The thesis will explore the idea of feeling Japanese spirituality of Shinto through a contemporary work of art, the animated film My Neighbour Totoro (1988). The idea of a felt spirituality revolves around Shinto’s notion of kami, divine entities whose existence becomes manifest through one’s feeling and perception to awe-inspiring things of the natural world and the aesthetic notion of aware, an immediate felt emotional response that coincides as the response/reaction when coming into contact with awe-inspiring things. This thesis conceives aware to be the meeting point in which the human and kami world converge, a Shinto concept known as shinjin-g itsu, or the meeting of the human spirit with kami. This thesis will uncover themes of Shinto spirituality through a close reading of the functionality of specific components of the film: music, setting, characters, character interactions, and symbolism. Themes such as nature, community, symbolism and the role of aesthetics within the film will be discussed to showcase the idea of a spiritual encounter. It is a spiritual encounter/meeting that is facilitated through the aesthetics and components of the film which elicits a response of aware from the viewer. / Graduate / 0322 / 0332 / 0900 / scarbul@gmail.com

Thesis (Th. M.)--Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, 1992. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 172-189).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 172-189).

Thesis--Bonn. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 338-354).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Michigan, 1983. / Index of references to illustrations, leaves 643-646. Includes bibliographical references (v. 1, leaves 442-483).

My thesis aims to map the art historical, religious and cultural influences in Chiho Aoshima’s work, particularly in her 2015 solo show Rebirth of the World at Seattle Asian Art Museum. I will start with an outline of the artist’s overall oeuvre, focusing specifically on her aesthetic development. This will set up an introduction of the main elements I see in her work (Shinto beliefs, yōkai/ukiyo-e aesthetic references, and references to A Cyborg Manifesto). The thesis will essentially be a case study of Rebirth of the World, using specific mediums as evidence for the presence of these influences in her work. My thesis is essentially Chiho Aoshima’s work is a seamless blend of the history and culture of Japan, while still grounding her practice in critical, contemporary theories of subversion. Her work is a gripping nod to the past but it is very much contemporary and critical, and it is easy to overlook all the threads woven into the fabric of her oeuvre.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the writings of Hayashi Ichizō, a Christian from southern Japan who on the 30th of May 1945 died while carrying out a kamikaze attack against Allied ships outside Okinawa. Hayashi’s writings, most notably his diary and some of the letters he sent to his mother, have been published posthumously by his sister in a volume called Hi nari tate nari. In this thesis, I conduct an in-depth analysis of these writings in an attempt to understand for what Hayashi died. In the two parts of the thesis, divided by two major themes in Hayashi’s writings – faith/family and nation/emperor, I discuss his thoughts around these issues. Using the idea of intertextuality as presented by Norman Fairclough, I have tried to see what lies behind Hayashi’s own words. Hayashi’s bounds to his mother were particularly strong, and through his Christian faith he found solace in the thought that he would one day reunite with her in Heaven.  At the same time, he was worried about whether dying in action in the name of the emperor would prevent this from happening, yet in the end he seems to have put his faith in providence. While Hayashi’s thoughts about the imperial system are ambivalent, a thorough reading of the material suggests that he remained critical of the cult surrounding the divine emperor. Though he does refer to himself as “the emperor’s ugly shield”, there seems to be more to his use of this term than state-promoted nationalism. Though it is difficult to say for what Hayashi died, we can reach a few conclusions about his fate. After he was conscripted in 1943, he chose to enter the Navy and he volunteered to be a pilot, yet it was never his choice to become a kamikaze pilot – death was given to him. While Hayashi never considered his death to be a suicide, contradicting his Christian belief, he was clearly worried about the prospect of his soul being enshrined in Yasukuni Shrine. To his death, his thoughts remained with his mother and with God, never with the emperor.

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains v, 161 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 111-114).

With the figure of fox as the emblematic emissary, Inari—arguably the most popular Shinto deity in Japan—is often deemed polytheistic due to its diverse blessings, whether agricultural, commercial, or industrial, or all of these at once. In the common historical account, Inari worship began as an agricultural ritual and, affected by the soaring monetary economy from the seventeenth century onward, it attained other predicates. Through two main studies on Inari shrines, this dissertation refutes that limited narrative and demonstrates that the agricultural attribute was in turn accentuated with the monetary economy. One study revolves around the Mimeguri Shrine, enshrined in Tokyo at the turn of the eighteenth century by the magnate Mitsui family for their commerce. The other study deciphers the concatenation of the Coal Mountain Tutelary Shrine and Tōka Shrine, originally established in the late eighteenth century by the local feudal administration, Miike-han, for their coal production in the current Fukuoka prefecture. With these shrines, the respective commercial and coal enterprises were rendered agricultural as though contained within the dominant Tokugawa order, which idealized the rice-based economy. Nurturing in effect the profit of the Mitsui family and the extra revenue of Mike-han—constituting a surplus, as this dissertation argues—the Inari worships of the merchant and the regional administration produced labor times. The presence of those shrines in this study serves as the metonymy of a contradictory process whereby even a deity was “alienated” under the command of money as if were fooled by its own emissary, the fox.

Populärkulturen bidrar med sätt att möta eleverna på deras egna villkor. Uppsatsen ämnar undersöka dels vilka drag av shintoism som återfinns i den japanska animerade filmen Spirited Away och dels hur filmen kan användas i undervisningen av religion på gymnasiet. Studiens ambition är att undersöka vad filmen kan erbjuda undervisningen på en B-kurs inom religionsämnet. Genom att utföra en läromedelsanalys samt ägna mig åt studier kring religionen shinto syftar uppsatsen till att belysa hur filmen Spirited away, och dess shintoistiska tematik, kan finna sin plats i undervisningen i ett klimat där läromedlen ofta misslyckas med att ge en nyanserad bild av den shintoistiska läran. Uppsatsen presenterar en kvalitativ intervju med en japansk man som ger sin bild av shinto. Resultatet visar även att B-kursen på gymnasienivå inbjuder till kopplingar mellan religiösa yttringar och aspekter av vårt sekulariserade samhälle. Populärkulturen, i detta fall genom filmen Spirited away, och shintoism kan därmed bidra till en kombination som leder till att eleverna når ett meningsfullt lärande inom flera olika områden. Studien påvisar att filmen är bärare av en shintoistisk aspekt som är gångbar att belysa i en lektionsplan. Denna lektionsplan vinner mest mark genom hur den behandlar religionens roll i ett sekulariserat samhälle. I detta fall populärkulturens bruk av religiös tematik. Däremot avvisas filmen som direkt förmedlare av den shintoistiska läran, och istället lyfts dess lämplighet som bro mellan ett religiöst system och den populärkulturella aspekten av religionsundervisningen.