Susumu Shimazono (JPN)

is Professor at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Tokyo. He published widely on modern and contemporary religious movements as well as on modern Japanese Religions in general in Japanese and Korean language. His English book From Salvation to Spirituality: Popular Religious Movements in Modern Japan (2004) shows him as perhaps the most important scholar of contemporary religions in Japan. He also co-edited Religion and Society in Modern Japan(1993). His recent Japanese publications include A Genealogy of Healing knowledge (2003). His works are based on empirical and historical research on religions in Japan. He has always been interested in comparative perspective between Japan on one hand and the West and various parts of Asia on the other. Recently he is working on the area between religion and medicine including bioethics and a new interdisciplinary area of the death and life studies. He published Science and Religion in the Age of Crisis: The Value of Life and Cultural Differences (Yoko 2007) and The Expansion of Japan´s New Religions Overseas, edited in Japanese Religions in and beyond the Japanese Diaspora (Berkeley 2007).