Religion, Medicine and the Notion of Charity in Early Jesuit Missionary Pursuits in Buddhist Japan
Searching for conceptual distinctions between religion and medicine is a promising avenue from which to reconstruct trajectories towards the appropriation of hegemonic Western concepts of secularism in Japan, such as the Meiji-period separation of religious and medical practice. Buddhism and medicin...
| Auteur principal: | |
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| Type de support: | Électronique Article |
| Langue: | Anglais |
| Vérifier la disponibilité: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | En cours de chargement...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Publié: |
Brill
[2019]
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| Dans: |
Journal of Religion in Japan
Année: 2019, Volume: 8, Numéro: 1/3, Pages: 46-75 |
| Sujets / Chaînes de mots-clés standardisés: | B
Japan
/ Buddhisme
/ Jésuites
/ Mission
/ Religion
/ Médecine
/ Bienfaisance
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| RelBib Classification: | BL Bouddhisme KBM Asie KCA Monachisme; ordres religieux KDB Église catholique romaine RJ Mission |
| Sujets non-standardisés: | B
Medicine
B Secularity B Cultural Translation B Merit B Jesuits B Charity |
| Accès en ligne: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Résumé: | Searching for conceptual distinctions between religion and medicine is a promising avenue from which to reconstruct trajectories towards the appropriation of hegemonic Western concepts of secularism in Japan, such as the Meiji-period separation of religious and medical practice. Buddhism and medicine had already established a complex relationship for centuries when the Jesuits arrived in Japan. Mahāyāna Buddhist tenets, such as the practice of medicine as a “field of merit” (fukuden 福田), served lay Buddhists as well as monastics as a means to increase social capital through charitable projects. The article seeks to explore whether the Jesuits’ distinction between religion and medicine, and by extension the notion of charity, had any significant impact on Japanese religious and medical culture. In making a distinction between religion and medicine, the Jesuits drew a particular boundary in a way that could be interpreted as a precursor of secularity. The analysis of late medieval and early modern sources in European languages and in Japanese supports the conclusion that the form of secularity emerging in the Edo period resulted from an increase in the popularization of Neo-Confucian concepts and not the influx of the Catholic notion of caritas in the Iberian phase. |
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| ISSN: | 2211-8349 |
| Contient: | Enthalten in: Journal of Religion in Japan
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/22118349-00801010 |