Copyright

Copyright

by

Benjamin Davis Cox

2018
 Signature Page
The Dissertation Committee for Benjamin Davis Cox
certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation:

Gods Without Faces

Childhood, Religion, and Imagination in Contemporary Japan

Committee:

____________________________________
John W. Traphagan, Supervisor

____________________________________
A. Azfar Moin

____________________________________
Oliver Freiberger

____________________________________
Kirsten Cather
 Title Page

Gods Without Faces

Childhood, Religion, and Imagination in Contemporary Japan

by

Benjamin Davis Cox

Dissertation

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School

of the University of Texas at Austin

in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

The University of Texas at Austin

May 2018
 Dedication

For my mother, who

tirelessly read all of
my blasphemies, but
corrected only my
grammar. BB&tt.
 Acknowledgments
Fulbright, CHLA

This research was made possible by the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, a

Hannah Beiter Graduate Student Research Grant from the Children’s Literature Association, and

a grant from the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Endowment in the College of Liberal Arts, University

of Texas at Austin. I would additionally like to thank Waseda University for sponsoring my

research visa, and in particular Glenda Roberts for helping secure my affiliation.

Thank you to the members of my committee—John Traphagan, Azfar Moin, Oliver

Freiberger, and Kirsten Cather—for their years of support and intellectual engagement, and to my

‘grand-advisor’ Keith Brown, whose lifetime of work in Mizusawa opened many doors to me that

would otherwise have remained firmly but politely shut.

I am deeply indebted to the people of Mizusawa for their warmth, kindness, and forbearance.

In particular, I wish to thank Mayor Ozawa for granting me permission to conduct my research;

the chairman of the board of education, as well as the enchō sensei, shuji sensei, teachers and staff

of all the schools and preschools I studied; the staff at ASUPIA, and in particular Chiharu and

Arisa, whose efforts on my behalf are truly without number; Daigo and Jun, for their clerical

perspectives and the pleasure of their company; the priests of Komagata Shrine for their generous

gifts of time and access; Shinkō, for his daily provision of shelter, caffeine, and access to WiFi;

and finally, my host family, particularly my parents Mitsuhiro and Shigeko, for caring for me like

a son and for their countless kindnesses and lessons. Jinsei iroiro…

Special thanks are due as well to Tomoko Hetherington for her heroic transcription of audio

files I had deemed undecipherable; Aubrey Hooser and Cyndi Goodson for their unsung

bureaucratic genius; Susan Ackerman, for inspiring and nurturing my passion for religious studies;

and Helen Hardacre for enabling and guiding my reinvention as a scholar of Japanese religion.

v
 Abstract

Gods Without Faces

Childhood, Religion, and Imagination in Contemporary Japan

by

Benjamin Davis Cox, Ph.D.

The University of Texas at Austin, 2018

SUPERVISOR: John W. Traphagan

In societies where religion is largely not dogmatic, Pierre Bourdieu observed that religion

“goes without saying because it comes without saying.” But in what manner does it come? Japan

presents a particularly interesting case study in religious transmission not only due to the lack of

dogmatism in the Japanese approach to religion, but also because there is demonstrably little overt

attempt to indoctrinate children into the belief systems of Buddhism and Shinto.

The texts from which the Japanese learn the most about the content of their religion are not

the holy texts of the institutional religions, but rather picture books from the secular market. Ideas

and attitudes about the kami and Buddhas are not communicated to the child explicitly, moreover,

but rather come tacitly as part of learning the traditional cultural apparatus of which these beings

are a constituent part. Because direct explanatory statements about the kami and Buddhas tend to

be avoided, the child comes to make assumptions about supernatural beings based on the ways

they are taught to interact with them: to greet these beings much as they would greet other humans,

and to think of them as members of a social network of loving care that sustains them even when

vi
they are not aware of its actions. Furthermore, children are taught that showing ritualized social

deference to a significant object is functionally equivalent to showing deference to the entire social

network that that object represents. The kami, then, is the symbolic spokesperson for this

collective: the face applied to a null operator through which feelings of concern are transacted.

Through this process, the kami and Buddhas come to be understood simultaneously as both

members of the community and symbolic representations of the community—and in particular,

the community in its role as a network dedicated to the collective nurturance of the child and

performing concern for his wellbeing. The concern of the community for the child and the gratitude

of the child for the community are both directed—not to their ultimate recipients—but toward

inanimate objects that serve as loci for the transaction of these feelings.

