In Memoriam: Bryan Ronald Wilson
(1926-2004)
and his contribution to the development of
Religious studies in Japan
delivered on 21st July, 2005, ISSR cpnference in Zagreb,
Croatia
Tsuyoshi Nakano, Soka University, Tokyo
First of all, as an executive committee member of Tokyo
Conference of IAHR (International Association for the History of
Religions), I would like to express deep gratitude to my dear
colleagues, President Enzo Pace, Karel Dobbelaere, Liliane Voye,
Jim Beckford, Peter Beyer and other friends of this SISR, for
coming to the conference held in the last March of this year. In
the conference, we set up 4 academic panels with those from SISR
and others, and the special reception in memory of Dr. Yoshiya
Abe, who had long been the council member from Japan and had made
a great effort since 1970s in order to establish good
relationship and mutual understanding between all of you and
Japanese scholars of religious studies together with late Dr.
Bryan Wilson. Now, as a Japanese student who has learnt very much
from Dr. Wilson’s academic works and from his ascetic life style
like a monk, but always enjoying good wine, it is a great honor
to be able to speak here about him in Japan. Dr. Wilson became
well known even in Japan, in the early 70s, as an advocate of
secularization theory and the study of sects through his early
works. The first translation of his publication was Religious
Sects (1970). It was published in Japanese in 1972. I first
encountered with him when I first translated his Contemporary
Transformation of Religion (Oxford University Press, 1976
(1979)). Then I translated other two books; Religion in
Sociological Perspective, Oxford University Press, 1982 (2002), A
Time to Chant: the Soka Gakkai Buddhists in Britain, Oxford
University Press, 1994 (1997). I also could have been a Visiting
fellow of All Souls College under his support in 1988-89.
