Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan

Ian Reader and George Tanabe's Practically Religious is a scholarly study of the worldly benefit tradition in Japanese religion, genze riyaku, the everyday petitionary practices asking for health, prosperity and safety that pervade ordinary Japanese religious life alongside its more formally theorized doctrines. Its authority rests on both authors' standing as academic specialists in Japanese religion and on the University of Hawaii Press's recognized strength in Asian studies publishing. The book's particular strength is taking seriously a dimension of practice that earlier scholarship on Japanese religion had often treated as beneath serious doctrinal attention, grounding its argument in fieldwork and documentary evidence from actual shrines and temples. Its limit is scope, a study of common devotional practice across Buddhism and Shinto together rather than a doctrinal history of either tradition on its own, so a claim about formal sectarian doctrine needs a source focused on that tradition specifically.