On Understanding Japanese Religion

by Joseph Mitsuo Kitagawa

Joseph Kitagawa, one of the founders of the field of history of religions and an eminent scholar of the religions of Japan, published his classic book Religion in Japanese History in 1966. Since then, he has written a number of extremely influential essays that illustrate approaches to the study of Japanese religious phenomena. To date, these essays have remained scattered in various scholarly journals. This book makes available nineteen of these articles, important contributions to our understanding of Japan’s intricate combination of indigenous Shinto, Confucianism, Taoism, the Yin-Yang School, Buddhism, and folk religion. In sections on prehistory, the historic development of Japanese religion, the Shinto tradition, the Buddhist tradition, and the modem phase of the Japanese religious tradition, the author develops a number of valuable methodological approaches. The volume also includes an appendix on Buddhism in America.

Asserting that the study of Japanese religion is more than an umbrella term covering investigations of separate traditions, Professor Kitagawa approaches the subject from an interdisciplinary standpoint. Skillfully combining political, cultural, and social history, he depicts a Japan that seems a microcosm of the religious experience of humankind.

Genres: Religion, Japan, History, Nonfiction

367 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Joseph Mitsuo Kitagawa was an eminent Japanese American scholar in religious studies. He was Professor Emeritus and Dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is considered as one of the founders of the field of the history of religions.

Reviews

[Drew Tschirki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book for anyone interested in Japanese religion. The book is comprised of essays. For that reason much of the same information / breakdown of pre-Buddhist Japan gets covered in almost every chapter (Jomon > Yayoi > Himiko > Uji / proto-Shinto > Soga clan > Shotoku Taishi > Buddhism) but once you’re through the introductory paragraphs of the chapters, they all have their own distinct flavor.

[Nikko]

A little dated in a few places, a little dry in others, but overall an absolutely fascinating read that anyone interested in Japan or Japanese Buddhism will treasure.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Joseph Kitagawa was a pioneer in the study of Japanese religion in American academia. This book is a collection of essays published in different places for somewhat different purposes, and, as such, it sometimes repeats itself more than a full-length approach would. But Kitagawa is more than thorough, from the early and mutual influences between Korea and Japan, including the mysterious Ainu minority, through the adoption of Japanese religion by many in this country. The overall picture that emerges is of a country manipulated by its elite, first the clan rising above its peers and developing a monarchy, insistent on its identification with the Sun Goddess. Later Emperors and the successive families that controlled them developed a full version of the native worship of local spirits into Shinto, alternating it with a Buddhism that owed little to Asoka, the great Indian pacifist king, and even less to Gautama himself. The Korean influence introduced Japan to a Buddhist tradition translated from Korean texts, themselves translated from the Chinese, and even the latter translated, after arduous journeys to India, from the originals. It is little wonder that something was lost along the way. The Chinese influence also brought with it Confucianism, which with Shinto and Buddhism made an awkward triangle during much of Japanese history, as one allied with the other against the third, only for the next powerful clan to reconfigure them all into a new pattern. The Tokugawas made every family register as Buddhist, prohibited Christianity and closed the country to Westerners. The Meiji restoration of imperial power that succeeded them opened the country to the West, tolerated Christianity, but sought to validate itself by embracing the native Shintoism and making it an arm of the state. Buddhism showed the most fecundity, ranging from the popular Pure Land sects, which posit an afterlife much like Christianity's, through the esoteric sects focused on the disciplined search for knowledge and faith, to Zen, with its emphasis on meditation and ritual. If Kitagawa avoids a few controversial issues, like the involvement of Zen with the militarism of World War II, the breadth of the panorama is spectacular. At the end, it looks like, as in few countries or religions, the imperial institutions and the clan-based bureaucracies that often controlled them made deliberate use of whichever religions seemed the most propitious at the time. It is almost as though Japan was ruled by a series of Constantines who, whatever their beliefs, used religions as tools to forge and unify the Empire.