Ryan Schram

ryan.schram@sydney.edu.au

Mills 169 (A26)

March 5, 2015

• Why are you here?
• What do you want to learn?
• What do you hope to achieve in this class?

Get up, introduce yourselves to each other. Talk about it. Take note of what other people say.

• What did people tell you?
• Was it different than what you expected?
• What goals do you have for this semester?

The Blackboard site for this class is available for those already registered: http://elearning.sydney.edu.au/. We will submit all of the work for this class there.

If you are not signed up for the class, you can get the unit outline and all of the information for this class at this public site: http://anthro.rschram.org/2667.

For next week, your assignment is to read the unit outline, assignment instructions, and the guides to the unit online. For the first tutorial (in Week 2), bring an example of a religious practice you would like to learn more about. We will meet in Fisher Library.

How do you define 'religion'?

• Write down a definition of religion off the top of your head.
• You can consult with the people nearby.
• How do you know whether something is or is not religious?

• A papal conclave, e.g. the meeting of Roman Catholic cardinals that elected Pope Francis.

• Many families in Japan place an altar in their home, opening it periodically to place offerings of rice and fruit, and offer prayers to deceased relatives. They can contain objects which are memorials to deceased relatives and are infused with their depleted life-essence, or kuyō. In this way Japanese families bring the spirits of ancestors into their home so they can maintain contact with them. (Rambelli 2010)

• Urban families, who tend to be more skeptical of religion, have started to buy shrines which appear from the outside to be less traditional looking. Rather than ornate woodworking in the classical styles of butsudan, the Japanese company Yakigen sells Danish and Italian styled models with a more sleek profile and similar look to other furniture. These are called “contemporary altars” (gendai butsudan).
• Yakigen does not want people to hide their altar or obscure it with camouflage. Rather they want the concept of kuyō (depleted life essence) to be part of their brand, and the brand of Japan itself, much like the concepts of sushi, geisha and sumō are internationally known. (Nelson 2008)
  ## Bible magazines: Is it religious? ##
• Revolve: The Complete New Testament, is a glossy magazine published by Thomas Nelson in 2003.

Revolve: The Complete New Testament. 2003. Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson.

Nelson, John. 2008. “Household Altars in Contemporary Japan: Rectifying Buddhist ‘Ancestor Worship’ with Home Décor and Consumer Choice.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 35 (2): 305–30.

Rambelli, Fabio. 2010. “Home Buddhas: Historical Processes and Modes of Representation of the Sacred in the Japanese Buddhist Family Altar (butsudan).” Japanese Religion 35 (1-2): 63–86.