Buddhism the Japanese way: Shinto kami

(Slice)

When Buddhists Attack (Zen of martial arts)

Theravada Buddhist Muay Thai champion versus Shaolin Kung Fu master from Far East

Buddhist Wisdom (Tuttle Publishing)

Uncover the historical truth about Buddhist warrior monks with this informative and enlightening book.

Exploring the origins of Buddhism and the ethos of the Japanese samurai, martial arts practitioner Professor Jeffrey Mann traces the close connection between the Buddhist way of compassion (karuna) and the way of the warrior.

This Zen book serves as a basic introduction to the history, philosophy, and current practice of Zen as it relates to the Japanese martial arts.

Maybe they'll be ghosts (kami)

It examines the elements of Zen that have found a place in budo (bujutsu or bugei)—the "Martial Way"—such as zazen, mushin, zanshin, and fudoshin, then goes on to discuss the ethics and practice of budo as a modern sport.

 

Offering insights into how qualities integral to the true martial artist are interwoven with this ancient religious philosophy, this book on Buddhism helps practitioners reconnect to an authentic spiritual discipline of martial arts.

Southeast Asian Silat, most dangerous martial art?

Film, television, and popular fiction have long exploited the image of the serene Buddhist monk who is master of the deadly craft of hand-to-hand combat.

While these media overly romanticize the relationship between a philosophy of non-violence and the art of fighting, When Buddhists Attack: The Curious Relationship Between Zen and the Martial Arts shows this link to be nevertheless real, even natural.

• BOOK: When Buddhists Attack (Tuttle Publishing)

Prof. Jeffrey Mann, Dept. of Religious Studies

ABOUT: The author Jeffrey K. Mann is a professor and the chair of the Religious Studies Department at [the Protestant Evangelical Lutheran] Susquehanna University (susqu.edu) in Pennsylvania. He earned his doctorate in religious studies from Vanderbilt University and has also served as a visiting professor of religion at Senshu University in Ikuta, Japan. A longtime student of Japanese martial arts, he has trained and competed in karate tournaments throughout North America, Japan, Okinawa, and the Philippines. He is an instructor of the Susquehanna Goju-ryu Karate-do Club, a school affiliated with the International Okinawan Goju-ryu Karate-do Federation.

• Warrior Wisdom (Tuttle Publishing)
• Hojoki: A Buddhist Reflection on Solitude
• Yurei Attack! The Japanese Ghost Survival Guide
• Buddhist Wisdom: Daily Reflections
• Jeffrey Mann; Pfc. Sandoval, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Strange sex girls in Buddhist Japan: Tokyo

(Japan explorer) LIVE: Tokyo in one long day: 12 hours from morning to midnight

(Japan explorer) Hello, Kitty. There's a place to get Japanese girl from a vending machine. (Japan's only place to do it)

(Kazu Kusano) Japanese female stand up: Gray-haired Jewish husband?

Woody Allen married his adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn

Sex, loneliness epidemic, Buddhist Japan

Lost in Translation (with Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray

Dodgers vs. Blue Jays at end of world

The stakes: If the Los Angeles Dodgers win tonight (Day of the Dead, Nov. 1, 2025), they’ll be the first team to win consecutive titles since the New York Yankees did it from 1998 to 2000.

Meanwhile, the Toronto Blue Jays won back-to-back championships in 1992 and 1993 — and they're back in the series for the first time in 32 years.

Help from the Other Side

If Toronto wins, it will be ecstasy for the country of mighty Canada, smearing it in the face of the Orange Dictator in his Demolished House commanding his ICE Gestapo.

• Do the LA Dodgers have a supernatural edge tonight thanks to their large Latin/Asian fan base? YES! Today, the Mexican Day of the Dead, is Mexican super-pitcher Fernando Valenzuela's birthday, and the greatest living Dodger pitcher, Shintoist ONE MAN SHOhei Ohtani is pitching tonight. Nando willing, tonight is a cinch for the Dodgers!
• What makes the Dodgers so good? It's the best team money could buy. And this is a capitalist country with a capitalist game that glorifies competition, rivalry, violent grit (sometimes breaking out in massive gang fights on the field when they lose and a little sports hooliganism on the streets when they win).

How did Shohei Ohtani happen?

(Search Party) Shohei Ohtani, #17, is the $700 million dollar man

World's greatest pitcher and hitter: S. Ohtani

How we got here: The Blue Jays on Friday seemed poised to tie the game in the ninth inning until Dodgers infielder Kiké Hernández initiated an incredible double play to end the game and secure a trip to Game 7.

Where things stand: The last game, the tiebreaker, will be at the covered Rogers Centre in Toronto, where the team of champions will claim Major League Baseball's Commissioner’s Trophy. More: World Series Game 7: The winner takes all as Dodgers seek a repeat title tonight (LAist.com)

Orange Dictator humiliates USA in Asia

(Comedy Central Africa) South Korea literally crowns the Clown President with king's headgear

YMCA greetings for a king | The Daily Show

Why do we Americans dishonor our king?

(Comedy Central Africa) Oct. 31, 2025: "The village people must be so proud that their song became America's official presidential anthem" 🤭 when all they did was write a song about getting r*iled at the gym. | The Daily Show on Comedy Central, DStv Ch122

• MLB Highlights, 10/31/25; LAist.com; Desi Lydic, The Daily Show; CC Liu, Pfc. Sandoval, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Dodger 'Yagi' (GOAT) Ohtani: World Series

• (Search Party) How Shohei Ohtani happened
• What does Shohei (翔平) mean? Shō (翔) means to "soar or glide," and hei (平) means to be "level, in the sense of being calm or peaceful." Hei is also a common ending for male names. His surname's initial character Oh (大) means "great or large" and tani (谷) means "valley." One who glides peacefully in a grand valley (like a stadium)? Source
• He's the G.O.A.T. (the "greatest of all time), we say, which in Japanese is yagi  ("goat").

World Series Game 3 HIGHLIGHTS | Blue Jays versus Dodgers - Oct. 27, 2025

The Greatest of All Time: The Yagi

(SPORTSNET) Oct. 28, 2025: DODGER STADIUM, Los Angeles. In one of the most unbelievable games of professional baseball anyone will ever see, featuring every manner of drama, the Los Angeles Dodgers bested the Toronto Blue Jays by way of a Freddie Freeman walk-off homer after 18 grueling innings, taking a 2-1 World Series lead in the process.

• 0:00 - 1st Inning
• 0:18 - 2nd Inning
• 0:46 - 3rd Inning
• 1:15 - 4th Inning
• 2:06 - 5th Inning
• 2:36 - 6th Inning
• 2:53 - 7th Inning
• 3:21 - 9th Inning
• 2025 World Series Game 3
• 2025 World Series
• Toronto Blue Jays highlights

Blue Jays vs. Dodgers World Series Game 3 (10/27/25) | MLB Highlights

The Fix Is In: Gambling?

The G.O.A.T. Shohei "Yagi" Ohtani was spectacular. But the game lasted seven hours, ending about midnight. Even diehard fans, many of them Proles outside the luxuries of the Inner Party, had to get home and get to work the next day, possibly nursing hangovers from a day at Distraction Ball.

The grind continues, and the Dodgers are down, maybe making this the closest World Series in a long while. What started off with rumors of a sweep, the Dodgers taking the series in four straight wins, diverted and has made them really work for it.

It is possibly all scripted to milk billions in bets with bookies and offshore gambling agents. The fix is in. So don't gamble based on statistics and math. That's how they get a bettor. The best laid plans of mice and men do not pan out or else everyone would bet by the numbers. It's bound to be a counterintuitive ending to make the house the most money. Here, seven hours are condensed into about seven exciting minutes of play without all the milling about and nail-biting.

Best baseball player is Buddhist?

