Ian Reader has been teaching and researching on the religions of Japan for many years. His PhD on Japanese Buddhism was gained at the University of Leeds in 1983, after which he and his wife Dorothy lived and worked in Japan for almost six years. Since 1989 he has been a member of the Scottish Centre for Japanese Studies at the University of Stirling, Scotland. He also spent a year as a Visiting Professor at the University of Hawaii in 1992-93. For three years from August 1995 he lived in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. Amongst his books are Religion in Contemporary Japan (Macmillan, 1991); Pilgrimage in Popular Culture (edited with Tony Walter, Macmillan, 1993) and A Poisonous Cocktail? Aum Shinrikyo-'s Path to Violence (NIAS Books, Copenhagen 1996).