A History of Japanese Religion

A History of Japanese Religion PDF Author: 笠原一男
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 660

Get Book Here

Book Description
Seventeen distinguished experts on Japanese religion provide a fascinating overview of its history and development. Beginning with the origins of religion in primitive Japanese society, they chart the growth of each of Japan's major religious organizations and doctrinal systems. They follow Buddhism, Shintoism, Christianity, and popular religious belief through major periods of change to show how history and religion affected each-and discuss the interactions between the different religious traditions.

A History of Japanese Religion

A History of Japanese Religion PDF Author: 笠原一男
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 660

Get Book Here

Book Description
Seventeen distinguished experts on Japanese religion provide a fascinating overview of its history and development. Beginning with the origins of religion in primitive Japanese society, they chart the growth of each of Japan's major religious organizations and doctrinal systems. They follow Buddhism, Shintoism, Christianity, and popular religious belief through major periods of change to show how history and religion affected each-and discuss the interactions between the different religious traditions.

Religions of Japan in Practice

Religions of Japan in Practice PDF Author: George J. Tanabe Jr.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691214743
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 583

Get Book Here

Book Description
This anthology reflects a range of Japanese religions in their complex, sometimes conflicting, diversity. In the tradition of the Princeton Readings in Religions series, the collection presents documents (legends and miracle tales, hagiographies, ritual prayers and ceremonies, sermons, reform treatises, doctrinal tracts, historical and ethnographic writings), most of which have been translated for the first time here, that serve to illuminate the mosaic of Japanese religions in practice. George Tanabe provides a lucid introduction to the "patterned confusion" of Japan's religious practices. He has ordered the anthology's forty-five readings under the categories of "Ethical Practices," "Ritual Practices," and "Institutional Practices," moving beyond the traditional classifications of chronology, religious traditions (Shinto, Confucianism, Buddhism, etc.), and sects, and illuminating the actual orientation of people who engage in religious practices. Within the anthology's three broad categories, subdivisions address the topics of social values, clerical and lay precepts, gods, spirits, rituals of realization, faith, court and emperor, sectarian founders, wizards, and heroes, orthopraxis and orthodoxy, and special places. Dating from the eighth through the twentieth centuries, the documents are revealed to be open to various and evolving interpretations, their meanings dependent not only on how they are placed in context but also on how individual researchers read them. Each text is preceded by an introductory explanation of the text's essence, written by its translator. Instructors and students will find these explications useful starting points for their encounters with the varied worlds of practice within which the texts interact with readers and changing contexts. Religions of Japan in Practice is a compendium of relationships between great minds and ordinary people, abstruse theories and mundane acts, natural and supernatural powers, altruism and self-interest, disappointment and hope, quiescence and war. It is an indispensable sourcebook for scholars, students, and general readers seeking engagement with the fertile "ordered disorder" of religious practice in Japan.

Japanese Religious Traditions

Japanese Religious Traditions PDF Author: Michiko Yusa
Publisher: Pearson
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 140

Get Book Here

Book Description
This series provides succinct and balanced overviews of the religions of the world. Written in an accessible and informative style, and assuming little or no prior knowledge on the part of the reader, each book gives a basic introduction to the faith--its history, beliefs, and practices--and emphasizes modern developments and the role and impact of the religion in today's world. Japanese Religious Traditions focuses on major Japanese religious concepts, practices, and sects within the traditions of Shinto, Buddhism, and popular modern movements. It is written in an accessible narrative that provides a valuable insight into the heart of Japanese culture. The coverage of the various key players in religious sects presents challenging philosophical questions to the reader, which in turn highlight the subtle nuances and shifts of expression in our own time and society.

The Invention of Religion in Japan

The Invention of Religion in Japan PDF Author: Jason Ānanda Josephson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226412342
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

Get Book Here

Book Description
Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of what we call “religion.” There was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning. But when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country had to contend with this Western idea. In this book, Jason Ananda Josephson reveals how Japanese officials invented religion in Japan and traces the sweeping intellectual, legal, and cultural changes that followed. More than a tale of oppression or hegemony, Josephson’s account demonstrates that the process of articulating religion offered the Japanese state a valuable opportunity. In addition to carving out space for belief in Christianity and certain forms of Buddhism, Japanese officials excluded Shinto from the category. Instead, they enshrined it as a national ideology while relegating the popular practices of indigenous shamans and female mediums to the category of “superstitions”—and thus beyond the sphere of tolerance. Josephson argues that the invention of religion in Japan was a politically charged, boundary-drawing exercise that not only extensively reclassified the inherited materials of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto to lasting effect, but also reshaped, in subtle but significant ways, our own formulation of the concept of religion today. This ambitious and wide-ranging book contributes an important perspective to broader debates on the nature of religion, the secular, science, and superstition.