Sorry Ladies and Gents, he's taken.

Wisdom Quarterly has yet to conclusively demonstrate that the Yagi (Japanese for "goat") is a Japanese Buddhist from Orange County, where he played for the Angels. But what is the circumstantial evidence? Let's see.

The all is empty, devoid of self.

Nearly everyone in Japan is Buddhist, at least by tradition as are a great number of Asian Orange County residents, with only San Francisco and Los Angeles serving as home for expat Buddhist communities from Japan (where many were brought more than a century ago to work in building the railroads then unceremoniously locked up in gulags to sit out WW II, where the humiliation of forced internment has not been forgotten. But Japan has more than Zen Buddhism.

Shinto priest bows, placates kami

The older tradition is Shinto or kami (spirit) worship/tending. And the newer tradition is Pure Land faith-based Buddhism usually called Nichiren Shōshū. There are of course colonial remnants of Christianity and modernist agnosticism and atheism, but deep down most every Japanese person adheres to ancient Buddhist tradition along with observance of other spiritual legacies. While it might be wise for Ohtani to keep it a mystery and rake in nearly a billion dollars in his stint with the Dodgers, we bet that just beneath the surface he bows, prays, meditates, focuses Zen-like, and welcomes the help of the unseen world of kamis and blessings wherever he can get them from the Old Country and his new home. After all, he did not succumb to a Hollywood manager-arranged public relationship for the press. He traveled back to Nippon (Japan) and found a traditional wife to accompany him on his rise to stardom and his life as a living legend. Can Babe Ruth or Fernando Venezuela compare?

• 30 Things You Must Know About Shohei Ohtani | IBTimes: He practices Japanese Shinto (polytheistic animism) and calls himself an American Christianity, which is smart.

If we were world-famous bonsai tree growers in Japan, we'd put it out that we were pro-business Ninja Samurai capitalists, so everyone would know we were proud Americans but very open to Japanese traditions like the lore of Bushi warriors. No cents in offending the locals with our brash Americans...and very few dollars.

• OCBC Dharma Message on ‘Shohei Mandala’ Proves to Be a ‘Clean’ Hit
• Shohei Ohtani: All we know about the LA Angels star

The Curse of the Colonel: Avoid dead KFC birds

It might be orchestrated to maximize gambling and drunkenness: Toronto bounces back in Game 4

The Fix Is Still In (B. Tuohy)

What will Halloween in Canada be like? The Dodgers will soon find out. Why? Whoever is writing this sports script would want to stretch out the suspense, sell more tickets, raise more money betting, and making the win more of a surprise with cries of "next year" in case of an upset. It's rudimentary in a corrupt capitalist system of American sport.

How dare anyone question the honesty, integrity, and above-board directness of the MLB and all its players, who would never do anything just for the money. Balderdash! Who could think such a thing or say it out loud?

Sex work? What's happening to Japan?

What is happening to Japan?

(Oriental Pearl) Premiered Oct. 9, 2025: TOKYO. Is Japan cooked? I (Oriental Pearl) have seen a lot of changes here in the last few years. And things seem to be getting worse.

• Donate to Tokyo's Homeless: jpkb.org/akiramenai
• Below are my affiliate links to learning tools I highly recommend:
• My Instagram: instagram.com/anming
• Oriental Pearl YouTube membership: @orientalpearl

Tokyo's Red-Light District for sex

(Broke But Rich) Japan's dark secret: Why they sell themselves (full doc)

Japan's DARK SECRET: Why they SELL themselves (full documentary)

Geisha Kyoto Gion (Japanese culture)

(Broke But Rich) Feb. 22, 2025: Dive into the dark side of Japan with us as we explore the world of "standing girls" ("sign girls")—infantilized females who wait in public streets to sell themselves. This isn't the typical nightlife scene. Buddhist Japan’s unique culture -- and attitude towards sex (as with the ancient geisha courtesans) -- has created an unexpected environment where this underground trade operates in plain sight. But why does it happen? And what’s the real story behind these women?

