Japanese Religion

In the early decades of the twentieth century, as Japanese society became engulfed in war and increasing nationalism, the majority of Buddhist leaders and institutions capitulated to the status quo. At the same time, there was a stream of ‘resistance’ among a few Buddhist
figures, both priests and laity. These instances of progressive and ‘radical Buddhism’ had roots in late Edo-period peasant revolts, the lingering discourse of early Meiji period liberalism, trends within Buddhist reform and modernisation and the emergence in the first decade of the twentieth century of radical political thought, including various forms of socialism and anarchism. This essay analyses the roots of ‘radical Buddhism’ in Japan by analysing the life and work of three distinctive figures: Tarui To¯kichi (1850–1922), Takagi Kenmyo¯ (1864–1914), and Uchiyama Gudo¯ (1874–1911). While noting their differences, I argue these three collective represent both the problems and possibilities of radical Buddhism in an East Asian and specifically Japanese context.

In Japan, marriage ceremonies prior to 1900 wedding of the crown prince used to be secular events, featuring some differences from the current matrimonial practice. This essay explores the Meiji era social engineering invention by looking at the history and practices of an altered ritual.

Şintoizm, Japonların tarih sahnesine çıkmasından bu yana var olduğuna inanılan, toplumun kültür ve felsefesiyle iç içe geçmiş Japon milli dinine verilen addır. Şintoizm’e ait bilgilere genellikle Kociki  ve Nihongi adı verilen dinî metinlerde ve halk inanışlarında rastlanır. Bu dindeki tarih ve inançla ilgili anlatımlar daha çok mitolojiktir. Günümüzde Japon dini denildiğinde Şintoizm ve Budizm’in sentezinden müteşekkil bir inanç sistemi önümüze çıkar. Bu senkretik din anlayışında Japonların, geçiş törenlerinin daha çok doğum, yetişkinlik, evlenme gibi kısımlarını Şinto mabetlerinde, ölüm ve sonrası ritüelleri ise Budist mabetlerde yerine getirdikleri görülür.
        Japon halk inanışı yüzyıllarca kulaktan kulağa aktarılmış ve insanların arasındaki bu hikâyelerin bir kısmı VIII. yüzyılda derlenen dinî metinlere girmiştir. Ancak Japon mitolojisinde yer etmiş hayvanlarla ilgili inanışların hepsini dinî metinlerde bulmak mümkün değildir. Bu inanışların kimisi atasözü ve deyim olarak varlığını devam ettirirken, kimisi de masal ve hikâye kitabı gibi eserlerle günümüze kadar taşınmıştır. Bu yüzden hayvanlarla ilgili inanışlar için dinî metinler yanında, Japon mitolojisi ile ilgili yazılmış eserlere ve atasözlerine göz atmak gerekir.
        Şintoizm’de hayvanların yeri ve önemini kavrayabilmek için bu dinde bulunan “kami” kavramını doğru anlamak önem arz eder. Zira bu dine dair tüm öğreti ve ibadetler doğrudan ya da dolaylı olarak bu temel kavramla ilişkilidir. Dolayısıyla kami kavramı bilinmeden, bu kavramla doğrudan bağlantılı olan Şintoizm’de hayvanlar konusunu anlamak zor olacaktır. Hayvanlar Japonya’da önem verilen bazı mekânlarda ve zamanlarda daha da ön plana çıkar. Bu nedenle çalışmamızda Şintoizm’de hayvanlara bakış açısı, kutsal varlık (kami), kutsal zaman (matsuri) ve kutsal mekân (cinca/miya) algısı çerçevesinde ele alınacaktır.

The Shinto Mirror of Yata contains an undeciphered message on the reverse side with a seemingly out of place Hebrew name of Yah.  Some early Japanese letters appear to produce no parallel words.  However, a study of early Brahmi brings up some surprising results.

