Spirituality and Alternativity in Contemporary Japan: Beyond Religion? by Ioannis Gaitanidis (review)

Reviewed by: Spirituality and Alternativity in Contemporary Japan: Beyond Religion? by Ioannis Gaitanidis Ernils Larsson Spirituality and Alternativity in Contemporary Japan: Beyond Religion? By Ioannis Gaitanidis. Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. 264pages. 115. 00 hardcover; 35. 95 softcover; ebook available. Ioannis Gaitanidis' Spirituality and Alternativity in Japanis a fascinating new contribution to the study of contemporary Japanese religion and religiosity. The work builds primarily on Gaitanidis' extensive ethnographic work in the spiritual therapy environment in Japan, but he supplements this with an impressive critical engagement with the academic subfield of "spirituality studies, " media usage of "the spiritual, " End Page 129and legal controversies surrounding "spiritual businesses. " The book also provides insight into the "spiritual boom" that took place in Japan between 2005 and 2009, and situates the boom in its historical, political, and social context. Gaitanidis divides the book into two parts, each comprising three thematic chapters. The first part focuses on the rise and fall of interest in spirituality in Japan, encompassing primarily the period from the mid-1990s to the late 2010s. Gaitanidis devotes one chapter each to three types of actors with a distinct interest in spirituality: the complementary and alternative therapy business; academia; and the publishing industry. The focus here is not only on how spirituality as a category is given meaning and how discourses are shaped within these different contexts, but also on the real effect spirituality has on the people working with it. This aspect is further emphasized in the second part of the book, in which Gaitanidis focuses particularly on how various individuals whose lives and livelihoods are interconnected with the category of spirituality are affected and informed by it. The three chapters all concentrate on particular issues related to this question: spiritual therapy and its place within the "healthist boom" in late-twentieth-century Japan; spiritual businesses as part of the service industry precarity under a neoliberal capitalist system; and legal and ethical challenges facing actors working within the alternative therapy business. Gaitanidis relies on a broad and multifaceted theoretical framework throughout his study, approaching the concept of spirituality from a number of different angles. Particularly intriguing is his consideration of the spiritual marketplace as a reflection of precarity—the state of persistent insecurity about employment or income—based on the understanding that spiritual life "remains dependent on the market conditions and social assumptions from which it seeks to escape" (133). In chapter 5, he shows how both workers and clients in the spiritual business are essentially stuck in an unfavorable and fundamentally unequal system, which in particular continues to structurally disadvantage women. He argues that the therapists as well as their paying customers—two categories that are not mutually exclusive—essentially seek freedom from precarity, but that the spiritual business cannot offer liberation, since it neither transcends nor contests "the gendered economy within which they and their clients were marginalized and precarious" (145). The book also challenges the popular notion of spirituality as "an 'alternative' for people who like neither religion nor science" (12). Building on ideas presented by Jonathan Z. Smith and Kocku von Stuckrad, Gaitanidis identifies spirituality as the third part in a triad; as an "alternative" to religion and science, yet significantly one that is never stable, with spirituality hiding different agendas depending on who wields it. He explores these agendas throughout the six thematic chapters, and concludes by suggesting that there are at least three different associations between alternativity and spirituality present in contemporary End Page 130Japan, where spirituality "can be an alternative forreligion, an alternative toreligion or an alternative offill in the blank" (187, italics in original). The common foundation for these associations is that religion as well as its alternatives are understood to have a therapeutic and often salvific function, whether for the nation, society, or the individual. Through this book, Gaitanidis has made a valuable contribution to the study of contemporary religion in Japan, and it is sure to become a classic in the study of new religions and alternative religiosity. By combining thorough ethnographic research with a solid critical analysis of the discourses surrounding alternative religion in Japan, Gaitanidis shows his qualities as both a meticulous and empathetic researcher. . .