• VIDEO: The Origins of Sacred Temple Prostitution

Forest Bathing: de-stress in nature

Hiking in giant Angeles National Forest/Preserve above Los Angeles at Bridge to Nowhere 

Shinrin Yoku: The Art of Forest Bathing | film

(Matador Network) Stuck swiping Insta every day? The practice of “forest bathing” can change what life is like. Unplug with Mike and Kati on an ancient Japanese trail, learning the creative and health benefits of Shinrin Yoku. #travel #shortfilm #outdoors #forest Shinrin Yoku: The Art of Forest Bathing was a 2020 Webby honoree in video: Travel and Adventure. Feb. 6, 2019. #outdoors #shortfilm #travel

There is a real Bridge to Nowhere in L.A.

"Forest bathing," or shinrin-yoku in its original Japanese, is a mindfulness practice that involves immersing oneself in nature.

The decades-old practice pulls from research that shows that spending time in nature can help lower stress levels (Harvard) and improve focus (U Michigan).

The resonance of the plants, rocks, spirits

Recently, forest bathing is growing in popularity, thanks in part to social media where people are sharing their experiences exploring forests and other green spaces and taking in all that they have to offer.

Over 45,000 videos have been shared on TikTok with the tag #forestbathing. Users say they've seen an improvement to their mental health. More

• Taking inspiration from Forest Bathing to reduce stress in the office - Frezza
• Harnessing the Healing Power of Nature: A Comprehensive Guide to Natural Forest Bathing - Dr. Pradeep Albert

Demon Slayer K&J-Pop (BabyMetal)

(Otaku in Tokyo) I watched Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle in Japan! (REVIEW w/ no spoilers)

(LL & LSV) BABYMETAL - FULL CONCERT - THE O2 ARENA, LONDON - MAY 30 2025

Watch Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba | Netflix (2024) 5 seasons⁨ (TV-MA⁩ Anime) After a demon attack leaves his family slain and his sister cursed, Tanjiro embarks upon a perilous journey to find a cure and avenge those he's lost. Starring: Natsuki Hanae, Akari Kito, Hiro Shimono.

People prefer lore, animation.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (Japanese 鬼滅の刃, Hepburn Kimetsu no Yaiba, rgh "Blade of Demon Destruction" [4]) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Koyoharu Gotouge.

It was serialized in Shueisha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump from February 2016 to May 2020, with its chapters collected in 23 tankōbon volumes. It was published in English by Viz Media and simultaneously on the Manga Plus platform by Shueisha.

It follows teenage Tanjiro Kamado, who joins the Demon Slayer Corps after his family is slaughtered and the sole survivor, his younger sister Nezuko, is turned into a demon, in the hopes of turning her into a human again and defeating the Demon King Muzan Kibutsuji.

(WatchMojo) Moments that broke the internet

Who cares?

The first 26-episode season of an anime TV series adaptation, produced by Ufotable, aired from April to Sept. 2019, with a sequel film, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train, released in Oct. 2020, which became the highest-grossing anime film and Japanese film of all time.

Infinity Castle is out in Japan #demonslayer #anime - Ordinary streets are the anime background.

An 18-episode second season of the anime series aired from Oct. 2021 to Feb. 2022, while a compilation film, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – To the Swordsmith Village, was released in Feb. 2023. An 11-episode third season aired from April to June 2023, while another compilation film, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – To the Hashira Training, was released in Feb. 2024.

Is it all due to Lisa?

(Kushun's J-POP) How a broke country girl became Japan's BIGGEST anime singer: Story of LiSA

Shy girls can speak up and sing in a traditional, aging, patriarchal society with bad demographics?

Mass popularity means $$$

An eight-episode fourth season aired from May to June 2024. A film trilogy sequel adapting the "Infinity Castle" story arc premiered in July 2025.

By July 2025, the manga had over 220 million copies in circulation, including digital versions, making it one of the best-selling manga series of all time.