vii
 Table of Contents

Copyright ......................................................................................................................................... i
Signature Page ................................................................................................................................ ii
Title Page ....................................................................................................................................... iii
Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... iv
Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................... v
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... vi
Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................... viii
List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. x
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ xi
List of Illustrations ........................................................................................................................ xii
Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1
Research Objectives .................................................................................................................... 6
Background and Significance ...................................................................................................... 7
Chapter Outlines ........................................................................................................................ 12
Chapter 1 – Scenes and Settings ................................................................................................ 17
Mizusawa Town ........................................................................................................................ 20
Preschool in Japan ..................................................................................................................... 23
The Japanese Religious Economy ............................................................................................. 25
Talking about ‘Religion’ in Shrine and Temple Preschools ..................................................... 30
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 44
Chapter 2 – Words and Pictures ............................................................................................... 46
Shinto Books ............................................................................................................................. 49
Buddhist Books ......................................................................................................................... 61
Gyōji Literature and the Secular Market ................................................................................... 70
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 86
Chapter 3 – Hopes and Dreams ................................................................................................. 89
Ema in Performative Context .................................................................................................... 90
Language Use and the Issue of Audience ............................................................................... 102
Children’s Wishes and their Social Ramifications .................................................................. 105
Children’s Ema, Vows, and Indirect Communication ............................................................ 123
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 129
Chapter 4 – Demons and Danger ............................................................................................ 131
Setsubun and the Oni ............................................................................................................... 133
Demons and Discipline ........................................................................................................... 142
Monsters and Metaphor ........................................................................................................... 158
Sympathy for the Devil ........................................................................................................... 173
The Oni Comes to Tokiwa Preschool ..................................................................................... 192
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 199

viii
Chapter 5 – Being, Dwelling, and Greeting ............................................................................ 201
Kami, Yōkai, and Constructing Sacred Space ......................................................................... 204
Shrine as Kami in Children’s Literature ................................................................................. 211
Kami and Mikoshi ................................................................................................................... 217
Being versus Dwelling: Toshigamisama and the Customs of the New Year .......................... 223
The Buddha is his Statue ......................................................................................................... 232
Ritual Greeting and the Construction of Personhood.............................................................. 239
Conclusion: Habitus, Embodied Cognition, and the Construction of Personhood ................. 253
Conclusion: The Localization of Concern .............................................................................. 262
Watching, Wasting, Grateful Tasting ...................................................................................... 266
Anthropomorphism and the Gods of Ordinary Things ........................................................... 276
Anthropomorphism in Adult Experience ................................................................................ 287
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 291
Appendix: Children’s Book Illustrations ............................................................................... 299
Works Cited............................................................................................................................... 325

ix
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 – Kanji usage based on putative tablet authorship..............................................102

Table 3.2 – Kanji/kana usage for two common words: ‘genki’ and ‘sugosu’.....................104

x
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 – Comparison of illustrations from Kamisama no ohanashi and Manga kojiki ........57
Fig. 3.1 – Child ema for sale at Komagata shrine.......................................................130
Fig. 4.1 – The oni arrives at Tokiwa kindergarten.........................................................196
Fig. 5.1 – Characters from Yōkai-watch on the grounds of Komagata shrine...........................257
Fig. 5.2 – Carrying a cardboard mikoshi at the summer matsuri at Komagata shrine, 2012......257
Fig. 5.3 – Children's mikoshi procession at Chinjufu Hachiman-gu, Isawa 2015.............258
Fig. 5.4 – Grandmother modeling sampai at small shrine....................................... 258
Fig. 5.5 – Father and daughter performing gasshō.....................................................259
Fig. 5.6 – A family of four makes offerings at the family grave during o-bon..............259
Fig. 5.7 – Statue of Jizō at Taiyō kindergarten, Kanegasaki, Iwate...............................260
Fig. 5.8 – Children practicing their morning Buddha greeting at Taiyō kindergarten.........260
Fig. 5.9 – Child playing with statue of Jizō.......................................................................261
Fig. 6.1 – Examples of anthropomorphic signage in Mizusawa.......................................298
Fig. 6.2 – Stuffed animals await immolation on a shrine’s New Year bonfire..............298

xi
 List of Illustrations

NOTE: Illustrations excerpted from the children’s literature herein discussed

are located in the Appendix, beginning on p299. The numbering system refers
to the chapter in which the illustration is discussed.

