Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Fabio Rambelli is Professor of Japanese Religions and Cultural History and ISF Endowed Chair in Shinto Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.<i>The Sea and the Sacred in Japan</i> makes a valuable contribution to the field of Japanese maritime religion that will grant important insights to scholars and graduate students of Japanese religion, history, and literature.
Reading Religion
Identifies a number of important research themes that have long remained understudied. As such, it is a timely and relevant contribution to the field, groundbreaking in several respects, which offers a number of new insights and raises some fascinating questions ... This is a very rich volume ... Scholars of Japanese religion and history will undoubtedly find much of interest in the volume, which provides a number of intriguing new insights, based on sound textual and historical analyses.
Journal of Religion in Japan
This volume is a very welcome addition to the body of English-language literature on maritime perspectives of Japanese history.
Global Maritime History
Readers will find here a collection of fascinating and pioneering scholarship.
Religious Studies Review
Fabio Rambelli and the authors of the essays in this volume ask how our understanding of Japanese religions would change if we set aside our presumptions of the centrality of rice agriculture and instead thought of Japan in its other guise, as a seafaring society. This book offers a host of fresh approaches to familiar topics and brings new and exciting material to subjects that have not been extensively explored before now. This book will become essential reading for everyone interested in Japanese religions, culture, and society.
Helen Hardacre, Edwin O. Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions and Society, Harvard University, USA
This book constitutes a landmark in the study of maritime factors in Japanese religion It comprises of a sparkling set of essays on a remarkable range of topics related to its main theme and points the way to much future research to be done.
T. H. Barrett, Professor Emeritus of East Asian History, SOAS, UK
<p>This is a long-awaited, excellent volume that illuminates a central, though hitherto neglected, theme in the study of Japanese religions. Its thoughtful editor balanced a wide range of topics and research angles, considering sea myths, legends, rituals, deities and cults; locating Japan’s sea religion in the “ocean” of Asian Buddhism; and offering interpretive conceptualizations of maritime religiosity in Japan. <br />This inspiring, path-breaking book opens new directions in the study of Japanese religions and belongs in any academic library and on any Japanese religions’ scholar’s shelf.</p>
Irit Averbuch, Associate Professor of Japanese Studies, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
Scholars have for some time argued about the importance of sea routes for East Asian trade and politics, but no one until now had examined their impact on religion and culture. Fabio Rambelli must be credited for bringing together eminent scholars from across the globe to produce a unique and important project in Japanese religious studies. Examples are used expertly to reflect the significance of the sea in Japanese religion. This will be essential reading for all those studying Japanese religion, culture, and history.
Bernard Faure, Professor of Japanese Religions, Columbia University, USA
The Sea and the Sacred in Japan is the first book to focus on the role of the sea in Japanese religions. While many leading Shinto deities tend to be understood today as unrelated to the sea, and mountains are considered the privileged sites of sacredness, this book provides new ways to understand Japanese religious culture and history.
Scholars from North America, Japan and Europe explore the sea and the sacred in relation to history, culture, politics, geography, worldviews and cosmology, space and borders, and ritual practices and doctrines. Examples include Japanese indigenous conceptualizations of the sea from the Middle Ages to the 20th century; ancient sea myths and rituals; sea deities and sea cults; the role of the sea in Buddhist cosmology; and the international dimension of Japanese Buddhism and its maritime imaginary.
Acknowledgements
Notes for the Reader
List of Contributors
List of Illustrations
General Introduction: The Sea in the History of Japanese Religions, Fabio Rambelli (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
Foreword: Cults and Culture of the Sea: Historical and Geographical Perspectives, Allan G. Grapard (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
Part One: Ancient Sea Myths and Rituals and Their Reinterpretations
1. Imperial Sea Magic? The Sea Kami and the Great Tasting (daijosai) at the Early Yamato Court, Mark Teeuwen (Oslo University, Norway)
2. The Sea and Food Offerings for the Kami (shinsen), Sato Masato (University of Kitakyushu, Japan)
3. Taming the Plague Demons: Border Islanders and the Ritual Defense of Japan, Jane Alaszewska (SOAS, UK)
4. Island of Many Names, Island of No Name: Taboo and the Mysteries of Okinoshima, Lindsey E. DeWitt (Kyushu University, Japan)
Part Two: Sea Deities and Sea Cults
5. Musical Instruments for the Sea-God Ebisu: The Mythological System of Miho Shrine and Its Performative Power, Ouchi Fumi (Miyagi Gakuin Women’s University, Japan)
6. An Empress at Sea: Sea Deities and Divine Union in the Legends of Empress Jingu, Emily B. Simpson (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
7. Frogs Looking Beyond a Pond: Shinra Myojin in the “East Asian Mediterranean” Network, Sujung Kim (DePauw University, USA)
8. Hachiman Worship Among Japanese Pirates (wako) of the Medieval Period: A Preliminary Survey, Bernhard Scheid (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria)
9. Shugendo and the Sea, Gaynor Sekimori (SOAS, UK)
Part Three: Buddhism and Japan in the Global Ocean
10. Buddhas from Across the Sea: The Transmission of Buddhism in Ancient and Medieval Temple Narratives (engi), Abe Yasuro (Nagoya University, Japan)
11. Lands and People Drifting Ashore: Distorted Conceptions of Japan’s Place in the World According to Medieval and Early Modern Japanese Myths, Ito Satoshi (Ibaraki University, Japan)
12. Buddhist Japan and the Global Ocean, D. Max Moerman (Columbia University, USA)
Part Four: Interpretive Constructs
13. The World Was Born from the Sea: Reading the Origin of Heaven and Earth in the Ruiju jingi hongen, Kanazawa Hideyuki (Hokkaido University, Japan)
14. Origuchi Shinobu and the Sea as Religious Topos: Marebito and Musubi no kami, Saito Hideki (Bukkyo University, Japan)
15. Sea Theologies: Elements for a Conceptualization of Maritime Religiosity in Japan, Fabio Rambelli (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
Bibliography
Index
The Shinto tradition is an essential component of Japanese religious culture. In addition to indigenous elements, it contains aspects mediated from Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and, in more recent times, Western religious culture as well—plus, various forms of hybridization among all of these different traditions. Despite its cultural and historical importance, Shinto Studies have failed to attract wide attention partly due to the lingering effects of Japanese ultranationalist propaganda during World War II that made use of aspects of Shinto. The Series makes available to a broad audience a number of important academic works that help dispel widespread misconceptions, according to which Shinto is intrinsically related to Japanese nationalism and constitutes the essence of Japanese culture. By putting such stereotypes into perspective, the series promotes further research and understanding of what is still an underdeveloped field.
Editorial Board
Irit Averbuch, Associate Professor of Japanese Culture, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Erica Baffelli, Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies, University of Manchester, UK
Heather Blair, Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
John Breen, Professor of Japanese History, International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto, Japan
Bernard Faure, Professor of Japanese Religions, Columbia University, New York, USA
Allan Grapard, Professor of Japanese Religions Emeritus, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Helen Hardacre, Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions and Society, Harvard University, USA
Sato Hiroo, Professor of Japanese Intellectual History, Tohoku University, Japan
Max Moerman, Associate Professor of Japanese Religions, Barnard College at Columbia University, USA
Bernhard Scheid, Senior Researcher, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
Mark Teeuwen, Professor of Japanese Cultural history, Oslo University, Norway
Sarah Thal, Associate Professor of Japanese History, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA