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...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Starling, Jessica (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Oxford University Press 2022
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
IxTheo Classification:AD Sociology of religion; religious policy
AG Religious life; material religion
AH Religious education
BL Buddhism
KBM Asia
TJ Modern history
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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.
ISSN:1477-4585
Contains:Enthalten in: American Academy of Religion, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfac029