Professor Elisabetta Porcu

Professor and Head of Department

Elisabetta Porcu is a Professor of Asian religions and Head of the Department for the Study of Religions at the University of Cape Town. She is a South Africa’s National Research Foundation (NRF) B2-rated researcher. 

Before moving to South Africa, she worked at various universities in Japan (2004-2010) and taught Japanese religions at the University of Leipzig (2010-2014). She has been Visiting Research Scholar at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto (2013-2014), Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hawaii (2013), and Visiting Professor at Kyushu University (2016-2017). Among her publications are the monographs Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture (Brill, 2008), and Negotiations of the Sacred: Kyoto’s Gion Matsuri and the Shifting Boundaries of a Japanese Festival (University of Hawaii Press, forthcoming), the volume Matsuri and Religion: Complexity, Continuity, and Creativity in Japanese Festivals (co-edited with Michael D. Foster, Brill 2020, 2021); and various articles and book chapters, including “Gion Matsuri in Kyoto: A Multilayered Religious Phenomenon” (2020); “Religion, Second Modernity and Individualization in Japan” (2018); “Contemporary Japanese Buddhist Traditions” (2017); and “Pop Religion in Japan: Buddhist Temples, Icons and Branding” (2014). 

Elisabetta is the founding director of the Center for the Study of Asian Religions (CSAR) at the University of Cape Town; the founding editor of the Journal of Religion in Japan (Brill); and has served on the executive committee of the Association for the Study of Religion in Southern Africa (2017-2023, ASRSA President 2021-2023). 

Selected Publications
Books

  • Porcu, Elisabetta. Forthcoming. Negotiations of the Sacred: Kyoto’s Gion Matsuri and the Shifting Boundaries of a Japanese Festival (University of Hawaii Press, forthcoming).
  • Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture. Leiden, Boston: Brill (2008) https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004164710.i-263

Co-edited books

Edited volumes

  • Jørn Borup and Elisabetta Porcu (eds). 2025. Japanese Buddhism in Europe (Brill). https://brill.com/display/title/72281?rskey=ytfp2Z&result=1
  • Matsuri and Religion in Japan; Special volume of the Journal of Religion in Japan (9, issues 1-3), 2020. Edited with Michael Dylan Foster.
  • Journal of Religion in Japan (2012-present) http://www.brill.com/jrj

Articles and book chapters (select)

  • “The Gion Festival in Kyoto and Glocalization.” Religions 13(8): 689 (pp. 1-13). Special issue on East Asian Religions and Globalization, eds. Ugo Dessì and Lukas Pokorny (2022). DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13080689
  • “Gion Matsuri in Kyoto: A Multilayered Religious Phenomenon.” In Matsuri and Religion: Complexity, Continuity and Creativity in Japanese Festivals. co-edited with Michael Dylan Foster, Leiden: Brill (2021), pp. 37-77.
  • “Shinnyoen,” co-authored with Ugo Dessì. In Courtney Bruntz (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies in Buddhism. New York: Oxford University Press (2021). DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195393521-0275.
  • “Gion Matsuri in Kyoto: A Multilayered Religious Phenomenon” Journal of Religion in Japan 9 (1-3). Special volume on Religion and Festivals in Japan (2020): 37-77. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/22118349-00901006
  • “Introduction: Matsuri and Religion in Japan.” Journal of Religion in Japan vol. 9, issues 1-3 (2020): 1-9. With Michael Dylan Foster. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/22118349-00901009
  • “Toward a Pure Land Buddhist Aesthetics: Yanagi Sōetsu’s Muu kōshu no gan.” In Georgios Halkias and Richard K. Payne (eds.). Pure Lands in Asian Texts and Contexts. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press (2019), pp. 587-601.
  • “Japanese Buddhisms in Diaspora.” In Richard Payne and Georgios Halkias (eds.), The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Buddhism. London and New York: Oxford University Press (2018): 1-23.
  • “Religion, Second Modernity and Individualization in Japan.” Journal of Religion in Japan 7/2 (2018): 126-144. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/22118349-00702002
  • “Tenrikyō’s Divine Model through the Manga Oyasama monogatari.” Journal of Asian Humanities at Kyushu University (JAH-Q) (2017): 85-93.
  • “Contemporary Japanese Buddhist Traditions.” In Michael Jerryson (ed). Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism. London and New York: Oxford University Press (2017), pp. 122-139.
  • “Nihon no toshi shakai ni okeru shūkyōsei to sezokusei no yuragi ni kan suru kōsatsu. 2016. [Translation into Japanese of “Observations on the Blurring of the Religious and the Secular” by request of the 21st Century Center for Excellence Program at Kokugakuin University, Tokyo- Series: Articles in Translations.] http://k-amc.kokugakuin.ac.jp/DM/dbTop.do?class_name=col_jat.
  • “Down-to-Earth Zen: Zen Buddhism in Japanese Manga and Movies.” Journal of Global Buddhism 16 (2015): 37-50. http://www.globalbuddhism.org/jgb/index.php/jgb/article/view/146
  • “The Religious-Secular Divide at the Community Level in Contemporary Japan.” In: Marian Burchardt, Monika Wohlrab-Sahr and Matthias Middell (eds.). Multiple Secularities Beyond the West: Religion and Modernity in the Global Age. Boston and Berlin: deGruyter (2015): 167-186.
  • “Pop Religion in Japan: Buddhist Temples, Icons and Branding.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 26/2 (2014): 157-172. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/jrpc.26.2.157
  • “Religion and the State in Contemporary Japan.” In Religion and Politics: European and Global Perspectives. Johann Arnason and Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski (eds.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (2014), pp. 168-182.
  • “Staging Zen Buddhism: Image Creation in Contemporary Films.” Contemporary Buddhism 15/1 (2014): 81-96. https://doi.org/10.1080/14639947.2014.890354
  • “Sacred Spaces Reloaded: New Trends in Shintō.” In Matthias Middell (ed.). Self-Reflexive Area Studies. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag/Leipzig University Press (2013), pp. 279-294.
  • “Observations on the Blurring of the Religious and the Secular in a Japanese Urban Setting.” Journal of Religion in Japan 1/1 (2012): 83-106. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/221183412X628398
  • “On- and Off-line Representations of Japanese Buddhism: Reflections on a Multifaceted Religious Tradition.” In Pacific World 32/1 (2010): 91-107.
  • “Speaking through the Media: Shin Buddhism, Popular Culture, and the Internet.” In The Social Dimension of Shin Buddhism, Ugo Dessì (ed.). Leiden, Boston: Brill (2010), pp. 209-239. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004186538.i-286
  • “Anniversaries, Founders, Slogans, and Visual Media in Shin Buddhism.” In Japanese Religions 34/1 (2009): 53-73.
  • “Glimpses of the Pure Land in Wartime Italy.” In The Pure Land ns 25 (2009): 71-86.
  • “Jōdo Shinshū no gendaitekina hyōshō” (Modern Representations of Jōdo Shinshū). In Bukkyō Bunka Kenkyūjo Kiyō  47 (2008): 109-119.
  • “Aesthetics and Art in Modern Pure Land Buddhism.” In Japanese Religions 32/1-2 (2007): 53-68.

Important links:
Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3074-5754
Academia site: www.uct.academia.edu/ElisabettaPorcu
Journal of Religion in Japan: http://www.brill.com/jrj