Chinese & Japanese Religions Books

New and Published Books

1. Making Sense of the Secular

   Critical Perspectives from Europe to Asia

   Edited by Ranjan Ghosh

   Series: Routledge Studies in Religion

   This book offers a wide range of critical perspectives on how secularism unfolds and has been made sense of across Europe and Asia. The book evaluates secularism as it exists today – its formations and discontents within contemporary discourses of power, terror, religion and cosmopolitanism – and...

   Published November 5th 2012 by Routledge
2. Mapping China and Managing the World

   Culture, Cartography and Cosmology in Late Imperial Times

   By Richard J. Smith

   Series: Asia's Transformations/Critical Asian Scholarship

   From the founding of the Qin dynasty in 221 BCE to the present, the Chinese have been preoccupied with the concept of order (zhi). This cultural preoccupation has found expression not only in China’s highly refined bureaucratic institutions and methods of social and economic organization but also...

   Published October 18th 2012 by Routledge
3. The Market and Temple Fairs of Rural China

   Red Fire

   By Gene Cooper

   Series: Asia's Transformations

   During the early communist period of the 1950s, temple fairs in China were both suppressed and secularized. Temples were closed down by the secular regime and their activities classified as feudal superstition and this process only intensified during the Cultural Revolution when even the surviving...

   Published August 12th 2012 by Routledge
4. Chinese Death Rituals in Singapore

   By Tong Chee Kiong

   Series: Anthropology of Asia

   Through a cultural analysis of the symbols of death - flesh, blood, bones, souls, time numbers, food and money - Chinese Death Rituals in Singapore throws light upon the Chinese perception of death and how they cope with its eventuality. In the seeming mass of religious rituals and beliefs, it...

   Published July 31st 2012 by Routledge
5. Buddhist Hagiography in Early Japan

   Images of Compassion in the Gyoki Tradition

   By Jonathan Morris Augustine

   Series: Routledge Studies in Asian Religion

   Hagiographies or idealized biographies which recount the lives of saints, bodhisattvas and other charismatic figures have been the meeting place for myth and experience. In medieval Europe, the 'lives of saints' were read during liturgical celebrations and the texts themselves were treated as...

   Published July 12th 2012 by Routledge
6. The Emergence of Daoism

   Creation of Tradition

   By Gil Raz

   Series: Routledge Studies in Taoism

   At the core of Daoism are ancient ideas concerning the Way, the fundamental process of existence (the Dao). Humans, as individuals and as a society, should be aligned with the Dao in order to attain the fullness of life and its potential. This book presents the history of early Daoism, tracing the...

   Published February 27th 2012 by Routledge
7. Spirituality in the Modern World

   Within Religious Tradition and Beyond

   Edited by Paul Heelas

   Series: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies

   It would not be an exaggeration to say that during the last century, most especially during and since the 1960s, the language of spirituality has become one of the most significant ways in which the sacred has come to be understood and judged in the West, and, increasingly, elsewhere. Whether it is...

   Published December 12th 2011 by Routledge
8. Religion, Law and Tradition

   Comparative Studies in Religious Law

   By Andrew Huxley

   This book brings together two scholarly traditions: experts in Roman, Jewish and Islamic law, an area where scholars tend to be familiar with work in each area, and experts in the legal traditions of South and East Asia, which have tended to be less interdisciplinary. The resulting mix produces new...

   Published December 1st 2011 by Routledge
9. An Introduction to Daoist Thought

   Action, Language, and Ethics in Zhuangzi

   By Eske Møllgaard

   Series: Routledge Studies in Asian Religion and Philosophy

   This is the first work available in English which addresses Zhuangzi’s thought as a whole. It presents an interpretation of the Zhuangzi, a book in thirty-three chapters that is the most important collection of Daoist texts in early China. The author introduces a complex reading that shows the...

   Published October 6th 2011 by Routledge
10. The Spread of Tibetan Buddhism in China

    Charisma, Money, Enlightenment

    By Dan Smyer Yu

    Series: Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism

    Focusing on contemporary Tibetan Buddhist revivals in the Tibetan regions of the Sichuan and Qinghai Provinces in China, this book explores the intricate entanglements of the Buddhist revivals with cultural identity, state ideology, and popular imagination of Tibetan Buddhist spirituality in...

    Published September 28th 2011 by Routledge