Review of Barbara Ambros, "Women in Japanese Religions"

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Barbara Ambros, Women in Japanese Religions New York: NYU Press, 2015. 240 pages. Hardcover $65.00; paperback $17.00. isbn 9781479827626 (hardcover); 978-1479884063 (paperback).BARBARA AMBROS'S Women in Japanese Religions is the first book of its kind to take up the history of in Japanese religions. Although a handful of books focusing on in the Buddhist tradition have been published, apart from Women and Religion in Japan (Okuda and Okano 1998) there has been no monograph on in Japanese religions as a whole. Ambros's book fills this lacuna.The strength of Ambros's work lies both in its comprehensiveness and nuanced manner of framing her object of discussion. In her postcolonial feminist critique, Ambros treats the religious lives of Japanese over an extended period of time-from the Jomon period (ca. 10,000-300 bce) up to the present time- contextualizing their engagement in various religious traditions within the contexts of social, economic, political, and legal history. Interrogating, and acknowledging, the role of historically in Japanese society as accomplices in the expression and maintenance of patriarchal norms, she makes no concession to monumentalizing desires to portray as mere victims or heroes.Throughout the book, Ambros looks closely at women's agency in the changing social structure, and in particular, at changes in family structure. Focusing particularly on marriage patterns and inheritance rights, she analyzes a wide range of writings on and by women, insisting on looking at old sources with new eyes, and in particular, through the eyes of women (3). Ambros presents a corrective narrative of in Japanese religions based on her interdisciplinary endeavor connecting different disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, and archeology. But at times her discussion of social conditions and changes seems almost to overwhelm and supplant the discussion of religion, which is meant to be primarily illuminated.Ambros argues that were not just suffering from the sexist propaganda of Confucianism and Buddhism as conventionally described. For women, these religions, including Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity, Shintoism, Shamanism, and new religions were an outlet to exercise their autonomy and agency. Ambros particularly identifies the Confucian-inspired family structure-that is, the virilocal, patrilineal household-as well as the increasing notion of defilement associated with major religious doctrines, as the cause of female exclusion in medieval Japanese society.In her introduction, Ambros begins with a critique of the androcentric character of previous scholarship. Certainly, Ambros's position is well taken, though her criticism of Bernard Faure is not entirely accurate. In her quick dismissal, Ambros states that his works fall in line with much existing scholarship-particularly Japanese scholarship influenced by Marxist paradigms-that depicts religion as a mere means of oppression, especially for women (2). Yet, Faure's The Power of Denial (2003) is a work that challenges the linear narrative of progress in the Marxist scholarship and, drawing upon various examples of Buddhist women, including literary representations of female divinities, demonstrates that in these contexts were not always silent, passive victims.The book consists of nine chapters. Chapter 1 examines two proto-historic representations of gender-clay figures from the Jomon period and the story of Himiko-while chapter 2 deals with mythological constructions of masculinity, femininity, and gender relations during the time when the Kojiki and Nihon shoki were compiled. Due to the fragmentary character of the surviving record from these periods, the interpretations of the examples given in these two chapters are inconclusive in informing us about the sociopolitical and religious status of at these times. …