Akuma sūhai toha nanika (Children of Lucifer: The Origins of Modern Religious Satanism)

This volume is a Japanese translation of Ruben van Luijk's Children of Lucifer: The Origins of Modern Religious Satanism, originally published by Oxford University Press in 2016.
 
The original work is already well-known, hence, I will not attempt to summarize its content here. A description is available from Oxford University Press, and the book has been widely reviewed. It also received the American Academy of Religion's Best First Book in the History of Religions Award in 2017.
 
Instead, I would like to briefly comment on the significance of publishing a Japanese translation. Satanism is far less familiar in Japan than it is in Europe or North America. This relative lack of familiarity was precisely what motivated my student and me to translate this important volume.
 
The concept of "Satan" (akuma in Japanese) is a relatively modern one in the history of Japanese religions. Japanese religious traditions have long possessed a variety of terms for evil spirits and malevolent beings. Among these, oni is perhaps the closest approximation to Satan; however equating the two would be misleading. Unlike Satan in Christian traditions, oni plays a very different symbolic and religious role in Japanese culture. Consequently, many aspects of modern religious Satanism are likely to be unfamiliar to Japanese readers, making a reliable scholarly introduction particularly valuable.
 

(Written by FUJIWARA Satoko, Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology / 2026)