Becoming One

Becoming One is a rich ethnographic study of a Japanese NGO’s development and aid work in Myanmar that traces its religious roots in Ananaikyō, a postwar new religion, and its transformation into a carrier of a “nonreligious” Shinto environmentalism. It provides a persuasive account of how particularistic Japanese values and ideals–Nihon no seishin–were translated and cultivated through its staff and training program. The ideological and financial links established between the organization’s leaders, the Liberal Democratic Party, and the nationalisitic Nippon Kaigi, confounds and challenges our conventional association of international aid with liberal politics. Highly recommended.–Mark R. Mullins, coeditor of Disasters and Social Crisis in Contemporary Japan: Political, Religious, and Sociocultural ResponsesBecoming One is especially significant as an object of study given not just the NGO’s unusual pedigree, but also the historical relationship between modern Japan and Burma-Myanmar and the ways in which OISCA forces us to reexamine the politics of international aid and development.–Nathan Hopson “New Books in East Asian Studies”Becoming One tells a strikingly different development story between Japan and Myanmar. Its graceful, clear-eyed view reveals ambivalent possibilities of international solidarity, alternately inspiring and disturbing, grown from muddy connections between neotraditional faith and ecologically attuned agrarian labor.–Peter Redfield, author of Life in Crisis: The Ethical Journey of Doctors Without Borders

Chika Watanabe is lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Manchester.