Japanese Studies Commons^™

Farming Satori: Zen And The Naturalist Farmer Fukuoka Masanobu, Ronald S. Green

Philosophy and Religious Studies

This paper looks at how Masanobu Fukuoka adopts Chan Buddhist philosophy in relation to his Zen natural farming method. To understand this, it examines the development in Chinese Buddhism that allowed and required Buddhist to farm, defining farming as Buddhist practice.The paper is organized as follows: I. Seeds in the Mahāyāna; II. Roots in Chan monastic regulations; III. Farming satori, Fukuoka’s writing on awakening.

Ticket To Salvation: Nichiren Buddhism In Miyazawa Kenji’S 'Night On The Galactic Railroad' (Ginga Tetsudō No Yoru), Jon P. Holt

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Presentation focuses on the Night on the Galactic Railroad, a classic Japanese novel written by Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933).

Tokuya Higashigawa's After-Dinner Mysteries: Unusual Detectives In Contemporary Japanese Mystery Fiction, Jessica Claire Kindler

Dissertations and Theses

The detective fiction (tantei shōsetsu) genre is one that came into Japan from the West around the time of the Meiji Restoration (1868), and soon became wildly popular. Again in recent years, detective fiction has experienced a popularity boom in Japan, and there has been an outpouring of new detective fiction books as well as various television and movie adaptations. It is not a revelation that the Japanese detective fiction genre, while rife with imitation and homage to Western works, took a dramatic turn somewhere along the line, away from celebrated models like Poe, Doyle, and Christie, and developed into …

Lessons In Immorality: Mishima's Masterpiece Of Humor And Social Satire, Nathaniel Peter Bond

Dissertations and Theses

From 1958 to 1959, Mishima Yukio published a series of satirical essays titled Lessons in Immorality, in the magazine Weekly Morningstar. Lessons in Immorality was made into a television series, a stage play, and a film.

Famous in the West for writing serious novels, Mishima's work as a humor writer is largely unknown. In these essays Mishima writes in a very comic style, making liberal use of hyperbole, burlesque, and travesty, in order to parody and satirize contemporary Japanese morality. Mishima uses humor to create a world in which Mishima Yukio, iconoclastic author and pop-culture figure, is an arbiter of …

Classroom-Library Collaboration: Incorporating Information Literacy Into The Beginning Japanese Curriculum Using Japanese Grade Readers And Other Resources Beyond The Textbook | 図書館との連携による情報リテラシー教育を取り入れた初級日本語カリキュラムの作成と実践—多読ライブラリーや教科書外のリソースを使った日本語情報リテラシー・プロジェクトー, Atsuko Takahashi, Sharon Domier

East Asian Languages & Cultures: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Political Interpretations Of The Lotus Sutra, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

The Sutra on the White Lotus of the Sublime Dharma (Sk., Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra; Ch., Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng; Jp., Myōhō renge kyō), commonly known as the Lotus Sutra, is arguably the most influential sutra of Mahāyāna Buddhism, and certainly one of the most revered sacred texts in East Asia. Via parables and short stories, the twenty-eight chapters of the Lotus Sutra indirectly present a number of core doctrines of the early Mahāyāna, the form of Buddhism that first emerged in India and West Asia roughly five centuries after the death of the historical Buddha Siddhartha Gautama (c. 563–486 …

Along The Tokaido With Two Brushes (2013), Theory & History Of Art & Design Department, Elena Varshavskaya (H791 Instructor)

Ukiyo-e Prints Course | Exhibition Catalogs

"This book is a student version of a scholarly catalog – it was written by RISD students to accompany the Japanese prints’ exhibition they have curated at the RISD Museum as the final project for 2013 spring semester course in art history. The idea of the course was to put emphasis on active learning from objects – not only through looking at the originals and analyzing them during visits to the museum but by trying a hand at various responsibilities of a museum curator. The Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs of the RISD Museum welcomed this experimental course and …

Review: Barbara R. Ambros, Bones Of Contention: Animals And Religion In Contemporary Japan (Hawai'i, 2012)., James Mark Shields

Other Faculty Research and Publications

Review: Barbara R. Ambros, Bones of Contention: Animals and Religion in Contemporary Japan (Hawai'i, 2012).

Zange And Sorge: Two Models Of 'Concern' In Comparative Philosophy Of Religion, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

The concept of Sorge, as developed in Martin Heidegger’s (1889–1976) classic work, Sein und Zeit (1927), describes an existential-ontological state characterized by “anxiety” about the future and the desire to “attend to” the world based on our awareness of temporality. In Japan, this concept was borrowed and critically developed by Watsuji Tetsurō (1889–1960). In Rinrigaku (1937–49), Watsuji argued that Heidegger’s Sorge remains overly reliant on the philosophical structures of Western individualism and subjectivism, and thus neglects the social dimension of human being. In turn, Watsuji’s contemporary, Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962), developed an alternative theory of “concern” in his reflections on …

Raising A Sense Of Self-Worth: Action Research On Self-Compassion In An English Program, Shinichiro Matsuguma

MA TESOL Collection

The suicide rate among Japanese youth has been dramatically increasing over the last decade due to the downturn economy and their lack of sense of self-worth. In this qualitative action research, the author introduces the concept of self-compassion to Japanese youth in a content-based English classroom as an attempt to raise their sense of self-worth. The research shows that self-compassion has a possibility of providing Japanese young people with more rational perceptions of themselves, creating an emotionally supportive environment, and allowing them to develop their self-awareness. The author concludes that it is this development of self-awareness that can raise the …

Review: Steven Heine, Sacred High City, Sacred Low City: A Tale Of Religious Sites In Two Tokyo Neighborhoods (Oxford, 2011)., James Mark Shields

Other Faculty Research and Publications

Review of Steven Heine, Sacred High City, Sacred Low City: A Tale of Religious Sites in Two Tokyo Neighborhoods (Oxford, 2011).

Human Trafficking In Japan: Legislative Policy, Implications For Migration, And Cultural Relativism, Paul Capobianco

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Peaceful Warrior-Demons In Japan: From Empress Kōmyō’S Red Repentant Asura To Miyazawa Kenji’S Melancholic Blue Asura, Jon P. Holt

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Strife, and the violence begotten from it, has long been a concern of Buddhism. Anger, ignorance, and greed, namely the three great evils, must be understood and overcome in order to advance towards enlightenment. Buddhism, as a syncretic religion, incorporated other religious figures from the Asian continent into it as a part of the process of appealing to new converts. The Asura embodies all three of these vices and yet in the process of being adopted into Buddhism, he was able to change from a violent demon into a peaceful guardian of the Buddha.

The Asura devas battled Indra in …