Expanding Religious Studies to Accommodate Comprehension of Paganism as a Bona Fide Religion

What is it about?

Through an examination of the concepts of universality and indigenousness, the Japanese author’s argument is that a more comprehensive definition of ‘religion’ is possible than there is via traditional Western academic understanding. Instead of the more restricted, confrontational and inadequate ‘sacred’/’secular’ framework, the Japanese principle of Irekawari suggests the possibility of a mutual conversion between the sacred and the profane. The author explores the conceptual dyad of *hare* ‘festive’ and *ke* ‘ordinary’ as providing a possibly broader framework that includes magic and sorcery along with religion and the sacred. It also precludes the necessity of positing a transcendent or supernatural reality and therefore, for the study of religion, encourages including the spiritual lives of such peoples as Native Americans or the Maori who consider proper behaviour to be “based upon *reciprocity between all beings*” rather than as something “deduced from any transcendentally authorized imperative.” As a more flexible and adjustable framework that is not only more general but also logically adequate yet simple, there is provision for the study of behaviour and understanding that we might accept as religious but which does not conform to characteristic Judeo-Christian quarantining of the sacred as absolute and distinct. Nevertheless, the author concludes that in the final analysis even the pairing of *hare* and *ke* is inadequate and replaces this framework with one between *i/yu* and *ke* that allows the consideration of defilement, pollution, danger and obstacle as religiously significant – e.g., the funeral ceremony, spiritual curing, etc. The new term is a Japanese linguistic element that appears in religious words that pertain to either celebratory or mourning situations. But rather than an opposition with *ke*, *i/yu* represents a religiously modified feature of *ke* or everyday life that permits consideration of religious gratitude and/or abstinence depending on the particular context. As an existential root, *i/yu* is a phase of the world rather than something that is radically and totally separate – encouraging an understanding that includes comprehending much folk practice (e.g., Ebisu worship, ritually insulting the gods, vernacular Buddhism, corpo-spiritual recognition, etc.) *Hare* becomes then a specialized, felicitous instance of *i/yu* that itself emerges out of the ordinary rather than being something utterly other.

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Why is it important?

Professor Mikirou Zitukawa's perception of the shortcoming of the terminology used in the West for understanding religion allows a subsequent vocabulary for religious terms to be developed. His astute analysis opens the field of study for pagan spirituality that has otherwise remained largely invisible for Western academics.