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This ambitious work offers a transnational account of the deity
Shinra Myojin, the "god of Silla" worshipped in medieval Japanese
Buddhism from the eleventh to sixteenth centuries. Sujung Kim
challenges the long-held understanding of Shinra Myojin as a
protective deity of the Tendai Jimon school, showing how its
worship emerged and developed in the complex networks of the East
Asian "Mediterranean"-a "quality" rather than a physical space
defined by Kim as the primary conduit for cross-cultural influence
in a region that includes the Yellow Sea, the Sea of Japan (East
Sea), the East China Sea, and neighboring coastal areas. While
focusing on the transcultural worship of the deity, Kim engages the
different maritime arrangements in which Shinra Myojin circulated:
first, the network of Korean immigrants, Chinese merchants, and
Japanese Buddhist monks in China's Shandong peninsula and Japan's O
mi Province; and second, that of gods found in the East Asian
Mediterranean. Both of these networks became nodal points of
exchange of both goods and gods. Kim's examination of temple
chronicles, literary writings, and iconography reveals Shinra
Myojin's evolution from a seafaring god to a multifaceted one whose
roles included the god of pestilence and of poetry, the insurer of
painless childbirth, and the protector of performing arts. Shinra
Myojin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian Mediterranean is not
only the first monograph in any language on the Tendai Jimon school
in Japanese Buddhism, but also the first book-length study in
English to examine Korean connections in medieval Japanese
religion. Unlike other recent studies on individual Buddhist
deities, it foregrounds the need to approach them within a broader
East Asian context. By shifting the paradigm from a land-centered
vision to a sea-centered one, the work underlines the importance of
a transcultural and interdisciplinary approach to the study of
Buddhist deities.
This ambitious work offers a transnational account of the deity
Shinra Myojin, the "god of Silla" worshipped in medieval Japanese
Buddhism from the eleventh to sixteenth centuries. Sujung Kim
challenges the long-held understanding of Shinra Myojin as a
protective deity of the Tendai Jimon school, showing how its
worship emerged and developed in the complex networks of the East
Asian "Mediterranean" - a "quality" rather than a physical space
defined by Kim as the primary conduit for cross-cultural influence
in a region that includes the Yellow Sea, the Sea of Japan (East
Sea), the East China Sea, and neighbouring coastal areas. While
focusing on the transcultural worship of the deity, Kim engages the
different maritime arrangements in which Shinra Myojin circulated:
first, the network of Korean immigrants, Chinese merchants, and
Japanese Buddhist monks in China's Shandong peninsula and Japan's O
mi Province; and second, that of gods found in the East Asian
Mediterranean. Both of these networks became nodal points of
exchange of both goods and gods. Kim's examination of temple
chronicles, literary writings, and iconography reveals Shinra
Myojin's evolution from a seafaring god to a multifaceted one whose
roles included the god of pestilence and of poetry, the insurer of
painless childbirth, and the protector of performing arts. Shinra
Myojin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian "Mediterranean" is
not only the first monograph in any language on the Tendai Jimon
school in Japanese Buddhism, but also the first book-length study
in English to examine Korean connections in medieval Japanese
religion. Unlike other recent studies on individual Buddhist
deities, it foregrounds the need to approach them within a broader
East Asian context. By shifting the paradigm from a land-centered
vision to a sea-centered one, the work underlines the importance of
a transcultural and interdisciplinary approach to the study of
Buddhist deities.
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