Ritual Practice in Modern Japan : : Ordering Place, People, and Action / / Satsuki Kawano.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Asian Studies Backlist (2000-2014) eBook Package
• VerfasserIn: Kawano, Satsuki,
• Place / Publishing House: Honolulu : : University of Hawaii Press, , [2005]; ©2005
• Year of Publication: 2005
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (160 p.) :; illus.
• Other title: Frontmatter --; Contents --; Acknowledgments --; Introduction --; 1. Kami, Buddhas, and Ancestors --; 2. Embodying Moral Order --; 3. Emplacing Moral Order --; 4. Constructing Kamakura In Everyday Life and City Festivals --; 5. The Sakae Festival --; 6. Reconsidering Ritual --; Notes --; Bibliography --; Index
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9780824874513; 9783110649772; 9783110564143; 9783110663259
• DOI: 10.1515/9780824874513
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Satsuki Kawano.

National surveys indicate that most Japanese, while professing no religious commitment, frequently perform rituals: They regularly tend their family home altars, look after family graves, participate in neighborhood festivals, and visit Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Are these rituals mere formalities? Based on fourteen months of fieldwork in Kamakura city near Tokyo, Satsuki Kawano examines the power of ritual and its relevance for modern urbanites. She reveals the indebtedness of ritual to forms that create an elevated context and infuse the mundane with a sense of moral order. By employing acts and environments common to everyday life, Kawano argues, ritual evokes morally positive values such as purity, gratitude, respect, and indebtedness. Rather than objectify morality in a sacred text or religious doctrine, ritual embodies and emplaces a sense of what it means to be a good person and creates moments of personal significance and engagement. In Kamakura, belief is therefore a consequence and not a prerequisite of ritual engagement. Ritual Practice in Modern Japan effectively challenges the widespread assumption that ritual in non-Western societies has little moral significance and that, with modernization, "traditional" practices inevitably disappear. This is a book that will interest scholars and students of cultural anthropology, ritual studies, and Japanese studies.