This article examines the formation and growth of the Grave-Free Promotion Society (GFPS), a civic group formed in 1990 to promote the scattering of human ashes in Japan. Changing family structures and a critical lack of sufficient burial space have led to a "grave revolution" since the end of the 1980s. Scattering sits at the intersection of legal battles over the ambiguous status of cremated remains, historical debates over what constitutes "traditional" funerary practices, Buddhist arguments for the necessity of posthumous ordi nation and memorial rites, as well as social and medical concerns over locat ing the dead. The "natural funerals," or shizenso, performed by the GFPS do not require a Buddhist funeral, memorial rites, posthumous name, or grave, and thus present a highly visible challenge to over 300 years of Buddhist mor tuary practices and family-centered, patrilineal graves. k eyw ords: Scattering ashes -shizenso -burial practices -graves -contemporary Buddhism -freedom of religion -eitai kuyd Mark Rowe is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Religion at Princeton University.

This article traces the effects of modern commercial ritual spaces and new crematoriums on the meaning and structure of contemporary Japanese funerals. The widening physical separation between the mourning family and the corpse throughout the death process parallels an increase in the ritual authority of the professional funeral industry, which has led to sev eral notable variations in funeral styles. O f particular note is a changing attitude towards the corpse that emphasizes the physical (consumer) com fort and individual needs of the deceased over the pacification of the spirit.

This article considers reactions at various levels of the Soto sect to the prob lems of funerary Buddhism. There is a widening gap, not only between the necessities of mortuary practice at local temples (both rural and urban) and the doctrine of no-self ostensibly embodied in the foundational texts of Dogen and Keizan, but also within the very organizational structures of the Soto sect itself. From its official publications and regional conferences to innovative strategies being developed at individual temples, I argue that, far from being a unified body, Soto Buddhism speaks with an array of competing and often contradictory voices. The diversity of Soto responses to the "mortuary problem" reveals intriguing disconnects between the research arm of the sect, those responsible for training priests, and the daily realities of local temples. k e y w o r d s : Soto Zen -genba -mortuary rites -ordination ceremony -sosai mondai Mark Rowe is currently finishing his PhD in the Religion Department at Princeton University. His dissertation explores the impact of changing Japanese burial practices on contemporary Japanese Bud dhism.

An attitude which hopes to derive aesthetic pleasure from an object is often thought to be in tension with an attitude which hopes to derive knowledge from it. The current article argues that this alleged conflict only makes sense when the aesthetic attitude and knowledge are construed unnaturally narrowly, and that when both are correctly understood there is no tension between them. To do this, the article first proposes a broad and satisfying account of the aesthetic attitude, and then considers and rejects twelve reasons for thinking that deriving knowledge from something is incompatible with maintaining an aesthetic attitude towards it. Two main conclusions are drawn. 1) That the representational arts are often in a good position to communicate non-propositional knowledge about human beings. 2) That while our desire to obtain pleasure from a work's manifest properties, and our desire to obtain knowledge from it, are not the same motive, the formal similarities between them are sufficiently impressive to warrant both being seen as elements of the aesthetic attitude. Some philosophers and critics feel that a desire to appreciate something aesthetically, and a desire to acquire knowledge from it, are two quite separate and possibly incompatible motives. 1 Peter Lamarque and Stein Olsen, for example, have argued that it is quite possible to acquire truths from a novel, but that the truths thus acquired have no bearing on its artistic quality. 2 This does not mean, however, that they endorse aestheticism or feel that novels are unconnected with life. On the contrary, they argue that novels enact, develop, explore and imaginatively realize 1 This article tries to draw together, and show the consistency of, three of my previous essays, 'The Definition of "Art" ', 'Poetry and Abstraction', and 'Lamarque and Olsen on Literature and Truth', all in M. W. Rowe, Philosophy and Literature: A Book of Essays (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). 2 Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen, Truth, Fiction and Literature (Oxford: OUP, 1996).

This article explores issues of temple succession (seshū), soteriology, and priestly identity through the experiences of three Buddhist women to demonstrate that female priests' experience eludes either/or contrasts between submission to male authority or feminist resistance to patriarchy and to argue for an assessment of women priests' agency on its own terms. Two of these women serve as abbots of temples, while one works as a deputy abbot (fuku jūshoku). They represent temple-and non-temple born (zaike), urban and rural temples, and different regions of the country. They have also each taken different paths to their current roles: one through marriage, and the other two through an unexpected death in the family. Relying on the voices of these priests, this article considers ways in which women navigate the basic pathways of priesthood: how they "choose" to be priests, how they are trained, and how they situate themselves in regard to institutional, doctrinal, and societal expectations. As such, this article also engages the ongoing concern of scholars and activists with politicized, normative approaches to agency in gender studies in non-Western contexts. Eschewing an assessment of what each of these priests offers in the way of resistance, this article instead considers how women priests' experiences allow us to redefine contemporary temple Buddhism.keywords: female Buddhist priests-gender-non-eminent monks-discourses of decline-seshū-temple succession-Nichiren-Shinshū-Jōdo-temple Buddhism Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 44/1: 75-101