Following the introduction of Buddhism to Japan in the sixth century, the faith quickly became a
defining feature of Japanese civilization, in large part because of the diverse and abundant visual
culture it engendered that both reflected and shaped its religious practice. Although Japanese Buddhism
remains a vital living tradition, until the last twenty years, its visual culture created after the
16th century has received little attention by scholars. Since then, Japanese and Western language
studies on focused aspects of Buddhist paintings, sculpture, and architecture, with most addressing
the early modern period (ca. 1600–1868), have proliferated but until the publication of Patricia
Graham’s Faith and Power in Japanese Buddhist Art, 1600–2005 (2007), no survey of materials spanning
this long time period had been attempted. This brief essay does not summarize Graham’s
broad analysis of the thread of change over time and the plurality of later Buddhist practice in
Japan manifest in its abundant visual culture. Instead, drawing on the examples presented in Graham’s
study, it introduces significant and representative sites of worship from the 17th century to
the present to highlight the ways the faith became transformed in tandem with changes in Japanese
society, manifested in the convergence of patronage, image production, and religious devotion
at these sites. Discussion is presented chronologically in four parts beginning with an
overview of studies on Japanese Buddhism’s recent visual culture. This is followed by three sections
on the sites and related imagery: Buddhist sites of worship in the early modern period, Buddhist
sites of worship in the modern period before World War II, and Buddhist sites of worship
in the modern period after World War II.

This article was first presented at the British Museum Symposium on Man Nature & Art, 6-8 September 2001. Submitted to the "East Asia Journal: studies in material culture" in 2005, it has been accepted but is yet to appear. This version is the author’s preprint.

Recognizing the importance of the Kyoto School and its influence on philosophy, politics, religion, and Asian studies, Japanese and Continental Philosophy initiates a conversation between Japanese and Western philosophers. The essays in this cross-cultural volume put Kyoto School thinkers in conversation with German Idealism, Nietzsche, phenomenology, and other figures and schools of the continental tradition such as Levinas and Irigaray. Set in the context of global philosophy, this volume offers critical, innovative, and productive dialogue between some of the most influential philosophical figures from East and West.

The Sutra on the White Lotus of the Sublime Dharma (Sk., Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra; Ch., Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng; Jp., Myōhō renge kyō), commonly known as the Lotus Sutra, is arguably the most influential sutra of Mahāyāna Buddhism, and certainly one of the most revered sacred texts in East Asia.  Via parables and short stories, the twenty-eight chapters of the Lotus Sutra indirectly present a number of core doctrines of the early Mahāyāna, the form of Buddhism that first emerged in India and West Asia roughly five centuries after the death of the historical Buddha Siddhartha Gautama (c. 563–486 BCE) and would eventually come to dominate East Asian Buddhism. The Lotus Sutra is a devotional text rather a philosophical one—i.e., it seems intended to work on the level of the emotions and the senses rather than the intellect. And yet, despite its otherworldly aspects, the Lotus Sutra has been employed over the centuries as a political text, both as a tool for maintaining the status quo and—especially in the twentieth century but with a few historical precedents—as an inspiration and justification for political transformation or reform. This chapter explores some of the various ways in which the Lotus Sutra has been understood and utilized as a political text.

