Japanese Journal of Religious Studies

At a time in the not-so-distant past, there was once a venerable Zen priest. Following in the steps of the reverend Bodhidharma, patriarch of the west,1 he passed more than thirty years in diligent study, straining his eyes by the light of fireflies...

Medieval scholar-monks produced and transmitted a massive body of texts known as sacred works or shogyo. This article focuses on the Todaiji monk Sosho (1202-1278), who produced almost five hundred texts. How and for what purposes did a scholar-monk...

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. One notable exception to this trend, however, was the...

As the media-driven "spiritual boom" that hit Japan in the last decade starts to fade away, the therapies that this phenomenon popularized among fans of everything termed "spiritual" continue to be carried out in small circles of practitioners and their...

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Sakai Naoki ... and Isomae Jun'ichi ..., eds., Overcoming Modernity and the Kyoto School: Modernity, Empire, and Universality ... Tokyo: Ibunsha, 2010. 368 pages. ¥3,780. isbn 978-4-7531-0285-3.This volume...

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Jan Swyngedouw and I met for the first time in the spring of 1966 when we were both accepted into the doctoral program at the University of Tokyo. As fellow students, we sat side by side in many Religious...

In March 2007 Joyu Fumihiro, ex-spokesperson of Aum Shinrikyo and exrepresentative of Aleph, set up a new religious organization called Hikari no Wa (literally "Circle of Light") with around two hundred members. Hikari no Wa strongly and publicly rejects...

Aum's activities have had a global impact on counterterrorism thinking. Its use of chemical and biological weapons caught the attention of policy makers and security forces globally, and Aum became a seminal influence on the way security and government...

This article is an examination of the unconventional spiritual exploration that one woman, a priest of the Tendai School, engaged in from her twenties into her fifties. It follows her conflicts regarding her spiritual quest and gender roles, and further...

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Bernard Faure, D. Max Moerman, and Gaynor Sekimori, eds., Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie, N° 18, 2009: Shugendo: l'histoire et la culture d'une religion japonaise [Shugendo: The History and Culture of a Japanese...

Duncan Ryuken Williams and Tomoe Moriya, eds., Issei Buddhism in the Americas Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010. 216 pages. Cloth, $70.00; paper, $25.00. isbn 978-0-252-03533-3 (cloth); 978- 0-252-07719-7 (paper).This volume joins a growing...

Urs App, The Birth of Orientalism Philadelphia and Oxford: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. xviii + 550 pp. 20 illustrations. Cloth, us$79.95/£52.00. isbn 978- 0-8122-4261-4.This absorbing and richly researched book is a close study of Europe's...

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Peter Suares, The Kyoto School's Takeover of Hegel: Nishida, Nishitani, and Tanabe Remake the Philosophy of Spirit Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010. 238 pp. Cloth, $65.00. isbn 0-7391-4688-2/978-0-7391-4688-0.Suares's...

Frédéric Girard, Vocabulaire du bouddhisme japonais, Tome i-Tome ii [Hautes Études Orientales-Extrême-Orient no.45] Genève: Librairie droz, 2008. xiii+1658 pp. Paperback, $120.00. isbn 978-2-600-01228-7; isbn 987-2-600-01191-4 (i); isbn 987-2- 600-01192-1...

Izumo fudoki describes Izumo Province, situated in today's Shimane Prefecture and facing the Japan Sea. It is the oldest surviving Japanese text compiled by aristocrats from a region, hence giving us unique information about a Japanese province during...

This article examines medical works aimed at nourishing life and promoting longevity composed or compiled by Buddhist priests in early medieval Japan, focusing on the Choseiryoyoho and the Kissayojoki. These texts provide an especially useful aperture...

Japan presents a useful case for studying new religious movements and their development of public relations and growth strategies, not only because there are large numbers of new religious movements in Japan, but also for the presence of controversial...

The doctrinal intricacies related to the teaching of other-power and the absence of precepts in Shin Buddhism have not traditionally prevented the development of a distinctive ethic and forms of social interaction. The data from a survey conducted by...

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)In March of 2008, the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Colorado, Boulder, hosted a small interdisciplinary conference titled "Illustrating the Dharma: Popular Buddhism...

Tsukumogami are animate household objects. An otogizoshi ("companion tale") titled Tsukumogami ki ("Record of tool specters"; Muromachi period) explains that after a service life of nearly one hundred years, utsuwamono or kibutsu (containers, tools,...

This article examines the Shuhanron emaki (The illustrated scroll of the wine and rice debate) as not only a reflection of late Muromachi-period cultural trends, but also a reworking of its sixteenth-century historical setting. The work ostensibly features...

This essay explores the portrayal of the famous shirabyoshi dancer Shizuka in an illustrated, hand-copied book (nara ehon) dating from the late sixteenth century. The text for the nara ehon, taken from a somewhat earlier ballad-drama (kowakamai), describes...

The demonic female, an object of male anxiety and desire, has long been a stock character in Japanese Buddhist literature. This article examines two female realms in the Japanese literary and visual imagination: Rasetsukoku, a dreaded island of female...

This essay examines the historical conditions for the establishment of the templeparishioner or danka system. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact beginnings of this system. While there are medieval precedents, the broad development of the relationship...

In early modern Japan, for Buddhist temples endowed with famed "secret Buddhas," the kaicho was a lucrative means of public fundraising. In particular, at a time when a large-scale project such as building or repairing a Main Hall required sizable funding,...

