Shimazono Susumu is a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Tokyo. He has published widely on modern and contemporary religious movements as well as on modern Japanese religions in general. Amongst his numerous publications is From Salvation to Spirituality: Popular Religious Movements in Modern Japan (Trans Pacific Press, 2004).

Okuyama Michiaki is a professor at Nanzan University and permanent research fellow at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, Nagoya, Japan. His recent works in English include “Religious Problems in Contemporary Japanese Society: Two Cases after the Aum Shinrikyo Affair,” in Religion and Social Problems (ed. Titus Hjelm, Routledge, 2010), and “‘State Shinto’ in Recent Japanese Scholarship” (Monumenta Nipponica 66/1, 2011).

Mira Sonntag is an associate professor for modern and contemporary Asian Christianity at Rikkyo University. Her research focuses on minor Christian movements in Japan, Asian women’s theology, and religious education. Her publications include Seimei no fushiginaru risei: Nakada Jūji, Uchimura Kanzō to Kimura Seimatsu no sairinundō 生命のふしぎなる理性ー中田重治、内村鑑三と木村清松の再臨運動, Uchimura Kanzō Kenkyū 43: 68-93 (2010).

Yoshihide Sakurai is a professor of sociology at the Graduate School of Letters, Hokkaido University, Japan. His recent publications include Regional Development in Northeast Thailand and the Formation of Civil Society (Khon Kaen University Press, 2003). He has published many books about contemporary religion in Japan and East Asia.

OCHIAI Hitoshi is a professor of mathematical theology at Doshisha University, Kyoto. He has published extensively in Japanese. All books are written in Japanese, but English translations of the most recent two books (Kantoru—Shingakuteki sūgaku no genkei  カントル 神学的数学の原型 [Cantor: Archetype of theological mathematics], Gendai Sūgakusha, 2011;  and Sūri shingaku o manabu hito no tame ni 数理神学を学ぶ人のために [Those Learning Mathematical Theology], Sekai Shisōsha, 2009) are available from the author at hochiai@mail.doshisha.ac.jp.

Ranjana Mukhopadhyaya is an associate professor of Japanese Studies in the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Delhi, India.  She specializes in the sociology of religion and Japanese religions, focusing on Engaged Buddhist movements and Buddhism in modern Japan. Her publications include Nihon no shakai sanka Bukkyo: Hōonji  to Risshō Kōseikai no shakai katsudō to shakai ronri 日本の社会参加仏教―法音寺と立正佼成会の社会活動と社会倫理  (Engaged Buddhism in Japan, Toshindo, 2005), the recipient of two academic awards in Japan.

INOUE Nobutaka is a professor at Kokugakuin University, and the director of the Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics at Kokugakuin University. He has been the president of the Japanese Association for Religious Studies since 2011. His recent publications in English include “Religious Education in Contemporary Japan” (Religion Compass, 3/4, Blackwell, 2009), and “Globalization and Religion: The Cases of Japan and Korea” (in Religion, Globalization, and Culture, Peter Beyer and Lori Beaman, eds., Brill, 2007).