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Podcast: New Books in Medieval History
Episode: Anna Andreeva, “Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan” (Harvard Asia Center, 2017)
Description: In her recent monograph, Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2017), Anna Andreeva focuses on a complex network of religious sites, figures, and texts to help us better understand the way in which Japanese deities were worshipped in medieval Japan. In so doing, she illuminates the medieval stages of a process that led to what was later called Shinto, and adds to the growing body of scholarship that challenges the relatively recent idea that Shinto is simply the native religion of Japan, unchanged since ancient times.To tackle such a...