In 1992, just as Japan’s economic bubble was in process of bursting, a series of manga debuted in the weekly Japanese magazine SPA! under the title Gōmanism Sengen (ゴーマニズム宣言; roughly, “Haughtiness” or “Insolence” Manifesto). Authored by Kobayashi Yoshinori 小林よしのり (b. 1953), this series utilized the tools of the graphic novel to engage in forthright social and political commentary with an unabashedly nationalistic slant. Over the next decade and a half, Kobayashi and his works became a publishing phenomenon. As of 2009, there are over 30 volumes of Gōmanism (and Neo-Gōmanism) Sengen manga, including several special editions—such as the bestselling Neo-Gōmanism Manifesto Special: On War (1998)—that have caused controversy and even international criticism for their revisionist portrayal of modern Japanese history. At its most general, Neo-Gōmanism is an “ideology” marked by withering sarcasm and blustering anger at what is perceived as Japanese capitulation to the West and China on matters of foreign policy and the treatment of history. In justifying Japan’s wartime aggression, the series calls into question the veracity of the Nanjing Massacre of 1937 as well as the legitimacy of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal of 1946–48, while heaping praise on the kamikaze pilots and engaging in sustained criticism of the United States and China. Though Kobayashi is more interested in political and historical events than religious issues per se, in 2005 he published a manga entitled Neo-Gōmanism Manifesto Special: On Yasukuni, which tackles the much-debated “problem” of Yasukuni Shrine, the nationalistic religious complex that has become a lightning-rod for questions of Japanese interpretations of their recent history—especially the military expansionism in East Asia that led to the Pacific War (1937–45). Frequently overlooked in discussions of Yasukuni, however, are a number of complex issues related to Shinto doctrine—in particular, the interpretation of Shinto presented at Yasukuni and the dominant ideology of Japan’s military era: State Shinto (kokka Shintō 国家神道). This essay examines the portrayal of the Yasukuni Issue within On Yasukuni, in order to: a) flesh out the characteristics of Kobayashi’s Neo-Gōmanism in relation to Japanese religion and State Shinto; b) examine the power and limits of manga as a representation form for teaching about the complex nexus of religion, politics and history in modern Japan; and c) make the case that Yasukuni Shrine itself has long functioned as a form of “revisionist manga”—and is thus the perfect subject for Kobayashi’s Neo-Gōmanist treatment.

This article  presents a very specific answer to the question about the sense in which the general population of Japan can be said to be "religious". The question arises because it is frequently denied altogether, especially by Japanese persons themselves. This denial arises because the term "religion", for which there is a Japanese equivalent, namely shūkyō 宗教, is widely assumed to imply a very specific belief and value system to which intellectual and emotional commitment is given.  In a different sense however, the vast majority of the population of Japan may be said to be religious in that they participate in a wide range of ritual activity throughout the year which is  accompanied by conceptual assumptions and values of widespread currency. This "religion" has no formal name because it is wider than any of the many specific religions otherwise found in the country. I refer to it as the "primal religion" of Japan, because in some sense it is the bedrock of all other, more specific religious orientations and activities. Its main patterns are outlined in this paper. A book-length study with more details has been in preparation for a considerable time.

In November 2011, while cleaning up tsunami debris as a volunteer in Miyagi Prefecture, I visited the tsunami-damaged port of Ayukawa. On that bleak day it was a desolate sight. Piles of rubble littered the shorefront, interspersed with gutted buildings and a collection of whale skulls — but little else to tell that this had been a prosperous whaling port five decades ago.

As I looked on, I remembered a verse from Misuzu Kaneko’s poem “The Whale Hunt”: “The whales no longer come here/And this coast has fallen on hard times”...

This essay provides a critical analysis of the aesthetic ideology of “Gōmanism” in the manga of Kobayashi Yoshinori (b. 1953), particularly "Yasukuniron" (On Yasukuni, 2005) and "Tennoron" (On the Emperor, 2009), in order to flesh out the implications of the author’s “revisionist” approach to Japanese religion, politics and
history.

Ritual, in the anthropology of Japan, has largely been treated in representational terms as expressive of the social. Against this, I consider as a counterexample the ritual technique of purification of the Japanese new religion Sūkyō Mahikari, analysed in terms of its physical and metaphysical infrastructure; in particular, the function of its form. I suggest that form is central to the production of ritual effects, and I develop some of the implications of this for thinking about the relation between morphology and efficacy in Japanese ritual technologies.

