Religion in Japan is manifested primarily in Shinto and in Buddhism, the two main faiths, which Japanese people often practice simultaneously. According to estimates, as many as 80% of the populace follow Shinto rituals to some degree, worshiping ancestors and spirits at domestic altars and public shrines. An almost equally high number is reported as Buddhist. Syncretic combinations of both, known generally as shinbutsu-shūgō, are common; they represented Japan's dominant religion before the rise of State Shinto in the 19th century.
Shūzō Kuki was a Japanese art critic, philosopher, and poet.
The Kyoto School is the name given to the Japanese philosophical movement centered at Kyoto University that assimilated Western philosophy and religious ideas and used them to reformulate religious and moral insights unique to the East Asian philosophical tradition. However, it is also used to describe postwar scholars who have taught at the same university, been influenced by the foundational thinkers of Kyoto school philosophy, and who have developed distinctive theories of Japanese uniqueness. To disambiguate the term, therefore, thinkers and writers covered by this second sense appear under The Kyoto University Research Centre for the Cultural Sciences.
Keiji Nishitani was a Japanese philosopher. He was a scholar of the Kyoto School and a disciple of Kitarō Nishida. In 1924, Nishitani received his doctorate from Kyoto Imperial University for his dissertation "Das Ideale und das Reale bei Schelling und Bergson". He studied under Martin Heidegger in Freiburg from 1937 to 1939.
Wilhelm Windelband was a German philosopher of the Baden School.
Kanbun is a form of Classical Chinese used in Japan from the Nara period to the mid-20th century. Much of Japanese literature was written in this style and it was the general writing style for official and intellectual works throughout the period. As a result, Sino-Japanese vocabulary makes up a large portion of the Japanese lexicon and much classical Chinese literature is accessible to Japanese readers in some resemblance of the original. The corresponding system in Korean is gugyeol (口訣/구결).
Remembering the Kanji is a series of three volumes by James Heisig, intended to teach the 3,000 most frequent Kanji to students of the Japanese language. The series is available in English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Hungarian, Italian, Swedish, and Hebrew. There is a supplementary book, Remembering the Kana, which teaches the Japanese syllabaries. Remembering the Hanzi by the same author is intended to teach the 3,000 most frequent Hanzi to students of the Chinese language. This book has two variants: Remembering Simplified Hanzi and Remembering Traditional Hanzi, each in two volumes.
Nishi Amane was a Japanese philosopher. He studied law and economics in the Netherlands. He became a political advisor to Tokugawa Yoshinobu before and after the Meiji Restoration. He served as a bureaucrat in the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Popular Affairs, and the Ministry of the Imperial Household under the Meiji government. He was involved in the drafting of the Military Precepts and the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors. With Mori Arinori and others, he formed the Meirokusha and worked to introduce Western philosophy.
Hajime Tanabe was a Japanese philosopher of science, particularly of mathematics and physics. His work brought together elements of Buddhism, scientific thought, Western philosophy, Christianity, and Marxism. In the postwar years, Tanabe coined the concept of metanoetics, proposing that the limits of speculative philosophy and reason must be surpassed by metanoia.
The University of Hawaiʻi Press is a university press that is part of the University of Hawaiʻi.
Valdo H. Viglielmo was a prominent scholar and translator of Japanese literature and works of Japanese philosophy.
Shizuteru Ueda was a Japanese philosopher specialized in philosophy of religion, especially in philosophy of Buddhism and Zen. He was a professor at Kyoto University and considered a third generation member of Kyoto School.
Heinrich Dumoulin, S.J. was a Jesuit theologian, a widely published author on Zen, and a professor of philosophy and history at Sophia University in Tokyo, where he was Professor Emeritus. He was the founder of its Institute for Oriental Religions, as well as the first Director of the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.
The Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture is one of the largest centers in the world devoted to scholarly research on the interface of philosophy and religions within the East and West. Founded in 1976 on the campus of Nanzan University, it has established itself in Japan and around the world as a center of academic excellence through its publications, conferences, and team of permanent researchers.
Jan Van Bragt (1928–2007) was a scholar of Japanese religion and philosophy at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture in Nagoya, Japan, where he served as its first acting director in 1976.
Taitetsu Unno was a scholar, lecturer, and author on the subject of Pure Land Buddhism. His work as a translator has been responsible for making many important Buddhist texts available to the English-speaking world and he is considered one of the leading authorities in the United States on Shin Buddhism, a branch of Pure Land Buddhism. Dr. Unno was an ordained Shin Buddhist minister and the founding Sensei of the Northampton Shin Buddhist Sangha.
Urs App is a historian of ideas, religions, and philosophies with a special interest in the history and modes of interaction between East and West.
Rein Raud is an Estonian academic and author.
William Marvin Bodiford is an American professor and author. He teaches Buddhist Studies and religion in the cultures of Japan and East Asia at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Joseph Stephen O’Leary is an Irish Roman Catholic theologian. He studied literature and theology at Maynooth College. He also studied at the Gregorian University, Rome (1972-3) and in Paris (1977–79). Ordained for the Diocese of Cork and Ross in 1973, he was a chaplain at University College Cork (1980–81). He taught theology at the University of Notre Dame (1981–82) and Duquesne University (1982–83) before moving to Japan in August, 1983. He worked as a researcher at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, Nanzan University, Nagoya (1985–86), where he later held the Roche Chair for Interreligious Research (2015–16). He taught in the Faculty of Letters at Sophia University, Tokyo, from 1988 to 2015.
