Overview

What role does religion play at the end of life in Japan? Spiritual Ends draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with hospice patients, chaplains, and medical workers to provide an intimate portrayal of how spiritual care is provided to the dying in Japan. Timothy O. Benedict uses both local and cross-cultural perspectives to show how global ideas about spirituality and the practice of spiritual care are being appropriated and reinterpreted in Japan. Benedict relates these findings to a longer story of how Japanese religious groups have pursued vocational roles in medical institutions as a means to demonstrate a so-called “healthy” role in society. By paying attention to how care for the kokoro (heart or mind) is key to the practice of spiritual care, this book enriches conventional understandings of religious identity in Japan, while offering a valuable East Asian perspective to global conversations on the ways religion, spirituality, and medicine intersect at death.

Full Product Details

9780520388666

Table of Contents

Reviews

"""Highly recommend[ed] to anyone interested in hospice care, spiritual care, or end-of-life care in, but not limited to, Japan."" * Japanese Journal of Religious Studies *"

"""Highly recommend[ed] to anyone interested in hospice care, spiritual care, or end-of-life care in, but not limited to, Japan."" * Japanese Journal of Religious Studies * ""A valuable addition to the ongoing discussion on the role of religiosity in Japan’s purportedly greatly secularized contemporary society, which will surely spark new debates regarding what religion can and cannot do for the dying."" * Religious Studies Review *"

Author Information

Timothy O. Benedict is Assistant Professor in the School of Sociology at Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan.

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