Exploring Shinto

by Pye

Shinto permeates the religious landscape of Japan and is a major key to the understanding of Japanese culture and society. But what is it? If ideological shortcuts are avoided there is no simple answer. Yet this book will guide students and general readers through many aspects of Shinto both today and in its history. It contains much information about sacred Shinto shrines and the divinities (the kami) which are the focus of devotion there. These numerous divinities have been viewed in different ways in the course of time, and contributions by specialists shed much light on the role played by Buddhism in this regard. Moreover, several fascinating religious movements or "sects" which share in the wider pattern of Shinto are also introduced and discussed. Oversimplified views may be challenged here, but the result is a volume in which "Shinto" is explored in a wide and illuminating perspective by an international team of scholars. It provides a refreshing and much-needed resource for all who are interested in the subject.

256 pages, Hardcover

Published July 1, 2020

Reviews

[Othy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael Pye, the editor of this volume, does a great job collecting the papers and setting up the importance of looking at Shinto as a pluralistic and varied religion that is tied, in some ways, to the Japanese people. The essays, however, are of varying quality. The book falls into the problem of many scholarly collections, namely that each essay discusses such a varied group of ideas and particularities that all semblance of an argument is lost. In the end, we have the very important thesis that Shinto is an ethic system of varied, non-orthodox nature, but I feel that I learned very little else except a few tidbits on disparate, individual issues across all of Japanese religious history.

[Mills College Library]

299.561 E9674 2020