Helen Hardacre is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 academic and Japanologist. At Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, she is the Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions and Society.

Hardacre is the daughter of British historian Paul H. Hardacre; and like her father, Hardacre would be awarded a Gugghenheim fellowship.

Career

She was Director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies

Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies

Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University is a research center focusing on Japan. It provides a forum for stimulating scholarly and public interest....

 from 1995 through 1998. Her interests include Japanese society and religion

Religion in Japan

Most Japanese people do not exclusively identify themselves as adherents of a single religion; rather, they incorporate elements of various religions in a syncretic fashion known as . Shinbutsu Shūgō officially ended with the Shinto and Buddhism Separation Order of 1886, but continues in practice...

 and the ramifications of potential constitutional amendments

Constitution of Japan

The is the fundamental law of Japan. It was enacted on 3 May, 1947 as a new constitution for postwar Japan.-Outline:The constitution provides for a parliamentary system of government and guarantees certain fundamental rights...

 on the future of religion in Japan.Japanese Studies Association of Australia (JSAA), 2005 Conference, keynote speaker bio notes

Selected works

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Helen Hardacre, OCLC

OCLC

OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. is "a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing information costs"...

/WorldCat

WorldCat

WorldCat is a union catalog which itemizes the collections of 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories which participate in the Online Computer Library Center global cooperative...

encompasses roughly 30+ works in 80+ publications in 3 languages and 5,000+ library holdings

• Lay Buddhism in Contemporary Japan : Reiyūkai Kyōdan (1983)
• The Religion of Japan's Korean Minority : the Preservation of Ethnic Identity (1984)
• Kurozumikyō and the New Religions of Japan (1985)
• Maitreya, the Future Buddha (1988)
• Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan (1988)
• Shintō and the State, 1868-1988 (1989)
• Asian Visions of Authority Religion and the Modern States of East and Southeast Asia (1994)
• New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan (1997)
• The Postwar Development of Japanese Studies in the United States (1998)
• Religion and Society in Nineteenth-Century Japan: a Study of the Southern Kantō Region, using late Edo and early Meiji Gazetteers (2002)