Illus. 2.1 - Supplemental dust jacket overleaf for Jigoku to gokuraku (2011).............300
Illus. 2.2 - Mizuki Shōnen is horrified by scenes of hell...............................................300
Illus. 2.3 - Sōbē trapped in the belly of an oni in hell..................................................301
Illus. 2.4 - Granny Waste-Not watches residents of hell fight over a cauldron of stew....301
Illus. 4.1 - A family of oni debates what is to become of Lolo the rabbit................302
Illus. 4.2 - A mixed crowd of humans and oni listen to a kamishibai performance...302
Illus. 4.3 - Mayu comforts a badly-scalded oni........................................................303
Illus. 4.4 - Grandfather and grandson help an oni pair to bathe.................................303
Illus. 4.5 - An oni turns over his magic mallet and cloak of invisibility........................303
Illus. 4.6 - The lonely kamisama appears in the guise of a beloved grandfather...........304
Illus. 4.7 - Children chase the ‘oni’ out of the house in a hail of roasted soybeans...........304
Illus. 4.8 - An oni snickers as an anxious mother tends to her sick children............305
Illus. 4.9 - A trio of oni are welcomed by a drunken father on setsubun night.....................305
Illus. 4.10 - The God of Good Luck takes up residence in the family’s kamidana.................306
Illus. 4.11 - Daikoku / Fuku-no-kami confronts the kami of poverty......................................306
Illus. 4.12 - Anthropomorphized good luck beans agree that the ‘oni’ is a man in a costume...307
Illus. 4.13 - Aodon cries so loudly that the bakeinu believes a larger monster to be nearby...307
Illus. 4.14 - Cover of There’s an Oni in your Tummy (1982).................................................308
Illus. 4.15 - Tsuyoshi, possessed by a black-skinned oni, throws beans angrily..........308
Illus. 4.16 - Yū’s bad qualities pour out of his belly-button as an oni scoops them up...309
Illus. 5.1 - Tomoki encounters an oni, one of the ‘kamisama of the house’...............309
Illus. 5.2 - Kanta sings to himself in the shrine grove..................................................310
Illus. 5.3 - A family discovers a dragon perched on the shrine building behind them.........310
Illus. 5.4 - A kami sets out from his tiny shrine and into a changed urban landscape................311
Illus. 5.5 - Emi-chan’s brother and his friends carrying the o-mikoshi..........................311
Illus. 5.6 - Cover of The Ten Little Frogs’ Autumn Festival (2010)..................................312
Illus. 5.7 - Toshigamisama, or the New Year God..................................................312
Illus. 5.8 - Toshigamisama sits, unobserved, atop the kagami-mochi........................314
Illus. 5.9 - Toshigamisama arrives as a cadre of smiling kagami-mochi....................314
Illus. 5.10 - Cover of The Mochi’s Feelings (2005)...............................................................314
Illus. 5.11 - Toshigamisama flutters down from the sky.......................................................314
Illus. 5.12 - Toshigamisama / o-Shōgatsu-sama arrives on a cloud........................................314
Illus. 5.13 - Shiba Wanko and Miké Nyanko dressed as the New Year kami.........................315
Illus. 5.14 - Aya’s father explains that the New Year kami is the family’s ancestors....................315
Illus. 5.15 - A kindly old man covers six roadside Jizō statues with straw hats....................315
Illus. 5.16 - Momo-chan gives a haircut to a statue of Jizō..........................................316

xii
Illus. 5.17 - Yosaku prays to a statue of Jizō as his mother arrives with his son.......316
Illus. 5.18 - The villagers of Nippon-ichi celebrate their Kannon statue.......................317
Illus. 5.19 - Amida Buddha hovers above three wooden Buddha images.........................317
Illus. 5.20 - The Kannon of Nippon-ichi lectures the third thief........................................318
Illus. 6.1 - Mii-chan the cow weeps, knowing her time to be slaughtered has arrived...............318
Illus. 6.2 - A plate of food is transformed into the animals and cook who made it...............319
Illus. 6.3 - Granny Waste-not declares food refusal to be an intolerable waste...............319
Illus. 6.4 - The protagonist of Why is Life Important? holds up a map of his kokoro...............320
Illus. 6.5 - Expressing gratitude is the only escape from feelings of helplessness and despair....320
Illus. 6.6 - Cover of the boxed set Kamisama of the Necessities of Life (2015).............321
Illus. 6.7 - Gohan-no-kamisama emanates from a small bowl of freshly cooked rice...............321
Illus. 6.8 - Kimono-no-kamisama is dizzied after Sawa-chan runs to show her father...............322
Illus. 6.9 - Tatami-no-kamisama appears on the woven rush floor, kamidana, and butsudan....322
Illus. 6.10 - Toire-no-kamisama hovers serenely over a freshly-cleaned toilet........................323
Illus. 6.11 - Tomoki finds himself drawn into the presence of the kamisama of the house..........323
Illus. 6.12 - Tsukumogami: everyday objects that are said to have kami within them...............324
Illus. 6.13 - A blanket is beseeched to protect the child while sleeping..........................324

xiii
Introduction

The outer edge of my right hand held out as a prow against the festival throngs, I navigated over

the crowded bridge toward the opposite riverbank. It was my first trip to Japan, and I was finding

it hard to credit reports of the dwindling rural population. The streets of Esashi Town—closed to

all but pedestrian traffic—were as choked with revelers as they were with smoke from the rows of

food stalls lining both sides of the main street. Seniors in thin nylon windbreakers or floral blouses,

ball caps and kerchiefs, bent harshly at the waist from decades of rice planting, politeness, and a

calcium-poor pre-boom diet, leaned against the embankment railing, chatting quietly among

themselves, or else sat on their walkers looking out silently across the water. Parents, an

advertiser’s plastic fan fluttering in one hand, a clear solo cup of ice-cold Asahi Super Dry

sweating in the other, relaxed with their friends and neighbors while paying refreshingly little

attention to their children, who shrieked delightedly through the streets, waving their festival

trophies of blinking LED trinkets and character balloons. Older children, self-segregated by gender,

clustered around cellular phones giggling, and joked up and down the riverbank in enjoyment of

the anonymity and freedom that in Japan is afforded only by the tumult of a crowd. Volunteers in

1
blue happi coats with the character for ‘festival’ printed across the back flitted officiously through

the crowd on a thousand unknown errands, as the eyes of the volunteer fire patrol, deeply scored

with laugh lines under their smart blue kepis, looked on in benign attentiveness.

