<p>This volume presents the only English translation of the prayers of Japan's indigenous religious tradition, Shinto. These prayers, norito, are works of religious literature that are basic to our understanding of Japanese religious history. Locating Donald Philippi as one of a small number of scholars who have developed a perceptive approach to the problem of "hermeneutical distance" in dealing with ancient or foreign texts, Joseph M. Kitagawa recalls Mircea Eliade's observation that "most of the time [our] encounters and comparisons with non-Western cultures have not made all the `strangeness' of these cultures evident. . . . We may say that the Western world has not yet, or not generally, met with authentic representatives of the `real' non-Western traditions." Composed in the stately ritual language of the ancient Japanese and presented as a "performing text," these prayers are, Kitagawa tells us, "one of the authentic foreign representatives in Eliade's sense." In the preface Kitagawa elucidates their significance, discusses Philippi's methods of encountering the "strangeness" of Japan, and comments astutely on aspects of the encounter of East and West.</p>

Norito: A Translation of the Ancient Japanese Ritual Prayers

Joseph Mitsuo Kitagawa

Princeton Univ. Press

<p>This volume tries to present a non-technical, jargon-free narrative, based on the author's lectures at Rice University, on the not-so-readily apparent mental and spiritual universe of peoples in contemporary Asia, who are caught between their inherited cultural and religious traditions and their current aspirations for economic security as well as political and human freedom. Like it or not, peoples in Asia have been influenced both negatively and positively, by Western thoughts and civilizations, especially in reference to such notions as freedom, human dignity, democracy, etc., during the past four decades or so. Now that the day of Western colonialism is over, peoples in Asia are determined to reconcile some of the legacies of the modern West, which provide «revolutionary impulse», with certain features of their inherited «traditions».</p>

Spiritual Liberation and Human Freedom in Contemporary Asia (The Rockwell Lecture Series)

History

Kelber, Werner H.

Americas

Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers

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Books by Joseph Mitsuo Kitagawa