John Lawrence Breen is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 academic and Japanologist. He is a specialist in Japanese religious practices at the in Kyoto

Kyoto

is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...

. He collaborates with Dutch scholar Mark Teeuwen

Mark Teeuwen

Mark J. Teeuwen is a Dutch academic and Japanologist. He is an expert in Japanese religious practices, and he is a Professor at the University of Oslo...

, with whom he has published two books.

Early life

Breen was awarded his BA at the University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

 in 1979. He earned a Ph.D. in 1993 at Cambridge. His doctoral thesis was "Emperor, State and Religion in Restoration Japan."

Career

From 1985 through 2008, Breen was a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Reader in Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies

School of Oriental and African Studies

The School of Oriental and African Studies is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the University of London...

 in London. He is currently an Associate Professor at the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed journal Japan Review.

In the course of his academic career, Breen's critical examination of religious practices in Japan has been informed by his historical research. Historicity

Historicity

Historicity may mean:*the quality of being part of recorded history, as opposed to prehistory*the quality of being part of history as opposed to being a historical myth or legend, for example:** Historicity of the Iliad**Historicity...

 is construed as a fundamental component of Breen's view of Shinto.

Breen's work is influenced by the writings of Toshio Kuroda

Toshio Kuroda

was a Japanese academic, historian and university professor. A specialist in medieval Japanese history and in the history of Japanese thought, he greatly influenced Japanese historiography with several innovative and controversial theories. His ideas were the opposite of what mainstream academics...

. As most contemporary historians, he holds a more moderate position. While Kuroda denied Shinto was more than a japanized version of Buddhism, he and Teeuwen believe that there was a pre-modern, indigenous tradition of worship, mythology and shrines, even if indeed Shinto as an organized religion was yet to be born.

Selected works

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about John Breen, 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 10+ works in 30 publications in 1 language and 1,000+ library holding.

• An annotated translation of the Noh
  Noh
  , or - derived from the Sino-Japanese word for "skill" or "talent" - is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Many characters are masked, with men playing male and female roles. Traditionally, a Noh "performance day" lasts all day and...
  
  play "Ukifune" (1979), Undergraduate Dissertation.
• Japanese simplified (1987)
• Emperor, State and Religion in Restoration Japan (1993)
• Japan and Christianity: Impacts and Responses (1996)
• Japanese in Three Months (1997)
• Shinto in History: Ways of the kami (2000), with Mark Teeuwen
• Introduction: Death Issues in 21st Century Japan (2004)
• Yasukuni, the War Dead and the Struggle for Japan's Past (2008)
• Record in pictures of Yasukuni Jinja Yūshūkan (2009)
• A New History of Shinto (2010), with Mark Teeuween

Chapters

• "The Rituals of Anglo-Japanese Diplomacy: Imperial Audiences in Early Meiji" in Daniels, G. and Tsuzuki, C., (2002). The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1600-2000, Vol. 5: Social and Cultural Perspectives. pp. 60–76.
• "Juyondai shogun Iemochi no joraku to Komei seiken ron" ("The Kyoto Pilgrimage of the 14th Shogun Iemochi and 'Komei Administration' Theory") in Meiji ishinshi gakkai, (2005), Meiji ishin to bunka. pp. 126–155.
• "Meiji tenno o yomu" ("Reading the Meiji Emperor") in Tetsuyuki, U., (2007). Nihon no kindai to wa nanika (What is Japanese Modernity?). pp. 76–92.

Articles

• "The Imperial Oath of April 1868: Ritual, Politics, and Power in the Restoration," Monumenta Nipponica.' Vol. 51, No. 4. (1996). p. 407-429
• "The Japanese Paradox of a Constitutional Monarch: With a Unique Status Between God and Man," History Today. Vol. 48, (May 1998). p. 2.
• "Yasukuni Shrine: Ritual and Memory," The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. June 3, 2005.
• "Resurrecting the Sacred Land of Japan The State of Shinto in the Twenty-First Century," Japanese Journal of Religious Studies. Vol. 37, No. 2, (2010). p. 295.