This volume presents the only English translation of the prayers
of Japan's indigenous religious tradition, Shinto. These prayers,
norito, are works of religious literature that are basic to our
understanding of Japanese religious history. Locating Donald
Philippi as one of a small number of scholars who have developed a
perceptive approach to the problem of "hermeneutical distance" in
dealing with ancient or foreign texts, Joseph M. Kitagawa recalls
Mircea Eliade's observation that "most of the time our] encounters
and comparisons with non-Western cultures have not made all the
strangeness' of these cultures evident. . . . We may say that the
Western world has not yet, or not generally, met with authentic
representatives of the real' non-Western traditions." Composed in
the stately ritual language of the ancient Japanese and presented
as a "performing text," these prayers are, Kitagawa tells us, "one
of the authentic foreign representatives in Eliade's sense." In the
preface Kitagawa elucidates their significance, discusses
Philippi's methods of encountering the "strangeness" of Japan, and
comments astutely on aspects of the encounter of East and West.
General
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