Sunny :)’s Reviews > Shinto: A Celebration of Life > Status Update

this is a manifesto.

why must you make so many sweeping claims and not cite anything to support them

even just the conversation that you said you had at the beginning PLEASE

not feeling great about this book using a French Orientalist's text from the 60s as its main reference, especially when i can think of multiple books that i've read by Japanese scholars studying Japanese religion in a way that links it to the culture and standards of Japanese society and how easily that would translate into a book like this

> be born in a western society
> be raised to value individualism
> k*ll self

i get that the point is "fellowship is better than competition" but these past few pages are just, PHEW

i thought this book was going to be an argument for incorporating Shinto philosophy into western (i think they just mean U.S.) culture and how to do so, because that's what the introduction sets it up to be

it is just an introduction to Shinto so far

i know too much i am not the target audience here but i will keep chugging along

i don't know what to make of this book yet- in its attempts to be respectful and positive it's veering a little too hard into romanticization. "the spiritually hungry soils of Europe" is a bit heavy-handed for me 😭

this book also isn't what i expected; i thought it was going to be more academic than it actually is, which isn't a huge deal since it's an interesting premise anyway