The sun had already gone to rest somewhere beyond the Ōu Mountains and soon the lingering

glow of evening followed in its wake, putting to bed the cicadas and their electric buzz as it went

and wrapping us all in the tepid mugginess of a Japanese summer night. The crowd began to

concentrate by the river, draining away from the food-lined streets to compete with the early-

squatters for a good view.

Without warning, the obsequious whine of a professional emcee blared a polite apology out

over the crowds from her podium under the bridge’s artificial halogen sun. The crowd remained

inattentive through the words of gratitude she directed at the event’s corporate sponsors. Only

when the high, sharp striking of a brass chime signaled a choir of nuns assembled on the bridge to

begin a slow, melodic chant did the roar of the crowd diminish—but even then only partially, the

incomprehensible words of the eika hymn providing a sonic backdrop to the evening’s activities.

From the vantage point I had assumed upstream of the bridge, in a place unseen by but by

no means deliberately hidden from the vast majority of spectators, a team of a dozen or so

volunteers in blue happi and armed with roadside emergency flares had waded out into the water,

forming a human chain from one bank to the other. On the near bank of the river, hundreds of tiny

boats—ranging in size from a shoebox to a canoe—lay in dry dock. At a signal from the bridge,

the volunteers lit their torches and began passing the smallest boats along the chain. At a wordless

signal from the bridge, the first wave of ships were set alight and cast adrift.

Quickly, I returned downstream to where my host and her family had long before secured a

prime viewing spot. The shallow current flowed so slowly that I managed to arrive just ahead of

2
this flotilla’s vanguard, and so was able to witness the gasp of fulfilled anticipation that rolled

downriver as the first flames hove in sight. As the number of boats swelled, the crowd around me

kept up a stream of commentary. Oh, that one’s candle has gone out!—Look, that one’s stuck in

the reeds!—I think that one is ours, or is it that one? Children especially seemed eager to engage

with the festival by spotting these minor dramas, even as their younger siblings, unaccustomed to

the excitement and the late hour, drooled in contented slumber in slings across their parents’ backs.

For those who stayed alert, excitement mounted steadily over the course of the evening as

larger and larger boats began emerging from under the bridge. Excitement reached a crescendo

when the first of the large boats appeared, shepherded by a clutch of volunteers aiding the force of

the current with tow-ropes and struggling to keep the flat-bottomed vessels’ bows facing forward.

Each of these was topped with a straw-roofed cabin, whose rice-paper walls were inscribed with

the six character formula of the nenbutsu—I take refuge in the Buddha Amitabha—and which was

stuffed to the brim with pyrotechnics.

When each ship had reached the halfway point of its earthly voyage—that is to say, half the

distance to the second river crossing where another set of volunteers was jovially fishing the

extinguished remnants of the flaming boats out of the current and tossing them unceremoniously

in a heap under the percussive glare of a kerosene flood lamp—its stevedores touched its cabin

roof with their flares. The dry straw erupted in a tower of flame, the light from which mixed with

the showers of sparks cascading from the four corners of the barge, outshining the illumination of

the thousands of cellular screens held up to faces to capture the event.

Four of these large boats would pass, flare up, and subside over the course of the evening,

and as the embers of the last receded from view, a display of rockets erupted from over the tree

line away downstream—at the hypothetical terminus of the boats’ original trajectory—to signal,

3
symbolically, that the ships had reached their destination, and to indicate to the crowds that this

portion of the evening had concluded. Those with exhausted children rushed to pack up their refuse

and picnic furniture to try and beat the traffic, while those who were still energetic began migrating

a few blocks over to the main festival boulevard. There, a massed performance of the locally-

renowned shishi-dance (at over a hundred performers, tonight was slated to break the Guinness

record, people said—as though there could possibly be another contender for the title) was set to

begin.

My experience at this festival seemed to give me first-hand confirmation of words of wisdom

I received from an African anthropologist while I was still an undergraduate. When you find

yourself at a public religious ritual, she said, be wary of assuming that everyone is deeply invested

in what is going on; if you ask them, most people will tell you that they came for the food.

