Overview

In the context of modern global exchanges, an imagined and essentialised notion of ‘East Asia’ has served as both a source of inspiration and a catalyst for new connections, extending beyond the geographic boundaries of China, Japan, and Korea. This volume explores the global circulation of practices, technologies, and ideas identified as ‘East Asian’ in alternative therapies and spiritual practices since the 1970s. Case studies range from the incorporation of traditional Chinese medicine into Brazilian naturopathy to self-development seminars promoting Korean national identity. Rather than focusing on questions of authenticity, the book uniquely interrogates how and why the cultures of China, Japan, and Korea have been invoked over the last fifty years to promote specific therapeutic, spiritual, and political agendas worldwide.

Full Product Details

9789048559015

Table of Contents

Reviews

""This volume offers critical thoughts and documentary descriptions of transcultural movements that have shaped and continue to shape the world. Anyone interested in the ongoing discourse on Orientalism vs. Occidentalism will find much food for thought... Individual chapters could be quite useful as assigned readings for undergraduate and graduate courses on modern martial arts, the history of modern medicine, globalization, and Buddhist Studies."" Jeffrey Kotyk, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany

Author Information

Ioannis Gaitanidis is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Global and Transdisciplinary Studies, Chiba University (Japan). He is the author of Spirituality and Alternativity in Contemporary Japan: Beyond Religion? (2022). Luis Fernando Bernardi Junqueira is a D. Kim Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge. He is a global historian of science, medicine, and religion in China, with extended interests in the histories of psychology and alternative medicine in modern East Asia and South America. Avery Morrow is a PhD candidate in Religious Studies at Brown University. His research broadly covers new religious movements and occultism in Japan from 1868 through the present day. He is currently finishing a major research project on the integration of a popular faith healing movement into modern Shinto ideology. Sangyun Han is a PhD candidate at the Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Tohoku University. Her research focuses on the history of modern Japanese religion, especially the relationship between the ‘Occult Boom’ of the 1970s and Japanese esoteric Buddhism. She has recently published “Historicizing the (Oc)cultic Milieu: Mikky. in 1970s Japan” (Religious Studies in Japan volume 7, 2024).

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