Spirit Tree

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A01=Leslie E. Williams
Author_Leslie E. Williams
Category=JH
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eq_isMigrated=1
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics

Product details

  • ISBN 9780761834168
  • Weight: 358g
  • Dimensions: 154 x 230mm
  • Publication Date: 06 Mar 2007
  • Publisher: University Press of America
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Paperback
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Despite what some scholarship has suggested, Shintô does exhibit a unifying cognitive integrity. Spirit Tree offers a unique social psychological interpretation of Shintô ritual at the Hakozaki Hachiman Shrine in Fukuoka, Japan and situates the cosmological organization of this practice within the larger context of ritual in East Asia. Employing a comparative approach, this study blends two theoretical orientations: cultural anthropology and Jungian psychology.

Hakozaki's rituals are a combination of a Yayoi period female medium tradition with a complex set of Chinese Yin-Yang Five Phase principles. Both systems are based on the feminine archetype, a fundamental conceptual foundation of Shintô ritual practice, which cognitively links woman and the earth. While the female shaman tradition is female-affirming in outlook, the later Chinese system is much less so. This monograph is a new acknowledgement of the conceptual continuity of Shintô ritual as an outgrowth of social cognition.

E. Leslie Williams began his study of East Asia by working as an ecclesiastical representative in Taiwan for two years. He was then a Japanese Ministry of Education graduate research scholar at Kyûshû University where he studied Edo period history for two years. He holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh and is Associate Professor of Japanese in the Department of Languages at Clemson University.

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