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Podcast: New Books in Buddhist Studies
Episode: Heather Blair, âReal and Imagined: The Peak of Gold in Heian Japanâ (Harvard U Asia Center, 2015)
Description: In her recent monograph, Real and Imagined: The Peak of Gold in Heian Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2015), Heather Blair explores the religious and institutional history of Kinpusen, a mountain in central Japan that served as both a pilgrimage destination for aristocrats from the capital and as a site for mountain asceticism.
Focusing her attention on aristocratic, male lay patronsâwomen were barred from climbing the mountainâshe shows how the urban elite saw the mountains (and, in this case, specifically Kinpusen) as the capitalâs opposite, as an untamed place to which one might go to gain s...