Shinto and Kokugaku Philosophy, Misc

For the ninth volume of Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy, titled bilingually in French and English Philosopher la traduction/Philosophizing translation, most of the contributors wrote their articles in foreign languages. By claiming that philosophy has a fundamental “translation-ness”, the editor believes that we can open Japanese philosophy to pluralistic orientations from the perspective of the thematic of “translation,” and in doing so probe into the essential problems of Japanese philosophy. The pieces collected here focus on questions of translation derived from observations (...) of East Asian history and culture where we can place Japanese philosophy. They provide diverse discourses on philosophical translation. (shrink)

This important volume introduces the reader to a variety of schools of thought. Ideal for classroom use, this is the ultimate resource for students and teachers of Japanese philosophy.

This article is a reply to Dominic McIver Lopes, 'Shikinen Sengu and the Ontology of Architecture in Japan,' published in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65 (2007). The reply explains how the standard ontology of architecture is able to accommodate Japanese shrines such as Ise Jingu.

This volume of Critical Readings provides an overview of recent scholarship about Japanese thought, as it took shape during the Edo Period. It contains articles about all participants in the intellectual debate: Buddhism, Confucianism, National Studies, and Dutch Learning.

In Search of the Way deals with intellectual and religious developments in early-modern Japan. It touches on the fate of Christianity but mainly covers Buddhism, Shinto, and Neo-Confucianism, particularly the latter. Of central concern is the constant debate over how society should be organized and how the individual can achieve self-fulfilment as just one element of a larger whole. It touches on such matters as ritual, pilgrimage, and religion in practice, but the emphasis is on ideological debate, disagreement, and consensus.

Three approaches to scholarship are “scholarship as a way,” which aims at perfection of character; “scholarship as a method,” which clearly limits objects and methods in order to achieve precise perception and new knowledge; and “scholarship as an expression,” which takes various approaches to questions and inquiry. The “humanities” participate deeply and broadly in all three of these approaches. In relation to this view of the humanities, Japanese Shinto is a field of study that yields rich results. As a religion (...) of awe, shrine groves, community, arts, and entertainment, it offers a research field that joins together the study of human beings, nature, society, and expression. Though we elucidate the characteristics of Shinto and its differences with Buddhism, we also draw attention to the seven dimensions of “place, way, beauty, festival, technique, poetry, and ecological wisdom,” and then finally take up “research on techniques of body and mind transformation” as a comprehensive and creative development in the “humanities.”. (shrink)

Religious Discourse in Modern Japan explores the transportation of the Western concept of “religion” in in the modern era; the emergence of discourse on Shinto, philosophy, and Buddhism; and the evolution of the academic discipline of religious studies in Japan.

In a wide range of contemporary debates on Japanese cultures of technological practice, brief reference is often made to distinct Shinto legacies, as forming an animist substratum of indigenous spiritual beliefs and cosmological imaginations. Japan has been described as a land of Shinto-infused ‘techno-animism’: exhibiting a ‘polymorphous perversity’ that resolutely ignores boundaries between human, animal, spiritual and mechanical beings. In this article, we deploy instances of Japanese techno-animism as sites of theoretical experimentation on what Bruno Latour calls a symmetrical anthropology (...) of nature-cultures. In staging a dialogue between actor-network theory and Japanese techno-animism, we show how Shinto cosmograms provide an enlivening and alternative diffraction device on several of the ontological motifs manifested in Latour’s work. In particular, by mobilizing the territory of a ‘new’ animism debate in anthropology – manifested in the work of Philippe Descola and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro – we attempt to infuse Latourian ‘multinaturalism’ with new, other-than-western analytical energy. Extending actor-network theory, we argue, Shinto cosmograms offer an interesting vantage point for interpreting the immanent, affective, enchanting and enabling powers of non-humans in contributing to collective life. By thus broadening the ‘cosmopolitical’ imagination beyond Latour’s own European-Catholic frame of reference, Shinto techno-animism offers up a wider reflection on contemporary entanglements of science, politics, ecology and cosmos. This reflection, we conclude, opens up a new intellectual territory, allowing us to trace techno-animist streams of thinking both ‘East’ and ‘West’, beyond the confines of the scientific naturalism indigenous to European thinking. (shrink)

In complete distinction to the world or universal religions like Christianity and Buddhism, Shinto is an ethnic religion that has grown out of the history and culture of the Japanese people. Shinto is a way of prayer and festivals that arose from a feeling of awe and reverence towards those entities the Japanese feared and respected as "KAMA (gods, divinities)", whereas Buddhism is a system of belief and practice leading to realization and the attainment of Buddhahood. We can highlight the (...) fundamental differences between Shinto and Buddhism by looking at the following three contrasting features. First, the KAMI simply are, but a Buddha is something that one has tobecome . In other words the KAMI represent the power of existence itself, whereas the Buddha was a human being who became a Buddha only after his enlightenment. Second, the KAMI come towards us but the Buddha goes away from us. Responding to human prayers and festivals, the KAMI make their appearance in that very place, whereas the Buddha departs from this secular world with its delusion and suffering, and makes for the other shore - the world of enlightenment. The third difference is that the KAMI stand whereas the Buddha sits. While the gods are thought to appear standing erect like columns, the Buddhas are envisaged in the meditation posture, doing Zazen to become enlightened. Despite the fact that the KAMA and the Buddhas, Shinto and Buddhism, have these fundamental differences, Shinto and Buddhism in Japan have had a complex relationship characterized by religious fusion. We have to conside how could this have been possible. (shrink)