| NOTA |
(★)(The traditional religions in Japan have always occupied a special place in the social order. Shrine Shinto, Japan´s aboriginal religion, is a community-based religion, and in agricultural society it enjoyed a position of security and exercised a unique social function. Buddhism, which originally stressed enlightenment of the individual, became in Japan a religion devoted to rituals for ancestors and supported the primacy of the family as the unit of social life. In ´Religion in Changing Japanese Society´Professor Morioka analyzes these two streams of religion, plus a third stream, Christianity, in terms of the effects that the enormous population shifts and changes in the traditional structure of the family since World War II have had on the social foundations of these religions. Rural parts of Japan have seen the decline of shrines and temples, but religions based on the individual, like Christianity, are benefiting from the migrational and social trends. In addition, the shifting population has functioned as a factor promoting a reorientation of Japanese religions, a reorientation moving away from long-standing traditional group and household religions toward emergent cultural values based on the individual. Developing countries now departing from traditional patterns and aiming at rapid industrialization will probably experience this same undermining of the well-established traditional patterns and the growth of new religions affirming individual values. This work is in a sense a synthesis of the author´s empirical studies on Japanese religion over a period of a quarter-century. It is, however, one of the few major studies on the subject by a Japanese to appear in English. Professor Morioka also provides a review of the history and major achievements of Japanese writers on the sociology of religion. Kiyomi Morioka is professor of sociology at the Tokyo University of Education and is a member of the American Sociological Association. He is a recipient of theAnezaki Memorial Award of the Japanese Association for Religious Studies [1963] and the Odaka Memorial Award of Sociology [1974].) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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