Taking the lead from Helen Hardacre's scholarship as well as recent postcolonial theory, this article seeks to delineate new terms in the longstanding debate over State Shinto. It traces the historical process by which State Shinto penetrated the lives...

This essay reflects on the roles of the researcher, gender, place, and nostalgia in the making of an ethnographic documentary film on a contemporary pilgrimage confraternity. Every year the group visits Oyama, a sacred mountain in central Kanagawa Prefecture,...

In his Yasenkanna and other writings Zen master Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769) relies on two seemingly conflicting analogies to speak of the art of nourishing life (yojo). On the one hand, he maintains that vital energy (ki) must be stored in the cinnabar...

This article examines the process by which the academic discourse on the decadence of early modern Buddhism was developed, especially in the context of Meiji Japan (1868-1912). The predominant framework in which much of the modern research on Edo Buddhism...

Adherents are taught that Mahikari originated from divine revelations that Okada Yoshikazu received during a spontaneous episode of kamigakari in 1959, and academic studies generally present the view that it is a derivative of Sekai Kyuseikyo and Omoto....

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.)THE DATE of the publication of this special issue on "Japanese Religions in Brazil" coincides with the centenary festivities of Japanese immigration to Brazil. On a number of occasions throughout the year,...

Empirical data indicate that the so-called "Buddhism of yellow color" that is predominantly associated with Japanese "immigrant" Buddhism, is constantly in decline in terms of "explicit" adherents. After some methodological observations, this article...

This paper explores the historical role of Busshinji temple as a center of Buddhism in Brazil for non-Japanese. Busshinji was established by Sotoshu as a betsuin (branch temple) in the city of São Paulo in 1956. Drawing on interviews with early adherents,...

This article will examine Omoto, Konkokyo, and Rissho Koseikai as examples of New Religions among Brazilians of Japanese descent, and Sekai Kyuseikyo, Soka Gakkai, and Reiyukai as Japanese new religions that have expanded through propagation to Brazilians...

Hideaki Matsuoka, Japanese Prayer below the Equator: How Brazilians Believe in the Church of World Messianity Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007. 173 pp. $60.00, hardcover. isbn-10 0-7391-1379-8 and isbn-13 978-0-7391-1379-0.Hideaki Matsuoka trained and actually...

The place of narrative in organizing our experience in the world has been the topic of much discussion in recent years. This paper starts from the position developed by the psychologist Jerome Bruner, who argues that there are two distinct modes of thought,...

Kuya is widely known as a tenth-century Buddhist holy man who was the first to spread the nenbutsu practice among common lay people. The document that scholars regard as the most credible for understanding who Kuya was is the Kuyarui, which is a eulogy...

This study takes as its focus the medieval deification of Prince Shotoku's mother, Anahobe no Hashihito. Long associated with the Nara nunnery Chuguji, Empress Hashihito was resurrected as patron goddess of the nunnery in the medieval period, when Chuguji...

Although the introduction of horses into the Japanese islands has long been a topic of interest for scholars concerned with political and military relations between the Japanese islands and the Korean peninsula, their role in shaping cultic life in the...

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.)Stephen G. Covell, Japanese Temple Buddhism: Worldliness in a Religion of Renunciation Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2006, 256 pp. $25.00 paperback, ISBN 978-0-8248-2967-4.THE DEATH of Japanese...

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.)Bernhard Scheid and Mark Teeuwen, ed., The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion London: Routledge, 2006, xvii + 397 pp. £85.00, hardcover, ISBN10: 0-415-38713-2; ISBN13: 978-0-415-38713-2.WHILE focusing...

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.)Maria Rodríguez del Alisal, Peter Ackerman, and Dolores P. Martinez, ed., Pilgrimages and Spiritual Quests in Japan London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2007. xxi + 184 pp. £75.00/$150.00 Hardcover. ISBN...

JOHN D'ARCY MAY, Transcendence and Violence: The Encounter of Buddhist, Christian and Primal Traditions New York and London: Continuum, 2003. xi + 225 pp. $45.00, cloth. ISBN 082641513X.John D'Arcy May was born in Melbourne, Australia, and has been Associate...

(ProQuest-CSA LLC: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.)IN SEPTEMBER 2005 the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia hosted a remarkable two-day symposium somewhat grandly titled, "Experiences With and Within: Christians in...

What is often called the first Japanese embassy to Europe was actually a publicity stunt conceived in 1582 by Alexandro Valignano, the inspector of the Portuguese-sponsored Asian missions of the Society of Jesus. Four teenagers from Kyushu were paraded...

This paper examines the "underground" Christians of the Edo period, looking principally at the experiences of Christians in community. It is argued that these experiences reflect a tension between the complementary realms of secrecy on the one hand and...

Uchimura Kanzo (1861-1930) was an extremely accomplished Meiji Christian convert who emphasized a Christianity he considered in tune with traditional Japanese religiosity and free of Western influence. When a child, he observed his family's distress...

It is accepted that Victorian attitudes to love, chastity, marriage, and the family, all rooted in Christianity, played an important part in changing norms of behavior related to gender relationships in Meiji Japan. But writers on Christianity in Meiji...

On 6 October 1877, several Japanese Christian students living in San Francisco gathered and organized the Fukuinkai (Gospel Society) for Bible study and to encourage mutual concern and support among members who shared similar difficulties and struggles....

Richard K. Payne and Kenneth K. Tanaka, eds., Approaching the Land of Bliss: Religious Praxis in the Cult of Amitabha Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism 17. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004. ix+304 pp. $32.00, cloth, ISBN 0-8248-2578-0.PURE...