Research interests
History of religion in Japan (with a focus on Shinto), social history, matsuri festivals
History of religion in Japan (with a focus on Shinto), social history, matsuri festivals
2025 (forthcoming): “Saimon recitations: A medieval worldview? Two examples from Oku Mikawa.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies.
“On the place of ‘meaning’ in traditional festivals: The hanamatsuri of Oku Mikawa.” Asian Ethnology.
2024: “Religion in Tokugawa Japan”. In The New Cambridge History of Japan, Vol II, pp. 443-477.
2023: Kyoto’s Gion festival: A social history. London: Bloomsbury. 261 pages.
Festivals in Asia: patronage, play, and piety, special issue, Religion 53/3, edited with Moumita Sen and Aike P. Rots.
2021: “Shinto in the 1660s and 1670s: The Shrine Clauses of 1665 as an expression of Domain Shinto.” In Stefan Köck et al, eds, Religion, Power, and the Rise of Shinto in Early Modern Japan, London: Bloomsbury, pp. 151-163.
“Faith as Authenticity: Kyoto’s Gion Festival in 2020.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 48/1, pp. 125-163.
2020: Sacred heritage in Japan. Edited with Aike Rots. Routledge.
Christian sorcerers on trial: Records of the 1827 Osaka Incident. With Kate W. Nakai and Fumiko Miyazaki. Columbia UP. 364 pages.
2017: A Social History of the Ise Shrines: Divine capital. London: Bloomsbury. Co-authored with John Breen. 302 pp.
Formations of the Secular in Japan. Special issue of Japan Review (30). Co-edited with Aike P. Rots.
2014: Lust, Commerce, and Corruption: “An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard” by an Edo Samurai. Co-authored and co-edited with Kate W. Nakai. Columbia University Press. 473 pp.
2013: Buddhism and Nativism: Framing Identity Discourse in Buddhist Environments. Co-edited with Henk Blezer. Brill Academic Publishers. 290 pp.
2012: Uncharted Waters: Intellectual Life in the Edo Period. Co-edited with Anna Beerens. Brill. 259 pp.
2010: A New History of Shinto. Co-authored with John Breen. Wiley-Blackwell. 264 pp. (Translated into Italian, Lo Shinto: Una Nuova Storia, Roma: Ubaldini 2014)