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"After Japanese emperor Naruhito ascended the Chrysanthemum throne in 2019, he preformed a secretive ritual funded by the state by offering newly harvested rice to the Shinto sun goddess Amaterasu, mythological progenitor of the imperial family, raising controversy and puzzlement both inside Japan and out. This book is a concise overview of Shinto through a survey of its key concepts, related archeological finds, central mythology, significant cultural sites, political dimensions, and historical developments. Its goal is to promote an understanding of Shinto as an enduring cultural phenomenon central to Japan past and present. Readers discover how Shinto honors nature, reveres mountains and rivers as living entities, why it famously asserts that eight million nature spirits, known as kami, surround the Japanese people in their homeland, and how politics have always been central to these positions"--

According to Mahāyāna Buddhism as seen in the Lotus Sūtra and many other Buddhist texts revered in Chinese and other East Asian traditions, the Buddha used his insight into each individual's capacity for understanding, to tailor his teachings about how they should proceed toward overcoming suffering. For this reason, the Buddha is sometimes called the Great Physician, having the ability to diagnose an individual's case and prescribe a specific remedy. This is the Buddha's skillful means or skill-in-means (upāya), his expertise in crafting a personal plan for liberation. Thus, the overall ethical imperative is the same regardless of an individual's aptitude, that is, a Buddha and a Bodhisattva is obligated to save all sentient beings from suffering. However, the specific ethical practices vary according to individual aptitude. Historically, Chinese Buddhists have generally held the belief that all people are endowed with Buddha-Nature, the innate ability to become enlightened. For example, in Chapter 12 of the Lotus Sūtra, the Buddha predicts the eventual enlightenment of even his antagonistic cousin Devadatta along with others once considered icchantika, deluded people thought to be incapable of attaining liberation. He further explains that some of the things the Devadatta did that appear to be hostile were actually indications that he was a good friend, because they enabled the Buddha to perfect the Six Pāramitās. Chinese Buddhists found theoretical basis for universal Buddha-Nature in Indian Tathāgathagarbha thought, which holds that all beings have within them an innate "womb of the Tathagāta", the Buddha. However, based on his own study of Sanskrit Yogācāra texts, the famous Chinese Buddhist pilgrim to India, Xuanzang (c. 602–664 CE), opposed this long-held and cherished view of Chinese Buddhism with the theory that instead we have within us a Storehouse Consciousness (Sanskrit: ālayavijñāna) that accumulates the karmic seeds of negative emotions. Accordingly, for those able to do so, dedication to the Buddha's Noble Path is the means of clearing the impure seeds stored in the ālayavijñāna and tied to individual and social suffering. Likewise, as the Eightfold Path instructs, individuals must help others to do the same. Yet, Xuanzang found that Yogācāra also taught that not all people are capable of transforming the karmic seeds of suffering and thereby attaining liberation. According to this understanding of Yogācāra's teachings, a person seeking enlightenment must necessarily use skill-in-means to engage others based on their innate capacities, just as the Buddha had done. But what are the categories of human capacities, perhaps used by the Buddha as the Great Physician to prescribe remedies to suffering? Indeed, what is the nature of Buddha-Nature and of transformation? It is necessary to answer these questions in order to apply Yogācāra's practical ethics to actual individual and group situations. Xuanzang left instructions on how to receive the Bodhisattva Vows to save all sentient beings. He also left a text that lists and explain specific ethical acts that those aspiring toward enlightenment must necessarily put into practice. However, he did not leave the necessary details about individual capacities. According to his closest student and successor of his Chinese Buddhist tradition, Kuiji (632–682), this task was left to him, taught by Xuanzang privately. This paper describes Kuiji's detailed analysis of individual capacities, which is the philosophical basis of his entire system of enlightenment. Our treatment of his scheme includes a description of his breakdown of (1) Two aspects of Buddha-Nature, (2) Three Steps in the Process of Transformation(3) Two Divisions of the Basis (4)Five Gotras, and (5) Three types of Icchantika. We begin by describing the background to Kuiji's understanding.

