The Ritual of Rights in Japan challenges the conventional wisdom that the assertion of rights is fundamentally incompatible with Japanese legal, political and s

What to do with the dead? In Imperial Japan, as elsewhere in the modernizing world, answering this perennial question meant relying on age-old solutions. Funera

In premodern Japan, legitimization of power and knowledge in various contexts was sanctioned by consecration rituals (kanjō) of Buddhist origin. This is the fi

Japan is one of the most urbanised and industrialised countries in the world. Yet the Japanese continue to practise a variety of religious rituals and ceremonie

Women, Rites, and Ritual Objects in Premodern Japan, edited by Karen M. Gerhart, is a multidisciplinary examination of rituals featuring women, in which signifi