Cultural Currents of Mindfulness: Tracing Mindfulness’s Use and Influence in Japan

Mindfulness is now widely studied and applied, yet its use and influence in non-Western contexts remain underexplored. This project examines the cultural dynamics of mindfulness in Japan, focusing on how the global spread of mindfulness intersects with local discourse rooted in religious and cultural traditions. A multilingual literature review was conducted using a two-pronged methodological approach: Study 1 employed a scoping review to map the conceptualisation and research of mindfulness in Japan through English-language articles, and Study 2 systematically analysed Japanese-language literature using topic modelling. Results suggest that mindfulness in Japan is predominantly framed as a therapeutic and wellness-oriented practice aligned with global psychological discourse, developing independently of active scholarship on culturally rooted contemplative and therapeutic traditions such as Naikan and Morita therapy. This pattern raises conceptual questions about whether such traditions will eventually be absorbed into globalised mindfulness discourse or persist as parallel bodies of scholarship, and points to a broader contribution for cross-cultural psychology in examining culture's active role in shaping what mindfulness means and does. Methodologically, the study demonstrates the value of combining scoping review and computational text analysis to achieve language-inclusive coverage and broaden the global evidence base in psychology.