A study of ethnic Japanese, Brazilian, Pentecostal Christians living in Japan. After the introduction of the “long-term resident” visa, the mass-migration of Nikkeis (Japanese Brazilians) has led to roughly 190,000 Brazilian nationals living in Japan. While the ancestry-based visa confers Nikkeis’ right to settlement virtually as a right of blood, their ethnic ambiguity and working-class profile often prevent them from feeling at home in their supposed ethnic homeland. In response, many have converted to Pentecostalism, reflecting the explosive trend across Latin America since the 1970s. Jesus Loves Japan offers a rare window into lives at the crossroads of return migration and global Pentecostalism. Suma Ikeuchi argues that charismatic Christianity appeals to Nikkei migrants as a “third culture”—one that transcends ethno-national boundaries and offers a way out of a reality marked by stagnant national indifference. Jesus Loves Japan insightfully describes the political process of homecoming through the lens of religion, and the ubiquitous figure of the migrant as the pilgrim of a transnational future. Praise for Jesus Loves Japan “Transnational migrants find spiritual sustenance in Suma Ikeuchi’s careful, sensitive ethnography. In showing how Pentecostalism grants meaning to a bleak existence, Ikeuchi opens new vistas in our understanding of Japanese Brazilians residing in Japan. She offers fresh insights to all interested in identity puzzles, self-making, religious conversion, and global movement.” —Daniel T. Linger, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz “Suma Ikeuchi’s nuanced fieldwork among Japanese Brazilians (Nikkei) employed in Japan exposes the flawed hemato-logic of government and corporate officials who believed that ancestry (“blood”) alone would make Nikkei more assimilable than other foreign guest workers. This book demonstrates the primacy of culture over “blood” as a cipher for ethnicity.” —Jennifer Robertson, author of Robo Sapiens Japanicus: Robots, Gender, Family, and the Japanese Nation (2018) “This is a remarkable book about a remarkable situation. Through wonderfully vivid ethnography, Ikeuchi documents the lives of Brazilian Pentecostal converts in Japan as they negotiate identities as migrants, homecomers, pilgrims, and believers. In the process, the book becomes an anthropological meditation on time, belonging, sincerity, and the multiple meanings of making connections through blood.” —Simon Coleman, Chancellor Jackman Professor, University of Toronto

After the introduction of the "long-term resident" visa, the mass-migration of Nikkeis (Japanese Brazilians) has led to roughly 190,000 Brazilian nationals living in Japan. While the ancestry-based visa confers Nikkeis' right to settlement virtually as a right of blood, their ethnic ambiguity and working-class profile often prevent them from feeling at home in their supposed ethnic homeland. In response, many have converted to Pentecostalism, reflecting the explosive trend across Latin America since the 1970s. Jesus Loves Japan offers a rare window into lives at the crossroads of return migration and global Pentecostalism. Suma Ikeuchi argues that charismatic Christianity appeals to Nikkei migrants as a "third culture"--one that transcends ethno-national boundaries and offers a way out of a reality marked by stagnant national indifference. Jesus Loves Japan insightfully describes the political process of homecoming through the lens of religion, and the ubiquitous figure of the migrant as the pilgrim of a transnational future.

How evangelical churches in the United States convert migrant distress into positive religious devotion Why do migrants become more deeply evangelical in the United States and how does this religious identity alter their self-understanding? In the Hands of God examines this question through a unique lens, foregrounding the ways that churches transform what migrants feel. Drawing from her extensive fieldwork among Brazilian migrants in the Washington, DC, area, Johanna Bard Richlin shows that affective experience is key to comprehending migrants’ turn toward intense religiosity, and their resulting evangelical commitment. The conditions of migrant life—family separation, geographic isolation, legal precariousness, workplace vulnerability, and deep uncertainty about the future—shape specific affective maladies, including loneliness, despair, and feeling stuck. These feelings in turn trigger novel religious yearnings. Evangelical churches deliberately and deftly articulate, manage, and reinterpret migrant distress through affective therapeutics, the strategic “healing” of migrants’ psychological pain. Richlin offers insights into the affective dimensions of migration, the strategies pursued by evangelical churches to attract migrants, and the ways in which evangelical belonging enables migrants to feel better, emboldening them to improve their lives. Looking at the ways evangelical churches help migrants navigate negative emotions, In the Hands of God sheds light on the versatility and durability of evangelical Christianity.

