Event

In an historical moment characterized by attempts to “green” Shintō by linking it to environmentalism or to mobilize Shintō concepts in the service of rightwing Japanese nationalist agendas, the exigency of clarifying the precise nature of this Japanese religion is clear. While recent scholarship has elucidated the origins of kami worship and the historical emergence of “Shintō” as a discrete religion separate from Buddhism, the relationship between Shintō and other spheres of social life in modern and contemporary Japan remains insufficiently understood. Depending on who one asks, Shintō is either the indigenous religion of the Japanese archipelago, the irreducible core of Japanese culture, a tiny subset of Japanese Buddhism, an oppressive political ideology linked to the emperor system, an environmentalist ethic, or some combination of these. Our project brings together historians, anthropologists, and scholars of religion from around the globe to collaborate with students and faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and other schools in the Philadelphia area in addressing a simple question with a complicated answer: “What isn’t Shintō”? 

Speakers:

John Grisafi, Shintō in Colonial Korea

Takashi Miura, Shintō Is the Indigenous Religion of the World: Deguchi Onisaburō and His Vision of Shinto Universalism

Tianran Hang, Interchangeable Divinities

Aike P. Rots, Primordial Practices? ‘Nature Worship’, ‘Animism’, and the Depoliticisation of Shintō

Shiyun Hu, Shintō at War: Individual or Corporate Misdeed?

Sarah Thal, Bushidō vs. Shintō: Shifting Rhetorics of Prewar Conservatism

Kaitlyn Ugoretz, What is Indigeneity? Questioning the Narrative Roots of Shintō

Jolyon Thomas, Non-Shintō National Pride in Postwar Japanese Public School Education

Chika Watanabe, The Politics of Shintō Ecology

Mark Teeuwen, Commentary

Open to the public; registration requested. Please see details and a registration form on http://web.sas.upenn.edu/shintosymposium/.