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).