Purpose of this Blog

I intend to use this blog as a means to digitize my findings on the subject of Japanese religion and folklore. My research mainly revolves around the subject of syncretism (shinbutsu shūgō 神仏習合), the fusion of the native deities of Japan with the foreign Buddhist deities and their respective cults. As for the eventual research question, I would like to keep a few options open at this point, but I am inclined to focus on folk religion in Japanese history, rather than the dogmatic religion that throve among the members of the monastic elite. Especially the tangible expressions of this kind of religion (votive statues, home altars and the like) are of great importance for my research. Religious objects (神具 shingu / 仏具 butsugu) deserve to be subject to further analysis for they provide indisputable evidence concerning the syncretic tendencies of the Japanese in the past. Furthermore, as they are the local manifestation of the universal human tendency to attribute sacred powers to certain objects, we will be able to compare the object(s) of our choice with similar ones from different cultures or periods.