William E. Deal is Severance Professor of theHistory of Religion in the Department of Religious Studies andProfessor of Cognitive Science in the Department of CognitiveScience at Case Western Reserve University, and Associate Directorfor Digital Humanities at the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities.He is the author of Theory for ReligiousStudies (with Timothy K. Beal, 2005) and Handbookto Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan (2006). Brian Ruppert is Associate Professor of JapaneseReligions at the University of Illinois, where he is a facultymember in the Department of East Asian Languages and Culturesand the Department of Religion. His publicationsinclude Jewel in the Ashes: Buddha Relics and Power inEarly Medieval Japan (2000), "Buddhism in Japan"( Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., 2005), and "Buddhism andLaw in Japan" ( Buddhism and Law: An Introduction, 2014).