This article outlines and critically discusses South Korean Buddhist films made during the time of the Roh Tae-woo government (1988-1993), which can be called a semi-democratic and semi-dictatorial regime. This was a period of transition in film policy from the censorship of the earlier dictatorial regimes to the freedom of expression offered to directors by the later democratic administrations, unprecedented in Korean film history. During this period the technical skill of directors improved bringing about a corresponding improvement in the quality of Korean Buddhist films and thus international attention. Although the government allowed filmmakers considerably more freedom to express ideas about sensitive political and social issues during the Roh regime, because of individual and institutional pressures, filmmakers could not freely and critically portray monastic lives and religious issues. For example, conservative Buddhists protested the release of films that depicted Korean Buddhism in a negative light, calling for a form of private censorship. These pressure led filmmakers to use abstruse dialogues, metaphors, stories, images, and technical terms in their Buddhist films, particularly those about Zen Buddhism, that likely baffled audiences.

This paper examines Tezuka Osamu's (1928-89) retelling of the biography of the Buddha to appeal to readers of the shōnen genre of manga. Tezuka is a well-known Japanese manga writer and artist, cartoonist, animator, film producer, and activist. In 1972, he began a series of manga adventures in Japan titled Buddha (ブッダ). The series ran to 14 editions in that country, ending in 1983. Subsequently, it was translated and reproduced in eight editions worldwide. This critically acclaimed series, which won the Eisner Award in 2004 and 2005 and Harvey Awards the same years, is considered the last great work in Tezuka's life. It has spawned two animated movies so far: Buddha: The Great Departure (Tezuka Osamu no budda: Akai sabaku yo! Utsukushiku, 2011) and Buddha 2: The Endless Journey (Tezuka Osamu no Budda: Owarinaki tabi, 2014). A third film is scheduled to be produced. While Astro Boy is Tezuka's best known work in America, he equally portrays Buddha as an innocent boy who rejects the political intrigues and imperialism drawn around him. In this way, Tezuka's Buddha retains an original purity in his heart, a Japanese post-war ideal and optimistic portrayal of the future potential of the country and the world. With reference to some of his other works, the paper describes how Buddha represents Tezuka's own ideas as much as the canonical Buddhist telling of the life story.

Although the notorious antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion had enormous impact on twentieth-century public opinion, with disastrous consequences, its importance has only recently been acknowledged by historians. As much as rational thinkers wish to ignore conspiracy theories of history implicating Jews as diabolical plotters, the persistence of these notions makes them worthy of serious study. By examining the origins of the Protocols and its subsequent dissemination, and by linking it to centuries-old folk traditions of demonology aimed at imagined "enemies within," scholars have begun to consider carefully the significance of this spurious document and its antecedents.

Chiyul (b. 1957), a nun of the Chogye Order of Korean Buddhism, led protests against government construction of a KTX (Korea Train eXpress) tunnel passing through Mt. Ch'ŏnsŏng between 2002 and 2006 and participated in protests against the government's nationwide four major rivers restoration project between 2008 and 2012, focusing on the Nakdong River. She has made serious efforts to protect environment as a nun in the culturally and institutionally sexist South Korean Buddhist order in particular and in the culturally, not institutionally, sexist South Korean society in general. She, when on hunger strikes five times totaling more than 341 days, filed along with environmental activists a lawsuit on behalf of salamanders living on the mountain and against the tunnel construction, and petitioned the government to take a proper environmental impact assessment. Although the courts would have accepted an unreasonable assessment of the environmental impact construction of the tunnel on the mountain and ruled in favor of the government's project, Chiyul and environmental activists made Koreans pay attention to the importance of these and related issues through legal procedures. In her later protests against the government's restoration project, she adopted more moderate walking protests than hunger strikes and lawsuits, possibly due to the failure to stop the government though her earlier radical protests.

Contains five speeches and twenty-three articles presented in the Fifth International Seminar on Buddhism and Leadership for Peace on the theme "Exploration of Ways to Put Buddhist Thought into Social Practice for Peace and Justice." The seminar was held under the joint auspice of Dae Won Sa Buddhist Temple of Hawaii and the Korean Buddhist Research Institute of Dongguk University, 1991.

This book narrates – mostly in the form of eyewitness accounts – the hardships and painful experiences of Japanese Americans during their forcible evacuation and internment in World War II. This book is a distinct academic contribution….it portrays the tyranny of state power in detail, [and] it goes beyond the sphere of politics and describes the manner in which the suppression of civil liberty stimulated some Japanese Americans to realize educational growth and to contribute to the social and cultural development of the country of their birth.