Percival Lowell and religious syncretism in 19th century Japan

Abstract. The article is devoted to the consideration of such an American researcher as Percival Lowell, his works about Asian countries, mainly books about Japan, which is an excellent example of religious syncretism, namely the fusion and coexistence of Shintoism and Buddhism. However, analyzing this problem within the framework of the XIX century is impossible without touching on the deeper layers of history, which are the origins of the situation considered in the article. Therefore, in this article attention is also paid not only to the era of the end of the Tokugawa shogunate and the Meiji Restoration, but also to earlier periods of time. Also, an important factor is that religious syncretism is viewed largely through the prism of works of Percival Lowell, who is the pioneer of multiculturalism. He was one of the first to explore various spheres of the life of Japanese society, and the orientalist told about his discoveries through his books to the European public, for which the East was something distant and incomprehensible. In the works "Spirit of the Far East", "Occult Japan, or the way of the gods" he touches upon the issues of family, personality, nature, art and religion, which is especially interesting for us within the framework of this article. Thanks to these and other studies, it is possible to get a picture of what exactly religious syncretism was in Japan in XIX c.

Keywords: history of Japan, Percival Lowell, religion, Shinto, Buddhism, XIX c.

For citation: Martynov D. E., Martynova Yu. A., Oshueva P. S. Percival Lowell and religious syncretism in Japan in XIX c. // Modern Oriental Studies. 2022. № 1. P. (in Russ.) https://doi.org/10.24412/2686-9675-1-2022-81-90