Comparative Study of the Religious Situation and the Cultural Functions of Religious Studies and sociology of Religion at the End of the 19^<th> Century.

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At this turn of the century from 20^<th> to 21^<st>, the call for the reconsideration and reformulation of the "modern" religious studies and sociology of religion became internationally much stronger. This research Project aimed at the clarification of the relationship between religious situation and formation of religious studies in fin de siecle both in Japan and Germany, and tried to obtain some useful hints for the actual issues of religious studies.Firstly, I dealt with the founder of the Japanese religious studies, Anesaki Masaharu, whose life and work typically show the interrelatedness of science of religion and the political /cultural situation of the day. Anesaki not only gave the foundation for the empirical study of religion in Japan, but also interfered actively in the religio-political situation of his day. In this sense, his case exemplifies clearly the cultural function of religious studies. A part of Anesaki-research was published as a paper read at the 18^<th> Quinqu … More ennial World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religion in Durban, South Africa, August 2000. The main part of the research will be published in a book-form with the title "Anesaki Masaharu and the Modern Japan" in the spring of 2002.Another theme of our research was the clarification of the religious theories of Georg Simmel, one of the founders of sociology of religion in Germany. It was confirmed in our research that Simmel established his sociology (of religion) and philosophy of life in ambivalent relationships with modernity in general and with contemporary situation of religion and culture in his time. I discussed about this circumstance in my article "Consequences of the 'psychologistic' understanding of religion".In the course of the research there surfaced another theme, which was not proclaimed in the first concept of our research, namely the comparison of the two fin de siecle in terms of religious situation and religious research in their parallels and differences. I treated this theme in my articles "The Conditions of 'Post-modern Religiosity? '" and "The Accompanying Shadow…Counter-Science and the Dream of the Search for the 'Spirituality'". Less