In the context of modern global exchanges, an imagined and essentialised notion of East Asia has served as both a source of inspiration and a catalyst for new connections, extending beyond the geographic boundaries of China, Japan, and Korea. This volume explores the global circulation of practices, technologies, and ideas identified as East Asian in alternative therapies and spiritual practices since the 1970s. Case studies range from the incorporation of traditional Chinese medicine into Brazilian naturopathy to self-development seminars promoting Korean national identity. Rather than focusing on questions of authenticity, the book uniquely interrogates how and why the cultures of China, Japan, and Korea have been invoked over the last fifty years to promote specific therapeutic, spiritual, and political agendas worldwide.
List of figures and tables
Acknowledgements
Note on naming, use of italics and other conventions
Therapy, Spirituality and East Asian Imaginaries: An Introduction
Section 1: Circulation of East Asian Concepts
Chapter 1: How Qi Became Energy: Parapsychology, Soviet Science and Chinese
Acupuncture in the 1970s
Chapter 2: Finding Kyo in Shiatsu Spaces: Sensing the Global Movement of
Embodied Knowledge
Chapter 3: Capturing the Moment of Kimochi-ii: Transnational Flows and the
Transformation of Qigong in Japan
Section 2: Circulation of Therapeutic Narratives
Chapter 4: Five-Element Acupuncture in 1960-80s Britain: In Pursuit of
Alternative Treatment with Body-Mind-Spirit
Chapter 5: From Eden to Aquarius: Oriental Medicine, Natural Healing and
the Market of Self-Care Books in Brazil in the 1970s
Chapter 6: Buddhist Self-Help Healing Narratives and the Meditative Turn
Section 3: Alternative Therapies Across Epistemic Fields and Professions
Chapter 7: A Collaboration Between Mother and Baby: Sophrology in a Japanese
Maternity Clinic and the Making of Medical Knowledge
Chapter 8: The Influence of Traditional Chinese Medicine on Brazilian
Naturology
Chapter 9: Constructing a Modern Esoteric Buddhist Breath Therapy
Section 4: Alternative Therapies and National Identities
Chapter 10: Ki Sury.n in South Korea: Reclaiming the Term Pigwahakch.k
(Unscientific) to Challenge Scientific Supremacy
Chapter 11: Nationalism and the Legitimacy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in
Macau: Colonial Legacy and Contemporary Imaginaries
Ioannis Gaitanidis is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Global and Transdisciplinary Studies, Chiba University (Japan). He is the author of Spirituality and Alternativity in Contemporary Japan: Beyond Religion? (2022). Luis Fernando Bernardi Junqueira is a D. Kim Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge. He is a global historian of science, medicine, and religion in China, with extended interests in the histories of psychology and alternative medicine in modern East Asia and South America. Avery Morrow is a PhD candidate in Religious Studies at Brown University. His research broadly covers new religious movements and occultism in Japan from 1868 through the present day. He is currently finishing a major research project on the integration of a popular faith healing movement into modern Shinto ideology. Sangyun Han is a PhD candidate at the Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Tohoku University. Her research focuses on the history of modern Japanese religion, especially the relationship between the Occult Boom of the 1970s and Japanese esoteric Buddhism. She has recently published Historicizing the (Oc)cultic Milieu: Mikky. in 1970s Japan (Religious Studies in Japan volume 7, 2024).
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