Women and Religion in Japan PDF Download

Author: Akiko Okuda
Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
ISBN: 9783447040143
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Author: Barbara Ambros
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479827622
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
A comprehensive history of women in Japanese religious traditions Scholars have widely acknowledged the persistent ambivalence with which the Japanese religious traditions treat women. Much existing scholarship depicts Japan’s religious traditions as mere means of oppression. But this view raises a question: How have ambivalent and even misogynistic religious discourses on gender still come to inspire devotion and emulation among women? In Women in Japanese Religions, Barbara R. Ambros examines the roles that women have played in the religions of Japan. An important corrective to more common male-centered narratives of Japanese religious history, this text presents a synthetic long view of Japanese religions from a distinct angle that has typically been discounted in standard survey accounts of Japanese religions. Drawing on a diverse collection of writings by and about women, Ambros argues that ambivalent religious discourses in Japan have not simply subordinated women but also given them religious resources to pursue their own interests and agendas. Comprising nine chapters organized chronologically, the book begins with the archeological evidence of fertility cults and the early shamanic ruler Himiko in prehistoric Japan and ends with an examination of the influence of feminism and demographic changes on religious practices during the “lost decades” of the post-1990 era. By viewing Japanese religious history through the eyes of women, Women in Japanese Religions presents a new narrative that offers strikingly different vistas of Japan’s pluralistic traditions than the received accounts that foreground male religious figures and male-dominated institutions.

Author: Barbara R Ambros
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479836516
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
A comprehensive history of women in Japanese religious traditions Scholars have widely acknowledged the persistent ambivalence with which the Japanese religious traditions treat women. Much existing scholarship depicts Japan’s religious traditions as mere means of oppression. But this view raises a question: How have ambivalent and even misogynistic religious discourses on gender still come to inspire devotion and emulation among women? In Women in Japanese Religions, Barbara R. Ambros examines the roles that women have played in the religions of Japan. An important corrective to more common male-centered narratives of Japanese religious history, this text presents a synthetic long view of Japanese religions from a distinct angle that has typically been discounted in standard survey accounts of Japanese religions. Drawing on a diverse collection of writings by and about women, Ambros argues that ambivalent religious discourses in Japan have not simply subordinated women but also given them religious resources to pursue their own interests and agendas. Comprising nine chapters organized chronologically, the book begins with the archeological evidence of fertility cults and the early shamanic ruler Himiko in prehistoric Japan and ends with an examination of the influence of feminism and demographic changes on religious practices during the “lost decades” of the post-1990 era. By viewing Japanese religious history through the eyes of women, Women in Japanese Religions presents a new narrative that offers strikingly different vistas of Japan’s pluralistic traditions than the received accounts that foreground male religious figures and male-dominated institutions.

Author: Haruko Nawata Ward
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351871811
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Meticulously researched and drawing on original source materials written in eight different languages, this study fills a lacuna in the historiography of Christianity in Japan, which up to now has paid little or no attention to the experience of women. Focusing on the century between the introduction of Christianity in Japan by Portuguese Jesuit missionaries in 1549 and the Japanese government's commitment to the eradication of Christianity in the mid-seventeenth century, this book outlines how women provided crucial leadership in the spread, nurture, and maintenance of the faith through various apostolic ministries. The author's research on the religious backgrounds of women from different schools of late medieval Japanese Shinto-Buddhism sheds light on individual women's choices to embrace or reject the Reformed Catholicism of the Jesuits, and explores the continuity and discontinuity of their religious expressions. The book is divided into four sections devoted to an in-depth study of different types of apostolates: nuns (women who took up monastic vocations), witches (the women leaders of the Shinto-Buddhist tradition who resisted Jesuit teachings), catechists (women who engaged in ministries of persuasion and conversion), and sisters (women devoted to missions of mercy). Analyzing primary sources including Jesuit histories, letters and reports, especially Luís Fróis' História de Japão, hagiography and family chronicles, each section provides a broad understanding of how these women, in the context of misogynistic society and theology, utilized resources from their traditional religions to new Christian adaptations and specific religio-social issues, creating unique hybrids of Catholicism and Buddhism. The inclusion of Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese texts, many available for the first time in English, and the dramatic conclusion that women were largely responsible for the trajectory of Christianity in early modern Japan, makes this book an essential reading for scholars of women's history, religious history, history of Christianity, and Asian history.

Author: 笠原一男
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 660

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Book Description
Seventeen distinguished experts on Japanese religion provide a fascinating overview of its history and development. Beginning with the origins of religion in primitive Japanese society, they chart the growth of each of Japan's major religious organizations and doctrinal systems. They follow Buddhism, Shintoism, Christianity, and popular religious belief through major periods of change to show how history and religion affected each-and discuss the interactions between the different religious traditions.

Author: Charlotte B. DeForest
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Christians
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Author: Margaret Ernestine Burton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Women
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Author: Samuel Lee
Publisher: Academy Press of Amsterdam
ISBN: 9789079516049
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
Japanese Women and Christianity describes the significant roles that women in Japan have played since the arrival of Christianity in the 16th century. Women in Japan have contributed to Christianity's growth in the nation for nearly five centuries, especially by promoting theological discussions and engaging in political, social, and cultural activism. They have contributed to charitable work, human rights, the fine arts, literature, and music. When Christianity was outlawed in Japan and Christians were persecuted (ca. 1565-1873), women even chose martyrdom and died for their faith in Jesus Christ. Each chapter first offers an overview of the historical, political, and social events that transpired during the era that it covers and explores the overall status of women in Japanese society and culture in the era that it addresses; it then gives a detailed description of the role of Christian women in Japan at the time. About the Author Samuel Lee is president of Foundation Academy of Amsterdam, an Academy for Liberal Arts and Humanities. Lee holds a Ph.D. in Theology from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where he currently leads the Center for Theology of Migration. His Ph.D. is about Christianity in Japan. Lee has a master's degree with a doctoral exam in Sociology of Non-Western Societies (with an emphasis on Japan) from Leiden University in the Netherlands. Samuel Lee is the author of The Japanese and Christianity: Why is Christianity Not Widely Believed in Japan? (2014).

Author: Paola Cavaliere
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004285156
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Promising Practices explores the ways women’s participation in contemporary Japanese religious civic organizations can work as a gateway toward participatory democracy and presents new perspectives on values and social interactions that embed democracy in the everyday women’s lives.

Author: Jennifer Coates
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351716786
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
This Companion is a comprehensive examination of the varied ways in which gender issues manifest throughout culture in Japan, using a range of international perspectives to examine private and public constructions of identity, as well as gender- and sexuality-inflected cultural production. The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture features both new work and updated accounts of classic scholarship, providing a go-to reference work for contemporary scholarship on gender in Japanese culture. The volume is interdisciplinary in scope, with chapters drawing from a range of perspectives, fields, and disciplines, including anthropology, art history, history, law, linguistics, literature, media and cultural studies, politics, and sociology. This reflects the fundamentally interdisciplinary nature of the dual focal points of this volume—gender and culture—and the ways in which these themes infuse a range of disciplines and subfields. In this volume, Jennifer Coates, Lucy Fraser, and Mark Pendleton have brought together an essential guide to experiences of gender in Japanese culture today—perfect for students, scholars, and anyone else interested in Japan, culture, gender studies, and beyond.