Practicing the Afterlife. Perspectives from Japan

This manuscript consists of a set of papers which were read on occasion of the international conference "Popular Japanese views of the afterlife" in April 1999. This conference was organized by the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The volume introduces important new research contributions from Japanese, American and European scholars to the history of popular Japanese views and practices of the afterlife. Popular means that these views and practices did not necessarily occur within the theological debate. Although this volume does not aim at writing a complete history of such views and practices, it comprises developments from prehistoric times until the immediate past and present times, and deals with all important religious traditions of Japan, namely Shintoism, Buddhism, Taoism, ancestor worship, shamanistic practices, the spiritism of the turn from the 19th to the 20th century and the so-called New Religions. All contributions have in common that they try to define the meaning of these views and practices in Japanese mental history, and to show their immense variety. They also demonstrate how the various discourses about that what human beings expect after death, even in Japan whose culture is generally regarded as strongly this-worldly, were clearly embedded in the world-view of their respective times. Finally they show how they at the same time also helped structuring these world-views.