Review of Satoko Fujiwara and Hiroki Miura, Youth Culture and Religion in Twenty-First Century Japan By Carole Cusack

https://www.academia.edu/167650222/Review_of_Satoko_Fujiwara_and_Hiroki_Miura_Youth_Culture_and_Religion_in_Twenty_First_Century_Japan?email_work_card=title This short but attractive and intriguing book opens with a discussion of oshi-katsu – “activities to express one’s support for one’s favourite people or things, most typically pop idols” (p. 1) – and the way such devotion shades into religion-like attitudes and behaviours. Satoko Fujiwara and Hiroki Miura want to avoid the direct parallel – fandoms are religions for young Japanese – but want to stress the ways in which “contemporary religious forms .. structurally and affectively resemb[le] oshi-katsu” (p. 2). Their concern is 2.5 dimensional, in-between 2 dimensional (manga, anime) and 3 dimensional (real humans). Invented or fiction-based religions are part of this mix, as are young people’s encounters with “virtual reality, augmented reality, and physical reality” (p. 3). Japanese youth are nonreligious in general, but religious and nonreligious alike have common factors that make meaning. The authors identify “practicing belonging … vicarious spirituality … gendered fetishism … parody of religion … 2.5-dimensional [and] subjective rituals or ritualization” (p. 5) as core. ...