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Among the most exciting developments in the study of Japanese religion over the past two decades has been the discovery of tens of thousands of ritual vessels, implements, and scapegoat dolls (hitogata) from the Nara (710–784) and early Heian (794–1185) periods. Because inscriptions on many of the items are clearly derived from Chinese rites of spirit pacification, it is now evident that previous scholarship has mischaracterized the role of Buddhism in early Japanese religion. This book argues that both the Japanese royal system and the Japanese Buddhist tradition owe much to continental rituals centered on the manipulation of yin and yang, animal sacrifice, and spirit quelling. The book charts a transformation in the religious culture of the Japanese islands, tracing the transmission and development of fundamental paradigms of religious practice to immigrant lineages and deities from the Korean peninsula. It shows how the ability of immigrant lineages to propitiate hostile deities led to the creation of elaborate networks of temple–shrine complexes that shaped later sectarian Shinto as well as popular understandings of the relationship between the buddhas and the gods of Japan. The examination of a series of ancient Japanese legends of female immortals, weaving maidens, and shamanesses reveals that female deities played a key role in the moving of technologies and ritual practices from peripheral regions in Kyushu and elsewhere into central Japan and the heart of the imperial cult. As a result, some of the most important building blocks of the purportedly native Shinto tradition were shaped by the ancestral cults of immigrant lineages and popular Korean and Chinese religious practices.

Religion is at the heart of ongoing political debates in Japan such as the constitutionality of official government visits to Yasukuni Shrine, yet the categories that frame these debates, religion and the secular, entered the Japanese language less than 150 years ago. This book shows that religion and the secular were critically reconceived in Japan by Japanese who had their own interests and traditions as well as those received in their encounters with the West. It argues that by the mid-nineteenth century developments outside of Europe and North America were already part of a global process of rethinking religion. The Buddhist priest Shimaji Mokurai (1838–1911) was the first Japanese to discuss the modern concept of religion in some depth in the early 1870s. Indigenous tradition, politics, and Western influence came together to set the course the reconception of religion would take in Japan. The book traces the history of the modern Japanese term for religion, shūkyō, and its components and explores the significance of Shimaji's sectarian background as a True Pure Land Buddhist. Shimaji went on to shape the early Meiji government's religious policy and was essential in redefining the locus of Buddhism in modernity and indirectly that of Shinto. The book offers an account of Shimaji's intellectual dealings with the West as well as clarifies the ramifications of these encounters for Shimaji's own thinking. It historicizes Japanese appropriations of secularization from medieval times to the twentieth century and discusses the meaning of the reconception of religion in modern Japan.

Since the 1990s the Japanese pet industry has grown to a trillion-yen business and estimates place the number of pets above the number of children under the age of fifteen. There are between 6,000 to 8,000 businesses in the Japanese pet funeral industry, including more than 900 pet cemeteries. Of these about 120 are operated by Buddhist temples, and Buddhist mortuary rites for pets have become an institutionalized practice. This book investigates what religious and intellectual traditions constructed animals as subjects of religious rituals and how pets have been included or excluded in the necral landscapes of contemporary Japan. Pet mortuary rites are emblems of the ongoing changes in contemporary Japanese religions. The book sheds light on important questions such as: Who (or what) counts as a family member? What kinds of practices should the state recognize as religious and thus protect financially and legally? Is it frivolous or selfish to keep, pamper, or love an animal? Should humans and pets be buried together? How do people reconcile the deeply personal grief that follows the loss of a pet and how do they imagine the afterlife of pets? And ultimately, what is the status of animals in Japan?

The book constitutes an attempt to rethink medieval Japanese religion in light of the recently discovered documents and of the innovative contributions by Japanese scholars. Drawing on the theoretical insights of structuralism, post-structuralism, and Actor-Network Theory, it retrieves what could be called the “implicit pantheon” (by opposition to the “explicit,” orthodox pantheon) of medieval esoteric Buddhism (mikkyō). Through a number of case studies, the book introduces readers to the labyrinthine world of medieval Japanese religiosity, and shows the centrality of the gods in religious discourse and practice. It describes and analyzes the impressive mythological and ritual efflorescence that marked the medieval period, not only in the religious domain, but also in the political, artistic, and literary spheres. While the individual chapters of the book give seem to follow the general taxonomic structure of the esoteric Buddhist pantheon, the proliferation of oblique relationships within and between chapters undermines that hierarchical structure and reveals the existence of a complex network, linking, not only deities, but also rituals, symbols, people, institutions, sacred objects and places.

Manga and anime (illustrated serial novels and animated films) are highly influential Japanese entertainment media that boast tremendous domestic consumption as well as worldwide distribution and an international audience. This book examines religious aspects of the culture of manga and anime production and consumption. Rather than merely describing the incidence of religions such as Buddhism or Shinto in these media, this book shows that authors and audiences create and re-create “religious frames of mind” through their imaginative and ritualized interactions with illustrated worlds. Manga and anime therefore not only contribute to familiarity with traditional religious doctrines and imagery, but also allow authors, directors, and audiences to modify and elaborate upon such traditional tropes, sometimes creating hitherto unforeseen religious ideas and practices. The book takes play seriously by highlighting these recursive relationships between recreation and religion, emphasizing throughout the double sense of play as entertainment and play as adulteration. The book demonstrates that the specific aesthetic qualities and industrial dispositions of manga and anime invite practices of rendition and reception that can and do influence the ways that religious institutions and lay authors have attempted to captivate new audiences.

Buddhists across Asia have often sought to die, as the Buddha himself is said to have done, with a clear and focused mind. This study explores the reception and development in early medieval Japan (roughly, tenth through fourteenth centuries) of the ideal of “dying with right mindfulness” (rinjū shōnen) and the discourses and practices in which it was embedded. By concentrating one’s thoughts on the Buddha at the moment of death, it was said, even the most evil person could escape the round of deluded rebirth and achieve birth in the Pure Land; conversely, even the slightest mental distraction at that juncture could send the most devout practitioner tumbling down into the evil realms. The ideal of mindful death thus generated both hope and anxiety and created a demand for ritual specialists who could help the dying to negotiate this crucial juncture. Examination of hagiographies, ritual manuals, doctrinal writings, didactic tales, diaries, and historical records uncovers the multiple, sometimes contradictory logics by which medieval Japanese approached death. Deathbed practices also illuminate broader issues in medieval Japanese religion that crossed social levels and sectarian lines, including intellectual developments, devotional practices, pollution concerns, ritual performance, and divisions of labor among religious professionals.