John K Nelson
Biographic Data
| ID | 112159 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John K Nelson |
| GIVEN NAMES | John K |
| FAMILY NAME | Nelson |
| SIGNATURE | NELSON J K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of San Francisco |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4307-9308 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 22 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1959 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Shintoism
Shinto is both an invented religious tradition and one with authentic continuity linking the origins of Japanese civilization to the present day. Through the manipulations of clans and military power, a body of ritual practices focused on local deities and ancestral spirits developed into an imperial institution and, much later, into a destructive religious nationalism. Shinto is highly syncretic and interactive with a variety of Buddhist denomin…
A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine
What we today call Shinto has been at the heart of Japanese culture for almost as long as there has been a political entity distinguishing itself as Japan. A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine describes the ritual cycle at Suwa Shrine, Nagasaki’s major Shinto shrine. Conversations with priests, other shrine personnel, and people attending shrine functions supplement John K. Nelson’s observations of over fifty shrine rituals and festivals. He eli…
Experimental Buddhism: Innovation and Activism in Contemporary Japan
This book documents a sense of what is happening on the front lines as a growing number of Buddhist priests try to reboot their roles and traditions to gain greater significance in Japanese society. It profiles innovative as well as controversial responses to the challenges facing Buddhist priests. From traditional activities (conducting memorial rituals; supporting residences for the elderly and infirm; providing relief for victims of natural di…
Experimental Buddhism: Innovation and Activism in Contemporary Japan
Based on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, it is one of the first studies to give readers a sense of what is happening on the front lines as a growing number of Buddhist priests try to reboot their roles and traditions to gain greater significance in Japanese society.The book profiles innovative as well as controversial responses to the challenges facing Buddhist priests. From traditional activities (conducting memorial rituals; suppo…
Handbook of contemporary Japanese religions
"Representing work by some of the leading scholars in the field, this volume presents important topics in the religious environment of contemporary Japan by surveying exciting trends, religious change and innovation, and the interactivity of religion with market and global forces"--Provided by publisher
Japanese Secularities and the Decline of Temple Buddhism
In many ways, Japan provides a predictable example of how historical, political, economic, and cultural factors in the postwar and late-modern periods influence the interactivity of religious affiliations and secular forces. And yet, to grasp the complexity of the situation also requires a broader analytical perspective, one that can incorporate secularizing influences that are harder to identify because they are more globally diffuse. Based on e…
Household Altars in Contemporary Japan: Rectifying Buddhist “Ancestor Worship” with Home Décor and Consumer Choice
In Japan, where organized religion is increasingly viewed with a critical eye, one of the country’s most enduring social and religious traditions—commemorating ancestral spirits—is undergoing rapid change. The highly competitive market for household altars is the source of innovative and sometimes radical concepts that represent a paradigm shift in how families and individuals should interact with ancestral spirits. No longer catering to guidelin…
Yasukuni mondai (review)
Reviewed by: Yasukuni mondai John Nelson (bio) Yasukuni mondai. By Takahashi Tetsuya. Chikuma Shinsho, Tokyo, 2005. 238 pages. ¥720. The sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II was observed in 2005. One might think that 60 years is a sufficient length of time to come to [End Page 558] terms with the causes and consequences of that terrible event, but such is not the case for Japan. To be sure, the Japanese people have processed and incorp…
Immortal Wishes: Labor and Transcendence on a Japanese Sacred Mountain (review)
Reviewed by: Immortal Wishes: Labor and Transcendence on a Japanese Sacred Mountain John Nelson (bio) Immortal Wishes: Labor and Transcendence on a Japanese Sacred Mountain. By Ellen Schattschneider. Duke University Press, Durham, 2003. xiv, 268 pages. $64.95, cloth; $21.95, paper. There are many points of access into Schattschneider's rich ethnographic account of one of Japan's most sacred mountains: agrarian family dynamics, Japanese women's ro…
A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690-1776
Social Memory as Ritual Practice: Commemorating Spirits of the Military Dead at Yasukuni Shinto Shrine
For architects of citizenship and nationhood, there is no shortage of conflicts and wars from which to build modern myths about submerging individual suffering and loss to greater causes. The grief, anger, and despair of individuals can be integrated over time into collectively shared assumptions about the indebtedness of the living to their heroic compatriots and ancestors. To remember these conflicts and those who (depending on the political co…
From Battlefield to Atomic Bomb to the Pure Land of Paradise: Employing the Bodhisattva of Compassion to Calm Japan's Spirits of the Dead
56 years after the end of World War II, the spiritual condition of Japan's military and civilian casualties remains very much a present-day concern. This is relevant not only for bereaved families, but also for city governments, religious institutions, and the state. In 1995, a new 'hall of mourning for the spirits of the unknown dead (killed) in the atomic bombing' was constructed with public and private funds at the edge of the Peace Park in Na…
A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690-1776
John K. Nelson deploys extensive and meticulous archival research to alter a host of current assumptions about religion in colonial Virginia. Instead of depicting early Virginians as religiously indifferent, Anglican clergy as mediocre, congregations as sparse and scattered, and worship as perfunctory, Nelson assembles both quantitative and manuscript evidence, along with a broad coverage of primary and secondary printed sources, to show that the…
Myths, missions, and mistrust: The fate of Christianity in 16th and 17th century Japan
This article examines accepted opinion regarding the persecution and demise of Christian/Catholic missions in 16th and 17th century Japan. Many of the key issues associated with the encounter of European missionaries and Japanese feudal systems of authority and power resonate with contemporary interest in transculturalism, semantic slippage, personal agency, and the intimate interplay between religion, politics, and economics. Burdened with rigid…
Enduring Identities: The Guise of Shinto in Contemporary Japan
Shifting Paradigms of Religion and the State: Implications of the 1997 Supreme Court Decision for Social, Religious and Political Change
The image of the apex of the Japanese legal system, as portrayed by file video clips on NHK evening news, has remained amazingly consistent over the years: poker-faced judges sit motionless in high-backed chairs, as if waiting to be taken to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. With such a stodgy and foreboding appearance, it is hard for us to imagine that exciting events might transpire within those solemn chambers. And yet occasionally a specific case …
A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine
A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine
Warden + Virtuoso + Salaryman = Priest: Paradigms within Japanese Shinto for Religious Specialists and Institutions
John K. Nelson, Warden + Virtuoso + Salaryman = Priest: Paradigms within Japanese Shinto for Religious Specialists and Institutions, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Aug., 1997), pp. 678-707
A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine
Freedom of expression: The very modern practice of visiting a Shinto shrine
Utilizing extended fieldwork, interviews, and cross-cultural reference with other religious sites, the present study examines why the practice of visiting Shinto shrines continues to hold salience for millions of contemporary Japanese. Observations show that a majority of individuals coming to one particular shrine, Kyoto y s Kamigamo Jinja, generally comply with the spir itual and visual ideology of the site, yet rarely describe themselves as (i…
A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine
Shinto ritual: Managing chaos in contemporary Japan
This paper addresses why an animistically-inspired system of ritual practices, structured around hazy notions of "chaos" and "order", remain viable in Japan for both the common person as well as for elites, based upon both ancient and "invented" rituals. Shinto religious practices would seem a likely candidate for extinction within Japan's hightech consumer society. And yet, it is commonplace that new cars be blessed at a shrine, that new residen…
Southern Anglicanism: The Church of England in Colonial South Carolina
Puritans and Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America by T. H. Breen
Book Review| January 01 1982 Puritans and Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America by T. H. Breen Puritans and Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America. By Breen, T. H.. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980. Pp., xviii, 270. $17.50. John K. Nelson John K. Nelson The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1982) 81 (1): 11…
Social Memory as Ritual Practice: Commemorating Spirits of the Military Dead at Yasukuni Shinto Shrine
For architects of citizenship and nationhood, there is no shortage of conflicts and wars from which to build modern myths about submerging individual suffering and loss to greater causes. The grief, anger, and despair of individuals can be integrated over time into collectively shared assumptions about the indebtedness of the living to their heroic compatriots and ancestors. To remember these conflicts and those who (depending on the political co…
Shinto ritual: Managing chaos in contemporary Japan
This paper addresses why an animistically-inspired system of ritual practices, structured around hazy notions of "chaos" and "order", remain viable in Japan for both the common person as well as for elites, based upon both ancient and "invented" rituals. Shinto religious practices would seem a likely candidate for extinction within Japan's hightech consumer society. And yet, it is commonplace that new cars be blessed at a shrine, that new residen…
Myths, missions, and mistrust: The fate of Christianity in 16th and 17th century Japan
This article examines accepted opinion regarding the persecution and demise of Christian/Catholic missions in 16th and 17th century Japan. Many of the key issues associated with the encounter of European missionaries and Japanese feudal systems of authority and power resonate with contemporary interest in transculturalism, semantic slippage, personal agency, and the intimate interplay between religion, politics, and economics. Burdened with rigid…
Shifting Paradigms of Religion and the State: Implications of the 1997 Supreme Court Decision for Social, Religious and Political Change
The image of the apex of the Japanese legal system, as portrayed by file video clips on NHK evening news, has remained amazingly consistent over the years: poker-faced judges sit motionless in high-backed chairs, as if waiting to be taken to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. With such a stodgy and foreboding appearance, it is hard for us to imagine that exciting events might transpire within those solemn chambers. And yet occasionally a specific case …
A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine
Warden + Virtuoso + Salaryman = Priest: Paradigms within Japanese Shinto for Religious Specialists and Institutions
John K. Nelson, Warden + Virtuoso + Salaryman = Priest: Paradigms within Japanese Shinto for Religious Specialists and Institutions, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Aug., 1997), pp. 678-707
Bondsmen and Bishops: Slavery and Apprenticeship on the Codrington Plantations of Barbados, 1710-1838
Georgia Journeys: Being an Account of the Lives of Georgia's Original Settlers and Many Other Early Settlers from the Founding of the Colony in 1732 Until the Institution of Royal Government in 1754
The Prose Works of William Byrd of Westover: Narratives of a Colonial Virginian
The Peace Prophets: American Pacifist Thought, 1919-1941
Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution
The Peace Prophets: American Pacifist Thought, 1919-1941
Journal Article The Peace Prophets: American Pacifist Thought, 1919–1941. By John K. Nelson. (Chapel Hill: University of North CaroHna Press, 1967. viii + 153 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. Paper, $4.50.) Get access Paul I. Miller Paul I. Miller Hiram College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 55, Issue 2, September 1968, Page 418, https://doi.org/10.2307/1899610 Publi…
From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765
On the Silence of the Declaration of Independence by Paul Eidelberg
Book Review| October 01 1978 On the Silence of the Declaration of Independence by Paul Eidelberg On the Silence of the Declaration of Independence. By Eidelberg, Paul. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1976. Pp. 127. John K. Nelson John K. Nelson The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1978) 77 (4): 538–539. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-…
A Season of Youth: The American Revolution and the Historical Imagination by Michael Kammen
Book Review| October 01 1979 A Season of Youth: The American Revolution and the Historical Imagination by Michael Kammen A Season of Youth: The American Revolution and the Historical Imagination. By Kammen, Michael. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978. Pp. xxi, 348. $15.00. John K. Nelson John K. Nelson The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1979) 78 (4): 52…
Puritans and Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America by T. H. Breen
Book Review| January 01 1982 Puritans and Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America by T. H. Breen Puritans and Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America. By Breen, T. H.. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980. Pp., xviii, 270. $17.50. John K. Nelson John K. Nelson The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1982) 81 (1): 11…
Southern Anglicanism: The Church of England in Colonial South Carolina
Shinto ritual: Managing chaos in contemporary Japan
This paper addresses why an animistically-inspired system of ritual practices, structured around hazy notions of "chaos" and "order", remain viable in Japan for both the common person as well as for elites, based upon both ancient and "invented" rituals. Shinto religious practices would seem a likely candidate for extinction within Japan's hightech consumer society. And yet, it is commonplace that new cars be blessed at a shrine, that new residen…
Freedom of expression: The very modern practice of visiting a Shinto shrine
Utilizing extended fieldwork, interviews, and cross-cultural reference with other religious sites, the present study examines why the practice of visiting Shinto shrines continues to hold salience for millions of contemporary Japanese. Observations show that a majority of individuals coming to one particular shrine, Kyoto y s Kamigamo Jinja, generally comply with the spir itual and visual ideology of the site, yet rarely describe themselves as (i…
A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine
A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine
Warden + Virtuoso + Salaryman = Priest: Paradigms within Japanese Shinto for Religious Specialists and Institutions
John K. Nelson, Warden + Virtuoso + Salaryman = Priest: Paradigms within Japanese Shinto for Religious Specialists and Institutions, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Aug., 1997), pp. 678-707
A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine
A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine
Shifting Paradigms of Religion and the State: Implications of the 1997 Supreme Court Decision for Social, Religious and Political Change
The image of the apex of the Japanese legal system, as portrayed by file video clips on NHK evening news, has remained amazingly consistent over the years: poker-faced judges sit motionless in high-backed chairs, as if waiting to be taken to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. With such a stodgy and foreboding appearance, it is hard for us to imagine that exciting events might transpire within those solemn chambers. And yet occasionally a specific case …
Enduring Identities: The Guise of Shinto in Contemporary Japan
From Battlefield to Atomic Bomb to the Pure Land of Paradise: Employing the Bodhisattva of Compassion to Calm Japan's Spirits of the Dead
56 years after the end of World War II, the spiritual condition of Japan's military and civilian casualties remains very much a present-day concern. This is relevant not only for bereaved families, but also for city governments, religious institutions, and the state. In 1995, a new 'hall of mourning for the spirits of the unknown dead (killed) in the atomic bombing' was constructed with public and private funds at the edge of the Peace Park in Na…
A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690-1776
John K. Nelson deploys extensive and meticulous archival research to alter a host of current assumptions about religion in colonial Virginia. Instead of depicting early Virginians as religiously indifferent, Anglican clergy as mediocre, congregations as sparse and scattered, and worship as perfunctory, Nelson assembles both quantitative and manuscript evidence, along with a broad coverage of primary and secondary printed sources, to show that the…
Myths, missions, and mistrust: The fate of Christianity in 16th and 17th century Japan
This article examines accepted opinion regarding the persecution and demise of Christian/Catholic missions in 16th and 17th century Japan. Many of the key issues associated with the encounter of European missionaries and Japanese feudal systems of authority and power resonate with contemporary interest in transculturalism, semantic slippage, personal agency, and the intimate interplay between religion, politics, and economics. Burdened with rigid…
A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690-1776
Social Memory as Ritual Practice: Commemorating Spirits of the Military Dead at Yasukuni Shinto Shrine
For architects of citizenship and nationhood, there is no shortage of conflicts and wars from which to build modern myths about submerging individual suffering and loss to greater causes. The grief, anger, and despair of individuals can be integrated over time into collectively shared assumptions about the indebtedness of the living to their heroic compatriots and ancestors. To remember these conflicts and those who (depending on the political co…
History (33 works) · Japanese History and Culture (20 works) · Political science (20 works) · History (19 works) · Law (17 works) · Art (16 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Archaeology (12 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (9 works)