In 1925, a Japanese new religion and a Chinese religious charity founded an organization in Beijing dedicated to uniting the world's religions. Its membership told a different story: Japanese generals, cabinet ministers, and expansionists who saw a useful cover for seizing interests in Manchuria and Mongolia. Yet the language of universal brotherhood proved harder to control than they expected. Chinese members turned it back on Japan, demanding the abolition of its most notorious treaty, and the organization collapsed.

In this second lecture of the Frontier Religious Studies series, Bunya Tamaoki uses this forgotten episode to ask how lofty ideals and hard politics entangle -- and how ideas can escape the people who invented them.

This event will be held in English, and is open to anyone who is interested. Registration is required.

Date: August 7, 2026
Time: 4:30 -6:00 p.m.
Venue: Tohoku University Kawauchi Campus, Multimedia Education and Research Complex, 6F (map)
To register: Google Form

About the Lecturer:

Bunya Tamaoki is a scholar of modern East Asian religious and intellectual history, currently affiliated with Kyoto Prefectural University as a JSPS postdoctoral fellow. His research examines the intersection of religion and politics in modern Japan and China, with particular attention to popular religious movements and the ideologies of pan-Asianism and ultra/super-nationalism. He is the author (in Japanese) of Pan-Asianism, Ultra/supernationalism, and Popular Religion: The Cooperation Movement of Oomoto-kyo and the Daoyuan/World Red Swastika Society (Shumpūsha 2026).

This lecture is organised by the Department of Japanese Religion and Intellectual History at Tohoku University's Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, and supported by the Toshiba International Foundation.