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THE HISTORY OF EARLY MODERN JAPAN
JOURNAL ASSIGNMENT FOUR
- BE ORGANIZED AROUND A SPECIFIC THESIS STATEMENT
- INCORPORATE SPECIFIC ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES DRAWN FROM THE ASSOCIATED ASSIGNED READINGS
- INCLUDE APPROPRIATE ANNOTATION (AND A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SOURCES CITED) CREDITING THE SOURCES FOR YOUR ILLUSTRATIONS.
an example of an informal analytical essay
One of the two
selections you have read for this assignment describes what occurs during
a pilgrimage to Ise while the second recounts several miracle tales
associated with the eighty-eight temple pilgrimage route on the island
of Shikoku.
What do these two sources (and Ian Reader's introduction to the second selection) tell you about the role of religion in the modernization process occurring during the Tokugawa era in Japanese history?
Reflect on how these selections serve to illustrate the interaction between such elements as religion, economic development and the emergence of a Japanese national consciousness as exhibited in the phenomenon of the religious pilgrimage as a form of both spiritual devotion and secular entertainment.
What traditions inherited from the past helped contribute to the growing importance attached to religious pilgrimage in the Tokugawa period? How do pilgrimage practices illustrate such well-established Japanese character traits as pragmatism and love of ritual? What other characteristics of "typical" social, religious and economic behavior are exhibited by those participating (or profiting from) pilgrimage-related activities?
How do innovations in other areas of Japanese life (transportation and rural development patterns, for instance) contribute to the rise of pilgrimage as an important sign of religious devotion, though one not particularly widely practiced earlier in Japanese history? How do pilgrimages such as those described contribute to (or reflect the results of) the modernization process at work in other areas of Japanese life (the growth of a national consciousness, for example, or the rise of literacy)?