Practically Religious in Practice: Twenty-Five Years of Scholarship and Counting

Ian Reader and George Tanabe’s Practically Religious (University of Hawai’i Press, 1998) was a groundbreaking work that continues to influence scholars today. While not explicitly written in conversation with scholars in the nascent field of Lived Religion at the time, it was perhaps one of the first and most influential works on what later became known as the study of lived religion in Japan. The book highlights the categories of moral luck and good luck, the marketing of benefits, the confluence between high and low traditions, and the distinction between cognitive and affective belief. Appealing to textual scholars, ethnographers, Buddhologists, and many others, it continues to be cited in contemporary research and is a staple assignment in many courses. In celebration of this seminal work’s 25th anniversary, the Society for the Study of Japanese Religions (SSJR) will host a roundtable of scholars who have benefited from the book.