{"title":"Historical Counter-Narratives: Japanese Christians’ Advocacy for South Korean Atomic Bomb Victims","authors":"Ágota Duró","doi":"10.18874/jjrs.47.2.2020.279-303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.2.2020.279-303","url":null,"abstract":"This article delineates the process that Japanese adherents of Christianity, despite Japan being one of the least Christian nations in the world, were at the forefront of civil society movements in the early 1970s to advocate for the rights of atomic bomb survivors who returned to South Korea after 1945. Many Christians, when considering Japan’s accountability in World War II, were driven by contrition and a strong sense of righteousness, and they considered reconciliation with other Asian nations of the utmost importance. This article explores the support activities of three Christians who were prominent members of grassroots movements that emerged in the 1970s to assist Korean survivors in various parts of Japan. Despite belonging to diverse Protestant denominations, the advocates were motivated to act by similar Christian ethics: to stand up for the oppressed, consolidate peace, love their neighbors, and demand social justice. Their example illustrates the larger historical process of Christian reassessment of their prewar morals in a way that facilitated their emergence as the preeminent promoters of pacifism and antiwar activism in the postwar era.","PeriodicalId":44102,"journal":{"name":"JAPANESE JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46575538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of: James C. Dobbins, Behold the Buddha: Religious Meanings of Japanese Buddhist Icons","authors":"J. LeFebvre","doi":"10.18874/jjrs.47.2.2020.353-358","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.2.2020.353-358","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44102,"journal":{"name":"JAPANESE JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41758545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of: Takashi Miura, Agents of World Renewal: The Rise of Yonaoshi Gods in Japan","authors":"April D. Hughes","doi":"10.18874/jjrs.47.2.2020.363-366","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.2.2020.363-366","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44102,"journal":{"name":"JAPANESE JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45588435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nenbutsu Orthodoxies in Medieval Japan","authors":"Aaron P. Proffitt","doi":"10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.135-160","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.135-160","url":null,"abstract":"New approaches to Buddhist doctrine and practice flourished within and across diverse lineages and sub-lineages in early medieval Japan. The early-modern and modern sectarianization of Japanese Buddhism, however, has tended to obscure the complex ways that the very idea of orthodoxy functioned in this fluid medieval environment. In this article, I explore attempts to account for the diversity of views regarding] nenbutsu orthodoxy in trea- tises composed by scholars monks affiliated with Mt. Kōya and Mt. Hiei. In particular, this article contextualizes how these monks constructed the idea of an esoteric nenbutsu by drawing upon earlier taxonomies developed in the Tendai school as well as the East Asian esoteric Buddhist corpus. Ultimately, this study concludes that the esoteric nenbutsu was not the provenance of a particular school or sect, but rather served as a polemical construct designed to subsume the diversity of approaches to nenbutsu praxis as monks in diverse lineages competed with one another to define esoteric Buddhism in the early medieval context.","PeriodicalId":44102,"journal":{"name":"JAPANESE JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41752923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of: Anna Andreeva, Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan","authors":"Or Porath","doi":"10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.183-185","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.183-185","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44102,"journal":{"name":"JAPANESE JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45854228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Doctrinal Origins of Embryology in the Shingon School","authors":"T. Kameyama","doi":"10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.85-102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.85-102","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I discuss the significance of embryological knowledge, such as the red and white drops and the five developmental stages of the embryo, in medieval Shingon esoteric Buddhism. Specifically, I examine the writings of Kakuban, an eminent Shingon Buddhist monk in early medieval Japan, and point out that, according to Kakuban, embryological knowledge was connected with the six elements, which were fundamental to Shingon conceptions of ontology. In other words, by constructing embryological theories, medieval Shingon monks such as Kakuban attempted to make a correlation between abstract and distant cosmologies and the life and death realities of their daily lives.","PeriodicalId":44102,"journal":{"name":"JAPANESE JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46764985","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Buddhist Temple Networks in Medieval Japan: Daigoji, Mt. Kōya, and the Miwa Lineage","authors":"A. Andreeva","doi":"10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.11-41","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.11-41","url":null,"abstract":"The intellectual links between medieval esoteric temples and localized Shingon movements are still far from being well understood. Although a part of education at major monastic complexes such as Daigoji and Mt. Kōya, transmissions of esoteric theories were not uniform and varied depending on their recipients’ social status. A comparative reading of the Yugikyō transmissions imparted by the abbot Jikken of Kongōōin to his official disciple Dōhan and a lesser-known semi-itinerant priest, Rendōbō Hōkyō, from a local training hall at Mt. Miwa in Nara Prefecture shows that during the late twelfth to fourteenth centuries non-elite practitioners in medieval Japan, such as those associated with the local Miwa lineage, did not simply study the Yugikyō teachings but were actively involved in their dissemination. They used theories associated with this sutra as key parts of their own religious capital and transported them from large esoteric temples further afield to Japan’s countryside.","PeriodicalId":44102,"journal":{"name":"JAPANESE JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42028368","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Making of an Esoteric Deity: Sannō Discourse in the Keiran shūyōshū","authors":"Yeonjoo Park","doi":"10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.161-176","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.161-176","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores depictions of Sannō in the Keiran shūyōshū, a collection of orally transmitted teachings on Mt. Hiei compiled in the early fourteenth century. Originally a conglomeration of protective kami, Sannō rose in prominence to become the primary deity of the mountain and, by extension, the divine representation of the Tendai teachings. Based on the medieval hermeneutic of source-trace, Sannō was posited as the embodiment of Tendai esoteric doctrine. This article demonstrates that the Sannō deity of Mt. Hiei, as constructed in the Keiran, represents a concerted effort among Tendai scholastics in medieval Japan to specify an orthodox esoteric Buddhist tradition by associating the fundamental doctrines of their school and consolidating competing interpretations into the guise of a singular deity.","PeriodicalId":44102,"journal":{"name":"JAPANESE JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46280536","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editor's Introduction: Esoteric Traditions in Medieval Japan","authors":"M. Mcmullen","doi":"10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.1-10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.1.2020.1-10","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44102,"journal":{"name":"JAPANESE JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47757614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}