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

[kate_nepveu]

Thanks for the unpacking of the end of Chapter 8--this is one of those things that's supposed to be blindingly obvious to contemporary readers, and while I probably could've unpacked it myself, I was distracted by the incredible skankitude of Chapter 9.

Does Tyler say if the mediums were always female, or were they just female here because the possessed person was female?

Hmm, Seidensticker calls it "a tightly folded bit of paper," and doesn't mention a knot. What's the significance of the incense box in the wedding rituals, does Tyler say? Or Murasaki's "initiation rituals," are those wedding-related or something else?

[telophase]

Morris says that the medium was usually a young woman, and gives examples from the Pillow Book and Genji, but doesn't discuss it further. Presumably A Woman's Weapon will discuss it, but I'll poke through its index in a bit. Morris mentions that exorcists are Buddhist and not Shinto.

(In contemporary Japan, IIRC, people get born and married Shinto but when they die, tend to have Buddhist funerals - has the Buddhist association with death lasted this long? Interesting question.)

Tyler says the incense box was to disguise the contents (the cakes) - presumably until the next morning when the deed had been done, since the women attendants figure it out at that point. I can't figure out where the initiation rituals are - maybe it's a difference in the translation?

[tekalynn]

As I understood it (from one class taken years ago and as a non-specialist) Shinto was always very good at "life" rituals, but had real problems with death, since Shinto sees death as super-impurity and prefers to stay as far away from it as possible. The imported Buddhists were the first to really do a lot with funerals, and slid right into a niche that the Shinto priests were more than happy to provide them with. And the Buddhists have been taking care of the death side of things ever since, responsibilities split between the two religious hierarchies very sensibly.

[akycha]

Hello, I just recently joined (I read Genji some years ago). I thought I'd comment on the medium question, just as an interesting side note, as I happen to be reading an ethnography on the subject.

In current Japan, spirit mediums seem to be overwhelmingly female. Schattshneider's work Immortal Wishes: Labor and Transcendence on a Japanese Sacred Mountain, deals with female spirit mediums (kamisama or, more derisively, gomiso, which roughly translates to "mystic healer") that generally are possessed by kami or, sometimes, oni (this is usually glossed as "demon," but also seems to have a connotation of "fierce god" in this context). She also mentions itako, who are, "the celebrated 'blind shamanesses'" of northern Tohoku (Schattshneider 2003: 30). Itako usually channel the spirits of the dead, although they have also been known to channel kami.

Kamisama are also ritual experts and may found their own shrines. I have yet to find any mention of a male medium in this volume, although I must note that it is site-specific and not

[rushthatspeaks]

Be aware that there is a lot of BS in Bargen. She has been known to use and mean seriously the phrase 'phallic mother'. For facts she's pretty good, but as far as interpretation goes I tend to consider her a raving loon, and yes, this includes the book's thesis: if being possessed is in fact a socially acceptable outlet, why does it lead to the deaths of women who do not wish to die? Now possessing I could see-- the Lady Rokujo is certainly expressing her disapproval of Genji's love life in the only way she can-- but I really think Bargen is barking up the wrong tree.

[rushthatspeaks]

I mean, anorexia can also be seen as a result of socialization/social pressures/the interiorization of emotions that cannot otherwise be expressed, but possession is *fast*. Yugao goes from fine to dead over the course of an evening.

[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

[telophase]

* Thinking about it again, I think our disagreement is that you're analyzing the function of the possessions in Genji, while I'm talking about the function of possession in Heian culture, not in the novel. Which is sort of what I say, badly, in my first reply to you.