These volumes are the culmination of sixteen years of research and engagement in the growing Socially Engaged Buddhist movement in Japan by the International Buddhist Exchange Center (IBEC) @ Kodosan in Yokohama, Japan. They follow its two publications dedicated to the Northeast Japan

tsunami and nuclear disaster in This Precious Life: Buddhist Tsunami Relief and Anti-Nuclear Activism in Post 3/11 Japan (2012) & Lotus in the Nuclear Sea: Fukushima and the Promise of Buddhism in the Nuclear Age (2013).

Volume II presents the new Socially Engaged Buddhist activities of 21st century Japan, a dynamic movement arising out of the social crisis of Japan's "disconnected society" (mu-en shakai). It focuses on five sub-movements in end-of-life care, suicide prevention, disaster relief and Buddhist chaplaincy, poverty and homelessness, and anti-nuclear activism and holistic development. An Afterword ponders the possibility of a new movement for gender justice.

Volume I provides an essential presentation of historical themes and a comprehensive survey of Socially Engaged Buddhism in the modern era.