I've sent the organizer the outline of the remarks I'd planned, but I doubt he'll be able to make enough sense of them to share with the audience. Perhaps he can at least read this poem from the Man'yoshu.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
無縁仏へ
Because of continuing jury duty, I will not be able to participate in a teach-in tomorrow on the recent Japanese calamities. Our university has little in the way of Japanologists, so I was to be part of it, and had a pert little talk mapped out - "Tenbatsu (天罰) and Muenbotoke (無縁仏)," which was to recall discussions of theodicy during the year I spent in Japan in 1992-93 in connection with Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara's much-publicized but unrepresentative claim that the earthquake was a kind of divine punishment (tenbatsu) for Japan, and then focus on the problem of the unburied dead, building on recent research on "funeral Buddhism" by Buddhologist Mark Rowe.
I've sent the organizer the outline of the remarks I'd planned, but I doubt he'll be able to make enough sense of them to share with the audience. Perhaps he can at least read this poem from the Man'yoshu.
I've sent the organizer the outline of the remarks I'd planned, but I doubt he'll be able to make enough sense of them to share with the audience. Perhaps he can at least read this poem from the Man'yoshu.
