13 Jun Sea Religion in Japan
Monday, June 13, 2106/9:30 AM
McCune Conference Room, HSSB 6020
This multidisciplinary conference gathers together leading experts in the broad field of Japanese religious history, as well as emerging young scholars (including advanced graduate students and recent PhDs), from several countries, in what is perhaps the first systematic endeavor to address Japanese religious history as seen from the sea, by focusing on sea-centered cults, deities, and symbolic systems.
The symbolic system underlying Japanese religion normally presupposes a continental, “landlocked” environment, centered on agriculture (especially rice cultivation) and focusing on mountains as the privileged sites of the sacred. Within this context, received scholarship tends to downplay (if not ignore altogether) the role of the sea in Japanese religiosities; this conference will be a significant contribution toward a shift in perspective in the study of Japanese religious history.
Sponsored by the ISF Endowed Chairs in Shinto Studies, the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, College of Letters and Science, the IHC’s Pagans: Interdisciplinary Encounters with Idolatry RFG, the Department of Religious Studies, the East Asia Center, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, The Chancellor, the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts, the Department of English, the Department of History, the Program of Comparative Literatures,Toshiba International Foundation, and the Japan Foundation.
For more information please visit: http://www.eastasian.ucsb.edu/seareligion/