Author: Erica Baffelli
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350086533
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 373
Get Book
Book Description
“This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. This book examines the trajectory and development of the Japanese religious movement Agonshu and its charismatic founder Kiriyama Seiyu. Based on field research spanning 30 years, it examines Agonshu from when it first captured attention in the 1980s with its spectacular rituals and use of media technologies, through its period of stagnation to its response to the death of its founder in 2016. The authors discuss the significance of charismatic leadership, the 'democratisation' of practice and the demands made by movements such as Agonshu on members, while examining how the movement became increasingly focused on revisionist nationalism and issues of Japanese identity. In examining the dilemma that religions commonly face on the deaths of charismatic founders, Erica Baffelli and Ian Reader look at Agonshu's response to Kiriyama's death, looking at how and why it has transformed a human founder into a figure of worship. By examining Agonshu in the wider context, the authors critically examine the concept of 'new religions'. They draw attention to the importance of understanding the trajectories of 'new' religions and how they can become 'old' even within their first generation.
Author: Erica Baffelli
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350086525
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 215
Get Book
Book Description
“This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. This book examines the trajectory and development of the Japanese religious movement Agonshu and its charismatic founder Kiriyama Seiyu. Based on field research spanning 30 years, it examines Agonshu from when it first captured attention in the 1980s with its spectacular rituals and use of media technologies, through its period of stagnation to its response to the death of its founder in 2016. The authors discuss the significance of charismatic leadership, the 'democratisation' of practice and the demands made by movements such as Agonshu on members, while examining how the movement became increasingly focused on revisionist nationalism and issues of Japanese identity. In examining the dilemma that religions commonly face on the deaths of charismatic founders, Erica Baffelli and Ian Reader look at Agonshu's response to Kiriyama's death, looking at how and why it has transformed a human founder into a figure of worship. By examining Agonshu in the wider context, the authors critically examine the concept of 'new religions'. They draw attention to the importance of understanding the trajectories of 'new' religions and how they can become 'old' even within their first generation.
Author: Erica Baffelli
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350043753
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Get Book
Book Description
Providing an overview of current cutting-edge research in the field of Japanese religions, this Handbook is the most up-to-date guide to contemporary scholarship in the field. As well as charting innovative research taking place, this book also points to new directions for future research, covering both the modern and pre-modern periods. Edited by Erica Baffelli, Andrea Castiglioni, and Fabio Rambelli, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Japanese Religions includes essays by international scholars from the USA, Europe, Japan, and New Zealand. Topics and themes include gender, politics, the arts, economy, media, globalization, and colonialism. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Japanese Religions is an essential reference point for upper-level students and scholars of Japanese religions as well as Japanese Studies more broadly.
Author: Peter B Clarke
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136828729
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Get Book
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.
Author: Ian Reader
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 082486400X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 318
Get Book
Book Description
Praying for practical benefits (genze riyaku) is a common religious activity in Japan. Despite its widespread nature and the vast numbers of people who pray and purchase amulets and talismans for everything from traffic safety and education success to business prosperity and protection from disease, the practice has been virtually ignored in academic studies or relegated to the margins as a uh_product of superstition or an aberration from the true dynamics of religion. Basing their work on a fusion of textual, ethnographic, historical, and contemporary studies, the authors of this volume demonstrate the fallacy of such views, showing that, far from being marginal, the concepts and practices surrounding genze riyaku lie at the very heart of the Japanese religious world. They thrive not only as popular religious expression but are supported by the doctrinal structures of most Buddhist sects, are ordained in religious scriptures, and are promoted by monastic training centers, shrines, and temples. Benefits are both sought and bought, and the authors discuss the economic and commercial aspects of how and why institutions promote practical benefits. They draw attention to the dynamism and flexibility in the religious marketplace, where new products are offered in response to changing needs. Intertwined in these economic activities and motivations are the truth claims that underpin and justify the promotion and practice of benefits. The authors also examine the business of guidebooks, which combine travel information with religious advice, including humorous and distinctive forms of prayer for the protection against embarrassing physical problems and sexual diseases. Written in a direct and engaging style, Practically Religious will appeal to a wide range of readers and will be especially valuable to those interested in religion, anthropology, Buddhist studies, sociology, and Japanese studies.
Author: Peter B. Clarke
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134241380
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Get Book
Book Description
An excellent and very timely update on an area seeing many recent developments.
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004234365
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 674
Get Book
Book Description
Representing work by some of the leading scholars in the field, this volume presents important topics in the religious environment of contemporary Japan by surveying exciting trends, religious change and innovation, and the interactivity of religion with market and global forces.
Author: Ian Reader
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113681941X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 323
Get Book
Book Description
The Tokyo subway attack in March 1995 was just one of a series of criminal activities including murder, kidnapping, extortion, and the illegal manufacture of arms and drugs carried out by the Japanese new religious movement Aum Shinrikyo, under the guidance of its leader Asahara Shoko. Reader looks at Aum's claims about itself and asks, why did a religious movement ostensibly focussed on yoga, meditation, asceticism and the pursuit of enlightenment become involved in violent activities? Reader discusses Aum's spiritual roots, placing it in the context of contemporary Japanese religious patterns. Asahara's teaching are examined from his earliest public pronouncements through to his sermons at the time of the attack, and statements he has made in court. In analysing how Aum not only manufactured nerve gases but constructed its own internal doctrinal justifications for using them Reader focuses on the formation of what made all this possible: Aum's internal thought-world, and on how this was developed. Reader argues that despite the horrors of this particular case, Aum should not be seen as unique, nor as solely a political or criminal terror group. Rather it can best be analysed within the context of religious violence, as an extreme example of a religious movement that has created friction with the wider world that escalated into violence.
Author: Harry Thomsen
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Get Book
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
Author: Helen Hardacre
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691221561
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Get Book
Book Description
The description for this book, Kurozumikyo and the New Religions of Japan, will be forthcoming.
