Religion and Spirituality in Japan

Religion and Spirituality in Japan
Author: Masami Takahashi
Publisher:
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2020-07-16
Genre:
ISBN: 9781943492800

While almost everyone in Japan regularly participates in traditional activities that are religious and spiritual in nature, it is perplexing that only 20 to 30% of the population self-identify with a particular religion. Several accounts have been offered to explain this discrepancy, but these speculations had never been examined empirically. There are several reasons as to why Japanese empirical scientists ignored the topic for so long. One may be that Japanese scientists themselves are too accustomed to the tradition to reflect upon the discrepancy. Since even astute researchers may fail to recognize such a fertile field for empirical research, the opportunities and venues to pursue this line of research in Japanese academia have been scarce. The Empirical Study of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality in Japan is a translated version of the original book, a collection of chapters by scholars from different psychological disciplines. It is the first book with an emphasis on empirical perspectives on the topic. Thus, it is also the first book written in English in the field. This book offers not only detailed empirical data, but also an examination of the theories and ideologies that underlie contemporary understanding of religion and spirituality in Japan.

Religion and Psychotherapy in Modern Japan

Religion and Psychotherapy in Modern Japan
Author: Christopher Harding
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2014-09-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1317683005

Since the late nineteenth century, religious ideas and practices in Japan have become increasingly intertwined with those associated with mental health and healing. This relationship developed against the backdrop of a far broader, and deeply consequential meeting: between Japan’s long-standing, Chinese-influenced intellectual and institutional forms, and the politics, science, philosophy, and religion of the post-Enlightenment West. In striving to craft a modern society and culture that could exist on terms with – rather than be subsumed by – western power and influence, Japan became home to a religion--psy dialogue informed by pressing political priorities and rapidly shifting cultural concerns. This book provides a historically contextualized introduction to the dialogue between religion and psychotherapy in modern Japan. In doing so, it draws out connections between developments in medicine, government policy, Japanese religion and spirituality, social and cultural criticism, regional dynamics, and gender relations. The chapters all focus on the meeting and intermingling of religious with psychotherapeutic ideas and draw on a wide range of case studies including: how temple and shrine ‘cures’ of early modern Japan fared in the light of German neuropsychiatry; how Japanese Buddhist theories of mind, body, and self-cultivation negotiated with the findings of western medicine; how Buddhists, Christians, and other organizations and groups drew and redrew the lines between religious praxis and psychological healing; how major European therapies such as Freud’s fed into self-consciously Japanese analyses of and treatments for the ills of the age; and how distress, suffering, and individuality came to be reinterpreted across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, from the southern islands of Okinawa to the devastated northern neighbourhoods of the Tohoku region after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters of March 2011. Religion and Psychotherapy in Modern Japan will be welcomed by students and scholars working across a broad range of subjects, including Japanese culture and society, religious studies, psychology and psychotherapy, mental health, and international history.

Anime, Religion and Spirituality

Anime, Religion and Spirituality
Author: Katharine Buljan
Publisher: Equinox Publishing (UK)
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781781791097

Barely a century has passed since anime (Japanese animation) was first screened to a Western audience. Over time the number of anime genres and generic hybrids have significantly grown. These have been influenced and inspired by various historical and cultural phenomena, one of which - Japanese native religion and spirituality - this book argues is important and dominant. There have always been anime lovers in the West, but today that number is growing exponentially. This is intriguing as many Japanese anime directors and studios initially created works that were not aimed at a Western audience at all. The mutual imbrication of the profane and sacred worlds in anime, along with the profound reciprocal relationship between 'Eastern' (Japanese) and 'Western' (chiefly American) culture in the development of the anime artistic form, form the twin narrative arcs of the book. One of the most significant contributions of this book is the analysis of the employment of spiritual and religious motifs by directors. The reception of this content by fans is also examined. The appeal of anime to aficionados is, broadly speaking, the appeal of the spiritual in a post-religious world, in which personal identity and meaning in life may be crafted from popular cultural texts which offer an immersive and enchanting experience that, for many in the modern world, is more thrilling and authentic than 'real life'. In the past, religions posited that after human existence on earth had ceased, the individual soul would be reincarnated again, or perhaps reside in heaven. In the early twenty-first century, spiritual seekers still desire a life beyond that of everyday reality, and just as passionately believe in the existence of other worlds and the afterlife. However, the other worlds are the fantasy landscapes and outer space settings of anime (and other popular cultural forms), and the afterlife the digital circuitry and electronic impulses of the Internet. These important new understandings of religion and the spiritual underpin anime's status as a major site of new religious and spiritual inspiration in the West, and indeed, the world.

A History of Japanese Religion

A History of Japanese Religion
Author: 笠原一男
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Total Pages: 660
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN:

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.

Why are the Japanese Non-religious?

