ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book demonstrates that the globalization of Japanese religions is a complex phenomenon that goes well beyond the transnational activism of new religious movements or a few traditional forms of Buddhism. The widespread combination of inter-religious dialogue and religious superiorism within the Japanese religious world can easily be misunderstood as a mere reaction to globalization. The greening of religion in Japan, so often misrepresented as the expression of an allegedly immutable 'green Dharma', is, in fact, the result of complex interactions between traditional and global ideas. In fact, the willingness to creatively incorporate ideas circulating in global culture can go hand in hand with claims of cultural chauvinism. The global repositioning of Japanese religions is also crosscut by imperceptible processes of decontextualization, which highlight certain aspects of the tradition and obscure others with instrumental nonchalance.