This article focuses on several key philosophical themes in the criticism of Sakaguchi Ango (1906–1955), one of postwar Japan’s most influential and controversial writers. Associated with the underground Kasutori culture as well as the Burai-ha of Tamura Taijirō (1911–1983), Oda Sakunosuke (1913–1947) and Dazai Osamu (1909–1948), Ango gained fame for two provocative essays on the theme of daraku or “decadence”—Darakuron and Zoku darakuron—pubished in 1946, in the wake of Japan’s traumatic defeat and the beginnings of the Allied Occupation. Less well-known is the fact that Ango spent his student years studying classical Buddhist texts in Sanskrit, Pali and Tibetan, and that he at at one time aspired to the priesthood. The article analyses the concept of daraku in the two essays noted above, particularly as it relates to Ango’s vision of a refashioned morality based on an interpretation of human subjectivity vis-à-vis the themes of illusion and disillusion. It argues that, despite the radical and modernist flavor of Ango’s essays, his “decadence” is best understood in terms of Mahāyāna and Zen Buddhist concepts. Moreover, when the two essays on decadence are read in tandem with Ango’s wartime essay on Japanese culture (Nihon bunka shikan, 1942), they form the foundation for a “postmetaphysical Buddhist critique of culture,” one that is pragmatic, humanistic, and non-reductively physicalist.

The half-century between the publication of the Imperial Rescript on Education (kyōiku chokugo 教育勅語, 1890) and the bombing of Pearl Harbor (1941) was one of tremendous institutional and intellectual tumult in the world of Japanese Buddhism. Buddhist sects and scholars were not immune to the changing political and cultural winds. While it is true that by the late 1930s, the majority of Buddhist leaders and institutions had capitulated to the status quo, preaching, in the words of Joseph Kitagawa “the virtues of peace, harmony, and loyalty to the throne,” the previous decades show anything but a continuous progression towards Buddhist nationalism. From the 1890s, Buddhist scholars and leaders such as Murakami Senshō 村上専精 (1851-1929),  Inoue Enryō 井上圓了 (1858-1919), Shaku Sōen 釋宗演 (1859-1919), and Kiyozawa Manshi 清沢満之 (1863-1903) were working towards the “reform” of Buddhism along to suit what they saw as encroaching “modernity”—especially Western science. They were joined in the succeeding decades by the intellectuals of the Kyoto School, whose vision was less a “new Buddhism” than a “new philosophy” both suited to twentieth-century Japan and with universal aspirations. Though there is significant variation in the thought of the leading figures of the Kyoto School, Nishida Kitarō 西田幾多郎 (1870-1945), Tanabe Hajime 田辺元 (1885-1962), and Nishitani Keiji 西谷啓治 (1900-1990), their work can be accurately categorized as an attempt at Buddhist “modernism.” What emerges then, from an examination of this fertile period is a debate between two visions of “new Buddhism”—one based on an understanding of “modernity” as a historical locus with specific political and cultural implications, and the other based on a “modernist” understanding of religion as a form of “aesthetics” largely abstracted from historical circumstances. This paper will examine the debate between the two visions of Buddhism during the period leading up to World War Two, as well as its implications for post-war Japanese Buddhism.

This study analyzes the contexts, techniques and resources of religious sculptures from the Kakakura period in Japan, 12th-14th centuries, and the 17th century Spanish sculpture. A large number of affinities emerge despite the temporal and cultural distance