Why are the Japanese Non-religious?
Author: Toshimaro Ama
Publisher: University Press of America
Total Pages: 110
Release: 2005
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 9780761830566

Why Are the Japanese Non-Religious?: Japanese Spirituality: Being Non-Religious in a Religious Culture, translated here for the first time in English, was first published in Japan in 1996. It has also been translated into Korean and German. Author Toshimaro Ama examines the concept of mushukyo, or lack of specific religious beliefs. According to Ama, the Japanese generally lack an understanding of or desire to commit to a particular organized religion, oftentimes fusing Shinto, Christianity, and Buddhism into a hybrid form of spirituality. The book, which has sold more than 100,000 copies, is widely popular among students of Japanese culture and ethnicity as well as lay readers desiring to learn more about Japanese religious identity.

Religions of Japan in Practice

Religions of Japan in Practice
Author: George J. Tanabe Jr.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 583
Release: 2020-06-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0691214743

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.

Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Religions

Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Religions
Author: Inken Prohl
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 675
Release: 2012-09-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004234357

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.

Faith in Mount Fuji

Faith in Mount Fuji
Author: Janine Anderson Sawada
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2021-12-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0824890434

Even a fleeting glimpse of Mount Fuji’s snow-capped peak emerging from the clouds in the distance evokes the reverence it has commanded in Japan from ancient times. Long considered sacred, during the medieval era the mountain evolved from a venue for solitary ascetics into a well-regulated pilgrimage site. With the onset of the Tokugawa period, the nature of devotion to Mount Fuji underwent a dramatic change. Working people from nearby Edo (now Tokyo) began climbing the mountain in increasing numbers and worshipping its deity on their own terms, leading to a widespread network of devotional associations known as Fujikō. In Faith in Mount Fuji Janine Sawada asserts that the rise of the Fuji movement epitomizes a broad transformation in popular religion that took place in early modern Japan. Drawing on existing practices and values, artisans and merchants generated new forms of religious life outside the confines of the sectarian establishment. Sawada highlights the importance of independent thinking in these grassroots phenomena, making a compelling case that the new Fuji devotees carved out enclaves for subtle opposition to the status quo within the restrictive parameters of the Tokugawa order. The founding members effectively reinterpreted materials such as pilgrimage maps, talismans, and prayer formulae, laying the groundwork for the articulation of a set of remarkable teachings by Jikigyō Miroku (1671–1733), an oil peddler who became one of the group’s leading ascetic practitioners. His writings fostered a vision of Mount Fuji as a compassionate parental deity who mandated a new world of economic justice and fairness in social and gender relations. The book concludes with a thought-provoking assessment of Jikigyō’s suicide on the mountain as an act of commitment to world salvation that drew on established ascetic practice even as it conveyed political dissent. Faith in Mount Fuji is a pioneering work that contains a wealth of in-depth analysis and original interpretation. It will open up new avenues of discussion among students of Japanese religions and intellectual history, and supply rich food for thought to readers interested in global perspectives on issues of religion and society, ritual culture, new religions, and asceticism.

Introducing Japanese Religion

Introducing Japanese Religion
Author: Robert Ellwood
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Japan
ISBN: 9781138958760

Offers a portrait of traditional and contemporary Japanese culture, and a understanding of the history and practice of religions in Japan. Ellwood explores the spiritual heritage of this country, from the Ise Shrine and Nara to the present day. He gives special attention to the traditions of Shinto, the different forms of Buddhism in Japan, including Shingon and Tendai, and Confucianism. He also explores new Japanese religious movements, including Aum Shinrikyo. Each religion is clearly described in terms of its history, practice, sociology and organization, and Ellwood emphasizes how in practice Japanese religion interacts and intermingles. Finally, Ellwood discusses the influence of Japan on popular culture, including discussion of anime, and the transmission of Japanese spiritual, mythical and religious themes to the rest of the world. This edition features new material on folk and popular religion, including shamanism, festivals, and practices surrounding death and funerals. Ellwood also updates the text to discuss recent events, such as religious responses to the Fukushima disaster. --Adapted from publisher description.

Spirituality as a Way

Spirituality as a Way
Author: Carl Becker
Publisher:
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2021-06-30
Genre:
ISBN: 9781925608076

How do Japanese people foster spiritual awareness? This book provides a fresh perspective on spirituality by highlighting the wisdom of Japan: 'Way' (pronounced michi or do in Japanese), which makes life a place for self-cultivation and personal growth, as seen in budo (the Way of martial arts) and geido (the Way of art). Traditionally embodied in the daily lives of the Japanese people, this practical perspective covers life situations ranging from greetings and meals to lying down and sitting up. These discussions of Japanese spirituality range from grief care, spiritual care, reincarnation, Zen and meditation to philosophical worldviews. Japanese spirituality as a Way contrasts with Western spirituality that tends to be based on a cognitive approach with a background of mind-body dualism. Today, as the traditional interconnectedness of humanity is increasingly fragmented, the authors hope their contribution from Japan may promote the study, understanding and practice of spirituality around the world.