Description

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Bringing together the innovative work of scholars from a variety of disciplines, Matsuri and Religion explores festivals in Japan through their interconnectedness to religious life in both urban and rural communities. Each chapter, informed by extensive ethnographic engagement, focuses on a specific festival to unpack the role of religion in collective ritualized activities. With attention to contemporary performance and historical transformation, the study sheds light on understandings of change, identity and community, as well as questions regarding intangible cultural heritage, tourism, and the intersection of religion with politics. Read as a whole, the volume provides a uniquely multi-sited ethnographic, historical, and theoretical study, contributing to discourses on religion and festival/ritual/performance in Japan and elsewhere around the globe.

About the Author

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Elisabetta Porcu, Ph.D. (2006), is Associate Professor of Asian Religions at the University of Cape Town. She is the author of Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture (Brill, 2008) and the founding editor of the Journal of Religion in Japan (Brill). Michael Dylan Foster, Ph.D. (2003; Stanford University), is Professor of Japanese and Chair of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Davis. His most recent monograph is The Book of Yōkai (UC Press, 2015). Contributors are: John Breen, Michael Dylan Foster, Andrea Giolai, Susanne Klien, Ogano Minoru, Elisabetta Porcu, Scott Schnell, Tsukahara Shinji, Yagi Tōru.