In explaining the history of the introduction of the concept of "religion" in modern Japan, the role of Jodo Shinshu priests has been rightfully stressed by previous research. In particular, Shimaji Mokurai (1838-1911) has been singled out as a pioneer in reforming the relationship between state and religion, not the least because he was among the first Japanese Buddhists actually traveling to Europe in 1872. Yet, the precise nature of the impact of this European experience upon Shimaji and his fellow travelers has so far remained unclear. In this article, I will show whom Shimaji met in France and Germany in 1872 and 1873, and how these encounters shaped his thinking after his return to Japan. The identity of the churchman Shimaji met in Berlin will be revealed for the first time, and I will especially focus on how the particular brand of liberal Protestant theology espoused by that minister impacted upon Shimaji's budding ideas about religion and the role of Buddhism within modern state and society.

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This paper analyzes Uchimura Kanzo's Bible study from the perspective of his specialty as an intellectual and of his calling in the Meiji era. It argues that his conscious activities based on the Bible aimed to contribute to the establishment of modern universal values in the world and aimed consequently to serve gradual changes in Japanese society. The author aims to reconstitute Uchimura's activities based fully on the Bible as the social developments of his specialty, with the best characteristics of his intellectual realism. The first part emphasizes that Uchimura received, from words of the Bible, a vision to the universality beyond the story of one race or one nation: "being personal, therefore being universal." The second part clarifies that Uchimura had a diagnosis that the Bible would greatly contribute to realize and generalize ethical values such as independence, liberty, justice, and peace. The third part deals with the process of undertaking Bible study as his own specialty, and examines the specific details of his proposal that Bible study as a social work would lead to a fundamental national reform from generation to generation.

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Nowadays, it is generally accepted as axiomatic that Japanese higher education, such as universities, provides courses on religion, and therefore religion can be studied. This was, however, not the case before the Meiji Era, when there was no modern university system. This paper traces the institutional factors that constitute the condition of today's education on and research of religion. The methodology focuses on the relationship between the government, especially the Education Ministry, and religious colleges from the historical point of view of the Japanese higher educational system and the policy on education. First, the Japanese Education Ministry's negative and aversive attitude against religious schools in the early Meiji Era will be presented. Next I will look at the way the Ministry changed its stance and established the Private School Ordinance and Acts of Colleges (Senmon Gakko Ordinance) around 1900 and improved education and research of religion in higher education. Finally, this paper will examine the reality that religious schools were established along with the guidance of the Education Ministry, whose motivation was to construct a modern educational system. This means that the original purpose of education and research in Japanese religious schools was, in the context of the history of education system, not for training religious professionals.

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This paper aims to make clear that "fortune-telling & charms," being popular among young girls in the 1980's in Japan, helped them to cope effectively with conflicts often taking place in establishing their relationships, especially in schools. For this purpose, I have analyzed articles in My Birthday, a representative fortune-telling magazine. It was said that "fortune-telling & charms," a part of "magic-religious popular culture" in the 80's, had worked as a map to help girls understand their standpoint and relationship with others, and My Birthday was taken in the same way. But as a result of analyzing in detail the articles in My Birthday, it has been found out that "fortune-telling & charms" have not only given girls a "map" as mentioned above, but also helped them to convert school into a place for training to construct relationships, by giving a mystic meaning to the process of adopting. It is also clear that My Birthday helped girls to create a loose community of their own.

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William James's doctrine of "the will to believe" is an attempt to justify the faith chosen by our passional nature, but this does not mean permission to believe anything we might like. His supposition is a conflict between belief and doubt of a "live" hypotheses, and its practical ethics is a question to be faced. In human psychology it is, in fact, difficult to separate probability from desirability, and an attitude of not believing without evidence is actually based on the fear of being in error. In human nature, however, there is implicit reasonableness which enables us to believe without evidence. James suggests that the consistency of the consequences which pragmatism requires should be suited as an ethical criterion rather than evidence. Furthermore, a religious hypothesis is a proposition in which "faith in a fact can help create the fact," hence in order to verify it, one must first believe it. In short, the term "believe" used by James means not to believe blindly, but to simultaneously verify consistency and generate truths. Then, for the people who want to be saved, believing could be superior to doubting.

