This anthology reflects a range of Japanese religions in their complex, sometimes conflicting, diversity. In the tradition of the Princeton Readings in Religions series, the collection presents documents (legends and miracle tales, hagiographies, ritual prayers and ceremonies, sermons, reform treatises, doctrinal tracts, historical and ethnographic writings), most of which have been translated for the first time here, that serve to illuminate the mosaic of Japanese religions in practice. George Tanabe provides a lucid introduction to the "patterned confusion" of Japan's religious practices. He has ordered the anthology's forty-five readings under the categories of "Ethical Practices," "Ritual Practices," and "Institutional Practices," moving beyond the traditional classifications of chronology, religious traditions (Shinto, Confucianism, Buddhism, etc.), and sects, and illuminating the actual orientation of people who engage in religious practices.
Within the anthology's three broad categories, subdivisions address the topics of social values, clerical and lay precepts, gods, spirits, rituals of realization, faith, court and emperor, sectarian founders, wizards, and heroes, orthopraxis and orthodoxy, and special places. Dating from the eighth through the twentieth centuries, the documents are revealed to be open to various and evolving interpretations, their meanings dependent not only on how they are placed in context but also on how individual researchers read them. Each text is preceded by an introductory explanation of the text's essence, written by its translator. Instructors and students will find these explications useful starting points for their encounters with the varied worlds of practice within which the texts interact with readers and changing contexts. Religions of Japan in Practice is a compendium of relationships between great minds and ordinary people, abstruse theories and mundane acts, natural and supernatural powers, altruism and self-interest, disappointment and hope, quiescence and war.
It is an indispensable sourcebook for scholars, students, and general readers seeking engagement with the fertile "ordered disorder" of religious practice in Japan.
Princeton Readings in ReligionsNote on Transliteration, Names, and AbbreviationsContents by ChronologyContents by TraditionContributorsIntroduction3Ethical PracticesSocial Values1Selected Anecdotes to Illustrate Ten Maxims252Kaibara Ekken's Precepts on the Family383The Shingaku of Nakazawa Doni53Clerical Precepts4Eisai's Promotion of Zen for the Protection of the Country635Shingon's Jiun Sonja and His "Vinaya of the True Dharma" Movement716A Refutation of Clerical Marriage78Lay Precepts7Eison and the Shingon Vinaya Sect898Kokan Shiren's Zen Precept Procedures98Ritual PracticesGods9Records of the Customs and Land of Izumo11310Miraculous Tales of the Hasedera Kannon11711Japanese Puppetry: From Ritual Performance to Stage Entertainment12412The Shinto Wedding Ceremony: A Modern Norito135Spirits13Tama Belief and Practice in Ancient Japan14114Japan's First Shingon Ceremony15315Shingon Services for the Dead15916Genshin's Deathbed Nembutsu Ritual in Pure Land Buddhism16617Women and Japanese Buddhism: Tales of Birth in the Pure Land17618Epic and Religious Propaganda from the Ippen School of Pure Land Buddhism18519Buddhism and Abortion: "The Way to Memorialize One's Mizuko"193Rituals of Realization20The Contemplation of Suchness19921The Purification Formula of the Nakatomi21022Dogen's Lancet of Seated Meditation22023Chido's Dreams of Buddhism23524A Japanese Shugendo Apocryphal Text246Faith25On Attaining the Settled Mind: The Condition of the Nembutsu Practitioner25726Plain Words on the Pure Land Way26827Shinran's Faith as Immediate Fulfillment in Pure Land Buddhism280Institutional PracticesCourt and Emperor28The Confucian Monarchy of Nara Japan29329The Founding of the Monastery Gangoji and a List of Its Treasures29930Hagiography and History: The Image of Prince Shotoku31631Nationalistic Shinto: A Child's Guide to Yasukuni Shrine334Sectarian Founders, Wizards, and Heroes32En the Ascetic34333The Founding of Mount Koya and Kukai's Eternal Meditation35434Legends, Miracles, and Faith in Kobo Daishi and the Shikoku Pilgrimage36035A Personal Account of the Life of the Venerable Genku37036Priest Nisshin's Ordeals38437Makuya: Prayer, Receiving the Holy Spirit, and Bible Study398Orthopraxis and Orthodoxy38Muju Ichien's Shinto-Buddhist Syncretism41539Contested Orthodoxies in Five Mountains Zen Buddhism42340Motoori Norinaga on the Two Shrines at Ise43541Shinto in the History of Japanese Religion: An Essay by Kuroda Toshio45142Sasaki Shoten: Toward a Postmodern Shinshu Theology46843Contemporary Zen Buddhist Tracts for the Laity: Grassroots Buddhism in Japan487Special Places44Keizan's Dream History50145Tokeiji: Kamakura's "Divorce Temple" in Edo Popular Verse523AppChinese Romanization Conversion Tables551Index559