It was the best-selling manga of 2019 and 2020. It has received critical acclaim for its art, storyline, action scenes and characters. The Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba franchise is one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time. More

Only its singers can explain allure and charm of J-Pop Babymetal

Asian animators are just better at drawing than Anglos?

• Netflix; Babymetal 2025; Otaku in Tokyo, Aug. 7, 2025; WatchMojo.com; Hao Fusion Studio (AI); CC Liu, Crystal Q., Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Babymetal's new song 'My Queen' - KY?

• Babymetal (ft. Spiritbox) sing hymn to Queen  Kwan Yin?
• What in the world is Japan's "Baby Metal"?
• babymetal.com (Babymetal | Metal Forth | Official Website)
• Babymetal, "Gimme Chocolate"; Seth Auberon, CC Liu, Pfc. Sandoval (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Japan's Hidden Christians going extinct

The distorted corruption of Imperial Christianity

Driven Underground Years Ago, Japan's 'Hidden Christians' Maintain Faith | NCPR News

26 Japanese Christians and imperial missionaries executed on crosses by Japanese warlord

Discovery at Sanxingdui sacrificial pits reveals new info on ancient China’s greatest treasures.

.

Bodhisattva Kannon/Virgin Mary?

IKITSUKI, Japan (AP) — On a small island in rural Nagasaki, Japan’s Hidden Christians gather to worship what they call their "Closet God." 🏳‍🌈?

In a special room about the size of a tatami mat is a scroll painting of a kimono-clad Asian woman. She looks like a Buddhist Bodhisattva [Kwan Yin, Guanyin, Avalokita] holding a baby, but for the faithful, this is a concealed version of Mary and the baby Jesus.

Another scroll shows a man wearing a kimono covered with camellias, an allusion to [Saint] John the Baptist’s beheading and martyrdom.

China versus Japan (American POV)

• Early Christian graves in Israel reveal rare African figurines made of Asian wood, hinting at cultural exchange
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• Moment of ZEN videos | Watch

Japan’s Hidden Christians

 

There are other objects of worship from the days when Japan’s Christians had to hide from vicious persecution, including a ceramic bottle of holy water from Nakaenoshima, an island where Hidden Christians were killed ("martyred") in the 1620s.

Little about the icons in the tiny, easy-to-miss room can be linked directly to Christianity — and that’s the point.

After emerging from cloistered isolation in 1865, following more than 200 years of violent harassment by Japan’s insular warlord rulers, many of the formerly underground Christians converted to mainstream Catholicism.

Factionalism in Christianity started early - Japanese LGBTQIA+ model boy toy gets in the ring.

Some, however, continued to practice not the religion that 16th century foreign missionaries originally taught them, but the idiosyncratic, difficult to detect version they’d nurtured during centuries of clandestine cat-and-mouse with a brutal regime.

• Japan Hidden Christians PHOTO GALLERY © Eugene Hoshiko

On Ikitsuki and other remote sections of Nagasaki prefecture, Hidden Christians still pray to these disguised objects. They still chant in a Latin that hasn’t been widely used in centuries. And they still cherish a religion that directly links them to a time of samurai, shoguns and martyred missionaries and believers.

• Related video: Losing faith? how a rare version of Christianity is heading for extinction in rural Japan (The Associated Press) もう主張を持って言われるということ以前からすれば、もう随分とそのお話を唱える機会っていうのはですね、もう減ってしまって、おまけにあのダンカーと言いますか、そういう方々ももうやめて、わかりによってですね、もうこういうふうになりましたけど、私はいずれは私たちも後継者がもうおそらく以外のもんですから、まあ、私たちのところで終わるでしょうけども、うん。

Now, though, the Hidden Christians are dying out, and there is growing certainty that their unique version of Christianity will die with them. Almost all are now elderly, and as the young move away to cities or turn their backs on the faith, those remaining are desperate to preserve evidence of this offshoot of Christianity — and convey to the world what its loss will mean.