Indeed, the metaphysical significance of this event seemed to have been of secondary

importance at best. If you were to have asked a member of the Buddhist clergy—say, the nuns who

were chanting on the bridge—they would likely have repeated the theologically correct answer:

that the toro nagashi, or ‘lantern flowing (festival)’, where it is performed, is intended to send the

spirits of the ancestors, who have been sojourning with their families for the three-day duration of

the o-bon holiday, back to the Pure Land, the paradise governed by the Buddha Amitabha (of the

aforementioned nembutsu) where they, unable to achieve enlightenment in this life, are waiting in

perfect bliss and receiving instruction in the Law from the mouth of the Buddha himself.

Although many—especially the grandmothers and great-grandmothers who pressed their

hands together in gasshō as the boats passed—could also parrot this explanation if pressed, most

adults will say little more than that the boats are meant to convey the ancestors back to wherever

4
it is they spend their time when they aren’t at home, and quickly evade any more probing questions

about whether this is ‘really’ so from nosy, obtuse, and narrow-mindedly literal ethnographers.

The metaphysical purpose of the rite may be its warrant and charter, but the majority of people

who choose to attend do so for the purpose of engaging in a community event; to indulge in deep-

fried octopus balls, crispy fried chicken skin on a skewer, glistening fried noodles, and chocolate-

dipped bananas; to spend a summer night with friends dressed down in comfortable street clothes

or else up in their favorite summer yukata; to meet by chance old classmates with whom they’ve

fallen out of touch; and to enjoy the fireworks. Like the hymn, the religious implication of the

event seemed firmly in the background.

Some months later, however, as I was looking through the videos I had taken with my own

mobile device, I noticed something that turned my reading of this event on its ear. My finger on

the delete button in disappointment at the flickering smudges of grainy red light creeping across

my computer monitor, suddenly a chorus of three or four children’s voices—boys and girls, none

older than six—erupt across time and space into my eardrums:

-Jiichan, mata kite ne! (Grampa, come back soon!)

-Baibai, Jiichan! Mata o, ne! (Bye-bye, Grampa! See you later!)
-Baibai! (Bye-bye!)
-Baibai, mata ne! (Bye-bye! Come again!)
-Jya, ne! (See ya!)
-Jya, ne! (See ya!)
-Jya ne, Jiichaaan! (See ya, Grampa!)
-Jiichan, baibai! Mata kite, nee! (Bye-bye Grampa! Come back again!)
-Baibai Jiichan (Bye-bye Grampa!)
-Jiichan, baibai! (Grampa, bye-bye!)

Clearly, something important was happening here, all the more important for my having so nearly

missed it. If Japanese religion—and religious ritual more generally—is as pro forma as I had been

led to believe, then what do we make of this outburst? After all, there was no ritual script for this

speech act: it had all the markings of spontaneous, discursive (albeit one-sided) conversation.

5
Presumably having at some point been made aware that the rite was intended to send the spirits of

their departed ancestors back whence they came, began to wish their dead grandfather well on his

journey with precisely the same attitude and language they would have used if he had been backing

out of their driveway. It seemed that there was something yet to be explained about mental

representations of a metaphysical order in a religious system that privileges action over creed—

and that the key to that understanding might lie not with the community’s adults, but with its

children.

Research Objectives
In societies—like Japan—where the dominant religious system is largely non-dogmatic,

Pierre Bourdieu observed, religion “goes without saying because it comes without saying.”1 But

in what manner does it come? In the absence of explicit dogma what is the process by which

children acquire their knowledge of the supernatural? In other words: How do Japanese children

acquire their understanding of the gods?

The overarching purpose of this research is to investigate the intergenerational transmission

of religious ideas in contemporary Japan by examining the process by which pre- and early

elementary-school children are exposed to the various gods of the Japanese pantheon. These

include what some scholars have called “culturally-postulated supernatural agents”2—the deities

and spirits of folk Shinto, State Shinto, several strands of Buddhism, the tradition of ancestral

veneration, Daoism, Confucianism, and folklore (dragons, ghosts, goblins, animal tricksters, etc.).

1
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology ; 16 (Cambridge ; New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 167.Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, 167.
2
Melford Spiro, “Religion: Problems of Definition and Explanation,” in Anthropological Approaches to the Study of
Religion, ed. Michael Banton, A.S.A. Monographs 3 (London: Tavistock, 1966), 96; E. Thomas Lawson and Robert
N. McCauley, Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990), 5.Spiro, “Religion: Problems of Definition and Explanation,” 96; Lawson and McCauley, Rethinking Religion:
Connecting Cognition and Culture, 5.

