Janine Tasca A. Sawada
Professor:
East Asian Studies and Religious Studies
Phone: +1 401 863 3567
Janine_Sawada@brown.edu
Janine T. A. Sawada, Professor of East Asian Studies and Religious Studies, specializes in the religious and intellectual history of early modern Japan. She is currently studying texts and images generated by banned religious groups in the Tokugawa period, especially groups devoted to the worship of Mt. Fuji.
Interests
Janine Sawada's early work dealt with the popularization of Zen Buddhist and Neo-Confucian ideas and practices among the working classes of Japan during the eighteenth century. More recently she researched groups that advocated various forms of personal cultivation in the early nineteenth century and the formation of political coalitions among the successors to these groups in the early Meiji period. Her work has encompassed the development in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of Shinto-type new religions, Neo-Confucian-inspired revival movements, divination systems, and Rinzai Zen networks. Professor Sawada is currently researching the religious and political context in which the Fujikō leader, Jikigyō Miroku, committed ritual suicide on Mt. Fuji. She is also beginning to explore the history of Nyoraikyō, the so-called first new religion of Japan.
Degrees
B.A., M.T.S., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Affiliations
Association for Asian Studies
European Association for Japanese Studies
Society for the Study of Japanese Religions
Japan Art History Forum
American Academy of Religion
Funded Research
N/A
Curriculum Vitae
Download Janine Tasca A. Sawada's Curriculum Vitae in PDF Format