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Regionistika 4.Indb ISSN 2029-2074 QUESTIONING THE IMAGE OF JAPAN AS A MIKO COUNTRY: REPRESENTATION OF SHAMANISM IN ANCIENT JAPANESE MYTHS Marina Shchepetunina Osaka University, Japan Keywords: Miko, shamanism, Japanese myth, male and female deities, Shinto Pagrindinės sąvokos: miko, šamanizmas, Japonijos mitas, vyriškosios ir moteriškosios dievybės, šintoizmas. Indigenous religious practices in Japan Since prehistoric times, the Japanese have venerated animistic spirits and deities called kami. Kami worship moved beyond awe of natural forces to institutionalized rituals and was transformed into the Shinto religion, which has been playing an essential role in people’s lives until nowadays. On the other hand, spirit practices remained in the form of folk religion in Northern Japan, Okinawa and Ryukyu Islands mainly, where female mediums called miko continue shamanistic traditions. Japanese shamanism, as pointed out by Mircea Eliade in his prominent work Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, differs from the classical shamanism of the North-Asian or Siberian type. While for the Siberian type the core element is ecstasy, extracorporeal journey, in the case of Japan it is, first of all, a technique of being possessed by spirits practiced mainly by women, miko. Unaware of the research undertaken in Siberia, the first Japanese folk 146 MARINA SHCHEPETUNINA religion ethnographer Yanagita Kunio (1875 - 1962) used the Japanese word miko to identify what was later called “shamans” by another famous reli- gious ethnographer Hori Ichiro. Yanagita Kunio distinguished two kinds of miko. One filled an official position as a priest at a Shinto shrine; the other was a roaming diviner and a religious practitioner who could fulfill common people’s needs for religious or secular support. In History of Japa- nese Miko, first published in 1930, Nakayama Tarō (1984) refers to the first type of miko as kannagi miko (miko serving a deity), and to the second as kuchiyose miko (miko through whose mouth a spirit speaks). During the following decades, researchers of traditional religious practices noticed that almost all Japanese shamans are of the possession type (Sakurai 1974; Ikegami 1999). Nowadays, the number of the popular type miko, or kuchiyose miko, is decreasing. Thus Ikegami (2008) notes that there are only several itako, blind kuchiyose miko in Northern Japan, and with them traditional posses- sion rituals may disappear in mainland Japan. On the other hand, there is also a new type of miko, urban miko. They work individually in cities, offering their services and counseling to pacify troublesome spirits and to put the minds of clients who are troubled by the stressful demands of modern society at ease (Sakurai 2000). Traditional shamanistic practices in Japan have been documented from a historical and religious perspective very well. However, this aspect of Japa- nese culture has not been so thoroughly discussed in the West. The major reference in the field still remains the ground-breaking Carmen Blacker’s work The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan published in 1975. One may assume that the lack of attention to the traditional shamanistic practices in the Western analysis of Shintoism may be explained by the fact that in the context of the 20th century events, such as the Pacific war and the end of Japanese imperialism, Western scholars have had a tendency to focus on the institutionalization of State Shinto more closely rather than on the folk aspects of Shinto religion. Shinto has undergone transformations from animistic beliefs in spirits of all things to a highly institutionalized system of religious practices, which remains an important national identity element. Shinto as a religion was formed in the course of historical events on the Asiatic continent, when the Chinese civilization was introduced to Japan. Scholars believe that the compilation of mythico-historical writings The Records of Ancient QUESTIONING THE IMAGE OF JAPAN AS A MIKO COUNTRY: REPRESENTATION OF SHAMANISM IN ANCIENT 147 JAPANESE MYTHS Matters (Kojiki) (712) and Chronicles of Japan (Nihongi) (720), that form the principal source of Shintoism, began in the 6th century during the reign of Emperors Keitai (507-543)1 and Kimmei (540-572) (Philippi 1969: 5). According to Sonoda (1985), in the period of compilation of the writings, Shinto, the way of kami, was viewed as native beliefs, contrasting with Buddhism (Sonoda 1985: 55). The word shinto appears in Nihongi before the records of Emperor Yōmei’s inauguration (586-588) The Emperor believed in Buddha and reverenced the Way of the Gods. (Aston 1924v.2: 106), and Emperor Kōtoku’s inauguration (645 - 655) He honored the religion of Buddha and despised the Way of the Gods2. (Aston 1924v.2: 195) By the