=
×

Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Head To Head
Log In
Register
The Modern Antiquarian Forum »
National Geographic and Celts
Log In to post a reply
137 messages
Topic View: Flat | Threaded
gorseddphungus
185 posts

More Questions
Mar 17, 2006, 19:36
Littlestone,

No problem. I certainly wouldn't have replied to your questions if I had known there was NO true desire to discuss anything, only some hidden intentions from your good self to 'prove' whether I am the 'real thing' (perhaps you can explain what you mean by that). I have not posted here for ages because of the time one wastes in reading things unrelated to prehistory (usually petty bickering etc) - it is easy to learn so much more by using the same amount of time reading something in a library! Mind you, these kind of forums do indeed provide some interesting links, like fourwinds, fitzcoraldo, tiompan, peterh, etc have done for me earlier on.

And I still like the somewhat candid schoolyard innocence behind the rude way in which you have directed all of your 'questions' at me (and yet so far argumenting so little about the subject yourself ) so I will keep replying to your questions in Japanese and hope you can decide whether I am proficient enough in that language. What will you do next if I were to tell you I was also born in the Basque countries!! Look for elementary tests in that language? Heh!

Now, jokes apart, I don't see why you find my suggestions on the Jomon 'strange'. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of Japanese prehistory will be able to recognise them in modern research. I will once more recommend the recent books I mentioned. Of one thing you can be sure, I never 'cut and paste'. I put time and energy into my verborrhea to talk about things that I feel passionate about. So if I have made some vital error in my hurried observations (as you just allow yourself to merely point out), surely you can be the one to say what, so we can all learn.

You ask what is the word used to call shinto in Japanese. There isn't one that many Japanese can tell you or me. As I said in my earlier reply, shinto is not strictly *only* a religion, it is something like a way of life. Westerners who arrive in Japan (especially the Germans) always ask cumbersome intellectual questions related to what they have read about shinto in their guidebooks but the fact of the matter is that what people do in shinto is non-definable. Clap your hands, thank the gods, throw a coin, wish for health and long life... It is a religion in the same way it is just a ritual or a way of life. In that way, I believe that shinto is a very ancient sacred 'religion' (likely to have involved nature and ancestor worship in its origins) which has unclear bounds with the profane - unlike Judeo-Christianity for instance. The very fact of talking now about shinto is equally just an intellectual waste of time although there is an enormous bulk of literature (mostly Western of course like there is about Japan). And the rituals involved are kept and known only by the monks, which is also, in my opinion, very 'megalithic'.

As for your other question, what is the most suitable word for 'temple' - it is jinja. I call them all temples but strictly speaking only the temples are the places where there is a worship of buddhism (ie the imported organised religion). The majority of tiny little eerye shrines around the countryside of Japan are of course Japanese shinto, which of course dates to pre-Buddhist times.
In reply to:
Re: Japan questions (Littlestone)		 Replies:
Temple (gorseddphungus)
Re: More Questions (Littlestone)
Topic Outline:
The Modern Antiquarian Forum Index