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Miyamairi
Miyamairi (宮参り, literally "shrine visit") is a traditional Shinto rite of passage in Japan for newborns. Approximately one month after birth (31 days for boys and 33 days for girlsAlice Mabel Bacon, "Japanese Girls and women" revised and enlarged edition, Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1902), parents and grandparents bring the child to a Shinto shrine, to express gratitude to the deities for the birth of a baby and have a shrine priest pray for their health and happiness. The practice is similar to a Christian infant baptism. Today, most Miyamairi are practiced between one month and 100 days after birth. In famous and busy shrines, the ceremony is held every hour, often during weekends. A group of a dozen babies and their families are usually brought into the hall, one group after another. A Shinto priest wearing a costume and headgear appears between the group and the altar, reciting a prayer and swinging a tamagushi is a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Shinto
Shinto () is a religion from Japan. Classified as an East Asian religion by scholars of religion, its practitioners often regard it as Japan's indigenous religion and as a nature religion. Scholars sometimes call its practitioners ''Shintoists'', although adherents rarely use that term themselves. There is no central authority in control of Shinto, with much diversity of belief and practice evident among practitioners. A polytheistic and animistic religion, Shinto revolves around supernatural entities called the . The are believed to inhabit all things, including forces of nature and prominent landscape locations. The are worshiped at household shrines, family shrines, and ''jinja'' public shrines. The latter are staffed by priests, known as , who oversee offerings of food and drink to the specific enshrined at that location. This is done to cultivate harmony between humans and and to solicit the latter's blessing. Other common rituals include the dances, rites of pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Rite Of Passage
A rite of passage is a ceremony or ritual of the passage which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another. It involves a significant change of status in society. In cultural anthropology the term is the Anglicisation of ''rite de passage'', a French term innovated by the ethnographer Arnold van Gennep in his work ''Les rites de passage'', ''The Rites of Passage''. The term is now fully adopted into anthropology as well as into the literature and popular cultures of many modern languages. Original conception In English, Van Gennep's first sentence of his first chapter begins: "Each larger society contains within it several distinctly separate groupings. ... In addition, all these groups break down into still smaller societies in subgroups." The population of a society belongs to multiple groups, some more important to the individual than others. Van Gennep uses the metaphor, "as a kind of house divided into rooms and corridors." A passage occurs when an in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans an archipelago of 6852 islands covering ; the five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu (the "mainland"), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Tokyo is the nation's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto. Japan is the eleventh most populous country in the world, as well as one of the most densely populated and urbanized. About three-fourths of the country's terrain is mountainous, concentrating its population of 123.2 million on narrow coastal plains. Japan is divided into 47 administrative prefectures and eight traditional regions. The Greater Tokyo Ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Alice Mabel Bacon
Alice Mabel Bacon (February 26, 1858 – May 1, 1918) was an American writer, women's educator and a o-yatoi gaikokujin, foreign advisor to the Japanese government in Meiji period Japan. Early life Alice Mabel Bacon was the youngest of the three daughters and two sons of Reverend Leonard Bacon, pastor of the Center Church in New Haven, Connecticut, and professor in the Yale Divinity School, and his second wife, Catherine Elizabeth Terry. In 1872, when Alice was fourteen, Japanese envoy Mori Arinori selected her father's home as a residence for Japanese women being sent overseas for education by the Meiji government, as part of the Iwakura Mission.Methodist Episcopal Church, 286-87 Alice received twelve-year-old Yamakawa Sutematsu as her house-guest. The two girls were of similar age, and soon formed a close bond. For ten years the two girls were like sisters and enhanced each other's interests in their different cultures.Takagi, p. 78 Education and career Bacon graduated fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious .... It is the Major religious groups, world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global population. Its adherents, known as Christians, are estimated to make up a majority of the population in Christianity by country, 157 countries and territories, and believe that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God, whose coming as the Messiah#Christianity, messiah was Old Testament messianic prophecies quoted in the New Testament, prophesied in the Hebrew Bible (called the Old Testament in Christianity) and chronicled in the New Testamen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Infant Baptism
Infant baptism is the practice of baptising infants or young children. Infant baptism is also called christening by some faith traditions. Most Christians belong to denominations that practice infant baptism. Branches of Christianity that practice infant baptism include Catholics, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, and among Protestants, several denominations: Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and other Reformed denominations, Methodists, Nazarenes, Moravians, and United Protestants. Opposition to infant baptism is termed "catabaptism". Ceremony The exact details of the baptismal ceremony vary among Christian denominations. Many follow a prepared ceremony, called a rite or liturgy. In a typical ceremony, parents or godparents bring their child to their congregation's priest or minister. The rite used would be the same as that denomination's rite for adults, i.e., by pouring holy water ( affusion) or by sprinkling water ( aspersion). Easte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Tamagushi
is a form of Shinto offering made from a ''sakaki''-tree branch decorated with shide strips of washi paper, silk, or cotton. At Japanese weddings, funerals, miyamairi and other ceremonies at Shinto shrines, ''tamagushi'' are ritually presented to the ''kami'' (spirits or gods) by parishioners, shrine maidens or kannushi priests. Linguistic history The Japanese word ''tamagushi'' is usually written with the ''kanji'' ''tama'' 玉 "jade; gem; jewel; precious; ball; bead" and ''kushi'' 串 "string together; skewer; spit; stick", or sometimes written 玉ぐし with ''hiragana'' since the official Tōyō kanji do not include 串. The earliest recorded transcription of ''tamagushi'' is 玉籤, using ''kuji'' 籤 "bamboo slip; (divination) lot; written oracle; raffle; lottery" instead of ''kushi''. The (c. 720 CE) '' Nihon Shoki'' "Chronicles of Japan", which repeatedly mentions a 500-branched ''masakaki'' 真榊 "true ''sakaki''" tree (tr. Aston 1896:43, 47, 121), is the ''loc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Shinto In Japan
Shinto () is a religion from Japan. Classified as an East Asian religion by scholars of religion, its practitioners often regard it as Japan's indigenous religion and as a nature religion. Scholars sometimes call its practitioners ''Shintoists'', although adherents rarely use that term themselves. There is no central authority in control of Shinto, with much diversity of belief and practice evident among practitioners. A polytheistic and animistic religion, Shinto revolves around supernatural entities called the . The are believed to inhabit all things, including forces of nature and prominent landscape locations. The are worshiped at household shrines, family shrines, and ''jinja'' public shrines. The latter are staffed by priests, known as , who oversee offerings of food and drink to the specific enshrined at that location. This is done to cultivate harmony between humans and and to solicit the latter's blessing. Other common rituals include the dances, rites of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ceremonies In Japan
A ceremony (, ) is a unified ritualistic event with a purpose, usually consisting of a number of artistic components, performed on a special occasion. The word may be of Etruscan origin, via the Latin '' caerimonia''. Church and civil (secular) ceremonies According to Dally Messenger and Alain de Botton, in most Western countries the values and ideals articulated in both church and civil ceremonies are generally similar. The difference is in what Messenger calls the "supernatural infrastructure" or de Botton the "implausible supernatural element".Messenger, Dally; ''Murphy's Law and the Pursuit of Happiness: a History of the Civil Celebrant Movement'', Spectrum Publications, Melbourne (Australia), 2012 Most churches and religions claim some extra advantage conferred by the deity e.g. Roman Catholics believe that through the words of consecration in the mass ceremony, God himself becomes actually present on the altar. Both church and civil ceremonies share the powerful p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |