I'm thrilled to share my new article, "The Metamorphic Spirit: Mountaineering, Secularity, and Spirituality at the Turn of Japan’s Twentieth Century." 🧵doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2024.2443842 (for open access, see below)
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
It began with a question. Many of us love to get into the mountains--why? Even when unconnected to religion in a formal sense, there's often something deeper going on than just exercise. I'm tracing those underlying ideas, with an emphasis on Japan (my field of expertise). The material is rich!
Brits are bringing Protestant orientations to Japan's mountains, naturalist literature by Emerson and others is being read, Japanese climbers are evaluating their own cultural heritage of mountain worship, women are ascending more peaks, and imperial agendas advance on the sidelines.
It's my first stab at a larger project mapping religious influences and intersections in the modern making of mountaineering--often assumed to be squarely secular. Now halfway through my research year at the Harvard Yenching Institute, I'm knee deep in the project, so let me know what you think!
Comments