Essay Competition

The results of other years
2003	2002
2001	2000
1998	1996

For your information, apart from the above English language Shinto Essay Competition, ISF has been organizing also the Chinese language Shinto Essay Competition since 2000, with 5 Chinese scholars specialized in Japanese cultural studies as the jurors. Besides, the Russian language Shinto Essay Competition has started from 2004, with 5 Russian scholars specialized in Shinto studies as the jurors. The results of Chinese and Russian competitions were publicized on ISF’s website.

Those who are interested in each Chinese and/or Russian language competition please contact in respective language with sippouxp@yahoo.com.cn for the Chinese and Moscow@shinto.org for the Russian.

Result of Shinto Essay Competition 2004
Sponsored by the International Shinto Foundation
(Announced on September 25, 2004)

Shinto Essay Competition 2004 was participated by 3 contributors from 3 nationalities. The essays were carefully read and evaluated by 8 jurors, who are members of the ISF’s Board of Trustees. We are pleased to announce the result of their judgments as follows. In accordance with the judgment points we have decided to distinguish the excellent and good essays by one 1st prize, one 2nd prize, no 3rd prize, but one additional encouraging prize. The essays belong to and will be published by the International Shinto Foundation, Inc.

Prize Winners
First Prize (US$1,000)	Tatsuma Padoan (University of Venice, Italy) “Shinto and Economy”
	Receiving the First Prize in the 2004 Shinto Essay Competition is for me a great honor and an invaluable encouragement for my studies. The topic proposed by the ISF about the relationship between Shinto and Economy has been a stimulating challenge for me, for it spurred me on improving my knowledge about Japanese religions, envisioning this phenomenon from an unexpected, but absolutely important, point of view. Studying religions by means of a socio-economical perspective brings our attention on cultural dynamics that lay at the very bases of human society, and gives us an idea of how important the religious phenomenon is for all the different cultures, as one of the fundamental needs of the human genre. I am very grateful to the jurors for their decision to select my essay for such an important award. Finally I wish to really thank the ISF for having organized this competition, in its continuous effort to promote a wider understanding of a religion, the Shinto, that could offer to our so-tormented contemporary world a message of peace and reciprocal respect, in which, quoting the words of the recently deceased great orientalist prof. Fosco Maraini, "the divine speaks always and everywhere, in the nature and in the human life around us. All is presented as Revelation, it is sufficient to hear, to see and to read it."
Second Prize (US$500)	Tai Wei Lim (Singapore, Cornell University, U.S.A.) “Shinto’s encounter with Christianity”

Encouraging Prize (US$100)	FrassMinggi Kamasa (Indonesia, Yonsei University, Korea) “Shinto issue on the Japanese daily life”

Submitted essays belong to and will be published
by the International Shinto Foundation.

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