Pilgrimages and Spiritual Quests in Japan

<p>This exciting new book is a detailed examination of pilgrimages in Japan including the meanings of travel transformation and the discovery of identity through encounters with the sacred in a variety of interesting dimensions in both historical and contemporary Japanese culture linked by the unifying theme of a spiritual quest. </p><p>Several fascinating new approaches to traditional forms of pilgrimage are put forward by a wide range of specialists in anthropology religion and cultural studies who set Japanese pilgrimage in a wider comparative perspective. They apply models of pilgrimage to quests for vocational fulfilment examining cases as diverse as the civil service painting and poetry and present ethnographies of contemporary reconstructions of old spiritual quests as conflicting (and sometimes global) demands impinge on the time and space of would-be pilgrims.</p>