In recent years there has been an increasing interest in Shugendō, a syncretic religion based on mountain worship and ascetic exercises. Various practicing groups across the country are expanding beyond their sanctuaries and gather in social networks, even creating new structures and international groups and practicing outside of Japan. The scope of Shugendō’s discourse and practice has expanded to a larger public, thereby attaching Shugendō to the popular belief in so-called “power spots”. Behind this growing popularity might be an interest in a “world invisible to the eyes” (Roth, 2019), in which worldly conflicts and individual concerns may be solved detached from rationalism. This lecture will explore to what extent Shugendō has been rematerialized and staged in the course of its popularization. Does Shugendō, as some scholars claim, represent an “embodiment of Japanese culture” that is worth spreading? Details and registration here

Speaker:
Josko Kozic, Heidelberg University

The sixth and last session of our MWS Web Forum Series ‘The Digital Transformation’ on November 4 will introduce six Digital Humanities (DH) projects from different institutes within the Max Weber Foundation. Harald Kümmerle (DIJ) will give a talk on “Datafication as observed in speeches in the Japanese Diet – an analysis using topic modelling”. Esther Meier and Sebastian Kindler (German Historical Institute Moscow) will introduce the German-Russian documentation and digitisation project “Soviet and German Prisoners of War and Internees”. Jörg Hörnschemeyer (DHI Rome) will give an overview of DH at the German Historical Institute in Rome. Mareike König (German Historical Institute Paris) will introduce “Academic blogging in the humanities” using the example of the platform de.hypotheses. Anne Klammt (DFK Paris) will give a talk on the “Deutsch-Französische Kunstvermittlung 1871–1940 & 1945–1960” and Jana Keck (German Historical Institute Washington) will introduce “Semi-Automated Genre Classification for Historical Newspapers”. Details and registration here

Andreas Fickers (Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History) will be the speaker in the fifth session of our MWS Web Forum Series ‘The Digital Transformation’ on October 28. His presentation “What the D does to History – The Digital Age as a New Historical Time Regime?” will focus on the interface between theory and practice, conceptual penetration and methodological reflection of historical scholarship in the digital age. It will discuss the tensions between a discipline based on 19th century methodological foundations and the radically changing knowledge economy of the 21st century. These tensions force historians to rethink and adapt central concepts and practices of thinking and doing history – including the question of the temporal regime of the digital which will be at the heart of this lecture. Details and registration here

Yuko Harayama (RIKEN), Dietmar Harhoff (Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition), and Ulrike Schaede (University of California San Diego) will be the speakers in the fourth session of our MWS Web Forum Series ‘The Digital Transformation’ on October 21. Its focus will be on ‘The Future of Society – National Ambitions and Strategies’. Yuko Harayama’s paper “How to use ‘Society 5.0’?” will introduce the concept and explain its use in Japan and the interest it has attracted abroad. In his presentation “Reconsidering German National Strategies towards Digitalization”, Dietmar Harhoff will focus on the government’s strategic plan ‘Industrie 4.0′, its national AI strategy, and initiatives to accelerate the digitalization of the public sector. Ulrike Schaede’s paper “National Differences in Preparing for the Digital Disruption: Markets v. Industrial Policy” will compare Japan’s reliance on industrial policy, the US’ focus on markets and private initiatives, and Germany’s in-between position. Details and registration here