“At this point, I’m afraid we are going to be the last ones,” said Masatsugu Tanimoto, 68, one of the few who can still recite the Latin chants that his ancestors learned 400 years ago. “It is sad to see this tradition end with our generation.”

Hidden Christians cling to a unique version of the religion

Christianity spread rapidly in 16th century Japan when Jesuit priests had spectacular success converting warlords and peasants alike, most especially on the southern main island of Kyushu, where the foreigners established trading ports in Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands, by some estimates, embraced the religion.

That changed after the shoguns began to see Christianity as a threat. The crackdown that followed in the early 17th century was fierce, with thousands killed and the remaining believers chased underground.

As Japan opened up to foreign influence, a dozen Hidden Christians clad in kimono cautiously declared their faith, and their remarkable perseverance, to a French Catholic priest in March 1865 in Nagasaki city.

Many became Catholics after Japan formally lifted the ban on Christianity in 1873.

But others chose to stay Kakure Kirishitan ("Hidden Christians"), continuing to practice what their ancestors preserved during their days underground.

Their rituals provide a direct link to a vanished Japan

In Kyushu with Hidden Christians

In interviews with The Associated Press, Hidden Christians spoke of a deep communal bond stemming from a time when a lapse could doom a practitioner or their neighbors.

Hidden Christians were forced to hide all visible signs of their religion after the 1614 ban on Christianity and the expulsion of foreign missionaries. Households took turns hiding precious ritual objects and hosting the secret services that celebrated both faith and persistence.

This still happens today, with the observance of rituals unchanged since the 16th century.

The group leader in the Ikitsuki area is called Oji, which means father or elderly man in Japanese. Members take turns in the role, presiding over baptisms, funerals, and ceremonies for New Year, Christmas, and local festivals.

Different communities worship different icons and have different ways of performing the rituals.

In Sotome, for instance, people prayed to a statue of what they called Maria Kannon, a genderless Bodhisattva of Mercy [Goddess of Compassion, originally spoken of as a male deva who got culturally converted and made more and more feminine], as a substitute for Mary.

In Ibaragi, where about 18,000 residents embraced Christianity in the 1580s, a lacquer bowl with a cross painted on it, a statue of the crucified Christ and an ivory statue of Mary were found hidden in what was called “a box not to be opened.”

Their worship revolves around reverence for ancestors

Let's do Zen. - No, no, Christian jiriki is best!

Many Hidden Christians rejected Catholicism after the persecution ended because Catholic priests refused to recognize them as real Christians unless they agreed to be rebaptized and abandon the Buddhist altars that their ancestors used.

“They are very proud of what they and their ancestors have believed in” for hundreds of years, even at the risk of their lives, said Emi Mase-Hasegawa, a religion studies professor at J.F. Oberlin University in Tokyo.

Tanimoto believes his ancestors continued the Hidden Christian traditions because becoming Catholic meant rejecting the Buddhism and Shintoism that had become a strong part of their daily lives underground.

“I’m not a Christian,” Tanimoto said. Even though some of their Latin chants focus on the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, their prayers are also meant to “ask our ancestors to protect us, to protect our daily lives,” he said. “We are not doing this to worship Jesus or Mary.… Our responsibility is to faithfully carry on the way our ancestors had practiced.”

Archaic Latin chants are an important part of the religion

Hidden Christians’ ceremonies often include the recitation of Latin chants, called Orasho.

The Orasho comes from the original Latin or Portuguese prayers brought to Japan by 16th century missionaries.

Recently on Ikitsuki, three men performed a rare Orasho. All wore dark formal kimonos and solemnly made the sign of the cross in front of their faces before starting their prayers — a mix of archaic Japanese and Latin. More

• Japan has a long history of promoting faith over self-effort: Apart from Zen, there is a larger movement for bhakti (devotion) called the tariki-jiriki (self-power vs. other-power) distinction
• The Associated Press, June 4, 2025; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly