Asian Religions in British Columbia
Edited by Larry DeVries, Don Baker, and Dan Overmyer

Asian Religions in British Columbia brings together fourteen religious studies scholars who offer intimate portraits of local religious groups, including Hindus and Sikhs from South Asia; Buddhist organizations from Southeast Asia; and Tibetan, Japanese, and Chinese religions from East and Central Asia. Although the geographical focus is particular, the conceptual focus is broad -- the authors explore each religious tradition in the larger context of Canadian multiculturalism.

2010, 322 pages, 6 x 9”

Reforming Japan
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union in the Meiji Period
By Elizabeth Dorn Lublin

Challenges received notions about women’s political involvement and engagement with the state in Meiji Japan by exploring the activism of members of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan, 1859-73
By Hamish Ion

Japan closed its doors to foreigners for over two hundred years because of religious and political instability caused by Christianity. By 1859, foreign residents were once again living in treaty ports in Japan, but edicts banning Christianity remained enforced until 1873. Ion investigates the impact of American Protestant missions on modern Japan and Japanese-American relations.

2009, 440 pages, 6 x 9”

Gandharan Buddhism
Archaeology, Art, and Texts
Edited by Kurt Behrendt & Pia Brancaccio

The ancient region of Gandhara, with its prominent Buddhist heritage, has long fascinated scholars of art history, archaeology, and textual studies. Discoveries of inscriptions, text fragments, sites, and artworks in the last decade have added new pieces to the Gandharan puzzle, redefining how we understand the region and its cultural complexity.

2006, 328 pages, 6 x 9"

Japan's Modern Prophet
Uchimura Kanzô, 1861-1930
By John F. Howes

Uchimura Kanzô was one of Japan’s foremost thinkers, whose ideas influenced contemporary novelists, statesmen, reformers, and religious leaders. He lived at a time of increasing modernization and rapid social change. Known as the originator and proponent of a particularly "Japanese" form of Christianity known as mukyôkai, Uchimura struggled with the tensions between his love for the homeland and his love for God.

2006, 464 pages, 6 x 9"

Images in Asian Religions
Texts and Contexts
Edited by Phyllis Granoff and Koichi Shinohara

Written by eminent scholars of anthropology, art history, and religion with interests in different regions (India, China, Japan, and Southeast Asia), this volume takes a fresh look at the many ways in which images were defined and received in Asian religions. Areas addressed include the complex, fluid, and contested nature of the religious image; the reception of images within the intellectual culture of Hinduism and Buddhism; and the importance of historical and cultural context in the study of religious images.

2004, 396 pages, 6 x 9”

Pilgrims, Patrons, and Place
Localizing Sanctity in Asian Religions
Edited by Phyllis Granoff and Koichi Shinohara

This book brings together essays by anthropologists, scholars of religion, and art historians on the subject of sacred place and sacred biography in Asia. The chapters span a broad geographical area that includes India, Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia, and China, and explore issues from the classical and medieval period to the present. They show how sacred places have a plurality of meanings for all religious communities and how in their construction, secular politics, private religious experience, and sectarian rivalry can all intersect.

2003, 392 pages, 6 x 9"