The study of religion in Japan is probably best known to Western people for D. T. Suzuki and the Kyoto School. However, it would be too Orientalistic to assume that the modern Japanese study of religions has been predominated by Zen Buddhist philosophy with a somehow mystical method of intuition. Japanese students majoring in shūkyōgaku (the study of religion) have been reading classic and contemporary works that are more or less similar to those on the reading lists at Western graduate schools. Moreover, the earliest Japanese scholars of religion regarded themselves as more scientifically objective than their Western counterparts who were struggling to detach themselves from the influence of Christian theology. Although those Japanese scholars were, in reality, far from ideologically neutral, the establishment of the study of religion as a nonconfessional university department...