A Path into the Mountains

A Path into the Mountains PDF Author: Caleb Swift Carter
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824893093
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Shugendō has been an object of fascination among scholars and the general public, yet its historical development remains an enigma. This book offers a provocative reexamination of the social, economic, and spiritual terrain from which this mountain religious system arose. Caleb Carter traces Shugendō through the mountains of Togakushi (Nagano Prefecture), while situating it within the religious landscape of medieval and early modern Japan. His is the first major study to view Shugendō as a self-conscious religious system—something that was historically emergent but conceptually distinct from the prevailing Buddhist orders of medieval Japan. Beyond Shugendō, his work rethinks a range of issues in the history of Japanese religions, including exclusionary policies toward women, the formation of Shintō, and religion at the social and geographical margins of the Japanese archipelago. Carter takes a new tack in the study of religions by tracking three recurrent and intersecting elements—institution, ritual, and narrative. Examination of origin accounts, temple records, gazetteers, and iconography from Togakushi demonstrates how practitioners implemented storytelling, new rituals and festivals, and institutional measures to merge Shugendō with their mountain’s culture while establishing social legitimacy and economic security. Indicative of early modern trends, the case of Mount Togakushi reveals how Shugendō moved from a patchwork of regional communities into a translocal system of national scope, eventually becoming Japan’s signature mountain religion.

A Path into the Mountains

A Path into the Mountains PDF Author: Caleb Swift Carter
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824893093
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Get Book

Book Description
Shugendō has been an object of fascination among scholars and the general public, yet its historical development remains an enigma. This book offers a provocative reexamination of the social, economic, and spiritual terrain from which this mountain religious system arose. Caleb Carter traces Shugendō through the mountains of Togakushi (Nagano Prefecture), while situating it within the religious landscape of medieval and early modern Japan. His is the first major study to view Shugendō as a self-conscious religious system—something that was historically emergent but conceptually distinct from the prevailing Buddhist orders of medieval Japan. Beyond Shugendō, his work rethinks a range of issues in the history of Japanese religions, including exclusionary policies toward women, the formation of Shintō, and religion at the social and geographical margins of the Japanese archipelago. Carter takes a new tack in the study of religions by tracking three recurrent and intersecting elements—institution, ritual, and narrative. Examination of origin accounts, temple records, gazetteers, and iconography from Togakushi demonstrates how practitioners implemented storytelling, new rituals and festivals, and institutional measures to merge Shugendō with their mountain’s culture while establishing social legitimacy and economic security. Indicative of early modern trends, the case of Mount Togakushi reveals how Shugendō moved from a patchwork of regional communities into a translocal system of national scope, eventually becoming Japan’s signature mountain religion.

Defining Shugendo

Defining Shugendo PDF Author: Andrea Castiglioni
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350179418
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Winner of the 2022 Association for the Study of Japanese Mountain Religion Book Prize Defining Shugendo brings together leading international experts on Japanese mountain asceticism to discuss what has been an essential component of Japanese religions for more than a thousand years. Contributors explore how mountains have been abodes of deities, a resting place for the dead, sources of natural bounty and calamities, places of religious activities, and a vast repository of symbols. The book shows that many peoples have chosen them as sites for ascetic practices, claiming the potential to attain supernatural powers there. This book discusses the history of scholarship on Shugendo, the development process of mountain worship, and the religious and philosophical features of devotion at specific sacred mountains. Moreover, it reveals the rich material and visual culture associated with Shugendo, from statues and steles, to talismans and written oaths.

Shugendo

Shugendo PDF Author: Hitoshi Miyake
Publisher: U of M Center for Japanese Studies
ISBN: 9781929280384
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This volume of essays is the first comprehensive publication in English of the work of Miyake Hitoshi, a distinguished scholar of Shugendo (mountain asceticism) and one of the foremost researchers on Japanese folk religion. In Miyake's systematic methodological and theoretical approach, Shugendo is a classic example of Japanese folk religion, for it blends many traditions (shamanism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Shinto) into a distinctive Japanese religious worldview and is typical of Japanese religion generally. The first part of this book is devoted to Shugendo's history, organization, ritual, austerities, thought, and cosmology. Related subjects include exorcism and the exclusion of women. The second part of the book provides research and reflection on Japanese folk religion, including essays on the idea of nature, worldly benefits, new religions, death and rebirth, and the structure of folk religion.

