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Summary:

"Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of what we call 'religion'. There was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning. But when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country had to contend with this Western idea. In this book, Jason Ananda Josephson reveals how Japanese officials invented religion in Japan and traces the sweeping intellectual, legal, and cultural changes that followed"--Publisher.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• The advent of religion in Japan
• Obscure obstacles
• Unlearning Shūkyō
• Unlearning "religion"
• Overview of the work
• 1. The marks of heresy : organizing difference in premodern Japan
• Difference denied: hierarchical inclusion
• Strange aberrations: exclusive similarity
• Hunting heretics
• 2. Heretical anthropology
• Contested silences: two versions of the acts of the saints
• Demonic dharma
• Japanese heretics and pagans
• 3. The arrival of religion
• Negotiating "religion"
• Taxonomy and translation: category in the webs of meaning
• Unreasonable demands
• 4. The science of the gods
• Shinto as a "nonreligion"

• The way of the gods
• Celestial archeology: the advent of European science in Japan
• The science of the gods: philology and cosmology
• Ritual therapeutics for the body of the nation
• The gods of science
• From miraculous revolution to mechanistic cosmos
• 5. Formations of the Shinto secular
• Secularism revisited
• Hygienic modernity and the world of reality
• Secular apotheosis
• 6. Taming demons
• The demons of modernity
• Restraining the wild
• Monstrous gods
• Evil cults
• Disciplining Buddhism, expelling Christianity
• 7. Inventing Japanese religion
• Religion in Japanese international missions
• Controlling the heart: debating the role of religion in the modern state
• Inventing "Japanese religions"
• 8. Religion within the limits
• Internal convictions
• External controls
• The birth of religious studies in Japan
• ConclusIon
• The invention of superstition
• The invention of the secular
• The invention of religion
• The third term
• Postscript
• Appendix: Religion explained
• Notes
• Character glossary
• References
• Index.

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Author/Creator:

Josephson-Storm, Jason Ānanda

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

English.

Main Work:

The invention of religion in Japan [by Josephson-Storm, J.Ā.]

Other Related Resources:

Print version: Invention of religion in Japan [by Josephson, J.Ā.] (Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2012, ©2012 — ISBN 9780226412337; LCCN 2012003656; OCLC Number 774867768)

Subjects:

Religion and state — Japan — History — 19th century

Japan — Religion — History — 19th century

Japan — History — Meiji period, 1868-1912

1800-1912

Religion

Religion and state

Japan

Genres:

History

General Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 345-379) and index.
Description based on: Print version record.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 387 pages)

Digital Characteristics:

text file

Call Numbers:

BL2207.3 .J67 2012eb

ISBNs:

9780226412351 (electronic bk.)
0226412350 (electronic bk.)
1283622742
9781283622745
9786613935199
6613935190
9780226412337 [Invalid]
0226412334 [Invalid]
9780226412344 [Invalid]
0226412342 [Invalid]

OCLC Numbers:

812924947