Okinawa: A People and Their Gods

Okinawa: A People and Their Gods PDF

Author: Robinson,

Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

Published: 2005-05-15

Total Pages: 110

ISBN-13: 146291277X

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Okinawa is a fascinating account of the most unusual religious practices of the Okinawan people. Subject throughout their long history to many foreign influences, the Okinawan people still retain to a remarkable degree a strong reverence for their prehistoric animistic beliefs. nevertheless, in accommodating themselves to the infiltration of Buddhist, Confucian, Shinto, and Christian influences they have been most receptive, with the result that what might seem confusing, illogical, and inconsistent to others, is quite compatible to them. This brief but authoritative account not only correlates present-day practices with their historical development, but also takes notice of current trends and likely future developments in Okinawa. The text is enhanced with sixteen significant photographs and with nine full-page maps to guide sightseers to Okinawa's most culturally significant places.

Handbook of Japanese Mythology

Handbook of Japanese Mythology PDF

Author: Michael Ashkenazi

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2003-11-05

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 1576074684

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An introductory guide to the mythology of Japan—one of the most pervasive yet least understood facets of Japanese culture. Handbook of Japanese Mythology makes it easy to travel this vast yet little-known mythological landscape. The book reveals the origins of Japan's myths in the very different realms of Buddhism, Shinto, and folklore, and explores related mythologies of the Ainu and Okinawan cultures and recent myths arising from Japan's encounters with modernization. It then offers vivid retellings of the central Shinto and Buddhist myths, plus descriptions of major historical figures, icons, rituals, and events. For students or long-time enthusiasts, it is the ideal guide for investigating Japanese reverence for the sun, the imperial family, and the virtues of purity and loyalty. Readers will also learn why sumo wrestlers stomp before each match, how a fussy baby creates thunder, why Japan has a god for soccer, and much more.

Wings of the Gods

Wings of the Gods PDF

Author: Peter (Petra) Gardella

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0197691870

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Wings of the Gods surveys the many roles that birds have played in the development of religions, from legends, rituals, costumes, wars, and spiritual disciplines to the current ecological crisis. Peter (Petra) Gardella and Laurence Krute, both scholars and birdwatchers, transcend a narrow focus on humanity to explore the agency of birds in world history.

Mass Suicides on Saipan and Tinian, 1944

Mass Suicides on Saipan and Tinian, 1944 PDF

Author: Alexander Astroth

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2019-03-27

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1476674566

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When the Americans invaded the Japanese-controlled islands of Saipan and Tinian in 1944, civilians and combatants committed mass suicide to avoid being captured. Though these mass suicides have been mentioned in documentary films, they have received scant scholarly attention. This book draws on United States National Archives documents and photographs, as well as veteran and survivor testimonies, to provide readers with a better understanding of what happened on the two islands and why. The author details the experiences of the people of the islands from prehistoric times to the present, with an emphasis on the Japanese, Okinawan, Korean, Chamorro and Carolinian civilians during invasion and occupation.

Songs from the Edge of Japan: Music-making in Yaeyama and Okinawa

Songs from the Edge of Japan: Music-making in Yaeyama and Okinawa PDF

Author: Matt Gillan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-01

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1317052625

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Since the early 1990s, Okinawan music has experienced an extraordinary boom in popularity throughout Japan. Musicians from this island prefecture in the very south of Japan have found success as performers and recording artists, and have been featured in a number of hit films and television dramas. In particular, the Yaeyama region in the south of Okinawa has long been known as a region rich in performing arts, and Yaeyaman musicians such as BEGIN, Daiku Tetsuhiro, and Natsukawa Rimi have been at the forefront of the recent Okinawan music boom. This popularity of Okinawan music represents only the surface of a diverse and thriving musical culture within modern-day Yaeyama. Traditional music continues to be an important component of traditional ritual and social life in the islands, while Yaeyama's unique geographical and cultural position at the very edge of Japan have produced varied discourses surrounding issues such as tradition versus modernity, preservation, and cultural identity. Songs from the Edge of Japan explores some of the reasons for the high profile of Yaeyaman music in recent years, both inside and outside Yaeyama. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork carried out since 2000, the book uses interviews, articles from the popular media, musical and lyrical analysis of field and commercial recordings, as well as the author's experiences as a performer of Yaeyaman and Okinawan music, to paint a picture of what it means to perform Yaeyaman music in the 21st century.

Okinawan War Memory

Okinawan War Memory PDF

Author: Kyle Ikeda

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-03-14

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 113501180X

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As one of Okinawa's most insightful writers and social critics, Medoruma Shun has highlighted the problems and limits of conventional representation of the Battle of Okinawa, raised new questions and concerns about the nature of Okinawan war memory, and expanded the possibilities of representing war through his groundbreaking and prize-winning fiction, editorials, essays, and speaking engagements. Yet, his writing has not been analyzed in regard to how his experience and identity as the child of two survivors of the Battle of Okinawa have powerfully shaped his understanding of the war and his literary craft. This book examines Okinawan war memory through the lens of Medoruma’s war fiction, and pays particular attention to the issues of second-generation war survivorship and transgenerational trauma. It explores how his texts contribute to knowledge about the war and its ongoing effects — on survivors, their offspring, and the larger community — in different ways from that of other modes of representation, such as survivor testimony, historical narrative, and realistic fiction. These dominant means of memory making have played a major role in shaping the various discourses about the war and the Battle of Okinawa, yet these forms of public memory and knowledge often exclude or avoid more personal, emotional, and traumatic experiences. Indeed, Ikeda’s analysis sheds light on the nature of trauma on survivors and their children who continue to inhabit sites of the traumatic past, and in turn makes an important contribution to studies on trauma and second-generation survivor experiences. This book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Asian literature, Japanese literature, Japanese history, war memory and Okinawa.

