The Formation of "Religious Discourses" and the Construction of "Religion"---with special regard to the Discussions about Religious Experience and about the Future of Religion.

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The purpose of this research project was to investigate how the modern concept of religion was formed in the discourses about religion in modern times, both in Europe and in Japan. I thematized this problem in terms of two fields of discourse, namely the discussions about "religious experience" and about "the future of religion." I demonstrated how closely the formation of the modern concept of religion was connected with the development and change of the self-understanding of modernity itself. The demise of the self-evident character of Christianity in Europe and the gradual establishment of the secular society caused the generation of the diverse understandings of religion. On the one hand, religion is regarded as the Other or the origin of modernity, on the other hand as the Alternative of modern values and practices. In Japan, where the modern European concept of religion was introduced simultaneously with the introduction of the modernity itself, there developed also diverse modes of religious discourses in a short time, and under the specific Japanese conditions. It can be said that in the formation period of modernity, both in Europe and Japan, the religion was conceptualized as something that is contrary to modernity or something that ought to be transformed in accordance with modernization. However, as the establishment of modernity was perceived increasingly as harmful for the spiritual life of the modern man, religion came to be regarded as the alternative sphere of value and cognition. This contrast becomes clearer through the comparison of the discourses of both epochs on the religious experience and on the future forms of religion.Our research project also demonstrated that the historical insights obtained through the analysis of the religious discourses of the past are indispensable for the creation of discourses about religion in our contemporary society.