6
 In order to determine how children come by their understanding of these beings, therefore,

my research has been guided by several specific lines of inquiry. First: of the many supernatural

beings of canonical Japanese religion, which are the most relevant to the everyday experience of

contemporary Japanese children, and in what ways does this list differ from operative adult

pantheons? Second, what roles do print and broadcast media play in communicating religious ideas

to children, and to what extent does adult mediation structure this communication? Third, what

arenas exist for the explicit religious indoctrination of preschool children, and what form does this

pedagogy take? Fourth, to what extent do children encounter religious ideas outside of explicitly

religious or pedagogical settings, and what effect does this have on populating their religious

imaginations? Fifth, when children participate in religious rituals whose primary actors are adults,

to what extent and by what means are they made to understand and internalize those adults’ ritual

actions and/or the motivation behind them? Finally, to what extent is childhood understanding of

and disposition toward supernatural beings inflected by non-contextually-determined cognitive

tendencies?

Background and Significance

This research is situated in the as-yet-unarticulated spaces among several interrelated bodies

of anthropological research, including those discourses concerning Japanese religion, childhood

socialization in Japan, religion and aging, the cognitive anthropology and developmental

psychology of religion, and the anthropological discourse on “folk” or “popular” religion.

Ever present but seldom in focus, children inhabit the peripheral spaces in ethnographic

accounts of Japanese religion. In Jeremy and Robinson’s account of traditional timber-frame house

construction, for example, children appear as a mute chorus scrambling to collect sanctified mochi

7
tossed over the newly-completed frame.3 Although children are the principal actors in Michael

Ashkenazi’s titular matsuri,4 his analytical focus remains fixed on the parents and other adult

participants. Likewise, William LaFleur’s masterful study of Jizō, the patron bodhisattva of

children, addresses this subject exclusively from maternal and clerical perspectives. 5 Perhaps

because adults have the power and resources to make and change ritual in the first place, children

have tended to inhabit the discursive periphery of these accounts—appearing as silent onlookers

rather than agents actively engaged in the process of cultural learning.

Likewise, in the same way that work on Japanese religion has had little to say about children,

work on Japanese children has had similarly little to say about religion. Early childhood in Japan

received considerable anthropological and psychological attention twenty to thirty years ago,

focused primarily on the effects of early childhood education and socialization on both academic

achievement and attitudes toward it.6 This work concentrated chiefly on the effect of socialization

in the life of the Japanese toddler. An important aim of this process of socialization, these scholars

found, was to instill some of the most important ethical norms of Japanese society, namely a

sensitivity to the needs of others (shūdan seikatsu). Yet although religion is often deeply implicated

with ethical pedagogy, seldom if ever did these studies mention religion explicitly.

3
Michael Jeremy and M. E. Robinson, Ceremony and Symbolism in the Japanese Home, Japanese Studies (Honolulu,
Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1989), 142–47.
4
Michael Ashkenazi, Matsuri: Festivals of a Japanese Town (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993), 49–63.
5
William R. LaFleur, Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1992).
6
George A. De Vos, Socialization for Achievement: Essays on the Cultural Psychology of the Japanese (Berkeley:
University of Calif. Press, 1973); Takeo L. Doi, “‘Amae’: A Key Concept for Understanding Japanese Personality
Structure,” in Japanese Culture, ed. Robert John Smith and Beardsley, Richard K (Chicago: Aldine, 1962), 132–39;
Takeo Doi, The Anatomy of Dependence, 1st ed. (Tokyo, New York: Kodansha International ; [distributed by Harper
& Row, New York, 1973); Harold W. Stevenson et al., eds., Child Development and Education in Japan (New York:
W.H. Freeman, 1986); Joy Hendry, Becoming Japanese: The World of the Pre-School Child (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1986); Lois Peak, “Learning to Become Part of the Group: The Japanese Child’s Transition to Preschool
Life,” Journal of Japanese Studies 15, no. 1 (1989): 93–123; Lois Peak, Learning to Go to School in Japan: The
Transition from Home to Preschool Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Joseph Jay Tobin, David Y.
H. Wu, and Dana H. Davidson, Preschool in Three Cultures: Japan, China, and the United States (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1989).

8
 My decision to focus on the acquisition of ideas rather than practices, finally, is a departure

from the prevailing trend among anthropologists to treat religion in Japan exclusively in terms of

ritual participation rather than belief.7 Because the Japanese conceive of their own religion in terms

of ritual participation rather than dogma, this approach is perfectly reasonable. However, much

can—and ought—still to be said about mental representations even in a system where religion is

not dogmatic. Far from ignoring the lessons of postmodern scholarship and its sensitivity to

rituality and embodiment, my study is designed to investigate the intellectual and affective

dimensions of religion given the consensus within religious studies that religion—at least in

Japan—is more about doing than about thinking.

