Efforts to understand and enhance human aging typically have considered aging in relation to ethnicity or spirituality, but not the interaction of all three variables with one another--yielding an incomplete view of elders’ religious development. This project explores the intersection of aging, ethnicity, and spirituality by selecting a particular American ethnic group and discerning what religious values seem most central and animating for its older members. It hypothesizes that four interrelated religious values--hope, compassion, relatedness, and gratitude--influence and shape second-generation (Nisei) Japanese Americans choices as they age, and it assumes that those Nisei who are involved in ethnically-based religious communities negotiate complementary incommensurabilities (creating bridges between and transforming multiple cultural norms and religious values while in multicultural contexts) as they grow older. Exploring these themes with Nisei focus groups and employing an epistemological paradigm of mutually critical correlation with a comparative analysis of Christian theologies and Mahayana Buddhist thought, this study will articulate that negotiation process constructively and intentionally. Hence this project can aid aging Japanese Americans’ self-understanding and offers a methodological example and insights for people engaged in cross-cultural geriatric human services provision, interfaith dialogue, pastoral ministry, and practical theology (with the latter terms defined broadly).