Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan:
Buddhism and Its Persecution
James Edward Ketelaar

Winner of the 1991 Hans Rosenhaupt Memorial Book Award of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
Finalist, 1993 Book Award of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association
Winner of the 1992 Hiromi Arisawa Award of the Association of American University Presses

Paper | 1993 | $45.00 / £30.95 | ISBN: 9780691024813
299 pp. | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4

Shopping Cart | Reviews

How did Buddhism, so prominent in Japanese life for over a thousand years, become the target of severe persecution in the social and political turmoil of the early Meiji era? How did it survive attacks against it and reconstitute itself as an increasingly articulate and coherent belief system and a bastion of the Japanese national heritage? Here James Ketelaar elucidates not only the development of Buddhism in the late nineteenth century but also the strategies of the Meiji state.

Review:

"Eloquent and provocative. [This] is one of only a few studies that tackle the question of traditional religions in modernizing Japan."--John Breen, Monumenta Nipponica

"A superb narrative about religion in nineteenth-century Japan. . . . One of the best books available that discusses religion in modern Japan."--William R. LaFleur, Journal of Church and State

"Well-researched and insightful."--Janine A. Sawada, Journal of Asian Studies.

This book has been translated into:

• Japanese

Subject Areas:

• Asian and Asian American Studies
• Asian and Asian American Studies
• Religion

Shopping Cart:

For customers in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Asia, and Australia
Paper: $45.00 ISBN: 9780691024813

For customers in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and India
Paper: £30.95 ISBN: 9780691024813

Prices subject to change without notice

File created: 6/10/2013

Questions and comments to: webmaster@press.princeton.edu
Princeton University Press