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- Convenor:
-
Kikuko Hirafuji
(Kokugakuin University)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Michael Wachutka
(University of Tübingen)
- Stream:
- Religion and Religious Thought
- Location:
- Torre A, Piso 0, Sala 03
- Sessions:
- Friday 1 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
We will discuss about how to convey Shinto concepts to abroad in the age of globalization. We will deal with some concrete examples connected to the Shinto classics (myths), Japanese folklore, and contemporary Shinto in our discussion.
Long Abstract:
In the run up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Japan has seen the number of foreign tourists coming to its shores rise every year. This rise has been accompanied by a growing interest in Shinto culture. Many of these tourists visit such shrines as Meiji-jingū 明治神宮 and Heian-jingū平安神宮 during their stay, and it is even not unusual for foreigners to outnumber Japanese visitors in some of these places.
Furthermore, many of the Japanese video games and animated cartoons that are popular overseas touch on or present Shinto culture in some way. Works in these genres such as My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro となりのトトロ) that draws on Japanese animism and Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi 千と千尋の神隠し) with its mixture of folkloric rites and beliefs from throughout Japan can be seen as creating the image that viewers have of contemporary Shinto. Still further, a fair number of foreigners have become curious about Japanese mythology arising from their interest in video games, animated films, and comic books.
It seems also that as this overseas interest grows, more and more young Japanese want to be able to explain Shinto culture to foreigners in their native languages. However, needless to say translating the vocabulary needed to talk about religion and then using it to get a point across is a rather difficult undertaking. An ethnic religion like Shinto also poses inherent difficulties.
These circumstances raise numerous questions for us to consider. How have our predecessors addressed the topic of Shinto culture, and what devices have they come up with to talk about it? What exactly are the difficulties inherent to the process of talking about Shinto culture? What methods for conveying information does the age of globalization demand us to seek out? We hope to address such topics in this panel, drawing on concrete examples connected to the Shinto classics (myths), Japanese folklore, and contemporary Shinto in our discussion. Our hope is that this panel will generate ideas and information that makes a positive contribution to the further pursuit of research on Shinto and Japanese religion overseas.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 1 September, 2017, -Nobutaka Inoue (Kokugakuin University)
Paper short abstract:
I will present some translation projects concerning Shinto and Japanese culture. Second, I will discuss the further development of these programs in the age of globalization.
Paper long abstract:
For more than a decade, the Institute for Japanese Culture and Classic (IJCC) at Kokugakuin University has been working through the internet and in real space to raise the global profile of the research undertaken at the Institute on Shinto and Japanese culture.
The IJCC took its first steps in this direction at the turn of the century when Kokugakuin University established its 21st Century Center of Excellence Program under the aegis of the MEXT. We at the Insitute decided its offering under that framework would be to make available online an English translation of Shintō jiten, which the Institute had published in 1994. As editor-in-chief on the project, I had already intended to have the work translated into English. Three chapters were translated by Institute staff members and published in paper form prior to 2002. Following the decision to create an online version of the EOS, the remaining chapters were translated with the assistance of an additional 40 foreign scholars. These six chapters along with the three that had already been published were then made available online for viewing free of charge.
Meanwhile, in the offline world the IJCC since 2002 has been inviting foreign scholars to participate in annual international symposia on various topics related to Shinto and Japanese culture. These fora have helped to establish a network through which we can discuss Shinto and Japanese culture on a global level. Furthermore, the Kokugakuin University Museum in 2014 began preparing guides to its exhibitions in English French, Chinese, and Korean, an effort that has also helped to raise the global profile of the work being done at this higher education institution on Shinto and Japanese culture.
These various programs and endeavors have highlighted the ongoing importance of finding the best ways to translate basic Shinto terms and concepts into foreign languages so as to convey their full meaning. To obtain optimal results will require the further development of studies on Shinto and Japanese culture in both Japan and foreign countries, and it is my hope that an ongoing global exchange of views will help toward achieving that aim.
Ignacio Quiros (Kokugakuin University)
Paper short abstract:
In any translation project, it is imperative to carefully decide who the intended readership is before start writing. My goal in this presentation is to use the specific case of Kojiki as means for offering some ideas about how to improve the readability of translations of ancient Shinto texts.
Paper long abstract:
While no translation can be said to offer absolute accuracy, it is no less true that some translation projects present a much greater risk of incoherence than others. This depends mainly on the degree of similarity between the source and target language, but needless to say chronological distance may also be involved. It is one thing to translate an excerpt from a Japanese newspaper into modern English and another to render into the same language a paragraph from an old Japanese classic such as Kojiki. Any translation of such ancient texts is bound to require large amounts of contextual information, usually presented in the form of end notes and footnotes.
What is this "contextual information"? In the case of Kojiki, the information required includes not only historical background, but also explanations of a wide variety of topics such as the semantic ambiguities in the use of Chinese characters; the oft-difficult interpretation of the names of deities, emperors, and heroes; and above all references to the works of earlier scholars. It is not unusual for these supplementary materials to be double or even triple the length of the translation of the original text. However, while these long notes may be a treasure trove of information for specialists, they can become a tedious burden for the average reader. Some translators work to keep the number of such notes to the minimum necessary, and some will eschew specialized subjects as a strategy for mitigating such burdens. While the resulting text may be more attractive to the eyes of an uninitiated reader, a more scholarly audience may disagree.
It is imperative, therefore, to carefully decide who the intended readership is for any translation project and then render the subject text in writing that meets the standards of that target audience. My goal in this presentation is to use the specific case of translations of Kojiki as means for offering some ideas about how to improve the readability of renderings of classic Shinto texts into other language that can navigate between the shoals of simplistic vulgarization and over-specialization.
Hiroshi Iwai (Tezukayama University)
Paper short abstract:
It is not easy to explicate Japanese folk religious culture in English or any other Western languages. I will discuss problems in the comparative study of folk religious culture focusing on the term folk.
Paper long abstract:
Folk religion has been defined in various ways in religious studies. What is more complicated is that the word folk, even in Western languages, imply different facets of religious phenomena. This may reflect the differences in religious cultures and the development of religious studies in each country.
In Japan, Minkan Shinkō (folk beliefs) has been mainly studied by scholars of folkloristics. On the other hand, Minzoku Shūkyō (folk religion) has been studied by sociologists and historians of religion. Since 1980s, the term Minkan Shinkō has been gradually replaced by Minzoku Shūkyō among scholars of folkloristics. Under the influence of Kunio Yanagita, the father of Japanese folkloristics, scholars have long regarded Minkan Shinkō as the unique religiosity that characterizes Japanese culture. Minkan Shinkō means here the substrate of Japanese culture and the worldview embedded in the daily lives and practices of Japanese ordinary people. Later, through the interdisciplinary collaboration with sociologists and historians of religion, they have come to recognize Minzoku Shūkyō as the religious phenomena that can be observed in the interaction among indigenous religious tradition and established religions such as Shinto and Buddhism. The sift in perspective has opened the way for comparative and cross-cultural studies.
However, it is not easy to explicate Japanese folk religious culture in English or any other Western languages. The term folk, in particular, connotes different aspects of social phenomena in each language. In this paper, therefore, I will discuss problems in the comparative study of folk religious culture focusing on the term folk.