Asia Pacific Pentecostalism, edited by Denise A. Austin, Jacqueline Grey, and Paul W. Lewis, yields previously untold stories and interdisciplinary analysis of pioneer foundations, denominational growth, leadership training, contextualisation, and community development across East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. Pentecostalism in the Asia Pacific has made an enormous contribution to its global family—from the more visible influence of Yonggi Cho from Korea to the worship revolutions from Australia (particularly associated with Hillsong) and the lesser known missionary activity from Fiji—each region has contributed significantly to global Christianity. Some communities prospered despite hostile environments and wartime devastation. This volume provides a systematic study of the geographical contexts of Asia Pacific Pentecostalism, including historical development, theological influences, and sociological perspectives. Contributors are: Doreen Alcoran-Benavidez, Dik Allan, Connie Au, Denise A. Austin, Edwardneil Benavidez, John Carter, Michael Chase, Yung Hun Choi, Darin Clements, Shane Clifton, Dynnice Rosanny Engcoy, Michael J. Frost, Luisa J. Gallagher, Sarita D. Gallagher, Kellesi Gore, Adonis Abelard O. Gorospe, Jacqueline Grey, James Hosack, Ken Huff, Paul W. Lewis, Lim Yeu Chuen, Mathew Mathews, Jason Morris, Nyotxay (pseudonym), Saw Tint Sann Oo, Selena Y. Z. Su, Masakazu Suzuki, and Gani Wiyono.

This volume explores the notion of “affective media” within and across different arts in Japan, with a primary focus on music, whether as standalone product or connected to other genres such as theatre and photography. The volume explores the Japanese reception of this “affective media”, its transformation and subsequent cultural flow. Moving from a discussion of early encounters with the West through Jesuits and others, the contributors primarily consider the role of music in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. With ten original chapters, the volume covers a wealth of themes, from education, koto music, guitar making, avant-garde recorder works, musicals and rock photography, to interviews with contemporary performers in jazz, modern rock and J-pop. Innovative and fascinating, the book provides rich new insights and material to all those interested in Japanese musical culture.

This Handbook provides a framework for analysing migrant diversity, utilising case studies that illustrate the social dynamics and consequences of such diversity for both migrants and host societies. By engaging with a wide range of literature and theoretical perspectives related to race and ethnicity, diasporas, gender, superdiversity, and intersectionality, it examines how such diversities can result in social processes of inclusion, exclusion, and hierarchical inequalities.

When Jesus comes back at the Second Coming, He will provide us with Antigravity vehicles, teleportation, Super intelligent Robots, Memory Absorption machines that will allow us to put memory from computers directly into our brain (no more school), He will provide us with Spaceships, some 7000 miles long or just one mile long. Jesus will provide the medical cure for aging or wrinkles (women take note). Also He will give us Transmutation capability to change dirt or any substance to any other substance. We can take dirt and rearrange it into- food, tomatoes, bananas, meat or a one ton car.- Anything you want- Just ask Him. Jesus will give the nations universes to live in. United African Continent has already petitioned Him for 10 billion galaxies in this universe and a trillion universes in the Mega, Mega, universe. What will China, Russia, Vietnam, Iran, Japan etc petition Jesus when He comes back ? The Parallel futures of the White race , the Black race and the Asian race. They will all be given universes to live in by The God of Israel. Jesus was Melchizedec ( Heb 7). So He must have been King of Salem in Genesis. Jesus was also King over the Canaanites ! Satan has never been to hell and when he does go there at the Second coming it is to be beaten and thrown out of hell by the inhabitants thereof. (Is 14). The Bible says it took God Generations (Gen 2:4)- not just Seven days to create the earth. That means Evolutionists are right about the time span and method. Theologians misunderstood. God designed and guided Evolutionary process is correct. Generations is to be noted. Where is Jesus? Whatever happened to the end time war between Christians and the U.S.S.R.? Did you know during Moses plagues the God of Israel turned Satans nation to look like frogs, bugs and lice etc. What did you think real demons looked like? Read this book for more.

