Review of: Tullio Federico Lobetti, Ascetic Practices in Japanese Religion

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Tullio Federico Lobetti, Ascetic Practices in Japanese Religion New York: Routledge. Japan Anthropology Workshop Series, 2013; 192 pages. Cloth, $137.75. isbn 978-0415833752.Anthropological research on Shugendo ... is far outnumbered by of religious studies and history, yet it offers innovative perspectives with multidisci- plinary implications.1 The method of analysis that distinguishes the of Shugendo from of other disciplines is the emphasis that anthropologists place on understanding Shugendo within and beyond specific contexts: consider- ing the relational dynamics, for instance, between Shugendo and various dimen- sions of social life in contemporary Japan, while striving to discern its insights-what Shugendo can teach us, directly or indirectly, about the human con- dition. Situating its pantheistic ontology, rites, and political history in the gamut of anthropological thought, ethnographies of specific Shugendo contexts can lead to more general theories of asceticism and the soteriological trinity of life, death, and rebirth, which is pervasive in Asian thought (see Obeyesekere 2002)Lobetti's recent work, Ascetic Practices in Japanese Religion, is a solid contribution to the of Shugendo because it offers a multifaceted analysis of contem- porary Shugendo, exploring its influence on sociality and contemplating its more existential aspects. A common problem in the study of contemporary Shugendo is tracing ascetic social networks because modern communication and transportation technologies-for example, social media websites and bullet trains-collapse time and space in ways that extend social networks far beyond any local context. As such, contemporary ascetics herald from everywhere to attend Shugendo retreats and it is difficult to determine the locus of their faith. Ascetics tend to be religious pluralists and belong, in varying capacities, to other sects and religions. This makes tracing ascetic networks a challenging task. In Ascetic Practices in Japanese Religion, Lobetti rectifies how asceticism is manifesting in the complicated inter-sectarian networks of contemporary religious affiliation by participating in retreats through- out the country, attempting to determine what the core of Shugendo, in its ubiquity yet multifarious orthodoxies, might be-for who leap between sects and rites and for who are devoted to one in particular. Divided into five chapters and introduction, at 136 pages it is a lean text. Without grounding in a single site, it may come across as somewhat superficial to ethnographers, yet it still offers useful ethnographic observations and theoretical insights into the structure and values of asceticism in contemporary Japanese religion.Lobetti positions his text as a work of philosophical anthropology and he frames Shugendo as tradition. The crux of his theoretical argu- ment is that Shugendo is a bodily hermeneutic based on a model of ontological progression-of becoming a more perfectible being through ascesis. This process is described with the term corporis ascendus-an embodied ascent to higher onto- logical status through ascesis. While most ascetics do shugyo ... to acquire an uninterrupted flow of this-worldly benefits, the exemplar case of corporis ascendus, he argues, are the sokushinbutsu ... of Tohoku, those who have attained Bud- dhahood in their own living bodies through self-mummification (see Hori 1962; Jeremiah 2010). Having willfully entered earthen chamber buried three meters underground, covered in large stones and with nothing more than a bamboo pole connecting to the surface for air, the ascetics designing to become sokushinbutsu fasted and meditated into death and thereby, according to Lobetti, achieved the highest status possible within their ascetic value system-complete self- effacement leading to corporeal immortality and sainthood. …