ABSTRACT
This journey through some of the ongoing dynamics of religious change from Japan to Hawaii indicates that Japanese Buddhism, Shintō, and new religious movements have considerably more to do with globalization than is generally acknowledged within religious studies. 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. However, it is meaningfully related to factors such as the emerging sense of globality and the quest for power within global society. 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. Similarly, the choice of meditation by Hawaiian Jōdo Shinshū practitioners transcends the local and American dimensions, and depends largely on globally minded and globally scaled processes of inclusion and exclusion. And, as the case of Risshō Kōseikai illustrates, the interactions of religion with politics and science in Japan are not simply domestic issues but reflect the ongoing realignment of powerful social systems in the global arena.
