The ancient region of Gandhara, with its prominent Buddhist heritage, has long fascinated scholars of art history, archaeology, and textual studies. Discoveries of inscriptions, text fragments, sites, and artworks in the last decade have added new pieces to the Gandharan puzzle, redefining how we understand the region and its cultural complexity.

The essays in this volume reassess Gandharan Buddhism in light of these findings, utilizing a multidisciplinary approach that illuminates the complex historical and cultural dynamics of the region. By integrating archaeology, art history,...

This is the spiritual biography of one of Japan's foremost thinkers, Uchimura Kanzo, who died in 1930 and whose ideas influenced contemporary historians, political scientists, and international religious followers. Known as the originator and proponent of a particularly ?Japanese? form of Christianity known as mukyokai, Kanzo attempted to purge the Protestantism that was flowing into Japan from the accretions to the biblical faith that had developed after several centuries of Western history.

In his lifetime, Kanzo was a well-known figure, becoming famous in Europe. His major...

Japan has had three Catholic prime ministers, and its current empress was raised and educated in the faith. How did a non-Christian nation come to foster more Catholic leaders than the United States, particularly when Protestantism is said to define Christianity in Japan and Catholicism is believed to be but a fleeting element of the country's so-called Christian century?

Far from being a relic of the past -- something brought to Japan by sixteenth-century missionaries such as Francis Xavier and then forgotten -- Catholicism offered, and continues to provide, an authentic way for...