Religious Space in Japan: Materialisations and Dogmatic Fundaments

Space is one of the fundamental concepts in the study of religions. People gather in halls or decorate a part of their home in order to practise their faith. Rituals require a specially designed space in order to function. Rooms can remind us of the deeds of eminent figures.

In the seminar, we want to use this central category of analysis to look at religions in contemporary Japan, focussing on the various schools of Buddhism. However, the areas of Shinto and the so-called ‘new religions’ will also be considered to some extent. We will deal with some core questions of religious aesthetics in order to familiarise ourselves with central perspectives and methods of religious studies. These methods are intended to enable us to deal specifically with the materiality of religious space in Japan - for example with certain temple districts, temple halls or cityscapes. To this end, we will also deal to some extent with rituals, which in most cases turn a religious space into such a space in the first place. Finally, when dealing with these topics, we should always be interested in the content of the (e.g. Buddhist) teachings that form the basis for a particular spatial concept.

Participants are also very welcome to critically analyse the Buddhist content covered in the seminar from the perspective of their own areas of study and reflect on differences and similarities to Christianity, for example.

An excursion to the Eko House of Japanese Culture in Düsseldorf is planned for Saturday 23 November. Please keep this date as free as possible. However, the seminar can also be attended without taking part in the excursion. The missing excursion will then be replaced.

–This seminar will be held in German–

(Machine translation.)