The Okinawa Program

The Okinawa Program PDF

Author: Bradley J. Willcox

Publisher: Harmony

Published: 2002-03-12

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 0609807501

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“If Americans lived more like the Okinawans, 80 percent of the nation’s coronary care units, one-third of the cancer wards, and a lot of the nursing homes would be shut down.” —From The Okinawa Program The Okinawa Program, authored by a team of internationally renowned experts, is based on the landmark scientifically documented twenty-five-year Okinawa Centenarian Study, a Japanese Ministry of health–sponsored study. This breakthrough book reveals the diet, exercise, and lifestyle practices that make the Okinawans the healthiest and longest-lived population in the world. With an easy-to-follow Four-Week Turnaround Plan, nearly one hundred fast, delicious recipes, and a moderate exercise plan, The Okinawa Program can dramatically increase your chances for a long, healthy life

People and Cultures of Hawaii

People and Cultures of Hawaii PDF

Author: Thomas W. Maretzki

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2011-04-30

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 0824860268

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This is a significant update to the highly influential text People and Cultures of Hawaii: A Psychocultural Profile. Since its publication in 1980, the immigrant groups it discusses in depth have matured and new ones have been added to the mix. The present work tracks the course of these changes over the past twenty years, constructing a historical understanding of each group as it evolved from race to ethnicity to culture. Individual chapters begin with an overview of one of fifteen groups. Following the development of its unique ethnocultural identity, distinctive character traits such as temperament and emotional expression are explored—as well as ethnic stereotypes. Also discussed are modifications to the group’s ethnocultural identity over time and generational change—which traits may have changed over generations and which are more hardwired or enduring. An important feature of each chapter is the focus on the group’s family social structure, generational and gender roles, power distribution, and central values and life goals. Readers will also find a description of the group’s own internal social class structure, social and political strategies, and occupational and educational patterns. Finally, contributors consider how a particular ethnic group has blended into Hawai‘i’s culturally sensitive society. People and Cultures of Hawai‘i: The Evolution of Culture and Ethnicity will, like its predecessor, fill an important niche in understanding the history of different ethnic groups in Hawai‘i.

Religion and Psychotherapy in Modern Japan

Religion and Psychotherapy in Modern Japan PDF

Author: Christopher Harding

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-09-15

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1317683005

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Since the late nineteenth century, religious ideas and practices in Japan have become increasingly intertwined with those associated with mental health and healing. This relationship developed against the backdrop of a far broader, and deeply consequential meeting: between Japan’s long-standing, Chinese-influenced intellectual and institutional forms, and the politics, science, philosophy, and religion of the post-Enlightenment West. In striving to craft a modern society and culture that could exist on terms with – rather than be subsumed by – western power and influence, Japan became home to a religion--psy dialogue informed by pressing political priorities and rapidly shifting cultural concerns. This book provides a historically contextualized introduction to the dialogue between religion and psychotherapy in modern Japan. In doing so, it draws out connections between developments in medicine, government policy, Japanese religion and spirituality, social and cultural criticism, regional dynamics, and gender relations. The chapters all focus on the meeting and intermingling of religious with psychotherapeutic ideas and draw on a wide range of case studies including: how temple and shrine ‘cures’ of early modern Japan fared in the light of German neuropsychiatry; how Japanese Buddhist theories of mind, body, and self-cultivation negotiated with the findings of western medicine; how Buddhists, Christians, and other organizations and groups drew and redrew the lines between religious praxis and psychological healing; how major European therapies such as Freud’s fed into self-consciously Japanese analyses of and treatments for the ills of the age; and how distress, suffering, and individuality came to be reinterpreted across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, from the southern islands of Okinawa to the devastated northern neighbourhoods of the Tohoku region after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters of March 2011. Religion and Psychotherapy in Modern Japan will be welcomed by students and scholars working across a broad range of subjects, including Japanese culture and society, religious studies, psychology and psychotherapy, mental health, and international history.

I Thought the Sun Was God

I Thought the Sun Was God PDF

Author: Masako Kimura Streling

Publisher: FriesenPress

Published: 2013-05

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1770974687

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Born in a poor fishing village under difficult circumstances, Masako, a descendant of the Satsuma Samurai Clan, grew up burdened with many, filial responsibilities, in a rigorously class-conscious and patriarchal society-one headed for massive and profound change. Unable to reconcile herself to the many roles within roles imposed upon her, and feeling in her heart that she was destined to make a difference, Masako embarked on a lifelong journey of growth and self-discovery that took her across the Pacific Ocean and eventually led her to God. In their sixties-when most Americans are hoping to retire and enjoy the fruits of their labors-Masako and her husband Carl spent three years as the first Lay Missionaries for the Society of St. Columban in Japan. Those years, while life changing, were also painful and left Masako scarred and in a state of spiritual and emotional crisis. Questioning her role, her identity, and her very worth, Masako returned to the United States to rebuild a life, and reconnect with the Church community. I Thought The Sun Was God is a powerful story of faith's eventual triumph over deprivation, denial, and rejection. It relates the author's struggle with adversity and injustice, culminating with her eventual surrender to the true higher power. It is about the struggle versus adversity and injustice, but it is also about surrender to one true higher power and finding one's voice while listening for the small, still voice of God.