Pilgrimage is found in most religious cultures, with large numbers of sites - from globally renowned places to regional shrines - flourishing historically and in the modern day. Pilgrimage centres around the world, including Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Guadalupe in Mexico, Lourdes in France, Santiago de Compostela in Spain, Haridwar in India, and Shikoku in Japan, attract millions of pilgrims annually, while a flourishing 'spiritual tourism' industry has grown to promote the practice. In the pr...

"She Comes First is quite simply the best guide to oral sex out there." —AskMen.comThe essential guidebook to oral sex, She Comes First offers a radical new philosophy for pleasuring womenAs women everywhere will attest, men are "ill-cliterate." But in the pages of this must-read sex guide, the mystery of female satisfaction is solved, and the tongue is proven mightier than the sword. According to Ian Kerner—sex therapist and evangelist of...

Pilgrimage is found in most religious cultures, with large numbers of sites - from globally renowned places to regional shrines - flourishing historically and in the modern day. Pilgrimage centres around the world, including Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Guadalupe in Mexico, Lourdes in France, Santiago de Compostela in Spain, Haridwar in India, and Shikoku in Japan, attract millions of pilgrims annually, while a flourishing 'spiritual tourism' industry has grown to promote the practice. In the pr...

Challenging the notion of the nonreligious in Japan being religious through tradition and institution, this book demonstrates how negativity and antipathy for religion relate to religious decline in Japan today. Why do most Japanese say they are 'nonreligious' (mushukyo)? Since the 1990s, scholars have answered this key question for understanding religion in contemporary Japan as follows: although the Japanese say they are nonreligious because they do not identify with a p...

A member of a British-American surveillance team in Cold War Berlin finds himself in too deep in this "wholly entertaining" work (The Wall Street Journal) from the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement.Twenty-five-year-old Leonard Marnham’s intelligence work—tunneling under a Russian communications center to tap the phone lines to Moscow—offers him a welcome opportunity to begin shedding his own unwanted innocence, even if he is ...

The Tokyo subway attack in March 1995 was just one of a series of criminal activities including murder, kidnapping, extortion, and the illegal manufacture of arms and drugs carried out by the Japanese new religious movement Aum Shinrikyo, under the guidance of its leader Asahara Shoko. Reader looks at Aum's claims about itself and asks, why did a religious movement ostensibly focussed on yoga, meditation, asceticism and the pursuit of enlightenment become involved in violent activities?

In this study, Ian Reader presents new insights into the relationship between religion and tourism more generally and into the contemporary religious situation in Japan. He counteracts scholarship that claims tourism increases religious activity, shows that tourism is a factor in increasing secularization in Japan and draws attention to the role of the state in such contexts.Although the Japanese constitution prohibits the state from promoting reli...

The study of pilgrimage often centres itself around miracles and spontaneous populist activities. While some of these activities and stories may play an important role in the emergence of potential pilgrimage sites and in helping create wider interest in them, this book demonstrates that the dynamics of the marketplace, including marketing and promotional activities by priests and secular interest groups, create the very consumerist markets through which pilgrimages become established and ...

This book will help you to appreciate the significance of Japan's own religion in everyday life to recognize the key traditions and festivals (matsuri) of the Shinto year to understand what you will see at Shinto shrines and in Shinto ritual to gain insights into the controversies surrounding Shinto, politics, and nationalism.Access the world's religions with Simple Guides: Religion a series of concise, accessible introductions to the world's major religions. Writt...

The Shikoku pilgrimage, a 1400 kilometre, eighty-eight temple circuit around Japan's fourth largest island, takes around forty days by foot, or one week by car. Historically, Buddhist ascetics walked it without ceasing, creating a tradition of unending pilgrimage that continues in the present era, both by pilgrims on foot and by others in cars. Some spend decades walking the pilgrimage, while others drive it repeatedly, completing hundreds of pilgrimage circuits. Most are retired and make ...

Transform Yourself from "Passion Victim" to Passionista!In the smash hit She Comes First, Ian Kerner singlehandedly waged battle against male sexual "ill-cliteracy," and women everywhere benefited from his "viva la vulva" philosophy of female pleasure. Now, in Passionista, it's time to learn all about what turns men on and makes them stay on. In this point-by-point, "blow-by-blow" sex guide for women, Kerner makes giving as much fun as receiving as he cov...

While scholarly works on this topic have to date mainly concentrated on Japan's influences in economic and political terms, this volume examines Japanese influences in Asia from a broader perspective. The text takes into account human factors, such as the presence of Japanese people as workers, managers and visitors in Asian societies and the flow of Japanese goods in terms on their impact on popular culture. In addition, the book examines the feelings within other Asian nations such as In...