Religion in Japan
Arrows to Heaven and Earth

A remarkable 1996 collection of essays explore different aspects of religion in Japan by an international team of contributors.

P. F. Kornicki (Edited by), I. J. McMullen (Edited by)

9780521550284, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 February 1996

348 pages, 12 b/w illus. 8 colour illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.68 kg

'Topics broached range from the Nara to the Heisei period, from folk religion to intellectual history, from religious state policy to private religious entrepreneurism, and from Okinawa to Hokkaido. As a result, the book will contain something to fascinate anyone with an interest in Japanese religion. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society

Peter Francis Kornicki and Ian James McMullen have put together a remarkable collection of essays on different aspects of religion in Japan by an international team of contributors. The essays in this 1996 book cover a wide range of subjects, from the new religions of post-war Japan to beliefs about fox-possession in the Heian period, and from French missionaries in Okinawa in the mid-nineteenth century to the Ainu bear festival in Hokkaido. Other chapters examine the religious life of Minamoto no Yoritomo, the founder of the first shogunate in the late twelfth century, and the role of pilgrimage in Japanese religion. The essays offer fresh insights into the rich religious traditions of Japan, many of which have been previously neglected in the English-language writing on Japan.

1. Notes on the kuji David Waterhouse
2. The worship of Confucius in ancient Japan James McMullen
3. An early anthropologist? Oe no Masafusa's A record of fox spirits Ivo Smits
4. Religion in the life of Minamoto Yoritomo and the early Kamakura bakufu Martin Collcutt
5. Rethinking Japanese folk religion: a study of Kumano Shugen Miyake Hitoshi
6. Keeping the faith: bakuhan policy towards religions in seventeenth-century Japan Peter Nosco
7. Heavenly affinities and discrepancies: Fr Leturdu's early ethnographic account of Okinawa (1846–8) Patrick Beillevaire
8. Accommodating the alien: Okuni Takamasa and the religion of the Lord of Heaven John Breen
9. Shinmeiaishinkai and the study of shamanism in contemporary Japanese religious life Helen Hardacre
10. The Ainu iyomande and its evolution Fosco Maraini
11. Mizuko kuyo: the re-production of the dead in contemporary Japan Elizabeth G. Harrison
12. Pilgrimage as cult: the Shikoku pilgrimage as a window on Japanese religion Ian Reader
13. The sacred power of wrapping Joy Hendry.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]