Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author Ambros, Barbara, 1968-

Title Bones of contention : animals and religion in contemporary Japan / Barbara R. Ambros
Published Honolulu : University of Hawaiʻi Press, ©2012
©2012

Copies

Description 1 online resource
Contents Order, karma, and kinship : animals in Japanese history and culture -- Masking commodification and sacralizing consumption : the emergence of animal memorial rites -- Pets, death, and taxes : the legal boundaries of religion -- Embodying hybridity : the necrogeography of pet memorial spaces -- Vengeful spirits or loving spiritual companions? : changing views of pet spirits
Summary "Since the 1990s the Japanese pet industry has grown to a trillion-yen business and estimates place the number of pets above the number of children under the age of fifteen. There are between 6,000 to 8,000 businesses in the Japanese pet funeral industry, including more than 900 pet cemeteries. Of these about 120 are operated by Buddhist temples, and Buddhist mortuary rites for pets have become an institutionalized practice. In Bones of Contention, Barbara Ambros investigates what religious and intellectual traditions constructed animals as subjects of religious rituals and how pets have been included or excluded in the necral landscapes of contemporary Japan. Pet mortuary rites are emblems of the ongoing changes in contemporary Japanese religions. The increase in single and nuclear-family households, marriage delays for both males and females, the falling birthrate and graying of society, the occult boom of the 1980s, the pet boom of the 1990s, the anti-religious backlash in the wake of the 1995 Aum Shinrikyō incident--all of these and more have contributed to Japan's contested history of pet mortuary rites. Ambros uses this history to shed light on important questions such as: Who (or what) counts as a family member? What kinds of practices should the state recognize as religious and thus protect financially and legally? Is it frivolous or selfish to keep, pamper, or love an animal? Should humans and pets be buried together? How do people reconcile the deeply personal grief that follows the loss of a pet and how do they imagine the afterlife of pets? And ultimately, what is the status of animals in Japan? Bones of Contention is a book about how Japanese people feel and think about pets and other kinds of animals and, in turn, what pets and their people have to tell us about life and death in Japan today."--Publisher's website
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
In English
Print version record
digitized 2011 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL
SUBJECT Chōsen Kōgei Kenkyūkai gnd
Subject Human-animal relationships -- Japan
Buddhist memorial rites and ceremonies -- Japan
Pets -- Funeral rites and ceremonies -- Japan
Pets -- Death -- Religious aspects -- Buddhism.
RELIGION -- Comparative Religion.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Sociology of Religion.
Pets -- Death -- Religious aspects -- Buddhism
Pets -- Funeral rites and ceremonies
Buddhist memorial rites and ceremonies
Human-animal relationships
Heimtiere
Tod
Zeremonie
Ritus
Buddhismus
Religiosität
Bestattungsritus
Trauerritual
Haustiere
Pets -- Death -- Religious aspects -- Buddhism.
Pet funeral rites and ceremonies -- Japan.
Buddhist memorial rites and ceremonies -- Japan.
Human-animal relationships -- Japan.
Japan
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780824837204
0824837207
9780824871512
0824871510