Environmentalism

Abstract

In recent decades, religious traditions worldwide have been reinterpreted in the light of environmental concerns. Various scholars and religious actors have described Asian worship traditions such as Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Hinduism as vestiges of 'holistic ecological wisdom' and 'ancient sustainability'in contrast to Abrahamic religions, which are often said to legitimize or even encourage exploitation of the natural environment (see White 1967). They have suggested that Asian traditions contain important resourcesphilosophical, practical, and physical -for overcoming today's global environmental crisis (e.g. Duara 2015;Smith 1972; Tucker & Berthrong 1998; Tucker & Williams 1997). As some critics have pointed out, such interpretations are often anachronistic and orientalist, and may be employed to support nationalist or other ideological agendas (Kalland 2002;Pedersen 1995). Although this critique is justified, there is no denying the fact that environmental concerns have contributed to the actual transformation of religious identities and practices. Today, religious leaders and laypeople throughout the world are expressing concerns with environmental issues. Some of them are making serious attempts to put these ideas into practice, ranging from mosque and church communities investing in alternative energy to temple and shrine communities actively resisting the destruction of local environments (e.g. Darlington 2012; Kent 2013).These global trends have exercised considerable impact upon Japanese religious organizations. Scholars and religious leaders in Japan have combined contemporary notions of Asian religions as 'holistic' and 'sustainable' with earlier modern ideas of Japan as a nation characterized by a unique attitude to nature. In popular discourse and nationalist scholarship, this spirit of 'harmonious co-existence with nature' is typically presented as a defining feature of 'the Japanese people' since times immemorial, which is said to have had a strong impact on aesthetic and religious traditions. In reality, this famous Japanese 'love of nature' is largely the product of Meiji-period nationalist mythmaking, and therefore not nearly as ancient or traditional as it is commonly imagined (see Kalland & Asquith 1997; Morris-Suzuki 1998: 35-59; Rots 2017b: 47-63). Moreover, the popularization of these ideas in Japan and abroad paradoxically coincided with the emergence of large-scale industrial pollution and environmental exploitation by Japanese state and corporate actors, domestically as well as abroad (Dauvergne 1997; Walker 2010). Nevertheless, although demonstrably at odds with reality, the perception of Japan as a 'green archipelago' possessing outstanding natural beauty, preserved throughout the centuries because of the Japanese people's unique love of nature, remains widespread. In recent decades,