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Books > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history
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The Invention of Religion in Japan (Hardcover, New)
Loot Price: R2,481
Discovery Miles 24 810
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The Invention of Religion in Japan (Hardcover, New)
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Through most of its long history, Japan had no concept of what we
call "religion." There was no corresponding Japanese word, nor
anything close to its meaning. But when American warships appeared
off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government
to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of
religion, the country has to contend with this Western idea. In
this book, Jason Ananda Josephson reveals how Japanese officials
invented religion in Japan and traces the sweeping intellectual,
legal, and cultural changes that followed. More than a tale of
oppression or hegemony, Josephson's account demonstrates that the
process of articulating religion offered the Japanese state a
valuable opportunity. In addition to carving out space for belief
in Christianity and certain forms of Buddhism, Japanese officials
excluded Shinto from the category. Instead, they enshrined it as a
national ideology while relegating the popular practices of
indigenous shamans and female mediums to the category of
"superstitions" - and thus beyond the sphere of tolerance.
Josephson argues that the invention of religion in Japan was a
politically charged, boundary-drawing exercise that not only
extensively reclassified the inherited materials of Buddhism,
Confucianism, and Shinto to lasting effect, but also reshaped, in
subtle but significant ways, our own formulation of the concept of
religion today. This ambitious and wide-ranging book contributes an
important perspective to broader debates on the nature of religion,
the secular, science, and superstition.
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