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What role does religion play at the end of life in Japan? Spiritual Ends draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with hospice patients, chaplains, and medical workers to provide an intimate portrayal of how spiritual care is provided to the dying in Japan. Timothy O. Benedict uses both local and cross-cultural perspectives to show how hospice caregivers in Japan are appropriating and reinterpreting global ideas about spirituality and the practice of spiritual care. Benedict relates these findings to a longer story of how Japanese religious groups have pursued vocational roles in medical institutions as a means to demonstrate a so-called “healthy” role in society. By paying attention to how care for the kokoro (heart or mind) is key to the practice of spiritual care, this book enriches conventional understandings of religious identity in Japan while offering a valuable East Asian perspective to global conversations on the ways religion, spirituality, and medicine intersect at death.

Timothy O. Benedict is Assistant Professor in the School of Sociology at Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan.

"An extremely sensitive, compassionate, and readable study of hospice care in Japan, Spiritual Ends vividly reveals how Japanese hospice patients face impending death and the ways that chaplains, doctors, and nurses attempt to help the dying maintain their sense of the value of their lives until the very end. Timothy O. Benedict has produced a work brimming with wisdom drawn from his work as a chaplain as well as historical study of hospital chaplaincy and a broad understanding of the place of religion in the lives of contemporary Japanese people."—Helen Hardacre, Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions and Society, Harvard University

"An important contribution to the study of religion in contemporary Japan. Benedict offers a highly original perspective and new insightful material, providing a critical approach to the debate about spiritual care and spirituality."—Erica Baffelli, Professor of Japanese Studies, University of Manchester

"Benedict’s frank interviews with dying patients and their caretakers reveal an unassuming approach to spiritual care that privileges human connections at life’s end. This thoughtful study explores how Japanese hospice work participates in a global spirituality movement and may be helping to redefine religion’s social roles."—Jacqueline Stone, author of Right Thoughts at the Last Moment: Buddhism and Deathbed Practices in Early Medieval Japan

"A discerning study of pain and comfort at the end of life, and a story of the invention of spirituality in Japan, which traces traffic between medical, psychological, and religious thought, Buddhism and Christianity, Japanese occult groups and Western transcultural psychology, and between Eastern and Western discourses of the mind and soul."—Amy B. Borovoy, Professor of East Asian Studies, Princeton University

“Shedding light on the Japanese hospice movement and the issues it faces, Timothy O. Benedict shows how the question of spiritual care in Japanese hospices is significant for our understandings of religion in contemporary Japan and has wider global implications. Spiritual Ends will appeal to all who are interested in studies of religion and change in Japan and globally."—Ian Reader, Professor Emeritus of Religion, The University of Manchester

"This beautifully researched book shows how spiritual care for the dying is practiced in modern Japan and what that care reveals about religious identity there. Benedict brings sensitivity, analytic clarity and important insights based on the experiences of patients, family members and staff. This is essential reading for anyone interested in hospice care or religion in Japan and the practice of chaplaincy and spiritual care globally."—Wendy Cadge, author of Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine and director of Chaplaincy Innovation Lab