The Dao Companion to Japanese Confucian Philosophy will be part of the handbook series Dao Companion to Chinese Philosophy, published by Springer. This series is being edited by Professor Huang Yong, Professor of Philosophy at Kutztown University and Editor of Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy. This volume includes original essays by scholars from the U.S., Europe, Japan, and China, discussing important philosophical writings by Japanese Confucian philosophers. The main focus, historically, will be the early-modern period (1600-1868), when much original Confucian philosophizing occurred, and Confucianism in modern Japan. The Dao Companion to Japanese Confucian Philosophy makes a significant contribution to the Dao handbook series, and equally to the field of Japanese philosophy. This new volume including original philosophical studies will be a major contribution to the study of Confucianism generally and Japanese philosophy in particular.

How the I Ching became one of the most widely read and influential books in the world The I Ching originated in China as a divination manual more than three thousand years ago. In 136 BCE the emperor declared it a Confucian classic, and in the centuries that followed, this work had a profound influence on the philosophy, religion, art, literature, politics, science, technology, and medicine of various cultures throughout East Asia. Jesuit missionaries brought knowledge of the I Ching to Europe in the seventeenth century, and the American counterculture embraced it in the 1960s. Here Richard Smith tells the extraordinary story of how this cryptic and once obscure book became one of the most widely read and extensively analyzed texts in all of world literature. In this concise history, Smith traces the evolution of the I Ching in China and throughout the world, explaining its complex structure, its manifold uses in different cultures, and its enduring appeal. He shows how the indigenous beliefs and customs of Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Tibet "domesticated" the text, and he reflects on whether this Chinese classic can be compared to religious books such as the Bible or the Qur'an. Smith also looks at how the I Ching came to be published in dozens of languages, providing insight and inspiration to millions worldwide—including ardent admirers in the West such as Leibniz, Carl Jung, Philip K. Dick, Allen Ginsberg, Hermann Hesse, Bob Dylan, Jorge Luis Borges, and I. M. Pei. Smith offers an unparalleled biography of the most revered book in China's entire cultural tradition, and he shows us how this enigmatic ancient classic has become a truly global phenomenon.

Peter Francis Kornicki and Ian James McMullen have put together a remarkable collection of essays on different aspects of religion in Japan by an international team of contributors. The essays in this 1996 book cover a wide range of subjects, from the new religions of post-war Japan to beliefs about fox-possession in the Heian period, and from French missionaries in Okinawa in the mid-nineteenth century to the Ainu bear festival in Hokkaido. Other chapters examine the religious life of Minamoto no Yoritomo, the founder of the first shogunate in the late twelfth century, and the role of pilgrimage in Japanese religion. The essays offer fresh insights into the rich religious traditions of Japan, many of which have been previously neglected in the English-language writing on Japan.

This book represents an ambitious effort to bring leading Yijing scholars together to examine the globalisation and localisation of the 'Book of Changes' from cross-cultural and comparative perspectives. It focuses on how the Yijing has been used to support ideologies, converted into knowledge, and assimilated into global cultures in the modern period, transported from the Sinosphere to British, American and French cultural traditions, travelling from East Asia to Europe and the United States. The book provides conceptualised narratives and cross-cultural analyses of the global popularisation and local assimilation of the Yijing, highlighting the transformation and application of the Yijing in different cultural traditions, and demonstrating how it acquired different meanings and took on different roles in the context of a global setting. In presenting a novel contribution to understandings of the multifaceted nature of the Yijing, this book is essential reading for scholars and students interested in the 'Classic of Changes'. It is also a useful reference for those studying Chinese culture, Asian philosophy, East Asian studies, and translation studies.