ABSTRACT
This chapter argues the somewhat controversial position that the future for traditional culture and religion is bright, even though one finds a widespread view that so-called traditional or indigenous culture is under great threat by the process of globalization. Globalization itself has been a long-term process extending over many centuries, although it has, with increasing rapidity, assumed a particular, discernible form only in recent centuries. Globalization is, it should be clearly recognized, a multidimensional process. Cultural clashes and tensions are an inevitable feature of globalization. The chapter proposes globalization along the lines conveyed by the Japanese word, dochakuka — meaning something like "global localization" or, more succinctly, "glocalization". Japan is a society whose history has been strongly— perhaps, uniquely— marked by its cultural creativity. In that sense, the general notion of the invention of tradition and the problematic nature of the idea of authenticity, are by no means alien to Japanese society in long-historical perspective.