Şintoizm, Japonların var oluşuyla birlikte varlık sahasına çıktığına inanılan, çoğu zaman kendileri tarafından milli kültür olarak görülen Japon milli dinidir. Bu din, zaman içinde Japonya’ya giren başta Budizm ve Ruizm/Konfüçyanizm olmak üzere çeşitli inançların etkisiyle şekillenerek günümüze kadar gelmiştir. Şintoizm, Daoizm ve Ruizm gibi Uzakdoğu inançlarının, müntesiplerinin aynı anda birden çok dine inanmayı yasaklamamış olması, bireylerin düşünce ve davranışlarında senkretik bir inanç sisteminin oluşmasına yol açmıştır.  Japonya’da toplumun temelini oluşturan aile kurumu ele alınırken de bu çok dinli yapı göz önünde bulundurulmalıdır. Çünkü Japonların, aile sistemlerini oluştururken Şinto inançları yanında etkileşimde oldukları kişilerin inançlarından da etkilendikleri aşikardır.
Bu çalışmada çeşitli inanışların etkisiyle gelişen Şintoizm’de aile kurumu çeşitli açılardan incelenecektir. Bunun için öncelikle Şinto dini metinlerinde aileyle ilgili ifadelere yer verilecek, ardından Şintoizm’de evlilik ve aile kurumunun amacı ve önemi, aile bireylerine yüklenen sorumluluklar, eş seçimi ve çokeşlilik/poligami, boşanma, eşcinsellik ve evlenmeden çocuk gibi aile ile ilgili hususlara Şintoist Japonların geçmişten günümüze bakış açıları ele alınacaktır.

The Global Repositioning of Japanese Religions: An Integrated Approach explores how Japanese religions respond to the relativizing effects of globalization, thereby repositioning themselves as global players. Organized around concrete case studies focusing on the engagement of Japanese Buddhism, Shinto, and several new religious movements in areas such as ecology, inter-religious dialogue, and politics, this book shows that the globalization of Japanese religions cannot be explained simply in terms of worldwide institutional expansion. Rather, it is a complex phenomenon conditioned by a set of pervasive factors: changes in consciousness, the perception of affinities and resonances at the systemic and cultural levels, processes of decontextualization, and a wide range of power issues including the re-enactment of cultural chauvinism.
The author investigates these dynamics systematically with attention to broader theoretical questions, cross-cultural similarities, the definition of religion and the perils of ethnocentrism, in order to develop his Global Repositioning model, which constitutes an integrated approach to the study of Japanese religions under globalization.
An empirically-grounded and theoretically-informed study of the effects of global trends on local religions, this book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in globalization, religious studies, Japanese studies, Hawaii, sociology, anthropology, and ecology.

TABLE  OF CONTENTS
Introduction
1 Approaching Religion under Globalization
2 Religious Others at the Door: Inclusivism and Pluralism as Forms of Global Repositioning
3 Glocal Environmentalism: Unpacking the Greening of Religion in Japan
4 Meditation à la Carte: Glocal Change in Hawaiian Jōdo Shinshū
5 Global Repositionings: Risshō Kōseikai, Japan, and the World at Large
6 Towards an Integrated Approach: The Global Repositioning Model
Conclusion
Bibliography
Glossary
Index

Shinto, literally the way of the kami (gods), is often regarded as Japan’s indigenous religion retaining archaic elements of animism and nature worship. At the same time, Shinto is sometimes seen as nothing else than a nationalistic political ideology. After all, in 1868 Japan turned into a modern nation state and worship at Shinto shrines became a national cult. This so-called State Shinto was eventually abolished under the Allied Occupation in 1946 but the historical links between Shinto and Japanese nationalism led to an ambivalent attitude towards Shinto not only at the popular level but also at the level of scientific research.

The present volume comprises eight essays by leading experts of Japanese intellectual history from Japan, Europe, and the USA who tackle this issue from the point of view of research history: What is the impact of State Shinto on Shinto research before and after the Second World War? How did Japanese and international scholars contribute and/or react to the ideological framework of Japanese nationalism? How did nationalist discourses of other countries (in particular German National Socialism) influence the conception of Shinto? As each essay addresses these issues from a specific angle, it becomes clear that there never was just one ideology of State Shinto. Moreover, from the 1880s onward the political authorities emphasized shrine ritual at the cost of Shinto theology. This so-called nonreligious-shrine doctrine also weakened the significance of academic research of Shinto as a tool of propaganda. Regarding the concept of Shinto proper, the impact of modern, “westernized” religious studies seems at least as important as traditional, “nativist” approaches.