time Nihongi was completed, Shinto formed an institutionalized religious system and played a significant role in the life of the court along with Buddhism. In the West, Shinto was viewed as an insufficient or defective religion for a long time, not suitable for a developed society. Many Western Japa- nologists were inclined to regard Shinto simply as an example of primitive religious mentality. Thus W.G. Aston, one of the early transmitters of Japa- nese beliefs, was predicting the imminent disappearance of Shinto at the beginning of the 20th century: Without a code of morals, or an efficient ecclesiastical organization, <…> Shinto is doomed to extinction. Whatever the religious future of Japan may be, Shinto will assuredly have little place in it. Such meat for babes is quite inadequate as a spiritual food for a nation which in these latter days has reached a full and vigorous manhood. (Aston 1921: 81) Later on, postwar Japanology focused its attention on the connection of Shinto with the imperial family and interpreted it as a formative element of nationalistic or imperialistic ideology (Holtom 1943). Indeed, with the beginning of Meiji restoration, Shinto, which coexisted with Buddhism in a syncretic form, was separated from Buddhism with the aim of “cosmic legitimizing”3 of imperial rule and formed the so-called national Shinto, or kokka Shinto. 1 The years of the reign of Emperors are indicated according to Nihongi 2 In the footnotes, Aston points out that in the original text the word shinto is used in both cases. 3 Joseph M. Kitagawa, preface to the translation of Norito by Donald L. Philippy (Philippi 1990: XV) 148 MARINA SHCHEPETUNINA In contrast, some contemporary Japanologists stress the uniqueness of Shinto as indigenous, native Japanese religious practices, not influenced by Buddhism. Within the framework of postmodernist philosophy and deconstructionist theory, which underlines the importance of pluralistic interpretations, John K. Nelson emphasises the potential of Shinto as a democratic religion: …shrine Shinto’s lack of centralized dogma, charismatic leaders, and sacred texts serve to promote both an institutional flexibility and a broad-based public participation. Neither doctrine nor institutional demand overshadows the sociocultural gardens of practice. (Nelson 2000: 11). The lack of dogma that W.G Aston was referring to is now positively reevaluated. The strong vitality and continuing popularity of Shinto is strikingly different from that of submerging folk tradition ofitako in Northern Japan. This is due to the fact that the institutionalization of Shinto played a role of a shelter for magico-religious practices of ancient Japan. The mythological records of Kojiki and Nihongi, which absorbed the cosmology of Shinto, provide us with the insight into magico-religious practices of ancient Japan, as they were used before the introduction of Buddhism and the Chinese culture. In this study, the first volume ofKojiki and the first and the second scrolls ofNihongi are analyzed. They consist of myths and legends of kami and refer to the mythic time before the first Emperor was born. The present analysis of Japanese mythology revealed heterogeneity in the representation of shamanistic tradition with respect to gender issues. While some male deities have the features characteristic to classical Sibe- rian shaman type, some female deities manifest certain features attributable to Japanese female shaman, miko, which can be observed until nowadays. Shamanistic characteristics among the deities were determined according to the constituents of shamanism identified by Ake Hultkrantz (Hultkrantz 1978: 32-50) as follows. The first constituent of shamanism is the belief in the supernatural world and cosmology, which provides the conceptual structure to a shaman’s experience and his contacts with the spirits. The second important constituent of shamanism was identified as the presence of a shaman as the “actor” on behalf of the community, whose artistic inspiration is granted to him by the helping spirits. Here one may draw an important distinction between a shaman and a non-shamanistic practi- QUESTIONING THE IMAGE OF JAPAN AS A MIKO COUNTRY: REPRESENTATION OF SHAMANISM IN ANCIENT 149 JAPANESE MYTHS tioner who attains contact with the other world without the help of spirits. Finally, the most important constituent of shamanism is considered to be ecstatic experiences of a shaman, such as ecstasy (extracorporeal journey) or possession. In the following chapters, a comparative analysis of the features of male and female shamans in Japanese mythology will be presented. Female shamanism: Miko in myths We come across the firstmiko figure in the texts of Kojiki and Nihongi; it is the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. She is the
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