Helen Hardacre provides new insights into the spiritual and cultural dimensions of abortion debates around the world in this careful examination of mizuko kuyo--a Japanese religious ritual for aborted fetuses. Popularized during the 1970s, when religious entrepreneurs published frightening accounts of fetal wrath and spirit attacks, mizuko kuyo offers ritual atonement for women who, sometimes decades previously, chose to have abortions. As she explores the complex issues that surround this practice, Hardacre takes into account the history of Japanese attitudes toward abortion,...
Helen Hardacre provides new insights into the spiritual and cultural dimensions of abortion debates around the world in this careful examination of
Helen Hardacre, a leading scholar of religious life in modern Japan, examines the Japanese state's involvement in and manipulation of shinto from the Meiji Restoration to the present. Nowhere else in modern history do we find so pronounced an example of government sponsorship of a religion as in Japan's support of shinto. How did that sponsorship come about and how was it maintained? How was it dismantled after World War II? What attempts are being made today to reconstruct it? In answering these questions, Hardacre shows why State shinto symbols, such as the Yasukuni Shrine and its...
Helen Hardacre, a leading scholar of religious life in modern Japan, examines the Japanese state's involvement in and manipulation of shinto from t...
Emerging from a conference on Communities in Question: Religion and Authority in East and Southeast Asia, held in Hua Hin, Thailand, May 1989, this volume examines some of the tensions and conflicts between states and religious communities over the scope of religious views of the communities, the
Emerging from a conference on Communities in Question: Religion and Authority in East and Southeast Asia, held in Hua Hin, Thailand, May 1989, this vo...