Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Practical Pursuits
The idea that personal cultivation leads to social and material well-being became widespread in late Tokugawa Japan (1600–1868). Practical Pursuits explores theories of personal development that were diffused in the early nineteenth century by a network of religious groups in the Edo (Tokyo) area, and explains how, after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the leading members of these communities went on to create ideological coalitions inspired by the pursuit of a modern form of cultivation. Variously engaged in divination, Shinto purification rituals, and Zen practice, these individuals ultimately used informal political associations to promote the Confucian-style assumption that personal imp...
Faith in Mount Fuji
Even a fleeting glimpse of Mount Fuji’s snow-capped peak emerging from the clouds in the distance evokes the reverence it has commanded in Japan from ancient times. Long considered sacred, during the medieval era the mountain evolved from a venue for solitary ascetics into a well-regulated pilgrimage site. With the onset of the Tokugawa period, the nature of devotion to Mount Fuji underwent a dramatic change. Working people from nearby Edo (now Tokyo) began climbing the mountain in increasing numbers and worshipping its deity on their own terms, leading to a widespread network of devotional associations known as Fujikō. In Faith in Mount Fuji Janine Sawada asserts that the rise of the Fuj...
Confucian Values and Popular Zen
Although East Asian religion is commonly characterized as "syncretic," the historical interaction of Buddhist, Confucian, and other traditions is often neglected by scholars of mainstream religious thought. In this thought-provoking study, Janine Sawada moves beyond conventional approaches to the history of Japanese religion by analyzing the ways in which Neo-Confucianism and Zen formed a popular synthesis in early modern Japan. She shows how Shingaku, a teaching founded by merchant Ishida Baigan, blossomed after his death into a widespread religious movement that selectively combined ideas and practices from these traditions. Drawing on new research into original Shingaku sources, Sawada ch...
Religions of Japan in Practice
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," "Ritua...
Honorable Merchants
In light of East Asia's current economic success, it has become increasingly clear that Confucian social thought, long assumed in Western scholarship to be a major stumbling block to economic development, can, under the proper circumstances, have exactly the opposite effect. Lufrano's study is the most sustained and sophisticated of recent reevaluations of Confucianism's role in the rapid commercial development in the late Ming to mid-Qing period. It will be of great interest and value to scholars in the growing field of Chinese business history and should be welcomed by those interested in the Confucian roots of Pacific Rim business practice.
Crossing Boundaries in Tokugawa Society
Suzuki Bokushi (1770-1842) was an elite villager in Echigo, a snowy province of Japan. Crossing Boundaries in Tokugawa Society presents a vivid picture of the life and world of this rural commoner, focusing on his interaction with the changing social and cultural environment of the late Tokugawa period (1603-1868). Bokushi's life and texts challenge notions of the rigidity of social boundaries between the urban and the rural, between social statuses, and between cultural and intellectual communities. However, his activities were still restrained by the external environment because of geographical remoteness, infrastractural limitations, political restrictions, cultural norms and the complexities of human relationships. His life exemplifies both the potentiality and the restraint of his historical moment for a well-placed member of the rural elite.
Proliferating Talent
Detailed and diverse, Proliferating Talent challenges us to rethink a crucial period in Japanese history. The eight essays translated here broadly cover the eventful half century that witnessed the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate and the rise of the modern Japanese state to the position of an international power. Edited by J.S.A. Elisonas and Richard Rubinger, professors of East Asian languages and cultures at Indiana University, Proliferating Talent is full of nuances and carefully textured readings in which local developments are carefully balanced against major national events.
Rhetoric in Modern Japan
Rhetoric in Modern Japan is the first volume to discuss the role of Western rhetoric in the creation of a modern Japanese oral and narrative style. It considers the introduction of Western rhetoric, clarifying its interactions with the forces and synergies that shaped Japanese literature and culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on the Meiji and Taishō years (1868-1926), it challenges the prevailing view among contemporary scholars that rhetoric did not play a significant role in the literary developments of the period. Massimiliano Tomasi chronicles the blooming of scholarship in the field in the early 1870s, providing the first descriptive analysis and cog...
Let Us Work Together for Good: David S.C. Kim's Life of Service to God
This volume is the third in a series on the life of David S.C. Kim, early follower of Reverend Sun Myung Moon. It is a historical record of his activities in service to God.
Prophets of Peace
Wars in the Persian Gulf and Yugoslavia have given new impetus to the ongoing debate in Japan concerning its postwar constitution and related issues of national security and world order. Although often overlooked in this debate, Japanese religious groups--especially some of the New Religions--have promoted peace as a major theme of their doctrine and activities, often explicitly supporting a pacifist position. This study, undertaken in the wake of the Persian Gulf War, looks at a representative group of New Religions and explores their concepts and practices of peace. Many of the Japanese New Religions draw on a tradition that emphasizes individual moral cultivation and use of prewar terms t...
