Sacred Secrets: Networks of Secret Knowledge in Japanese Religions
Friday-Saturday, March 3-4, 2023
David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704
For more than four centuries, the history of Japanese religions has been dominated by secrecy. Secret texts circulated in every group regardless of their affiliation or social status, showing the porosity and pervasiveness of secrecy. Why and how did secrecy become such a central component of religious life? Although works on secrecy abound in the field of European and Tantra studies, the enormous body of Japanese secret works – many of which are recently discovered – has received relatively little attention, casting a shadow on a fundamental aspect of medieval and early modern Japanese religions.
This symposium brings together scholars working on a wide range of topics in the context of Japanese religions to discuss secrecy from different perspectives and methodologies. The aim of this event is to draw attention to the role of secrecy and better illuminate the dynamics underlying the process of “secretization,” the mobility of secrecy, as well as the factors that marked the decline of the culture of secrecy. More broadly, the scope of this symposium is to foster a conversation on Japanese religions from a cross-disciplinary perspective to understand the networks and logics that participated in the creation of religious identities during the Japanese age of secrecy.
Day 1 – Friday, March 3
4:30-6:00 | Keynote Address
The Language of Secrecy: Allegoresis in Medieval Japanese Culture
Susan Blakeley Klein, Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture, Director of Religious Studies, UC Irvine
Please note: This is a hybrid event. If you'd like to participate in the symposium via Zoom, please register here.
