Author Affiliations: University of California, Santa Barbara
關鍵詞
Buddhist economics; Buddhist literature; merit-making; general economy; Buddhist and Shinto relations; Buddhist temple economic activities
摘要
This article presents an overview of the economic dimensions of premodern Japanese Buddhism—both economic ideas and activities—by focusing on representative primary sources and important secondary scholarship. It opens with a discussion of economic activities in which temple-shrines and their personnel were directly engaged in. Next, in order to find some type of theorization for those practices, it examines a number of popular stories from medieval and early modern Japan (some of which are still circulating today as children’s tales) that deal with the origin of wealth. It problematizes their underlying economic thought, including examples of resistance to dominant ideas about production and wealth. Finally, the paper offers some considerations on the ‘general economy’ of premodern Japanese Buddhism.
目次
Buddhist Economic Practices 165 Sacred Properties (butsumotsu 仏物, shinmotsu 神物) and the Origin of Wealth 169 Fiction, Wealth, and the Sacred 173 Considerations 180 Wealth, Power, and Resistance 186 Concluding Remarks on the Buddho-Shinto General Economy 191