Uchimura Kanzo (1861 1930) was an independent, original, and thought-provoking pioneer of Christianity in modern Japan. His theological values were organically linked with his aspiration for living and practicing such evangelical ideas as prophetic existence, neighborly love, social justice, pacifism, patriotism, and internationalism in the sphere of public life. Uchimura's commitment to the interaction between religious thought and social life is apparent in his well-known epitaph: "I for Japan; Japan for the World; the World for Christ; and All for God." In this interdisciplinary, multi-angled approach to Uchimura Kanzo, the contributors shed light on the inner logic, meanings, and modes of interaction between the religious and social thought observable in Kanzo. Contributors: Andrew E. Barshay Kei Chiba Shin Chiba Kyougae Lee Hiroshi Miura Tsunao Ohyama Hiroshi Shibuya Takashi Shogimen Yasuhiro Takahashi Kunichika Yagyu

Studies of racism against migrants have recently attempted to move away from the presumed dichotomy between 'white' and 'Others', yet the focus of much research remains predominantly trained on 'white' people racializing ‘Others’: whether Black, Asian or Muslim. Attending only to this 'white'/'Other' binary homogenises select groups of non-'white' including Asians. This approach also ignores racialisation and racism by Asians and among Asians. Consequently, there is a dearth of studies on issues of race in non-'white' settings. Through engaging the themes of co-ethnicity, intersectionality and postcoloniality, this book contributes to extant studies of migration in three ways through: (1) examining new geographical sites of racialisation and racism; (2) illuminating racialisation and racism beyond the 'white'/'Others' binary; and (3) introducing new dynamics in racialisation and racist discourses, including intersectional factors such as nationality, class, gender, language, religion, temporal framings and postcoloniality. Asian Migration and New Racism will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of Sociology, Social and Political Geography, Social Anthropology, History and Politics. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

In recent decades, reception history has become an increasingly important and controversial topic of discussion in biblical studies. Rather than attempting to recover the original meaning of biblical texts, reception history focuses on exploring the history of interpretation. In doing so it locates the dominant historical-critical scholarly paradigm within the history of interpretation, rather than over and above it. At the same time, the breadth of material and hermeneutical issues that reception history engages with questions any narrow understanding of the history of the Bible and its effects on faith communities. The challenge that reception history faces is to explore tradition without either reducing its meaning to what faith communities think is important, or merely offering anthologies of interesting historical interpretations. This major new handbook addresses these matters by presenting reception history as an enterprise (not a method) that questions and understands tradition afresh. The Oxford Handbook of the Reception History of the Bible consciously allows for the interplay of the traditional and the new through a two-part structure. Part I comprises a set of essays surveying the outline, form, and content of twelve key biblical books that have been influential in the history of interpretation. Part II offers a series of in-depth case studies of the interpretation of particular key biblical passages or books with due regard for the specificity of their social, cultural or aesthetic context. These case studies span two millennia of interpretation by readers with widely differing perspectives. Some are at the level of a group response (from Gnostic readings of Genesis, to Post-Holocaust Jewish interpretations of Job); others examine individual approaches to texts (such as Augustine and Pelagius on Romans, or Gandhi on the Sermon on the Mount). Several chapters examine historical moments, such as the 1860 debate over Genesis and evolution, while others look to wider themes such as non-violence or millenarianism. Further chapters study in detail the works of popular figures who have used the Bible to provide inspiration for their creativity, from Dante and Handel, to Bob Dylan and Dan Brown.