Speaker: Stephen Christopher, Tokyo Metropolitan University

This presentation analyzes the growing importance of Tibetan Buddhism in East and Southeast Asia. Based on multi-sited fieldwork, I track the creation of symbolic and material capital through Tibetan Buddhist patronage networks. These transnational flows link communities across Asia with Tibetan settlements in India. While much scholarship has already focused on the East/West exchange of Tibetan Buddhism, this presentation shifts the focus to inter-Asian Tibetan Buddhism and preservation of Tibetan culture. I argue that Tibetan Buddhism is adapting to novel sociocultural conditions as it spreads across Asia. This is leading to heterogeneous forms of Tibetan Buddhism as it is exchanged across borders and helps scholars to better understand diasporic religious change. In Japan, we will consider several ethnographic examples: how Tibetan Buddhism fits within the landscape of spiritual therapies geared towards healing, especially for women; how the everyday intimacies of Tibetan monastic life are depicted in the popular manga cartoons of Kuranishi, Yasuko; and how the Tibet Festival in Kochi is hybridized with the Shikoku pilgrimage in attempts to revitalize a famed Japanese tradition. By moving across these ethnographic contexts, this presentation demonstrates how inter-Asian Tibetan Buddhism adapts to and sometimes hybridizes with the spiritual landscape of host countries. I argue that the Tibetan diaspora does not fit ‘ideal refugeehood’ – but instead generates various forms of material capital and is often socially additive.