Based on the assumption that existing epistemic and social structures shape the way in which Western concepts of secularism were appropriated, the contributions in this volume inquire into the historical conditions for the development of a Japanese form of secularity.

Introduction: Secularities in Japan  Ugo Dessì and Christoph Kleine Formations of Secularity in Ancient Japan? On Cultural Encounters, Critical Junctures, and Path-Dependent Processes  Christoph Kleine Religion, Medicine and the Notion of Charity in Early Jesuit Missionary Pursuits in Buddhist Japan  Katja Triplett Secularization and the Jōruri Plays: The Decline of Religious Belief and the Search for Secular Salvation in Early Modern Japan  Kawata Koh 川田耕 “Even Three-Year-Old Children Know That the Source of Enlightenment is not Religion but Science”: Modern Japanese Buddhism between ‘Religion’ and ‘Science,’ 1860s–1910s  Hans Martin Krämer Practicing Belonging? Non-religiousness in Twenty-First Century Japan  Fujiwara Satoko World Heritage, Secularisation, and the New “Public Sacred” in East Asia  Aike P. Rots