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In this paper, I attempt to identify Wittgenstein's relations to Kierkegaard at the period of his diaries Ludwig Wittgenstein: Denkbewegungen. Tagebucher 1930-1932, 1936-1937. In short, I claim that Wittgenstein put in practice Kierkegaard's philosophy of religion as taught in Practice in Christianity. According to Kierkegaard's Practice in Christianity, we need to be contemporaneous with Christ, face the possibility of offence, and overcome it to have faith. He also thinks that when we fully realize our imperfection in contrast to the demands of such an ideal, we may come to find some reality in the forgiveness of our sins. At the period from 1930 to 1932, Wittgenstein considers his vanity and cowardice as his sins. I argue that at the period from 1936 to 1937, he seeks salvation in Christianity and then reads Kierkegaard's Practice in Christianity. I also argue that in the end Wittgenstein comes to have faith in the forgiveness of his sins as Kierkegaard intends in his book.

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Prayer, premising the existence of personal or non-personal absolute transcendence, is the act that intends to change the forms of the existence of praying persons themselves, others, or the world inside the praying persons by concentrating their attention on something. Based on this definition, I examine Gurdjieff's idea of prayer. In order to make concentration on prayer easy, Gurdjieff adopted God, a praying person himself, and a living person who was the nearest to the praying person, as objects of prayer. He thought that what would achieve a prayed wish was not the non-personal God or the living person who was the nearest to the praying person, but was the concentration of the attention of the praying person on his prayer-words and so on. It also was an exercise that involved self-observation and self-remembering. On the other hand Gurdjieff explained that if a praying person prayed in the proper way, a substance called "magnetism," which he had in and around his physical body, would change. Furthermore, Gurdjieff explained that this change would help create an astral body that was the soul for the physical body. In his prayer, he considered the use of language important, and intended to change the forms of the existence of praying persons themselves.

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In the Romanian communist era, there were several vigorous dissident movements. Nicolae Steinhardt, a Romanian orthodox monk, is known as a writer who joined interior dissident movements and actively supported the campaigns of exile organizations against the communist regime. He was arrested for supporting Constantin Noica, a prominent dissident and philosopher, and spent four years between 1960 and 1964 in concentration camps. In Steinhardt's dissident movement, he maintained a close relationship with Mircea Eliade, who was leading advocate of a group of Romanian exiles. It is possible that Eliade's concept of religions was considered as a key factor in the resistance against Romanian and Soviet regimes. This paper focuses on Steinhardt's text such as Jurnalul fericirii. This book is about his experience in concentration camps. I elucidate that what Eliade calls religions as an idea contrary to the propaganda of communist regime and based on Romanian nationalistically tinged resistance.

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The aim of this paper is to make a case for the translational program of Martin Buber and Frank Rosenzweig. They set forth a methodology for reading biblical texts, based on the perception of sound patterns such as the repetition of key words, called Leitwort (Leading Word). The Leitwort enables the understanding of a word root or word stem, the repetition of which has significance in the Hebrew text. It is also reproduced in the German translation. The Leitwort is not confined to a certain word but can also refer to a sentence or a single letter. The repetition of the Leitwort creates a dynamic phonetic movement and rhythmizes the structure in the biblical text, in which the change of tone precedes God's message and expresses the meaning of the whole teaching. This is the technique in the oral tradition to express the shift from prescriptions to a final instruction. Buber and Rosenzweig seek to demonstrate how the Bible presses art into the service of a Teaching, and how a translation designed to lead the attentive listener-reader back to the syntactic and stylistic workings of the Hebrew text may serve this end.

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