Enduring Identities : The Guise of Shinto in Contemporary Japan

__Enduring Identities__ is an attempt to understand the continuing relevance of Shinto to the cultural identity of contemporary Japanese. The enduring significance of this ancient yet innovative religion is evidenced each year by the millions of Japanese who visit its shrines. They might come merely seeking a park-like setting or to make a request of the shrine's deities, asking for a marriage partner, a baby, or success at school or work; or they might come to give thanks for benefits received through the intercession of deities or to legitimate and sacralize civic and political activities. Through an investigation of one of Japan's most important and venerated Shinto shrines, Kamo Wake Ikazuchi Jinja (more commonly Kamigamo Jinja), the book addresses what appears through Western and some Asian eyes to be an exotic and incongruous blend of superstition and reason as well as a photogenic juxtaposition of present and past. Combining theoretical sophistication with extensive fieldwork and a deep knowledge of Japan, John Nelson documents and interprets the ancient Kyoto shrine's yearly cycle of rituals and festivals, its sanctified landscapes, and the people who make it viable. At local and regional levels, Kamigamo Shrine's ritual traditions (such as the famous Hollyhock Festival) and the strategies for their perpetuation and implementation provide points of departure for issues that anthropologists, historians, and scholars of religion will recognize as central to their disciplines. These include the formation of social memory, the role of individual agency within institutional politics, religious practice and performance, the shaping of sacred space and place, ethnic versus cultural identity, and the politics of historical representation and cultural nationalism. Nelson links these themes through a detailed ethnography about a significant place and institution, which until now has been largely closed to both Japanese and foreign scholars. In contrast to conventional notions of ideology and institutions, he shows how a religious tradition's lack of centralized dogma, charismatic leaders, and sacred texts promotes rather than hinders a broad-based public participation with a variety of institutional agendas, most of which have very little to do with belief. He concludes that it is this structural flexibility, coupled with ample economic, human, and cultural resources, that nurtures a reworking of multiple identities--all of which resonate with the past, fully engage the present, and, with care, will endure well into the future.

The plays presented here were first performed between 1769 and 1832, a time when the Japanese puppet theatre known as Bunraku was beginning to lose its pre-eminence to Kabuki. During this period, however, several important puppet plays were created that went on to become standards in both the Bunraku and Kabuki repertoires; three of the plays in this volume achieved this level of importance. This span of some sixty-odd years was also a formative one in the development of how plays were presented, an important feature in the modern staging of works from the traditional plebeian theatre. Only a handful of complete and uncut plays are produced in Bunraku or Kabuki nowadays; included here is one of these. Two among the four plays contained in this volume are examples of the much more common practice of staging a single popular act or scene from a much longer drama that itself is seldom, if ever, performed in its entirety today.

Kabuki, while better known outside Japan, has been a great beneficiary of the puppet theatre, borrowing perhaps as much as half of its body of work from Bunraku dramas. Bunraku, in turn, has raided the Kabuki repertoire but to a far more modest degree. The final play in this collection, The True Tale of Asagao, is an instance of this uncommon reverse borrowing. Moreover, it is an example of yet another way in which some plays have come to be presented: a coherent subplot of a longer work that gained an independent theatrical existence while its parent drama has since disappeared from the stage. These later eighteenth-century works display a continued development toward greater attention to the theatrical features of puppet plays as opposed to the earlier, more literary approach found most notably in the dramas of Chikamatsu Monzaemon (d. 1725).

The plays in this volume are accompanied by informative introductions, extensive notes on stage action, and discussions of the various changes that Bunraku underwent, particularly in the latter half of the eighteenth century, its golden age.

Annotation Enduring Identities is an attempt to understand Shinto's continuing relevance to the cultural identity of contemporary Japanese. The enduring significance of this ancient yet innovative religion is evidenced each year by the millions of Japanese who visit its shrines. They might come merely seeking a park-like setting or to make a request of the shrine's deities, asking for a marriage partner, a baby, or success at school or work; or they might come to give thanks for benefits received through the intercession of deities or to legitimate and sacralize civic and political activities. Through an investigation of one of Japan's most important and venerated Shinto shrines, Kamo Wake Ikazuchi Jinja (more commonly Kamigamo Jinja), the book addresses what appears through Western and some Asian eyes to be an exotic and incongruous blend of superstition and reason as well as a photogenic juxtaposition of present and past. Combining theoretical sophistication with extensive field-work and a deep knowledge of Japan, John Nelson documents and interprets the ancient Kyoto shrine's yearly cycle of rituals and festivals, its sanctified landscapes, and the people who make it viable. At local and regional levels, Kamigamo Shrine's ritual traditions (such as the famous Hollyhock Festival) and the strategies for their perpetuation and implementation provide points of departure for issues that anthropologists, historians, and scholars of religion will recognize as central to their disciplines. These include the formation of social memory, the role of individual agency within institutional politics, religious practice and performance, the shaping of sacred space and place, ethnic versus culturalidentity, and the politics of historical representation and cultural nationalism. Nelson links these themes through a detailed ethnography about a significant place and institution, which, until now, has been largely closed to both Japanese and foreign scholars CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS CONVENTIONS chapter 1. OPENING ORIENTATIONS chapter 2. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION The Very Modern Practice of Visiting a Shinto Shrine chapter 3. TOWARD AN IDEOLOGY OF SACRED PL ACE chapter 4. KAMO MEMORIES AND HISTORIES chapter 5 WARDEN VIRTUOSO SALARYMAN PRIEST The Roles of Religious Specialists in Institutional Perspective chapter 6. PERFORMING RITUAL chapter 7. KAMIGAMO’S YEARLY RITUAL CYCLE CONCLUSION appendix 1. SYMBOLS, PAVILIONS, AND SIGNS AT KAMIGAMO SHRINE appendix 2 .KAMO-AFFILIAT E D S H R I N E S I N JAPAN NOTES select character glossary WORKS CITED INDEX