Discussant: Harumi Befu, Kyoto Bunkyo University

According to Clifford Geertz, the practice of ritual is organized around constellations of symbols. Sets of symbols comprise essential matrices of meaning that serve to convey an ordered view of the world, the practitioner’s place within that universe, as well as existential imperatives for practitioners to act in certain ways within the world that is framed and presented by means of symbol.

Japan’s spiritual tradition known as Shinto is no exception to this pattern. The purpose of this panel of papers is to squarely explicate the role and significance of symbolic communication related to salient issues of cosmology within the Shinto tradition. All three papers are based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Japan.

Leslie Williams will address homophonic considerations regarding the term musubi that shape particular Shinto rituals. David Fish will speak on the history, symbolic significance, and role of the Shinto kagura called the kotobuki jishi "lion dance." Satsuki Kawano examines common gestures and place structures involved in Shinto rituals in Kamakura

Each paper in this panel will address three broad issues meant to heighten our understanding of specific symbols with regard to Shinto ritual practitioners’: (1) worldview; (2) their place in that world; and (3) existential imperatives contained in symbol that cause them to act accordingly.

The discussant of this panel will be Harumi Befu, currently Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kyoto Bunkyo University and Professor Emeritus of the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University.

E. Leslie Williams, Clemson University

Japanese is a language rich in homophones. For centuries, utilization of these homophones has served as not only the basis of everyday humor and a refined literary device employed in poetry (kakekotoba), but also as an essential element in Japan’s shamanistic form of ritual practice, Shinto. Shamanism here is defined as manipulation of esoteric knowledge (i.e. interstitial words, objects, places, or times) in order to effect a rupture of dimension with the other world, and thus affect a desired outcome.

Homophones, words that sound alike, are interstitial in that they constitute connections between objects, and as such are used in Shinto ritual as a form of incantation. A vast number of homophones are employed (or are tabooed) in the Shinto tradition, but the focus of this paper will be on the term musubi.

This term appears in the earliest record written in Japanese, the Kojiki, and denotes "spirit of creation," but this homophone also means "to bear fruit," "to bind," "to unite," and "to mate." As a homophone, musubi is essentially a matrix of various meanings that are understood and used by Shinto practitioners as a: (1) vocal incantation; (2) physical talisman; (3) form of ritual action; and (4) symbol that expresses aspects of a coherent worldview.

In particular, the term musubi is an important aspect of kotodama belief by which practitioners appropriate the symbolic fertility of the natural world to serve their own personal and social needs.

David L. Fish, St. Andrews College

For a country that has never had an indigenous variety of Felis leo, Japan is home to a remarkable number of lion dances (shishi mai). These find their collective origin in a choreographic tradition brought from China during the Nara period via the Korean kingdom of Paekche. Taken over by Japanese gigaku, the dance was used in Buddhist rites of exorcism and imbued with further symbolic meaning. Gigaku died out during the Edo period, but not before its lion-dance tradition had directly and indirectly influenced many other genres, including shishi-mai. As these performances evolved, they came to serve divergent ends through differing symbolic means.

One of the most important progeny of the gigaku lion dance is found in the dai kagura of the Ise Shrine, which in turn had inspired several other shishi-mai throughout Eastern Japan. These include the kotobuki jishi dance performed by the Wakayama shachû (a Tokyo guild of Shinto performers recognized by the Japanese government as an Important Intangible Cultural Asset). This paper compares and contrasts the nature and symbolic content of kotobuki jishi with the Ise dai kagura to reveal how the former was adopted to meet the realities encountered in the shogunal capital of Edo. It also considers the development of kotobuki jishi during the modern period, a time in which the dance has become less ritualistic/symbolic and more secular/representational.

Satsuki Kawano, University of Pittsburgh

Taking a performance-oriented approach, this paper examines common gestures and place structures involved in Shinto rituals in Kamakura. First, common ways to "reverently face" (ogamu) Shinto deities will be examined. The acts of bowing, purification, offering, and sharing involve the embodiment of common Japanese values, such as purity, reciprocity, and knowing indebtedness.

Second, hierarchy-maintaining gestures and place structures will also be examined. During Shinto rituals in Kamakura, practitioners make use of upper-lower, front-back, and exterior-interior body parts and place areas, which are aligned with contrasting values of purity-impurity, high rank-low rank, and formality-informality. Culturally defined order is maintained by using these body parts and place areas during ritual procession, bowing, management of the lower and back body parts, and using torii gates and differentiated floors.