Back to All Events

Contemporary Legacies of Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan (Indiana University)

When Americans occupied Japan at the end of WWII, they claimed that Japanese religion was a political problem and declared religious freedom a solution. But in doing so, the occupiers ignored a long history of debate about religious freedom in Japan. Their narrative also masked competing interpretations among Americans themselves about was religion was and how it could be freed. This talk traces the lasting consequences of those debates, both for Japan and the world.