By reconsidering the importance of religious beliefs, I am aligning myself with a significant

body of research on the social psychology and cognitive science of religion. In particular, the way

in which young children acquire ideas about spiritual beings has been of great concern in the

United States, 8 but the majority of this work presupposes a culture suffused by hegemonic

Protestantism. Justin Barrett in particular has argued that the human infant is predisposed to

perceive divine agency in keeping with the Judeo-Christian model of “God” as an omniscient and

7
Jeremy and Robinson, Ceremony and Symbolism in the Japanese Home; Winston Davis, Japanese Religion and
Society: Paradigms of Structure and Change (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992); Ashkenazi,
Matsuri; John K. Nelson, A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996); Ian
Reader and George J. Tanabe, Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan (Honolulu:
University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1998); Scott Schnell, The Rousing Drum: Ritual Practice in a Japanese Community
(Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999); John K. Nelson, Enduring Identities: The Guise of Shinto in
Contemporary Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000); John W. Traphagan, The Practice of Concern:
Ritual, Well-Being, and Aging in Rural Japan, Carolina Academic Press Ethnographic Studies in Medical
Anthropology Series (Durham, N.C: Carolina Academic Press, 2004); Satsuki Kawano, Ritual Practice in Modern
Japan: Ordering Place, People, and Action (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005).
8
Stewart Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Karl
Sven Rosengren, Carl N. Johnson, and Paul L. Harris, eds., Imagining the Impossible: Magical, Scientific, and
Religious Thinking in Children (Cambridge [England] ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Cristine H.
Legare and André L. Souza, “Evaluating Ritual Efficacy: Evidence from the Supernatural,” Cognition 124, no. 1 (July
1, 2012): 1–15; J. L. Barrett, R. A. Richert, and A. Driesenga, “God’s Beliefs versus Mother’s: The Development of
Nonhuman Agent Concepts,” Child Development 72, no. 1 (February 2001): 50–65.

9
morally concerned singular deity. 9 Because Japan, like much of the rest of the world, has no

omnipotent, transcendent, creator god, but rather a multitude of transcendent beings, saints, and

local spirits, my work on ‘god’ concepts here will help to explain mental representations of deities

where there is no prevailing tendency to monotheism.

At the broadest possible level, finally, this research is intended to bring the insights of

cognitive science to bear on the perennial issue of ‘folk religion’. It has seemed self-evident to

generations of anthropologists that some kind of “folk” or “popular” religious system or mode

exists for the majority of people in a given society outside the tomes and declarations of the

theological elites—the most famous of these being Robert Redfield’s “Great-” and “Little

Traditions”. And yet all attempts to define this phenomenon in opposition to élite groups—whether

these groups be geographically (non-urban), socially (lower-class), economically (poor),

educationally (illiterate), or religiously (lay) marginal—have been dismissed as unsatisfactory at

best, and pernicious at worst.

What I propose is that the idea of ‘natural religion’ suggested by cognitive scientists may be

the key to unraveling the question of folk religion. As understood by these scholars, ‘natural

religion’ refers to certain basic religious ideas that appear with startling regularity in all the world’s

cultures and that arise as the natural consequence of human cognitive processes. Indeed, it is this

similarity which one prominent scholar of popular religion in modern China has provocatively

suggested may in fact represent a “universal religion of ordinary people.” 10 The chasm often

identified between pulpit and pew as the starting point of conversations about folk religion11 can

9
This bias is pervasive in Barrett’s writing; for a particularly straightforward example see: Barrett, Richert, and
Driesenga, “God’s Beliefs versus Mother’s.”
10
Daniel L. Overmyer, Local Religion in North China in the Twentieth Century: The Structure and Organization of
Community Rituals and Beliefs, Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section Four, China, Handbuch Der Orientalistik 22
(Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2009), 187.
11
Don Yoder, “Toward a Definition of Folk Religion,” Western Folklore 33, no. 1 (1974): 2–15.

10
be explained as resulting from the action of these cognitive processes on the contents of official

theological systems. But because natural religion relies on universal cognitive tendencies rather

than class- or status-based differences to account for this disconnect, it allows us to avoid falling

into the trap of talking about folk religion as though it were a separate (but lesser) cultural system

that exists in tension with other kinds of more official religiosity; a system alternate to, but

nevertheless as thoroughly worked out and robust as, élite theological systems.

The natural religion of the cognitive scientists is by no means identical to folk religion.

Rather, I propose that what we have been reluctantly calling “folk” or “popular” religion is in fact

the place of ongoing negotiation between innate cognitive predispositions on the one hand, and

concrete, transmissible cultural artifacts on the other. “Folk religion” exists at the point of tension

between our innate cognitive architecture and the contents of our religious institutions. It is nothing

less than the result of the meeting between intuitions about the animate nature of the world and the

purposefulness of causality and the established apparatus of culture and the learned theologies of

a scholarly, textual élite. Thus, the grander project to which my research hopes to contribute is

this: How do ordinary people—that is, people with neither theological training nor interest—make

these negotiations? How are cultural particulars transmitted? Why and to what extent do they

become naturalized hegemonic representations, and to what extent and under what circumstances

do they remain only provisional? By determining how young children—who are in the very earliest

stages of putting culturally-prompted masks on their intuitive concepts of supernatural agency—

acquire and use these cultural forms, we can begin to understand this process of negotiation more

generally.

