Re: [tlug] [OT] Harajuku redux - The day Hachiko cried

[Brian Chandler <brian@example.com>]

Evan Monroig wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 7:26 PM, Brian Chandler <brian@example.com> wrote:
> > Gen Kanai wrote:
> >
> > > On Apr 25, 2008, at 5:27 PM, SL Baur wrote:
> > >
> > > > On 4/25/08, Ian Barwick <barwick@example.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Tsk tsk, it's a shrine, not a temple ;).
> >  Huh? I suppose this is about whether a religious edifice belongs to
> > Buddhism or Shinto, which has nothing in (actual) English to do with whether
> > it's a "temple" or a "shrine", since that isn't what the English words mean,
>
> Don't you say "a buddhist temple" and "a shinto shrine" in English, as
> generally accepted translations for お寺 and 神社 or 神宮?

Yes, it's certainly true that there is a convention in Japanology of 
using "temple" to refer to a Buddhist edifice and "shrine" to refer to a 
Shinto one - even when the "temple" is a shrine to Avalokiteshvara or 
the "shrine" is architecturally a temple. But this doesn't mean that in 
real English the words "temple" and "shrine" in isolation carry the 
baggage of お寺 and 神社, because they don't.

Brian Chandler