JJRS > Volume 48 Issue 2 Epilogue: Japanese Religions and their Contributions to One Woman’s Identity

Makiko Hamaguchi

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I was born in northern Kyushu in 1995 and grew up there with three siblings. I have been living in Vancouver, Canada, since 2014. This autobiographical article is my attempt to examine how my worldview has been shaped, and how I have come to be who I am today, through an emerging sense of Japanese identity. My current learning environment has enabled me to be aware of what have often been styled as the distinct virtues of the Japanese people, which have been passed on to me by way of the embodied memories of their past lives. Yet those are quickly disappearing in contemporary Japanese society, and I have found my role through investigating histories that resurrect those virtues for collective rebirth.