The Sea and the Sacred in Japan is the first book to focus on the role of the sea in Japanese religions. While many leading Shinto deities tend to be understood today as unrelated to the sea, and mountains are considered the privileged sites of sacredness, this book provides new ways to understand Japanese religious culture and history. Scholars from North America, Japan and Europe explore the sea and the sacred in relation to history, culture, politics, geography, worldviews and cosmology, space and borders, and ritual practices and doctrines. Examples include Japanese indigenous conceptualizations of the sea from the Middle Ages to the 20th century; ancient sea myths and rituals; sea deities and sea cults; the role of the sea in Buddhist cosmology; and the international dimension of Japanese Buddhism and its maritime imaginary.

When Hagurosan is told to take an offering to the shrine, he reluctantly begins his trek up the mountain. But when he gets hungry and eats the cake meant for the spirits, things take a turn that no one could have expected. Now Hagurosan must face the consequences of his actions.

Defining Shugendo brings together leading international experts on Japanese mountain asceticism to discuss what has been an essential component of Japanese religions for more than a thousand years. Contributors explore how mountains have been abodes of deities, a resting place for the dead, sources of natural bounty and calamities, places of religious activities, and a vast repository of symbols. The book shows that many peoples have chosen them as sites for ascetic practices, claiming the potential to attain supernatural powers there. This book discusses the history of scholarship on Shugendo, the development process of mountain worship, and the religious and philosophical features of devotion at specific sacred mountains. Moreover, it reveals the rich material and visual culture associated with Shugendo, from statues and steles, to talismans and written oaths.

Now available in ePub format. The award-winning Rough Guide to Japan makes the ideal travel companion to one of the world's most unique and dynamic countries. In full color throughout, this opinionated guide is packed with essential information on the latest and best places to sleep, eat, party and shop and includes pointers on etiquette and other cultural niceties. Maps of all the main tourist destinations and easy-to-read color transportation maps of the Tokyo and Osaka train and subway systems help you navigate the major cities. From neon-soaked Tokyo to temple-studded Kyoto and snow-topped Mount Fuji, all of the major travel hotspots are covered in full, and The Rough Guide to Japan also points the way to off-the-beaten-track gems: Soak in a live-volcano hot spring on Kyushu island, go diving in tropical Okinawa, or wind your way through mountain traverses in the Japan Alps. You'll also find a richer understanding of the country through chapters on Japan's history, religions, arts, movies, music, and pressing environmental issues. Make the most of your time with The Rough Guide to Japan.

Ascetic practices are a common feature of religion in Japan, practiced by different religious traditions. This book looks at these ascetic practices in an inter-sectarian and inter-doctrinal fashion, in order to highlight the underlying themes common to all forms of asceticism. It does so by employing a multidisciplinary methodology, which integrates participant fieldwork – the author himself engaged extensively in ascetic practices – with a hermeneutical interpretation of the body as the primary locus of transmission of the ascetic ‘embodied tradition’. By unlocking this ‘bodily data’, the book unveils the human body as the main tool and text of ascetic practice. This book includes discussion of the many extraordinary rituals practiced by Japanese ascetics.

Transforming the Void: Embryological Discourse and Reproductive Imagery in East Asian Religions provides new insight into how the body’s generative processes are harnessed as powerful metaphors for spiritual attainment in the religious traditions of China and Japan.