Course Packet REL 444/544 Medieval Japanese Buddhism, Fall 2024 (Focus pages marked with asterisk*)

Introductory background material for those without coursework in Buddhism or Japanese Religion

• 1. Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) 9-26.
• 2. Robert A. F. Thurman, trans., The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1987) 56-63, 73-77.*
• 3. Hayao Kawai, "Japanese Mythology: Balancing the Gods," in his Dreams, Myths and Fairy Tales in Japan (Daimon, 1995) 67-97.*

Matrix of Japanese society and religion leading up to the Kamakura Period

• 4. Toshio Kuroda, "Shinto in the History of Japanese Religion," tr. by James Dobbins and Suzanne Gay, Journal of Japanese Studies 7:1 (Winter 1981), 1-21.*
• 5. Joseph Kitagawa, "Chapter 6. The Shadow and the Sun: A Glimpse of the Fujiwara and the Imperial Families in Japan," in his On Understanding Japanese Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 98-116.
• 6. William LaFleur, "Chapter 2 In and out of the Rokudō," in his Karma of Words-Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1983) 26-59 (48-59*).

Matrix of Japanese society and the development of Buddhism into the Kamakura Period

• 7. Helen Craig McCullough, tr. The Tale of the Heike (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1988), 1-6, 17-19, 23-37.*
• 8. Robert E. Morrell, "Tendai's Jien as Buddhist Priest," Early Kamakura Buddhism-A Minority Report, 23-43.
  
• 9. Kazuo OSUMI, “Buddhism in the Kamakura Period,” in The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol 3 Medieval Japan, gen. ed. Kozo YAMAMURA (NY: Cambridge University Press), 544-563 (544-555, 560-563*).
• 10. Jeffrey P. Mass, "The Emergence of the Kamakura Bakufu [Military Government]" in Medieval Japan-Essays in Institutional History, ed. John W. Hall and Jeffrey P. Mass (Stanford: Stanford University Press), 127-156.

The Zen Buddhism of Dōgen

• 11. Mark Unno, “Philosophical Terms in the Zen Buddhist Thought of Dōgen.”*
• 12. Mark Unno, “18. Shushōgi Paragraph 30,” Engaging Dōgen’s Zen, eds. Bret Davis, Jason Wirth, & Brian Schroeder (Boston: Wisdom, 2016), 179-184.*
  
• 13. Norman Waddell & Masao Abe, tr. "Shōbōgenzō Genjōkōan," by Dōgen Kigen, The Eastern Buddhist 5:2 (10/1972), 129-140.*
• 14. Steven Heine, The Zen Poetry of Dogen (Boston: Tuttle, 1997), 1-34.
• 15. Barbara Ruch, "The Other Side of Culture in Medieval Japan," in The Cambridge History of Japan - Volume 3 Medieval Japan, 500-511.*

The Shin Buddhism of Shinran

• 16. Mark Unno, “Key Terms – Pure Land Buddhism and the Philosophy of Hōnen and Shinran.”
  
• 17. Mark Unno, “The Original Buddhist Rebel - Shinran,” Tricycle (Winter 2017), 1-16. 
• 18. Mark Unno, "The Nembutsu of No-Meaning and the Problem of Genres in the Writings and Statements of Gutoku Shinran," The Pure Land 10-11 (12/1994) 1-9.*

Further readings on the background of women and gender in Buddhism and in the context of the Kamakura Period 

• 19. Rita Gross, Buddhism after Patriarchy (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), 29-54.*
• 20. Lori Meeks, Hokkeji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Premodern Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2010) 250-300.