Asian Folk Religion and Cultural Interaction

Asian Folk Religion and Cultural Interaction PDF

Author: Yoshihiro Nikaidō

Publisher: V&R Unipress

Published: 2015-10-28

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 3847004859

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This book uses a cultural interaction approach to discuss numerous temples and shrines of Sinitic origin that house Daoist, Buddhist, and folk gods. Such deities were transmitted outside the Chinese continent, or were introduced from other regions and syncretized. Examples include temple guardian gods that arrived in Japan from China and later became deified as part of the Five Mountain system, and a Daoist deity that transformed into a god in Japan after syncretizing with My?ken Bosatsu. The profoundly different images of Ksitigarbha in China and Japan are discussed, as well as Mt. Jiuhua, the center of Ksitigarbha in modern China. Lastly, the process by which Sinitic gods were transmitted to regions outside of the Chinese continent, such as Taiwan, Singapore, and Okinawa, is explored.

Cultural Interaction Studies in East Asia

Cultural Interaction Studies in East Asia PDF

Author: Demin Tao

Publisher: V&R Unipress

Published: 2021-03-08

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 3847011537

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This volume tackles the unique scholarly challenges of Cultural Interaction Studies in an East Asian context. Leading experts in a variety of related fields – from religion and history to geography, language, literature, Sinology and Japanology – have contributed a total of 18 articles, collected under the following six rubrics: "New Directions in Regional Studies", "New Trends in Humanities Studies", "Material Circulation and Cultural Transmission in East Asia", "China's Experience of Cultural Interaction with the West", "Transformation of Japanese Scholarship from Early Modern to Modern Times", and "The Wisdom of Selective Adaptation and Constructive Dialog". Among the eight award-winning contributors, Ge Zhaoguang (1950–) has received critical acclaim for his What is China? Territory, Ethnicity, Culture, and History (2014), while Nakanishi Susumu (1929–) has been internationally recognized for his lifelong devotion to the study of ancient Japanese literature. Nakanishi's determination to inherit Prince Shotoku's spirit of peaceful coexistence with Japan's neighboring countries led him to propose the new era name "Reiwa", which was officially adopted for use by the Emperor Naruhito upon his enthronement on May 1, 2019.

Chinese Religions

Chinese Religions PDF

Author: Christian Jochim

Publisher: Prentice Hall

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13:

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Covers Confucianism, Taoism, and Chinese Buddhism focusing on the interaction between religion and aspects of Chinese culture such as the family, the community, the arts, etc.

Zen and Material Culture

Zen and Material Culture PDF

Author: Pamela D. Winfield

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-06-07

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 0190693738

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The stereotype of Zen Buddhism as a minimalistic or even immaterial meditative tradition persists in the Euro-American cultural imagination. This volume calls attention to the vast range of "stuff" in Zen by highlighting the material abundance and iconic range of the Soto, Rinzai, and Obaku sects in Japan. Chapters on beads, bowls, buildings, staffs, statues, rags, robes, and even retail commodities in America all shed new light on overlooked items of lay and monastic practice in both historical and contemporary perspectives. Nine authors from the cognate fields of art history, religious studies, and the history of material culture analyze these "Zen matters" in all four senses of the phrase: the interdisciplinary study of Zen's matters (objects and images) ultimately speaks to larger Zen matters (ideas, ideals) that matter (in the predicate sense) to both male and female practitioners, often because such matters (economic considerations) help to ensure the cultural and institutional survival of the tradition. Zen and Material Culture expands the study of Japanese Zen Buddhism to include material inquiry as an important complement to mainly textual, institutional, or ritual studies. It also broadens the traditional purview of art history by incorporating the visual culture of everyday Zen objects and images into the canon of recognized masterpieces by elite artists. Finally, the volume extends Japanese material and visual cultural studies into new research territory by taking up Zen's rich trove of materia liturgica and supplementing the largely secular approach to studying Japanese popular culture. This groundbreaking volume will be a resource for anyone whose interests lie at the intersection of Zen art, architecture, history, ritual, tea ceremony, women's studies, and the fine line between Buddhist materiality and materialism.

Shinra Myōjin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean”

Shinra Myōjin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean” PDF

Author: Sujung Kim

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2019-11-30

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 0824877993

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This ambitious work offers a transnational account of the deity Shinra Myōjin, the “god of Silla” worshipped in medieval Japanese Buddhism from the eleventh to sixteenth centuries. Sujung Kim challenges the long-held understanding of Shinra Myōjin as a protective deity of the Tendai Jimon school, showing how its worship emerged and developed in the complex networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean”—a “quality” rather than a physical space defined by Kim as the primary conduit for cross-cultural influence in a region that includes the Yellow Sea, the Sea of Japan (East Sea), the East China Sea, and neighboring coastal areas. While focusing on the transcultural worship of the deity, Kim engages the different maritime arrangements in which Shinra Myōjin circulated: first, the network of Korean immigrants, Chinese merchants, and Japanese Buddhist monks in China’s Shandong peninsula and Japan’s Ōmi Province; and second, that of gods found in the East Asian Mediterranean. Both of these networks became nodal points of exchange of both goods and gods. Kim’s examination of temple chronicles, literary writings, and iconography reveals Shinra Myōjin’s evolution from a seafaring god to a multifaceted one whose roles included the god of pestilence and of poetry, the insurer of painless childbirth, and the protector of performing arts. Shinra Myōjin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean” is not only the first monograph in any language on the Tendai Jimon school in Japanese Buddhism, but also the first book-length study in English to examine Korean connections in medieval Japanese religion. Unlike other recent studies on individual Buddhist deities, it foregrounds the need to approach them within a broader East Asian context. By shifting the paradigm from a land-centered vision to a sea-centered one, the work underlines the importance of a transcultural and interdisciplinary approach to the study of Buddhist deities.

