Jolyon Baraka Thomas is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan (2012). His most recent monograph, Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan, was published by University of Chicago Press in 2019. He is now working on a third book, tentatively titled Difficult Subjects: Troubling the Public/Private Divide in Japanese and American Public Schools. He is also co-editing The New Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions.