Norito

Fülszöveg

Japanese Literature/Religion
NORITO
A TRANSLATION OF THE ANCIENT JAPANESE RITUAL PRAYERS
DONALD L. PHILIPPI WITH A NEW PREFACE BY JOSEPH M. KITAGAWA
This volume contains the only available English translation of the prayers of japan's indigenous religious tradition, Shinto. These prayers, norito, are works of religious literature that are basic to our understanding of Japanese religious history. Locating Donald Philippi as one of a small number of scholars who have developed a perceptive approach to the problem of "hermeneutical distance" in dealing with ancient or foreign texts, Joseph M. Kitagawa recalls Mircea Eliade's observation that "most of the time [our] encounters and comparisons with non-Western cultures have not made all the 'strangeness' of these cultures evident. . . . We may say that the Western world has not yet, or not generally, met with authentic representatives of the 'real' non-Western traditions."
Composed in the stately ritual language of the ancient... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Japanese Literature/Religion
NORITO
A TRANSLATION OF THE ANCIENT JAPANESE RITUAL PRAYERS
DONALD L. PHILIPPI WITH A NEW PREFACE BY JOSEPH M. KITAGAWA
This volume contains the only available English translation of the prayers of japan's indigenous religious tradition, Shinto. These prayers, norito, are works of religious literature that are basic to our understanding of Japanese religious history. Locating Donald Philippi as one of a small number of scholars who have developed a perceptive approach to the problem of "hermeneutical distance" in dealing with ancient or foreign texts, Joseph M. Kitagawa recalls Mircea Eliade's observation that "most of the time [our] encounters and comparisons with non-Western cultures have not made all the 'strangeness' of these cultures evident. . . . We may say that the Western world has not yet, or not generally, met with authentic representatives of the 'real' non-Western traditions."
Composed in the stately ritual language of the ancient Japanese and presented as a "performing text," these prayers constitute one of the authentic foreign representatives in Eliade's sense, in the preface Kitagawa elucidates their significance, discusses Philippi's methods of encountering the "strangeness" of Japan, and comments astutely on aspects of the encounter of East and West.
Donald L. Philippi is highly regarded as a translator of Japanese into English. His works include Kojiki (Princeton/University of Tokyo Press) and Songs of Gods, Songs of Humans: The Epic Tradition of the Ainu (Princeton/North Point Press), joseph M. Kitagawa is Professor Emeritus of the University of Chicago Divinity School and of the Department of Far Easteh languages and Civilizations there; he is also a former Dean of the Divinity School. , Vissza