The Religious Traditions of Japan 500-1600

The Religious Traditions of Japan 500-1600 PDF Author: Richard Bowring
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521851190
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 516

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first English-language overview of the interaction of Buddhism and Shintō in Japanese culture.

Women in Japanese Religions

Women in Japanese Religions PDF Author: Barbara Ambros
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479827622
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book Here

Book Description
A comprehensive history of women in Japanese religious traditions Scholars have widely acknowledged the persistent ambivalence with which the Japanese religious traditions treat women. Much existing scholarship depicts Japan’s religious traditions as mere means of oppression. But this view raises a question: How have ambivalent and even misogynistic religious discourses on gender still come to inspire devotion and emulation among women? In Women in Japanese Religions, Barbara R. Ambros examines the roles that women have played in the religions of Japan. An important corrective to more common male-centered narratives of Japanese religious history, this text presents a synthetic long view of Japanese religions from a distinct angle that has typically been discounted in standard survey accounts of Japanese religions. Drawing on a diverse collection of writings by and about women, Ambros argues that ambivalent religious discourses in Japan have not simply subordinated women but also given them religious resources to pursue their own interests and agendas. Comprising nine chapters organized chronologically, the book begins with the archeological evidence of fertility cults and the early shamanic ruler Himiko in prehistoric Japan and ends with an examination of the influence of feminism and demographic changes on religious practices during the “lost decades” of the post-1990 era. By viewing Japanese religious history through the eyes of women, Women in Japanese Religions presents a new narrative that offers strikingly different vistas of Japan’s pluralistic traditions than the received accounts that foreground male religious figures and male-dominated institutions.

Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Religions

Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Religions PDF Author: Inken Prohl
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004234357
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 675

Get Book Here

Book Description
Representing work by some of the leading scholars in the field, the chapters in this handbook survey the transformation and innovation of religious traditions and practices in contemporary Japan.

Religion in Japan

Religion in Japan PDF Author: P. F. Kornicki
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521550284
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Get Book Here

Book Description
Peter Francis Kornicki and Ian James McMullen have put together a remarkable collection of essays on different aspects of religion in Japan by an international team of contributors. The essays in this 1996 book cover a wide range of subjects, from the new religions of post-war Japan to beliefs about fox-possession in the Heian period, and from French missionaries in Okinawa in the mid-nineteenth century to the Ainu bear festival in Hokkaido. Other chapters examine the religious life of Minamoto no Yoritomo, the founder of the first shogunate in the late twelfth century, and the role of pilgrimage in Japanese religion. The essays offer fresh insights into the rich religious traditions of Japan, many of which have been previously neglected in the English-language writing on Japan.

Religions of Japan

Religions of Japan PDF Author: H. Byron Earhart
Publisher: Harper San Francisco
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Get Book Here

Book Description
A quick review of Japanese history and a detailed account of the country's religions.

Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions

Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions PDF Author: Paul L. Swanson
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824830021
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 488

Get Book Here

Book Description
For updates online, visit the Nanzan Guide site at Nanzan Library of Asian Religion and Culture. The Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions combines, for the first time in any language, state-of-the-field theoretical and critical discussions with concrete resources students and scholars need to conduct research on Japanese religions. Even seasoned scholars typically approach their research in an unsystematic manner, becoming familiar with a particular area of inquiry while remaining largely unaware of what exists in the rest of the field. This inefficient method hinders particularly less-experienced researchers and circumscribes their lines of inquiry. The Nanzan Guide provides both beginners and specialists with a reference that will serve as a basic introduction to Japanese religions and allow them to conduct research more proficiently and in greater depth. Overlapping and thought-provoking chapters, written by leading specialists, offer a variety of perspectives on the complicated and multifaceted field of Japanese religions. The essays are divided into four sections: religious traditions (Japanese religions in general, Shinto, Buddhism, folk religion, new religions, Christianity); the history of Japanese religions (ancient, classical, medieval, early modern, modern, contemporary); major themes (symbolism, ritual and the arts, literature and scripture, state and religion, geography and environment, intellectual history, gender); and "practical" essays (finding references and using libraries, working with archive collections, conducting fieldwork). A chronology of religion in Japanese history is also provided.