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This course examines the history of Japanese religions through the visual arts. Sculpture, painting, architecture, and decorative arts serve as the primary sources for our exploration of traditions of Buddhism, kami worship, Daoism, mountain cults, folk religion, and Christianity. Discussions engage in social issues such as gender, class, and identity; religious questions of salvation and absence; and institutional matters such as lineage, legitimacy, and shifting sources of religious authority. A major concern of the course is the different aspects of the ideal and real body that are presented in Japanese visual culture, paying special attention to the means by which raw materials of art are transformed into ideal "living icons." (Carr)

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