Is this always gonna be about history? No. It is sometimes gonna be about history and sometimes its about my progress. Other times it’s about my garden! Either way, I hope you have fun here! And if you want to be one of the first to know, whenever something happens here, follow me on Instagram!
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Part 5: Kokugaku
This is part 5 of my series on Shinto as a civil religion, you can find the other parts here. Kokugaku, roughly translated as national teaching, was a kind of Japanese philology focusing on analyzing and philosophizing old Japanese texts, to return to a historical Japanese teaching. Phew! Before Kokugaku the study of Japanese history…
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Part 4: Shinto and its separation from Buddhism, 1868
This is part 4 of my series on Shinto as a civil religion, you can find the rest of the series here. Restoration Shinto’s influence on the new Meiji government was immediately evident when Shinto was successfully separated from Buddhism. A few months after the overthrowing of the shogunate, Okuni Takamasa, Fukuba Bisei, and Kamei…
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Part 3: The Meiji Restoration and Shinto
This is part 3 of my series on Shinto as a civil religion, you can find the other parts here. The Meiji Restoration was one of the biggest upheavals of Japanese culture in 200 years when it occurred in 1868. At the beginning of the 1800s, the Americans, the British and the Russians started to…
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Part 2: Shinto between 1600-1868
This is Part Two in my series on Shinto as a civil religion, which you can find here! Shinto between 1600-1868 (also known as the Tokugawa period), mainly existed in three different versions. All these were in relation to Buddhism. The most known about for many is the ritual practices of the Japanese Emperor and…
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Part 1: State Shinto as a civil religion – what is it?
I would like to start this first part of my series on Shinto with an apology! This post will be very heavy on the definitions. It might be a somewhat hard start to the series, but it is, unfortunately, necessary. To understand State Shinto, as is the focus of this series, we must understand civil…
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Part 0: Intro to my series on Shinto
I have always been fascinated by Shinto, so much so that I wrote my masters about it and its role in Japan during the years until World War II. This is the foundation for my new series on Shinto. And so I set out not only to translate the 75 pages into English but also…
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How do I review books?
I review books based on three factors, Accessibility, Fun and Reliability. And I realized it might not be obvious to everyone what these stand for, so here is a quick explanation! How I Review Accessibility Accessibility to me, is about how easily the text is to follow. If you’ve never ever read about this topic…
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What is Notoriously Boring?
When I went to school, all the kids would always complain, about how boring our history lessons were. And even though I would sometimes agree, I found that it wasn’t entirely true. My mission with Notoriously Boring, is bringing history content to the people in a way that is, you know, not boring. I intent…