This is the first book to describe in details the fire rites of Japanese Tantrism,called in Japanese goma,from Sanskrit homa.The Shingon goma is a living contemporary ritual whose origins go back to Vedic India and to Indo-European antiquity.

Although Indian and Tibetan versions of tantric Buddhism are increasingly recognized, the East Asian variations on this practice remain largely overlooked. The only book to present the entire breadth of tantric Buddhism in East Asia, this collection remedies that situation with 12 key essays drawn from rare sources. Organized into four sections--China and Korea, Japan, Deities and Practices, and Influences on Japanese Religion--the book brings together a "critical mass" of scholarship, with the potential to create a sea change in the understanding of this subject

Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of what we call “religion.” There was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning. But when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country had to contend with this Western idea. In this book, Jason Ananda Josephson reveals how Japanese officials invented religion in Japan and traces the sweeping intellectual, legal, and cultural changes that followed. More than a tale of oppression or hegemony, Josephson’s account demonstrates that the process of articulating religion offered the Japanese state a valuable opportunity. In addition to carving out space for belief in Christianity and certain forms of Buddhism, Japanese officials excluded Shinto from the category. Instead, they enshrined it as a national ideology while relegating the popular practices of indigenous shamans and female mediums to the category of “superstitions”—and thus beyond the sphere of tolerance. Josephson argues that the invention of religion in Japan was a politically charged, boundary-drawing exercise that not only extensively reclassified the inherited materials of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto to lasting effect, but also reshaped, in subtle but significant ways, our own formulation of the concept of religion today. This ambitious and wide-ranging book contributes an important perspective to broader debates on the nature of religion, the secular, science, and superstition.

Language in the Buddhist Tantra of Japan dismantles the preconception that Buddhism is a religion of mystical silence, arguing that language is in fact central to the Buddhist tradition. By examining the use of 'extraordinary language'-evocations calling on the power of the Buddha-in Japanese Buddhist Tantra, Richard K. Payne shows that such language was not simply cultural baggage carried by Buddhist practitioners from South to East Asia. Rather, such language was a key element in the propagation of new forms of belief and practice. In contrast to Western approaches to the philosophy of language, which are grounded in viewing language as a form of communication, this book argues that it is the Indian and East Asian philosophies of language that shed light on the use of language in meditative and ritual practices in Japan. It also illuminates why language was conceived as an effective means of progress on the path from delusion to awakening.

"Buddhism is often preconceived and stereotyped as a religion of 'mystical silence', but Richard K. Payne argues that language is in fact central to the Buddhist tradition. By examining the use of Japanese Buddhist Tantra and 'extraordinary language', invocations calling on the power of the Buddha, Payne shows that such language was not simply 'cultural baggage' carried by Buddhist practitioners from South to East Asia. Rather, such language was a key element in the propagation of new forms of belief and practice. Whereas Western approaches to the philosophy of language are grounded in language as a form of communication, this book argues that it is the Indian and East Asian philosophies of language that shed light on the use of language in meditative and ritual practices in Japan. It also explains why it was conceived as an effective means of progress on the path from delusion to 'awakening'"--

In premodern Japan, legitimization of power and knowledge in various contexts was sanctioned by consecration rituals (kanjō) of Buddhist origin. This is the first book to address in a comprehensive way the multiple forms and aspects of these rituals also in relation to other Asian contexts. The multidisciplinary chapters in the book address the origins of these rituals in ancient Persia and India and their developments in China and Tibet, before discussing in depth their transformations in medieval Japan. In particular, kanjō rituals are examined from various perspectives: imperial ceremonies, Buddhist monastic rituals, vernacular religious forms (Shugendō mountain cults, Shinto lineages), rituals of bodily transformation involving sexual practice, and the performing arts: a history of these developments, descriptions of actual rituals, and reference to religious and intellectual arguments based on under-examined primary sources. No other book presents so many cases of kanjō in such depth and breadth. This book is relevant to readers interested in Buddhist studies, Japanese religions, the history of Japanese culture, and in the intersections between religious doctrines, rituals, legitimization, and performance.

The book is the first comprehensive and illustrated treasury of esoteric mudras in the English language. Mudras in Japan by Lokesh Chandra and his late wife Sharada Rani is a collection of symbolic hand postures used in the rituals of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism of the Shingon denomination. The mudras have been an integral part of Buddhist iconography as well as of ritual. In Tantric rituals, the recitation of a mantra was accompanied by a mudra, and a ritual action. In the Mahavairocana-sutra, mudras are vital constituents of worship and meditation. Japan has the earliest manuscript of the mudras. The most ancient scroll is from the pen of Subhakarasimha of Nalanda, who lived from 637 to 735. The copy at the Onjoji monastery is dated 855. Another manuscript dated 864 has Mudras of the Susiddhi-tantra.