Interpreting Japanese Society: Anthropological Approaches

312 Pages·1998·2.57 MB·English

by  Joy Hendry

Interpreting Japanese Society
The contributors to this new edition of Interpreting Japanese Society have all
spent long periods living and working in Japan and they cover such areas as
religion, ritual, leisure, family and social relations. Many of the chapters also
examine local perceptions of time and space, thus offering invaluable keys to
understanding and interpreting indigenous ways of thinking not easily accessible
to outsiders with more superficial experience. New topics for this edition include
an original interpretation of the sinister Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese view of Western
philosophy, an account of hi-tech computerized healers and an explanation of
ghost marriages.
This new, updated and revitalized edition of a classic work demonstrates the depth
and quality of an anthropological approach to the study of the people who inhabit
Japan. It also shows the important contribution research in such a rapidly changing
industrialized nation can make to the subject of anthropology.
Joy Hendry is Professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University.
She has twenty-five years’ experience specializing in the study of Japan and is
the author of Understanding Japanese Society and Wrapping Culture.

Interpreting Japanese
Society
Anthropological approaches
Edited by Joy Hendry
Second edition
London and New York
First edition published 1986 by JASO
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

Second edition published 1998 by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1998 Editorial and selection Joy Hendry; individual chapters
the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0-203-01269-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-12505-3 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-17267-5 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-17268-3 (pbk)
Contents
List of illustrations vii
List of contributors ix
Foreword to second edition xiii
Acknowledgements xv
Note on the text xvii
Introduction: the contribution of social anthropology to Japanese
studies 1
Joy Hendry
Part I Time, space and models of action
1 Time in the Japanese ritual year 15
Laurence Caillet
2 Spatial characterization of human temporality in the Ryu¯kyu¯s 31
Patrick Beillevaire
3 The Pythagorean view of time and space in Japan 42
Thomas Crump
4 The question of space: from Heidegger to Watsuji 57
Augustin Berque
5 Contested identities and models of action in Japanese discourses
of place-making: an interpretive study 68
Eyal Ben-Ari
Part II Kinship and social relations: perceptions and practice
6 Time, space and person in Japanese relationships 91
Jane M.Bachnik
7 Is the ie disappearing in rural Japan?: the impact of tourism on
a traditional Japanese village 117
Okpyo Moon
v
vi Contents
8 Death rites in Japan in the twentieth century 131
Jan van Bremen
9 A child in time: changing adoption and fostering in Japan 145
Roger Goodman
Part III Religion, science and cosmology
10 Gods, ancestors and mediators: a cosmology from the
South-western Archipelago of Japan 167
Teigo Yoshida
11 The importance of the left hand in two types of ritual activity
in Japanese villages 182
Kazuto Matsunaga
12 ‘Years of calamity’: yakudoshi observances in urban Japan 194
David C.Lewis
13 Redefining Kuzaki: ritual, belief and cho¯ boundaries 213
D.P.Martinez
14 Science and religious movements in Japan: hi-tech healers and
computerized cults 222
Mary Picone
Part IV Leisure: its impact and significance
15 Sakariba: zone of ‘evaporation’ between work and home? 231
Sepp Linhart
16 One over the seven: sake drinking in a Japanese pottery community 243
Brian Moeran
17 Models of performance: space, time and social organization in
Japanese dance 259
James Valentine
Name index 282
Subject index 286
Illustrations
FIGURES
6.1 Self/other relationship (polar) 92
6.2 Self and other relationship 92
6.3 House plan of the Kato¯ household 106
8.1 Eirei Jizo¯, guardian deity for the spirits of the war dead 137
9.1 Ie—Japanese household 148
11.1 Four points of worship at the village shrine 184
11.2 Passing through the ring of chigaya 185
11.3 Use of notebook on auspicious and inauspicious occasions 187
11.4 Use of serviette on auspicious and inauspicious occasions 187
11.5 Arrangement of dishes on auspicious and inauspicious occasions 187
11.6 Villagers in southern Kyushu turn anti-clockwise at the ta no
kami festival 190
11.7 Again the villagers turn anti-clockwise 191
12.1 Yakudoshi years for men and women 197
12.2 The use of East Asian medicine before and after a principal
yakudoshi 208
16.1 Informal seating arrangement (stage 1) 251
16.2 Informal seating arrangement (stage 2) 251
16.3 Informal seating arrangement (stage 3) 251
17.1 Komachi odori danced at the tanabata festival 263
17.2 Rock ’n’ roll at Harajuku: youths dancing in a circle 264
17.3 A young man supervises the dancing at Harajuku 274
TABLES
7.1 Population of Hanasaku village, 1960–93 119
9.1 Proportion of children in welfare institutions and in foster home
placements in various countries 146
9.2 Number of registered foster families, families fostering children
and children in foster care, 1953–91 151
9.3 Estimated numbers of different types of adoption in Japan per
year in mid-1990s 151
vii
viii Illustrations
9.4 Estimated numbers of adoptions by age and gender in Japan, 1983 152
9.5 Figures for the futsu and tokubetsu yo¯shi adoptions of children,
1985–95 154
9.6 Comparative proportion of children in foster home placements
and in child protection institutions, 1955–89 157
16.1 Analysis of drinking parties 254
Contributors
Jane M.Bachnik is Professor of Anthropology at the Ministry of Education,
National Institute of Multi-media Education, Chiba, Japan. Interests include: the
family, the organization of self and social order, and internet usage, all in
contemporary Japan, and pedagogy for cross-cultural teaching and learning.
Publications: Situated Meaning: Inside and Outside in Japanese Self, Society and
Language (1994), Family, Self and Society in Contemporary Japan (in press) and
A Pedagogy for Cross-Cultural Teaching and Learning (in press).
Patrick Beillevaire is an anthropologist and historian, chargé de recherche at the
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and a member of the Centre de
Recherche sur le Japon of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris);
his current areas of research are nineteenth-century Okinawan history, and the
comparative study of rituals in the Ryu¯kyu¯s.
Eyal Ben-Ari is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and
Anthropology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His most recent books
include Body Projects in Japanese Childcare: Culture, Organization and Emotions
in a Preschool (1996) and Japanese Childcare: An Interpretive Study of
Organization and Culture (1997). He has carried out fieldwork on Japanese white
collar suburbs, Japanese kindergartens and the Japanese community in Singapore.
Augustin Berque is Director of the Centre de Recherche sur le Japon of the
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris). His recent books include
Les Raisons du Paysage: De la Chine Antique aux Environnements de Synthèse
(1995), Nihon no Fu¯dosei (1995), Être humains sur la Terre: Principes d’éthique
de l’ecoumène (1996). He is also editor of the Dictionnaire de la Civilisation
Japonaise (1994). Nature, Artifice and Japanese Culture is a recent translation of
his work into English (1997).
Laurence Caillet is Full Professor in the Department of Ethnology, Comparative
Sociology, Prehistory and Ethnomusicology at the University of Paris-X Nanterre.
Her interests include Japanese folklore, history of Japanese anthropology, fictive
kinship, and worldview in contemporary urban Japanese society. She has published
Syncrétisme au Japon, O-Mizutori: le ritual de l’eau de Jouvence (1981), Fêtes
ix