Editor’s Introduction: Embodied Worlds of Japanese Religions

This special issue brings together essays that examine the body as a central site of religious meaning and transformation in Japanese history. Like the previous installment, “The Body Religious in Japan, Part 1,” the contributions span disciplines and periods, asking how bodies have been understood and worked upon in the history of Japanese religions. Across different media and contexts, the essays show that bodies were imagined, formed, and interpreted in ways that mattered deeply for Esoteric Buddhism, Shinto, Folk Religion, and Shugendō. Rather than treating the body as a passive object, the articles in this volume foreground it as an active medium through which religious knowledge was produced, transmitted, and contested.