Immortal Wishes - Labor and Transcendence on a Japanese Sacred Mountain

"Ellen Schattschneider has given us an account of Japanese religious experience that is at once powerfully evocative and analytically sophisticated. "Immortal Wishes" is a remarkable book that should prove invaluable not only for students of Japan but also for anyone wanting to understand the transformative power of religious experience."--Bradd Shore, Emory University

List of contents

Acknowledgments ix

Note on Conventions xiii

Introduction: Labor and Transcendence 1

1. Predicaments of History: Ritual Life on a Japanese Periphery 19

2. Between Worlds: Akakura's Architecture of Potential Transformation 46

3. Labor and Rebirth: Cosmological Kinship in the Annual Ritual Cycle 86

4. Miniature Mountains: Offerings and Exchange 121

5. My Mother's Garden: Ascetic Discipline on the Mountain 145

6. I am the Mirror: The Political Dimensions of Representational Action 173

Conclusion 210

Appendix: Guide to Persons Mentioned in the Text 231

Notes 233

Bibliography 251

Index 263

Summary

An ethnographic rendering of religious rituals and ascetic practices at the Akakura Mountain Shrine in northern Japan. This book relates the histories of the practice and individual practitioners, annual rituals, steps and elements involved in shugyo, legendary dreams, and the conflicted issues of succession raised by the founder's death.

Product details

• Authors: Ellen Schattschneider, Schattschneider, Ellen Schattschneider
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 16.04.2003
• EAN: 9780822330752
• ISBN: 978-0-8223-3075-2
• No. of pages: 288
• Dimensions: 153 mm x 247 mm x 27 mm
• Weight: 531 g
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology > Other religions; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Miscellaneous; RELIGION / Shintoism, Religion - World Religions