Date: July 11 (Friday), 13.00-16.30

Venue: Middle-size meeting room, 3rd floor, Inamori Foundation Memorial Building, Kyoto University

Program:
Session I: A talk by Justin McDaniel (13:00 – 14:30)
Session II: Panel presentation and discussion (14:45 – 16:30)

Speaker:
Justin McDaniel, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania and Visiting Research Scholar at CSEAS, Kyoto University

Panel presenters:
Tadayoshi Murakami (Osaka University), Tatsuki Kataoka (Kyoto University), Takahiro Kojima (Kyoto University)

Session I: A talk by Justin McDaniel (13:00 – 14:30):

“The Architects of Buddhist Leisure”

Abstract: The rise of Asian economies over the 20th and 21st centuries has not only brought market competition and political influence, but also the rise of a “leisure class.” Buddhism, usually described as an austere religion which condemns desire and promotes monasticism and denial, has not been the subject of the history of leisure. There has been little investigation of Buddhist pleasures or pastimes. However, Buddhist leisure activities, Buddhist tourism, and Buddhist material products are common parts of Asian culture. Indeed, some of the first tourist books and souvenir shops in Asia were marketed and owned by practicing Buddhists in Bangkok, Kyoto, and Singapore. Novels and coffee-table books about Buddhist tourists and pleasure-seekers have been popular in Thai, Chinese, and Japanese history. Buddhist monasteries across Asia are sites of playgrounds, sports-fields, and shopping bazaars. Over the past seventy years, Buddhist comic books, films, and soap-operas have flourished on Asian airwaves. Indeed, many of the ways Buddhist children first learn about their religion is not in the strict confines of a monastic training center, but through Buddhist leisure activities like singing songs, family trips, martial arts camps, and beauty contests.
These creative religious improvisations and public culture of Buddhism in Asia is often built on the idea that Buddhist practice and leisure activities go hand-in-hand.

This talk focuses on the work of three architects of Buddhist public and leisure spaces in Nepal, Singapore, and Thailand and is designed to start a discussion about the very idea of Buddhist leisure space in modern Asia.

About the speaker:
Professor McDaniel’s research foci include Lao, Thai, Pali and Sanskrit literature, art and architecture, and manuscript studies. His first book, Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words, won the Harry Benda Prize. His second book, The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magic Monk, won the Kahin Prize. He has received grants from the NEH, Mellon, Rockefeller, Fulbright, PACRIM, Luce, the SSRC, among others. He is the co-editor of the journals: Buddhism Compass, Journal of Lao Studies, and Associate Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies. He has won teaching and advising awards at Harvard U, Ohio U, the University of California, and the Ludwig Prize for Teaching at Penn. In 2012 he was named a Guggenheim Fellow and in 2014 a fellow of Kyoto University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies. His forthcoming work includes edited books on Thai Manuscripts, Buddhist Biographies, and Buddhist ritual. He also has a new book on modern Buddhist architecture.

Session II: Panel presentation and discussion (14:45 – 16:30):
1. “Recitation of Buddhist manuscripts in vernacular: the Shan Buddhist manuscript culture in Maehongson, Northern Thailand” by Tadayoshi Murakami (Osaka University)
2. “Chinese Temples, Phylanthropic Foundations, and Chinese Sutra Chanting: ‘Thai Buddhism’ outside the Sangha” by Tatsuki Kataoka (Kyoto University)
3. “Buddhist Practices in Dehong Prefecture, Yunnan, China” by Takahiro Kojima (Kyoto University)
4. Comments by Justin McDaniel—to be followed by discussion

Moderator: Yoko Hayami, CSEAS
Language: English