Chapters 8-9: cultural footnotes

[telophase]

Again, since there's been summaries already, I'm just adding cultural footnotes. If I don't say where I got the info, it was pretty much ripped off directly from the footnotes in Tayler's translation.

Comments

[telophase]

From my anthropological point of view - the possession allows women to act in ways that break social barriers, and nobody thinks the worse of them for it (and watching someone else do it is just about as good as doing it yourself, in many cases). That part meshes with what I know about the phenomenon in other cultures as relief from social pressures. (I do have an MA in cultural anthropology; just as a data point)

I would view Yugao's particular experience as literary license, and the cultural phenomenon itself as seen in the Pillow Book and whatever other source documents it appears in as a way for women (and probably men as well; spectators seem to get a lot out of it) to break social barriers in a socially-accepted manner and let off a bit of steam. Keep in mind it's the wild behavior of the temporarily-possessed spirit mediums that the exorcists drive the spirits into that is really the focus of this function, not the ill person who's been diagnosed with possession.

Bargen seems to be using normal anthropological theory to push an agenda about what Murasaki is doing vis-a-vis female empowerment, and I think it's rather too modern a concept and that Murasaki probably would be extremely puzzled if someone tried to explain modern feminism to her.