Audience, Authorship, and Agency: Religious Educational Materials for Modern Buddhist Women’s Groups in Japan
The canonical Buddhist sutras were always delivered on the occasion of a particular gathered audience. I apply this basic premise of Buddhist doctrinal production to a body of religious literature produced for women in Japan from the 1890s to the 1910s to help resolve the scholarly conundrum of how...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
2022
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| In: |
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Year: 2022, Volume: 90, Issue: 2, Pages: 473-492 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Japan
/ Buddhism
/ Religious pedagogy
/ Women's group
/ Listening
/ Participation
/ Competent to act
/ History 1892-1912
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| RelBib Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AG Religious life; material religion AH Religious education BL Buddhism KBM Asia TJ Modern history |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | The canonical Buddhist sutras were always delivered on the occasion of a particular gathered audience. I apply this basic premise of Buddhist doctrinal production to a body of religious literature produced for women in Japan from the 1890s to the 1910s to help resolve the scholarly conundrum of how to trace female religious agency in the absence of named female authorship. I identify women’s agency as being exercised through reading rather than writing, and through gathering to listen to teachings rather than delivering sermons themselves. I conclude that providing an engaged presence for the teachings is an important form of religious agency in Buddhist and other contexts. Taking a demand-side (rather than supply-side) approach to understanding Buddhist propagation during this period also illuminates the shifting field of competition for the support and collaboration of religious women in modern Japan. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-4585 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: American Academy of Religion, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfac029 |