Routledge Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami (Routledge Studies in Asian Religion)

From the Publisher A scholarly work on this Japanese religionShinto in History is the only book to date which offers a critical overview of Shinto from early times to the modern era, and evaluates Shinto's place in Japanese religious culture. It examines critically Shinto's origins and its subsequent development through the medieval, pre-modern and modern periods.A comprehensive and critical study of Shinto is long overdue, since a clear exposition of what Shinto is, and is not, is essential to an understanding not only of Japanese religious culture, but of Japanese cultural history itself.The essays in this book address such key topics as Shinto and Taoism in early Japan, Shinto and state ritual in early Japan, Shinto and Buddhism in medieval Japan, and Shinto and the state in the modern period. All of the essays highlight the dynamic nature of Shinto and shrine history by focusing on the three-way relationship, often fraught, between local shrine cults, Shinto agendas and Buddhism.The contributors are all established scholars; the essays by non-Japanese contributors have been specially researched and written for this book, while those by Japanese scholars have previously been published in Japanese and deserve wider readership.Contents: 1 Introduction: Shinto Past and Present; 2 Shinto and Taoism in early Japan; 3 Shinto and the Natural Environment; 4 The State Cult in the Nara and Heian periods; 5 The Economics of Ritual Power; 6 The kami in esoteric Buddhist Thought and Practice; 7 Reading the Yuiitsu Shinto Myobo Yoshu: A Modern Reading of an Esoteric Shinto Text; 8 The Death of a Shogun: Deification in early Modern Japan; 9 Changing Images of Shinto: Sanja Takusen or The Three Oracles; 10 Mapping the Sacred Body: Shinto versus Popular Beliefs at Mt Iwaki in Tsugaru; 11 Nativism as a Social Movement: Katagiri Harukazu and the Hongaku Reisha; 12 Ideologues, Bureaucrats and Priests: on Shinto' and Buddhism' in Early Meiji Japan; 13 Shinto as a non-religion: The Origins and Development of an Idea; 14 The Structure of State Shinto: Its Creation, Development and Demise; 15 The Disfiguring of Nativism: Hirata Atsutane and Orikuchi Shinobu; 16 Tanaka Yoshito and the Beginnings of Shintogaku. Product Description This is the only book to date offering a critical overview of Shinto from early times to the modern era, and evaluating Shinto's place in Japanese religious culture. In recent years, a few books on medieval Shinto have appeared, but none has attempted to depict the broader picture, to examine critically Shinto's origins and its subsequent development through the medieval, pre-modern and modern periods. The essays in this book address such key topics as Shinto and Daoism in early Japan, Shinto and the natural environment, Shinto and state ritual in early Japan, Shinto and Buddhism in medieval Japan, and Shinto and the state in the modern period. All of the essays highlight the dynamic nature of Shinto and shrine history by focusing on the three-way relationship, often fraught, between local shrine cults, Shinto agendas and Buddhism. Review 'The book as a whole constitutes a very important tool in order to achieve both a general and detailes overview of Shinto and to better assess some major topics' - Dr. Flavia Monceri, EAJS Bulletin