Media and New Religions in Japan

Media and New Religions in Japan PDF Author: Erica Baffelli
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135117845
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781135117849, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivative 4.0 license. Japanese "new religions" (shinshūkyō) have used various media forms for training, communicating with members, presenting their messages, reinforcing or protecting the image of the leader, and, potentially, attracting converts. In this book the complex and dual relationship between media and new religions is investigated by looking at the tensions groups face between the need for visibility and the risks of facing attacks and criticism through media. Indeed media and new technologies have been extensively used by religious groups not only to spread their messages and to try to reach a wider audience, but also to promote themselves as a highly modern and up-to-date form of religion appropriate for a modern technological age. In 1980s and early 1990s some movements, such as Agonshū , Kōfuku no Kagaku, and Aum Shinrikyō came into prominence especially via the use of media (initially publications, but also ritual broadcasts, advertising campaigns, and public media events). This created new modes of ritual engagement and new ways of interactions between leaders and members. The aim of this book is to develop and illustrate particular key issues in the wider new religions and media nexus by using specific movements as examples. In particular, the analysis of the interaction between media and new religions will focus primarily on three case studies predominantly during the first period of development of the groups.

Media and New Religions in Japan

Media and New Religions in Japan PDF Author: Erica Baffelli
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135117845
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781135117849, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivative 4.0 license. Japanese "new religions" (shinshūkyō) have used various media forms for training, communicating with members, presenting their messages, reinforcing or protecting the image of the leader, and, potentially, attracting converts. In this book the complex and dual relationship between media and new religions is investigated by looking at the tensions groups face between the need for visibility and the risks of facing attacks and criticism through media. Indeed media and new technologies have been extensively used by religious groups not only to spread their messages and to try to reach a wider audience, but also to promote themselves as a highly modern and up-to-date form of religion appropriate for a modern technological age. In 1980s and early 1990s some movements, such as Agonshū , Kōfuku no Kagaku, and Aum Shinrikyō came into prominence especially via the use of media (initially publications, but also ritual broadcasts, advertising campaigns, and public media events). This created new modes of ritual engagement and new ways of interactions between leaders and members. The aim of this book is to develop and illustrate particular key issues in the wider new religions and media nexus by using specific movements as examples. In particular, the analysis of the interaction between media and new religions will focus primarily on three case studies predominantly during the first period of development of the groups.

Japanese New Religions in the West

Japanese New Religions in the West PDF Author: Peter B. Clarke
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134241380
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
An excellent and very timely update on an area seeing many recent developments.

Japanese New Religions in Global Perspective

Japanese New Religions in Global Perspective PDF Author: Peter B Clarke
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136828729
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Since the 1960s virtually every part of the world has seen the arrival and establishment of Japanese new religious movements, a process that has followed quickly on the heels of the most active period of Japanese economic expansion overseas. This book examines the nature and extent of this religious expansion outside Japan.

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

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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.

Prophets of Peace

Prophets of Peace PDF Author: Robert Kisala
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
In his analysis of these results, he offers some observations on the role of religion in contemporary Japanese society and advocates a more positive engagement in the debate on Japan's role in international security arrangements. By offering a representative sample of New Religion groups and focusing on their doctrines, Prophets of Peace provides a different perspective for those whose primary interest is the Japanese New Religions. Although students and scholars of Japanese religion will be the book's first audience, its accessibility and thematic approach also recommend it to readers with a broader interest in contemporary Japanese society, peace studies, and the role of religious groups in modern 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

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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.

Kurozumikyo and the New Religions of Japan

Kurozumikyo and the New Religions of Japan PDF Author: Helen Hardacre
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691020488
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
The description for this book, Kurozumikyo and the New Religions of Japan, will be forthcoming.

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

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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.

The New Religions of Japan

The New Religions of Japan PDF Author: Harry Thomsen
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
THE PUBLICATION of this book will meet a conscious need among students of Japanese religion and culture because it presents in a series of factual and scholarly, yet not pedantic, expositions one of the significant developments of postwar Japan: the emergence and development of shinko shukyo, or "new religions." Mr. Thomsen, who has given himself to the study of these religions and is one of the younger missionaries who herald a return to the scholarly tradition so greatly neglected among postwar Christian missionaries and students, estimates that the new religions have about eighteen million followers, or one out of every five Japanese. Probably never before in the history of Japan have there been so many kinds of religious innovations and interests. This book is significant on several counts: it reflects the vitality of Japanese religion through the new religions, which perhaps are as representative of this vitality as any of the older traditional religions. It seriously considers this unique phenomenon of Japanese culture, which because of fanatical and superstitious acts among some of the followers has been treated with a reproach mingled with contempt, and because of obvious materialism and even charlatanry has led many to dismiss them with a quip or a laugh. On the other hand, some of the older religious groups are obviously alarmed over the increasing power of the new religions because they are seemingly able to meet many of the felt needs of the Japanese people. Mr. Thomsen considers the religious and sociological factors that have created these movements--the roots from which they have sprung--and goes a considerable distance toward establishing their common bonds. The book is important for the Christian student because it not only describes the encounter which Christianity has had with these new religions, but it also makes clear the difficulties missionaries have had in facing the Oriental syncretic concept of religion

New Religions in Japan

New Religions in Japan PDF Author: Marjorie C. Leeper
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description