Minowa was born in Chiba Prefecture (Japan) in 1960. He graduated from Tokyo University in 1983. He has been a professor at the graduate school of Humanities and Social Sciences, the University of Tokyo since April 2010. His specialty is Japanese Buddhism and history of Buddhist thought. In particular, he is interested in the acceptance of precepts and the development of meditation. He studies how monks actually practiced and researches the development of meditation from India to China and to Japan, while trying not to forget the connection of his research and the present age. He is author of The Religion of Japan (translated by Chun-shu company, 2007); Buddhism Meditation Theories (Chun-shu company, 2008); History of Japanese Buddhism (Shunsha Co., 2015), among others.
