In this conversation, René speaks with Dr. Justin Stein, the scholar of Japanese religion: What makes something “traditional”? How does the idea of “tradition” get invoked in political and social movements? And what is the relationship between tradition and the challenges our society faces today, from the climate crisis to racism to the coronavirus?
“Tradition seems to take on renewed importance in times of change.”
“There is no one objective telling of the past.”
“Each generation shapes tradition in a new way.”
“We’ve seen in our lifetimes a … revolution of consciousness.”
Join us for a discussion of varied traditions, from wrestling to dispelling ghosts, and reflections on the power and danger of “traditional” thinking.
Biography
Justin B. Stein (PhD, Study of Religion, University of Toronto) is Instructor of Asian Studies at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia, Canada. His research program focuses on how exchanges within transnational networks have shaped spiritual/religious practices and ideas in the North Pacific region (North America, Hawaii, and Japan).
His doctoral thesis (2017) examined the production of Reiki healing in mid-twentieth-century Japan, Hawaii, and North America as a way to theorize the North Pacific as a cultural intersystem, consider an analytical category called “spiritual medicine,” and discuss how circulation is a form of cultural production. A revised version of this thesis is under review for publication as a monograph. His postdoctoral research (JSPS 2017–2019, Bukkyo University) examined a network of Buddhist youth groups in Japan and the Japanese diaspora in the 1920s and 1930s and how their efforts to create a non-sectarian, internationalist peace movement interacted with their sectarian and national identities as well as the colonial activities of the Japanese and American Empires.
Publications
Among his recent publications are a forthcoming volume (Routledge Handbook of Religion, Medicine, and Health, co-edited with Dorothea Lüddeckens, Pamela Klassen, and Philipp Hetmanczyk) in which he has a chapter titled “Energy Healing: Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, and Healing Touch in the United States and Beyond,” a special issue of Japanese Religions on “Japan and the Global Occult,” to which he contributed an introduction (co-authored with Ioannis Gaitanidis), and a peer-reviewed article, “‘Universe Energy’: Translation and Reiki Healing in the Twentieth-Century North Pacific,” Asian Medicine 14 (2019): 81-103.
Websites
Many of his publications are available on his website: justinstein.academia.edu
He also writes about Reiki history and upcoming events at: facebook.com/JBSReikiResearch
Reference
25:45: Yokozuna_(Wrestler)
25:57: Mirror of Modernity – Invented Traditions of Modern Japan by Stephen Vlastos: mirror-of-modernity
32:40: Virgin_boy_egg
35:36: Don_Quixote
