ABSTRACT
While both Buddhism, Shinto and Confucian thought have been critically studied in premodern Japan, modernity and the introduction of ‘Western knowledge’ were key factors in significant transformations of the academic study of religion and Buddhism. Inspired by Western Buddhology, Pali and Sanskrit became new focus areas, combined with a more rational and scientific orientation paralleled also in the religious formations of the Meiji ‘New Buddhism’. Recent years’ postmodern re-orientations have critiqued the Eurocentrism of religious studies, envisioning more emphasis on the cultural particularism and diversity within the study of both religion and Buddhism while at the same time addressing challenges of engaged or secular scholarship. The chapter gives a broad outline of the history of scholarly studies of Buddhism and religion in Japan, discussing examples of contemporary post-colonial critique and possible contours of an identity-based decolonial alternative.