Heritage and Religion in East Asia

Heritage and Religion in East Asia PDF

Author: Shu-Li Wang

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-12-29

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1000327744

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Heritage and Religion in East Asia examines how religious heritage, in a mobile way, plays across national boundaries in East Asia and, in doing so, the book provides new theoretical insights into the articulation of heritage and religion. Drawing on primary, comparative research carried out in four East Asian countries, much of which was undertaken by East Asian scholars, the book shows how the inscription of religious items as "Heritage" has stimulated cross-border interactions among religious practitioners and boosted tourism along modern pilgrimage routes. Considering how these forces encourage cross-border links in heritage practices and religious movements in China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, the volume also questions what role heritage plays in a region where Buddhism, Taoism, and other various folk religious practices are dominant. Arguing that it is diversity and vibrancy that makes religious discourse in East Asia unique, the contributors explore how this particularity both energizes and is empowered by heritage practices in East Asia. Heritage and Religion in East Asia enriches understanding of the impact of heritage and religious culture in modern society and will be of interest to academics and students working in heritage studies, anthropology, religion, and East Asian studies.

Rooted in Hope: China – Religion – Christianity Vol 2

Rooted in Hope: China – Religion – Christianity Vol 2 PDF

Author: Barbara Hoster

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-27

Total Pages: 508

ISBN-13: 1351672592

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This Festschrift is dedicated to the former Director and Editor-in-chief of the Monumenta Serica Institute in Sankt Augustin (Germany), Roman Malek, S.V.D. in recognition of his scholarly commitment to China. The two-volume work contains 40 articles by his academic colleagues, companions in faith, confreres, as well as by the staff of the Monumenta Serica Institute and the China-Zentrum e.V. (China Center). The contributions in English, German and Chinese pay homage to the jubilarian’s diverse research interests, covering the fields of Chinese Intellectual History, History of Christianity in China, Christianity in China Today, Other Religions in China, Chinese Language and Literature as well as the Encounter of Cultures.

Voices from the Underworld

Voices from the Underworld PDF

Author: Fabian Graham

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2020-02-11

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1526140594

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In Singapore and Malaysia, the inversion of Chinese Underworld traditions has meant that Underworld demons are now amongst the most commonly venerated deities in statue form, channelled through their spirit mediums, tang-ki. The Chinese Underworld and its sub-hells are populated by a bureaucracy drawn from the Buddhist, Taoist and vernacular pantheons. Under the watchful eye of Hell’s ‘enforcers’, the lower echelons of demon soldiers impose post-mortal punishments on the souls of the recently deceased for moral transgressions committed during their prior incarnations. Voices from the Underworld offers an ethnography of contemporary Chinese Underworld traditions, where night-time cemetery rituals assist the souls of the dead, exorcised spirits are imprisoned in Guinness bottles, and malicious foetus ghosts are enlisted to strengthen a temple’s spirit army. Understanding the religious divergences between Singapore and Malaysia through an analysis of socio-political and historical events, Fabian Graham challenges common assumptions on the nature and scope of Chinese vernacular religious beliefs and practices. Graham’s innovative approach to alterity allows the reader to listen to first-person dialogues between the author and channelled Underworld deities. Through its alternative methodological and narrative stance, the book intervenes in debates on the interrelation between sociocultural and spiritual worlds, and promotes the de-stigmatisation of spirit possession and discarnate phenomena in the future study of mystical and religious traditions.

Routledge Handbook of Religions in Asia

Routledge Handbook of Religions in Asia PDF

Author: Bryan S. Turner

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-09-25

Total Pages: 897

ISBN-13: 1317636457

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The Routledge Handbook of Religions in Asia provides a contemporary and comprehensive overview of religion in contemporary Asia. Compiled and introduced by Bryan S. Turner and Oscar Salemink, the Handbook contains specially written chapters by experts in their respective fields. The wide-ranging introduction discusses issues surrounding Orientalism and the historical development of the discipline of Religious Studies. It conveys how there have been many centuries of interaction between different religious traditions in Asia and discusses the problem of world religions and the range of concepts, such as high and low traditions, folk and formal religions, popular and orthodox developments. Individual chapters are presented in the following five sections: Asian Origins: religious formations Missions, States and Religious Competition Reform Movements and Modernity Popular Religions Religion and Globalization: social dimensions Striking a balance between offering basic information about religious cultures in Asia and addressing the complexity of employing a western terminology in societies with radically different traditions, this advanced level reference work will be essential reading for students, researchers and scholars of Asian Religions, Sociology, Anthropology, Asian Studies and Religious Studies.

Fear, Heterodoxy, and Crime in Traditional China

Fear, Heterodoxy, and Crime in Traditional China PDF

Author: Tommaso Previato

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-06-27

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9004699007

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This multi-contributor volume examines the evolving relationship between fear, heterodoxy and crime in traditional China. It throws light on how these three variously interwoven elements shaped local policies and people’s perceptions of the religious, ethnic, and cultural “other.” Authors depart from the assumption that “otherness” is constructed, stereotyped and formalized within the moral, political and legal institutions of Chinese society. The capacity of their findings to address questions about the emotional dimension of mass mobilization, the socio-political implications of heterodoxy, and attributions of crime is the result of integrating multiple sources of knowledge from history, religious studies and social science. Contributors are Ágnes Birtalan, Ayumu Doi, Fabian Graham, Hung Tak Wai, Jing Li, Hang Lin, Tommaso Previato, and Noriko Unno.