Table of contents

* Introduction: Shinto Studies and the Nonreligious-Shrine Doctrine (Bernhard Scheid)
* Religion, Secularity, and the Articulation of the “Indigenous” in Modernizing Japan (Isomae Jun’ichi)
* Nationalism and the Humanities in Modern Japan: Religious, Buddhist, Shinto, and Oriental Studies (Hayashi Makoto)
* Colonial Empire and Mythology Studies: Research on Japanese Myth in the Early Shōwa Period (Hirafuji Kikuko)
* Coming to Terms with “Reverence at Shrines”: The 1932 Sophia University–Yasukuni Shrine Incident (Kate Wildman Nakai)
* Shinto Research and Administration in the First Half of the Twentieth Century: The Case of Miyaji Naokazu (Endō Jun)
* The Ethnographer, the Scholar, and the Missionary: French Studies on Shinto at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century (Jean-Pierre Berthon)
* “A Living Past as the Nation’s Personality”: Jinnō Shōtōki, Early Shōwa Nationalism, and Das Dritte Reich (Michael Wachutka)
* In Search of Lost Essence: Nationalist Projections in German Shinto Studies (Bernhard Scheid)

This special section of Asian Medicine brings together three scholars of the history of healing practices and medicine in premodern Asian societies to explore whether and how emic boundaries between religion and medicine were drawn in different historical contexts. In this introduction, we use the example of ancient Japan in an attempt to show how first steps towards a separation of religion and medicine can be identified, even when they have not yet been clearly differentiated institutionally or distinguished conceptually as distinct fields of action. By doing so, we operation-alize the macro-sociological question central to the 'multiple secularities' approach, namely how 'secular' fields of action-here, curing disease-emancipate themselves from 'religion' in premodern 'non-Western' societies. We propose to look for differences in the framing and interpretation of healing activities, for the ascription of either (professional) competence or (religious) charisma to the healers, to ask whether the activities are to be interpreted as a social function or service, and to identify the sources of authority and legitimacy. This is followed by a brief summary and discussion of the contributions by Selby, Czaja, and Triplett.

This is my MA thesis on Shugendo in the Kumano area (the Yoshino-Kumano pilgrimage) submitted to Sophia University in March 1976. I was still not committed to an academic career and I was more interested in the experience and what to learn from it, and so parts of it are subjective and inadequate from a "scholarly" perspective. It was typewritten with the kanji written in by hand, and some of the content is now dated and elementary compared to recent research, but I offer it to the public as an early study when Shugendo was still relatively unknown in the West.

While it is only in recent decades that scholars have begun to reconsider and problematize Buddhist conceptions of “freedom” and “agency,” the thought traditions of Asian Buddhism have for many centuries struggled with questions related to the issue of “liberation”—along with its fundamental ontological, epistemological and ethical implications. With the development of Marxist thought in the mid to late nineteenth century, a new paradigm for thinking about freedom in relation to history, identity and social change found its way to Asia, and confronted traditional religious interpretations of freedom as well as competing Western ones. In the past century, several attempts have been made—in India, southeast Asia, China and Japan—to bring together Marxist and Buddhist worldviews, with only moderate success (both at the level of theory and practice). This paper analyzes both the possibilities and problems of a “Buddhist materialism” constructed along Marxian lines, by focusing in particular on Buddhist and Marxist conceptions of “liberation.” By utilizing the theoretical work of Japanese “radical Buddhist” Seno’o Girō, I argue that the root of the tension lies with conceptions of selfhood and agency—but that, contrary to expectations, a strong case can be made for convergence between Buddhist and Marxian perspectives on these issues, as both traditions ultimately seek a resolution of existential determination in response to alienation. Along the way, I discuss the work of Marx, Engels, Gramsci, Lukàcs, Sartre, and Richard Rorty in relation to aspects of traditional (particularly East Asian Mahāyāna) Buddhist thought.