In this book, Tyler Barrett foregrounds the complexities surrounding a Japanese ethnic church community in the context of Canada. The rationale for conducting this research was to get a deeper understanding with respect to the views of its members, whose decisions often result in the formation of organizations known as Japanese ethnic churches. According to the author, while previous studies explored Japanese ethnic churches, they did not address its complexities.
Barrett calls for a more relevant description of Japanese ethnic church communities by referring to them as ‘transcultural communities’. The proposed research highlights the fact that Japanese ethnic church communities, while representing cultural and linguistic hybridity, also reveal that its members ‘experience and embody hybridity because of mixing, meshing, take-up and exchange’ (4).
From the outset of the book, the reader is introduced to ‘sacred epistemology’ and ‘secular epistemology’ approaches applied in this study, as well as their differences. Indeed, the author underscores that the ‘secular’ and ‘sacred’ should be distinguished due to their ‘religious and non-religious epistemological perspectives that may vary and may not reflect the infinite amount of potential perspectives that individuals may have’ (9). The author demonstrates that ‘epistemological hybridity’, that is, where ethnic and nationalistic characters are based on knowledge from both ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ epistemologies, are evident in perceptions of subjects in this study (11).
The author foregrounds the concept of ‘churchscapes’, in order to reveal the sociolinguistic complexities of the church communities outside Japan. Indeed, the author argues that ‘Japanese ethnic churchscapes outside of Japan resemble Japanese churchscapes in Japan, as both are developed and determined by global and local flows of language, culture, and religion’ (23), that further impact policies and practices in the local. Therefore, the author concludes, that in order to claim and maintain ‘Japaneseness’ in terms of language and culture, Japanese ethnic churchscapes should have a balanced presence of first-generation Japanese members, who exhibit Japanese language and culture preference.
Indeed, one of the research questions explored by the author is related to how communities in transcultural spaces viewed and perceived themselves with respect to being Christian and being Japanese. Interestingly, rather than strictly subscribing to ‘either/or’ binary beliefs, participants’ responses revealed no connection to ‘prior ontological statuses evident in Japanese epistemological traditions of culture and customs of following Buddha’, thus being indicative of ‘epistemological hybridity’, a spatiotemporal reality imbued with a ‘simultaneous presence and practice of cultural and language practices in ethnolinguistic communities’ (44).
The reader is further introduced to church members’ negotiation and projection of their Japanese cultural identity as well as their life in the Canadian sociocultural milieu. Interestingly, while Japanese church members view Japanese language and culture to be a salient component for their survival in Canada (older generation), ‘nissei younger generations often function in both Japanese and English in Canada as they negotiate between two worlds’ (56), that is, Japan and Canada.
A sociolinguistic view of Japanese ethnic church communities as churchscapes foregrounds the fact that its members often go through ‘transcultural realities in terms of religious, cultural and language hybridity’ (110), which further affect important decisions about language planning and policy, as community members negotiate their views with respect to their hybrid identity, language, and culture.
