Introducing Japanese Religion

Robert Ellwood is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Religion at the University of Southern California. He is the author of over twenty-five books, including Many Peoples, Many Faiths, The Fifties Spiritual Marketplace, The Sixties Spiritual Awakening, and Islands of the Dawn.

1. Encountering the Japanese religious world 2. The past in the present: vignettes of Japanese spiritual life 3. The way of the kami: Shinto then and now. Interlude: introduction to Buddhism 5. Magic mountains and the old court: Heian Buddhism and its culture 6. Warrior culture, simple faith: the Kamakura Buddhist reformation 7. Swords and satori: Zen and its culture 8. Christ and Confucius: the West arrives, and then Japan turns inward 9. The rising sun and the dark valley: from the Meiji Restoration until 1945 10. Chanting and dancing: Shugendo and the "new religions" of Japan 11. Pilgrimages: religion in Japan 1945 to the present