Shugendo: Essays on the Structure of Japanese Folk Religion (Volume 32) (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies) - Softcover

Miyake, Hitoshi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1929280386 ISBN 13: 9781929280384

Publisher: U of M Center For Japanese Studies, 2007

Synopsis

This volume of essays is the first comprehensive publication in English of the work of Miyake Hitoshi, a distinguished scholar of Shugendo (mountain asceticism) and one of the foremost researchers on Japanese folk religion. In Miyake's systematic methodological and theoretical approach, Shugendo is a classic example of Japanese folk religion, for it blends many traditions (shamanism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Shinto) into a distinctive Japanese religious worldview and is typical of Japanese religion generally.
 The first part of this book is devoted to Shugendo's history, organization, ritual, austerities, thought, and cosmology. Related subjects include exorcism and the exclusion of women. The second part of the book provides research and reflection on Japanese folk religion, including essays on the idea of nature, worldly benefits, new religions, death and rebirth, and the structure of folk religion. 

About this title

About the Author:

Miyake Hitoshi, formerly of Keio University, now teaches at Kokugakuin University. His most recent publication is Shugendo soshiki no kenkyu (A Study of the Organization of Shugendo, 1999). H. Byron Earhart has collaborated with Professor Miyake over the past three decades in the study of Shugendo, new religions, and folk religion, and has written extensively on Japanese religion. He teaches at Western Michigan University.

Review:

“A rich source for the study of folk religion in Japan, and Shugendo in particular . . . This collection is most welcome.”
—Paul L. Swanson, in Japanese Journal of Religious Studies
 

“This elite religion, and Miyake’s exposition of it, is rich and learned.”
—George J. Tanabe, Jr., in the Journal of Asian Studies
 

About this edition

• Publisher: U of M Center For Japanese Studies
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1929280386
• ISBN 13: 9781929280384
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 322
• Editor: Earhart H.