Thirteenth IESHR Lecture by Philippe Buc: Civil war and religion in Medieval Japan and Medieval Europe

By Dilip -
The Indian Economic and Social History Association
and
SAGE
are pleased to announce the
Thirteenth IESHR Lecture
by
Philippe Buc
Professor of Medieval European History at the Universität Wien (Austria)
at
7:00 pm, Monday, 16th September 2019
Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre
(Please join us for tea at 6:15 pm)

Civil war and religion in Medieval Japan and Medieval Europe

Abstract: Japan and West-Central Europe, two small ensembles placed at vast Eurasia's extremities, have often been compared with reference to their respective "middle ages". Between ca. 1880 to 1970, the juxtaposition was motivated by the sometime ideological desire to account for Japan's exceptional and swift modernisation and its entry into the exclusive club consisting of European and New World military and economic powers. One axis of comparison was then self-evident: the shared importance of the warrior class. While also focusing on the wider culture of warfare, this lecture, however, addresses the differential role played by religions in Japan prior to ca. 1600 and Europe before ca. 1550 in internal warfare ("civil war" or "intra-cultural" war). To what extent and in what manner did the locally present religions -- Buddhism alloyed with what came to be called Shinto and Christianity -- shape conceptions and practices of war in both ensembles?  Did differences (or sometime analogies) between Japanese and European religious beliefs and practices impact, for instance, the scale of atrocities, care for the defeated or the dead, loyalty or side-switching, and willingness to fight? How, in this context, was rebellion justified?

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