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Helen Hardacre, Shinto: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2017.
If we say that I knew nothing about Shinto and Japanese cultural and religious history before reading this book, it would be generous: I had some vague impressionistic stereotypes drawn from pop culture, which is the opposite of knowledge. Helen Hardacre is, according to her bio, Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions and Society at Harvard University, however, so I feel reasonably confident that she, at least, knows her stuff.
There are, as I learned from this book, debates about the extent to which one can write a history of Shinto before “Shinto” as a term came to be used to describe practices and beliefs by its practitioners. Hardacre begins her history early, before the Nara period, providing a brief overview of the early history of state development in Japan before identifying institutions connected with practices related to the “Kami,” the gods and/or spirits around which Shinto grew. Tracing institutional continuities through various changes and ruptures up to the modern day, Hardacre proceeds to write a readable and well-illustrated history of practices (and later, beliefs) concerning a set of practices and beliefs that came be held by their practitioners as self-consciously indigenous to Japan. In this light, Hardacre includes discussion of Buddhist, Daoist, and later Christian influence on cultural and religious trends.
If you’re used to a history of religion from a Christian perspective — where the focus is usually on doctrine and belief as much as institutions and practices, and orthodoxy vs. heterodoxy looms large — Hardacre’s history is frankly revelatory, to be honest. The tension and interplay between a divergent set of practices and beliefs and the way in which they develop and are used/promoted/suppressed by different factions and political authorities is fascinating, and the developments of the 20th century are really interesting.
I found it a good introduction to the subject, and a good overview as I try to gain more of a grasp of Japanese history than that available from popular culture.
κῆπος τῶν βιβλιοθηκῶν | a garden from the libraries 