Nanzan Library of Asian Religion & Culture: Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions

Paul L. Swanson & Clark Chilson, eds.

Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions

Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005, xii+466 pages. $35 cloth

Updates

The Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions has been prepared as an aid for students and scholars engaged in research on Japanese religions. It is the first resource guide to encompass the entire field of Japanese religions and provide tools for navigating it.
In the nearly forty years that have elapsed since the appearance of Joseph Kitagawa's Religion in Japanese History (1966), there has been a large amount of new scholarship on the role of religion in Japanese history. What general summaries there are of Japanese Buddhism and Shinto have tended to rely on scholarship from the 1960s and 1970s. In the intervening years, the field has seen considerable development and given rise to a host of new questions, leaving a great deal of earlier work outdated and out of focus. The Nanzan Guide offers the latest scholarship on a wide range of issues.
It is neither simply a comprehensive introduction to Japanese religions nor a mere collection of research sources. It aims rather to combine (1) a broad outline of Japanese religious traditions, (2) a closer look at scholarly views on a number of subfields, time periods, and selected themes, and (3) practical techniques for accessing and evaluating relevant data. As such, the book should prove useful as a supplement to texts introducing undergraduates to Japanese religions and as a reference for graduate students undertaking specific research projects. For scholars specializing in one or another aspect of Japanese religions, the book offers a generous inventory of the current state of the field by representative authors. Finally, historians and social scientists whose work brings them into contact with Japanese religions will find that the clear design, incisive overviews, selective bibliographies, and detailed index make this volume an invaluable reference work.

"There is nothing like the Nanzan Guide for combining state-of-the-field theoretical and critical discussions on the major aspects of Japanese religions with concrete guidance on the available resources.… This volume represents a new genre of academic publication: a research manual for newer students and experienced scholars alike. Packed with important materials on major topics and delivered in clear and authoritative language by experts in the field "

— Paula Arai
Carleton College

Paul L. SWANSON is Director of the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, where he has been a permanent research fellow since 1990. In addition to editing the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, he has published widely in the field of Buddhist studies, including Foundations of T'ien-t'ai Philosophy (1989), Religion and Society in Modern Japan (1993), and Pruning the Bodhi Tree (1997). His annotated translation of the Chinese Buddhist classic Mo-ho-chih-kuan has been released in provisional digital form on CD_ROM as The Great Cessation-and-Contemplation (2004).

Clark CHILSON is assistant professor of religion at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. From 1998 to 2003 he served as associate editor at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture and the Nanzan Anthropological Institute, where he co-edited Shamans in Asia (2003), and published research on the Buddhist holy man Kūya and secretive Pure Land Buddhist groups. He completed his doctoral dissertation for Lancaster University in 2004.

VOL.8

NANZAN LIBRARY
OF ASIAN RELIGION
AND CULTURE

The Table of Contents and Editros' Introduction to this book may be downloaded and read with Adobe Acrobat.
© Nanzan Institute for Re;igion and Culture. For personal use only. This material may not be distributed
without written permission of the copyright holder and the University of Hawai'i Press.