2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
A Comparative Study of Unhappy Ghost Stories
Project/Area Number |
26370075
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Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
Section | 一般 |
Research Field |
History of thought
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Research Institution | Tohoku University |
Principal Investigator |
SATO Hiroo 東北大学, 文学研究科, 教授 (30125570)
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Project Period (FY) |
2014-04-01 – 2018-03-31
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Keywords | 幽霊 / 死者 / 近世 / コスモロジー |
Outline of Final Research Achievements |
The ghosts of the medieval period were for the most part those of people of power and prosperity, the extremely exceptional. These hauntings ended not with a vendetta being brought to a bloody conclusion, but with the ghost finding salvation in the Buddha. In the early modern period, quite to the contrary, it was possible for anyone at all, no matter how ordinary, to become a ghost. There is also a key difference in quality between the grudge held by the early modern ghost-the satisfaction or removal of which was unmediated by any transcendent savior-and the medieval ghosts, suffering and shut off from the salvation which would end that suffering. By the early modern period, ghosts would no longer seek salvation of the religious kind. They had but a single goal-the ruthless pursuit of revenge on those that killed them and abandoned their bodies. This is the reason, then, for the mass emergence in the early modern period of vengeful ghosts pursuing vendettas.
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Free Research Field |
日本思想史
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