University Press of America
Pages: 218
•
Trim: 6⅜ x 9½
978-0-7618-5524-8 • Hardback • August 2011 • $100.00 • (£77.00)
978-0-7618-5518-7 • Paperback • August 2011 • $45.99 • (£35.00)
Tomoko Iwasawa is associate professor of comparative religions at Reitaku University, Japan. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy of religion from Boston University. Her publications include Jaspers' "Schuldfrage" and Hiroshima: Does the Concept of Guilt Exist for Japanese Religious Consciousness? (2008) and On the Concept of Defilement: A Comparative Study of Paul Ricoeur's "Symbolism of Evil" and Japanese Myth (2009). She is an executive board member of International Shinto Foundation.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I TAMA IN JAPANESE MYTH — HISTORICAL INVESTIGATIONS
Chapter 1 In Pursuit of Tama in the Japanese Language: Motoori Norinaga’s Interpretation of Tama
Chapter 2 In Search of the Salvation of Embodied Tama: Hirata Atsutane’s Interpretation of Tama
Chapter 3 The Dialectic of Mythologizing, Demythologizing, and Remythologizing
PART II TAMA IN JAPANESE MYTH — CONCRETE MANIFESTATIONS
Part II Introduction
Chapter 4 The Problem of Defilement: The Myth of Izanagi and Izanami
Chapter 5 The Problem of Sin: The Myth of Amaterasu and Susanowo
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Tomoko Iwasawa's fascinating and, in many ways, revolutionary study of the Kojiki … makes a convincing case for the fundamentality of tama within the overall structure of Japanese myth…. Fully conversant with Western philosophy and the leading experts in the analysis and criticism of classical Japanese texts, Tomoko Iwasawa's [book] should be considered required reading in Japanese studies, religious studies, and the comparative philosophy of religion.
— Alan M. Olson, Boston University
Unusually lucid and intelligent…. This thoroughly hermeneutic analysis looks to the thought of Paul Ricoeur and Hans-Georg Gadamer and then goes beyond them. Her argument is startling in its originality, thorough in its documentation, and deeply persuasive.
— Michael Palencia-Roth, Trowbridge Scholar in Literary Studies, Emeritus professor of comparative and world literature, University of Illinois
Few scholars have yet approached the kind of exegesis that lwasawa accomplishes … Grounded in ancient Shinto texts and modern scholarship, this original and even courageous work critiques and advances Ricoeurian understanding of myth … and perhaps ultimately of the human condition.
— Carl Becker Ph.D., Litt., professor of comparative religions, Kokoro Research Center, Kyoto University
I heartily applaud Iwasawa for the boldness of her project. I especially agree with her call for more remythologizing in the scholarly study of Shinto myth, that narrative corpus that was mythologized by State Shinto and then has been so thoroughly demythologized in postwar scholarship.
— Japan Review