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This issue completes four volumes of Journal of Daesoon Thought and the Religions of East Asia. It may be that we can now cease saying JDTREA is a “new journal” and settle into the rhythm of being an (albeit recently) established academic publication. Since the first issue was published in September 2021 authors from Australia, Taiwan, Italy, Sweden, France, Canada, Vietnam, the United States of America, Korea, England, Hong Kong, China, Poland, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Bangladesh have published their research articles in JDTREA; this is already a significant global presence, and our book reviewers include scholars from Japan. It is estimated there are between 193 (according to the United Nations) and 237 (according to Central Intelligence Agency, US) countries in the contemporary world. To date, JDTREA has secured contributors from seventeen countries. The future looks bright; we are hopeful that the journal will prove attractive to scholars from many other nations and locations in the future.

This issue contains five articles. The first is by Dinh Hong Hai and is titled “Maitreya Symbol in the New Religious Movements of East Asia: A Comparative Study of Long Hoa Di Lac in Vietnam and Daesoon Jinrihoe in Korea.” This research argues that while Christian missionaries brought the Christian idea of the eschatological saviour Jesus who will return to judge and rule the perfected world, Asia already had Maitreya, the future Buddha, a figure with a dual nature (being both Bodhisattva and Buddha), who has proved very attractive in certain East Asian new religious movements (NRMs). The case studies are Daesoon Jinrihoe, a well-established Korean NRM, and Long Hoa Di Lac, a small Vietnamese movement that is still marginal and not fully established as a religion.

The next article is by Nguyen Trung Hieu, “Religious Belief in the Jade Emperor among the Vietnamese in the Seven Mountains Region, An Giang Province, Vietnam.” This attractively illustrated research considers a specific region where devotion to the Jade Emperor, who rules a court in Heaven that is directly comparable to the courts of the historic Chinese Emperors on Earth, is particularly strong. Other deities venerated in An Giang Province include the Earth Mother, Guan Yin, the Nine Mysterious Guardians, and Master Hổ (a local deity). The author supplies fascinating details regarding the cultic activities which take place at these temples, and also the cultural transformation of the Jade Emperor, from being the highest god of Chinese religion to being regarded as the “Father of the Local People” in southwestern Vietnam, near the Mekong Delta.

The third contribution is by Jakir Hossan, Md Jashim Uddin Bhuiyan and Bai Xinfa, and is titled “The Mutual Contribution of the Manipuri Religion and Their Traditional Handicrafts in Bangladesh.” This study considers the Manipuri people of Bangladesh (who are divided into Muslim, Hindu, and adherents of traditional Manipuri religion) and the particular weaving and dressmaking traditions that they preserve in their minority communities. Differences in the motifs ornamenting certain clothing styles are noted, and the importance of retaining these manufacturing practices due to the requirement that traditional hand-crafted items be worn in important religious ceremonies is emphasised.

Trinh Ngoc Linh's “Cosmology in Daesoon Jinrihoe and Caodaism: New Religious Ontology or Age-old Literary Motifs Applied in New Religions?” is an analysis of how special narratives attach themselves to the founders of new religions. These “mythical” stories are constituted of folkloric motifs and references to classical or traditional literatures of the new religious movement founder's home country and culture. Three Western theorists, Eric Hobsbawm (the invention of tradition), Maurice Halbwachs (collective memory) and James Grayson (folklore and motif analysis), are used to create the methodological framework that the author applies to the founders of Đại Đạo Tam Kỳ Phổ Độ (better known as Caodaism) and Daesoon Jinrihoe. Miss Trinh is a doctoral candidate at Ho Chi Minh National University, and it is very pleasing to see such good work from the emerging generation of women scholars of Asian religions.

The final contribution is by Nguyen Ngoc Tho and Nguyen Tan Quoc and is “The Custom of Cúng Việc Lề in Southern Vietnam: A Newly-Invented Tradition of Filial Piety Ethics?” This article continues the strong presence of Vietnamese scholars and emphasis on Vietnamese new religious phenomena in this journal issue. The authors use Eric Hobsbawm and Maurice Halbwachs, too, and their subject matter connects with that of the Jade Emperor study, in that the cúng việc lề custom they detail is a Vietnamese adaptation of traditional ancestor veneration (such as found in China, and other cultures with a strong Confucian heritage).

The journal issue is completed by three reviews supplied by the Review Editor, Professor Holly Folk (Western Washington University). My ongoing gratitude is due to Bae Kyuhan, Lee Gyungwon, Jason Greenberger, and Choi Wonhyuk from Daejin University, as our working relationship in producing the journal has deepened and become stronger over the last four years. I am also thankful to the authors and referees who made this issue happen. It must be noted that this is the first issue of JDTREA that features only Asian authors of the research articles. I began with an expressed desire that we seek to attract scholars from new and as yet unrepresented regions to publish with JDTREA. That is not incompatible with feelings of pleasure and pride about the ways we have showcased the scholarship of Asian colleagues.

Carole M. Cusack

Editor of JDTREA

The University of Sydney