Pilgrimages and Spiritual Quests in Japan [Hardcover]

This exciting new book is a detailed examination of pilgrimages in Japan, including the meanings of travel, transformation, and the discovery of identity through encounters with the sacred, in a variety of interesting dimensions in both historical and contemporary Japanese culture, linked by the unifying theme of a spiritual quest.

Several fascinating new approaches to traditional forms of pilgrimage are put forward by a wide range of specialists in anthropology, religion and cultural studies, who set Japanese pilgrimage in a wider comparative perspective. They apply models of pilgrimage to quests for vocational fulfilment, examining cases as diverse as the civil service, painting and poetry, and present ethnographies of contemporary reconstructions of old spiritual quests, as conflicting (and sometimes global) demands impinge on the time and space of would-be pilgrims.

Introduction.  Travel as Spiritual Quest in Japan  Part 1: Pilgrimages, Paths and Places  1. Pilgrimage Roads in Spain and Japan  2. Pilgrimage, Space and Identity: Ise (Japan) and Santiago de Compostela (Spain)  3. The Concept of Pilgrimage in Japan  4. The Daily Life of the Henro on the Island of Shikoku during the Edo Priod as Mirror of Tokugawa Society  5. Stranger and Pilgrimage in Village Japan  Part 2: Reconstructing the Quest  6. Current Increase in Walking Pilgrims  7. New Forms of Pilgrimage in Japanese Society  8. Old Gods, New Pilgrimages? A Whistle Stop Tour of Japanese International Theme Parks  Part 3: The Quest for the Magic, Liminal, or Non-Ordinary  9. Pilgrimages in Japan. How Far are they Determined by Unconsciously Held Assumptions?  10. Agari-Umai, or the Eastern Tour: A Ryukyuan Royal Ritual and Its Transformations&nbsplè