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).

Jolyon Baraka Thomas is a PhD candidate in Religion at Princeton University. His dissertation, “Japan’s Preoccupation with Religious Freedom,” discusses competing visions of religious freedom in early twentieth century Japan. Previous publications include Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2012), “Horrific ‘Cults’ and Comic Religion: Manga After Aum,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 39(1): 127–151, and “Shūkyō Asobi and Miyazaki Hayao’s Anime,” Nova Religio 10(3): 73–95.

Micah Auerback  researches and a teaches in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. His academic interests, centered on the modern period, include military and prison chaplaincy by Japanese Buddhists; modern Buddhist notions of engagement with state and society; and the polymath Minakata Kumagusu. His book project analyzes changing Japanese narratives of the Buddha Śākyamuni, from the Edo period to the postwar years.

Ikuo Higashibaba is a professor of comparative religion at Tenri University in Tenri, Japan. He is the  author of Christianity in Early Modern Japan: Kirishitan Belief and Practice (E.J. Brill, 2001).

Satoko Fujiwara is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at The University of Tokyo.

Norichika Horie is an associate professor at Center for Death and Life Studies and Practical Ethics at University of Tokyo. His recent publications in English include “Spirituality and the Spiritual in Japan: Translation and Transformation,” Journal of Alternative Spiritualities and New Age Studies vol. 5, (2009-11), http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/jasanas/ (Uploaded in April 2012).

Elisabetta Porcu, Ph.D. in Religious Studies, teaches Japanese religions at the University of Leipzig. She has been Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hawaii and is currently Visiting Research Scholar at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto. She is the author of Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture (Brill, 2008) and is the founding editor of the Journal of Religion in Japan (Brill).

OKAMOTO Ryōsuke  is a part-time Lecturer at the University of the Sacred Heart (Tokyo) where he teaches sociology of religions. He is the author or co-editor of the following recent books: Sociology of Sacred Place and Prayer (聖地と祈りの宗教社会学; Shumpūsha, 2012); Frontier of Religion and Society (宗教と社会のフロンティア; Keisō Shobō, 2012,); Contemporary Religious Tourism (聖地巡礼ツーリズム; Kōbundō, 2012).