Mountain Mandalas

Mountain Mandalas PDF Author: Allan G. Grapard
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474249027
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
In Mountain Mandalas Allan G. Grapard provides a thought-provoking history of one aspect of the Japanese Shugendo tradition in Kyushu, by focusing on three cultic systems: Mount Hiko, Usa-Hachiman, and the Kunisaki Peninsula. Grapard draws from a rich range of theorists from the disciplines of geography, history, anthropology, sociology, and humanistic geography and situates the historical terrain of his research within a much larger context. This book includes detailed analyses of the geography of sacred sites, translations from many original texts, and discussions on rituals and social practices. Grapard studies Mount Hiko and the Kunisaki Peninsula, which was very influential in Japanese cultural and religious history throughout the ages. We are introduced to important information on archaic social structures and their religious traditions; the development of the cult to the deity Hachiman; a history of the interactions between Buddhism and local cults in Japan; a history of the Shugendo tradition of mountain religious ascetics, and much more. Mountain Mandalas sheds light on important aspects of Japan's religion and culture, and will be of interest to all scholars of Shinto and Japanese religion. Extensive translations of source material can be found on the book's webpage.

A Religious Study of the Mount Haguro Sect of Shugendō

A Religious Study of the Mount Haguro Sect of Shugendō PDF Author: H. Byron Earhart
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Haguro Mountain
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description


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.

Shugendō

Shugendō PDF Author: Hitoshi Miyake
Publisher: U of M Center for Japanese Studies
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Miyake defines folk religion as "religion that emerges from the necessities of community life." In Miyake's systematic methodological and theoretical approach, Shugendo is a classic example of Japanese folk religion, for it blends many traditions (shamanism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Shinto) into a distinctive Japanese religious worldview and is typical of Japanese religion generally."--BOOK JACKET.

Tantric Buddhism in East Asia

Tantric Buddhism in East Asia PDF Author: Richard K. Payne
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0861714873
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Although Indian and Tibetan versions of tantric Buddhism are increasingly recognized, the East Asian variations on this practice remain largely overlooked. The only book to present the entire breadth of tantric Buddhism in East Asia, this collection remedies that situation with 12 key essays drawn from rare sources. Organized into four sections--China and Korea, Japan, Deities and Practices, and Influences on Japanese Religion--the book brings together a "critical mass" of scholarship, with the potential to create a sea change in the understanding of this subject

Living Buddhas

Living Buddhas PDF Author: Ken Jeremiah
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786456027
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Northern Japan is home to an ancient, esoteric tradition of self-mummifying Buddhist monks, little known to the outside world. Long after death, these ascetics continue to be revered as Living Buddhas. This first English-language work on the subject recounts the process by which these monks starve themselves for a decade, bury themselves alive with only a small breathing tube, and meditate until death. After three years, the mummified body is exhumed and displayed. The biographies of various monks are presented within, as is an examination of the religious beliefs involved, an amalgamation of three distinct religious traditions. Also explored is the role of asceticism in religion, and beliefs about life and death shared by the Buddhist sects involved in self-mummification.

Accounts and Images of Six Kannon in Japan

Accounts and Images of Six Kannon in Japan PDF Author: Sherry D. Fowler
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824856252
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
Buddhists around the world celebrate the benefits of worshipping Kannon (Avalokiteśvara), a compassionate savior who is one of the most beloved in the Buddhist pantheon. When Kannon appears in multiple manifestations, the deity’s powers are believed to increase to even greater heights. This concept generated several cults throughout history: among the most significant is the cult of the Six Kannon, which began in Japan in the tenth century and remained prominent through the sixteenth century. In this ambitious work, Sherry Fowler examines the development of the Japanese Six Kannon cult, its sculptures and paintings, and its transition to the Thirty-three Kannon cult, which remains active to this day. An exemplar of Six Kannon imagery is the complete set of life-size wooden sculptures made in 1224 and housed at the Kyoto temple Daihōonji. This set, along with others, is analyzed to demonstrate how Six Kannon worship impacted Buddhist practice. Employing a diachronic approach, Fowler presents case studies beginning in the eleventh century to reinstate a context for sets of Six Kannon, the majority of which have been lost or scattered, and thus illuminates the vibrancy, magnitude, and distribution of the cult and enhances our knowledge of religious image-making in Japan. Kannon’s role in assisting beings trapped in the six paths of transmigration is a well-documented catalyst for the selection of the number six, but there are other significant themes at work. Six Kannon worship includes significant foci on worldly concerns such as childbirth and animal husbandry, ties between text and image, and numerous correlations with Shinto kami groups of six. While making groups of Kannon visible, Fowler explores the fluidity of numerical deity categorizations and the attempts to quantify the invisible. Moreover, her investigation reveals Kyushu as an especially active site in the history of the Six Kannon cult. Much as Kannon images once functioned to attract worshippers, their presentation in this book will entice contemporary readers to revisit their assumptions about East Asia’s most popular Buddhist deity.