Shugendo: Essays on the Structure of Japanese Folk Religion, Paperback

This volume of essays is the first comprehensive publication in English of the work of Miyake Hitoshi, a distinguished scholar of Shugendo (mountain asceticism) and one of the foremost researchers on Japanese folk religion. In Miyake's systematic methodological and theoretical approach, Shugendo is a classic example of Japanese folk religion, for it blends many traditions (shamanism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Shinto) into a distinctive Japanese religious worldview and is typical of Japanese religion generally.
The first part of this book is devoted to Shugendo's history, organization, ritual, austerities, thought, and cosmology. Related subjects include exorcism and the exclusion of women. The second part of the book provides research and reflection on Japanese folk religion, including essays on the idea of nature, worldly benefits, new religions, death and rebirth, and the structure of folk religion.

Miyake Hitoshi, formerly of Keio University, now teaches at Kokugakuin University. His most recent publication is Shugendo soshiki no kenkyu (A Study of the Organization of Shugendo, 1999). H. Byron Earhart has collaborated with Professor Miyake over the past three decades in the study of Shugendo, new religions, and folk religion, and has written extensively on Japanese religion. He teaches at Western Michigan University.