2026 March 6 (Fri) 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm | (In-Person) | Porté Room (S250), Second Level, CGIS South Building, 1730 Cambridge St.

Religion and Politics in Japan Today: How Nippon Kaigi and Soka Gakkai Inform Elections and Policymaking

Speaker: LEVI MCLAUGHLIN, Professor, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University

Moderator: PAULINA KOLATA, Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University

Faced with political upheaval, aging support bases, rising regional security concerns, and harsh economic realities, how are influential religion-linked activists now seeking to shape Japan? What are the impacts of their initiatives? Levi McLaughlin will draw on his recent ethnography to illuminate consequential ways participants in the influential Shinto-linked lobby organization Nippon Kaigi and adherents of the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai are now restructuring their political engagements, from local-level communities up to the highest levels of government. This presentation will clarify reasons why we must attend to religion to understand support for and opposition to Japan’s popular Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae and her government, and it will point to ways religious affiliates will likely inform Japanese politics in the near future.

Reischauer Institute Japan Forum Lecture Series co-sponsored by the Program on US-Japan Relations