11
Chapter Outlines
The following dissertation divides naturally into two major sections. The first addresses the

question of how Japanese children learn about the gods—which is to say, the settings and

experiences that serve as the vectors through which this cultural content is passed—while the

second addresses what, exactly, it is that these children learn, and by extension, what that pedagogy

means for our understanding of Japan.

Chapter 1 – Scenes and Settings

In the first chapter, I introduce the reader to the town of Mizusawa, where I conducted the majority

of my fieldwork, and its institutional childcare structure: its daycares, pre-, and elementary schools.

After a brief explanation of local childcare practices more generally, I will introduce the reader to

the ways in which religious pedagogy features in early childcare, which are surprisingly few even

for daycare centers with explicit religious affiliation. In explaining how these institutions

operate—particularly with reference to the domain of religion—I will perforce introduce the reader

to the practical vicissitudes of doing ethnography of ‘religion’ in Japan, and why this difficulty is

of vital importance to understanding the object of my study.

Chapter 2 – Words and Pictures

Over the course of my fieldwork, one of the most frequent responses I received to an explanation

of my research objectives (second only to muzukashii, naa? – ‘oh, that’s tricky’) is that children

primarily received their understanding of the gods from books. In my second chapter, I turn to an

analysis of the role of picture books in Japanese religious pedagogy. The books themselves fall

neatly into several categories, each of which I will treat in turn: texts produced in whole or in part

by religious organizations both Shinto and Buddhist, and books from the secular market that deal

with Japanese religion indirectly through explaining gyōji: the essential practices of the traditional

festival calendar. This gyōji literature, in turn, is easily divisible into two categories: manuals,

12
which are visual catechisms for easy reference, and narratives, which explain a given festival over

the course of telling a story.

Chapter 3 – Hopes and Dreams

Chapter 3 begins the second of my two sections by turning my focus from the settings and vectors

of pedagogy to its content. Having established that Japanese children learn primarily by doing, I

begin a series of chapters that try to establish just exactly what it is that this performance teaches.

As I establish in Chapter 1, Japanese religion is a thoroughly integrated system, and therefore does

not form a ready or easy complement to a ‘secular’ realm, despite surface indications to the

contrary. As such, it is to be expected that activities an outside observer would unhesitatingly

consider to be ‘religious’ can sometimes be used in order to communicate values that we might

otherwise classify as secular. In this chapter, I focus on the inscribing of ema—votive tablets on

which Japanese of all ages express their hopes for the future—as an opportunity to reinforce the

secular values at the center of early childhood pedagogy: the recognition of the self as a member

of a cohesive group and the willingness to act accordingly.

Chapter 4 – Demons and Danger

My discussion of childhood experience with the supernatural begins, not with the kami or Buddhas,

but with lesser supernatural beings—oni and yōkai—with whom children come into more intimate

contact, and which inhabit the murky world between religion and folklore, earnestness and self-

conscious metaphor. A popular subject of children’s books, oni and yōkai serve a number of

purposes in the child’s religious pedagogy. They provide an easier and lower-stakes point of entry

to the entirety of the Japanese traditional cosmology by being more relatable and approachable; in

so doing, the apparentness of their existence serves as an epistemological support for the present

yet aloof kami and Buddhas. They engage the imagination and the limbic system; delighting and

terrifying in equal measure, the oni give children a traumatic face to apply to their deep and real

13
anxieties, while at the same time affording them means to work through these anxieties through

play—all while implicitly reinforcing the validity of a shared cultural paradigm. Finally, in so

doing, they provide the child his or her first foray into the world of personified social processes,

as the oni in its many guises is made to stand in variously for ill fortune, personal failures, and the

pressure for social conformity.

Chapter 5 – Being, Dwelling, and Greeting

Interestingly, although Japanese religion—and Japanese culture more broadly—places such a high

premium on the correct performance of protocol, adults nevertheless deal very leniently with the

imperfect ritual performances of children. In a ritual context where doing things correctly is more

important than an earnest heart, how can this be so? To answer this, I will revisit the debate of

whether ritual is primarily efficacious or symbolic/expressive. My contention is that ritual, at least

in the Japanese context, is primarily understood as an act of communication.

By casting ritual as essentially communicative, we strike at the heart of Japanese religious

pedagogy. Children may not be taught precisely what the kami or Buddhas are—indeed, to the

point where precious few children and surprisingly few adults will readily distinguish them—but

they can tell you very easily where they might be found. In this chapter, I explain the ways in

which children come to understand where the kami and Buddhas can be accessed, and in so doing,

come to a fuller understanding of the role of material representations of divinity in the way those

beings come to be conceptualized. Extending the metaphorical play involved in thinking about oni,

I will argue in this chapter that the modes of imagining and interacting with deities that children

are taught are fully consonant with broader modes of social interaction, which in turn helps to

explain origin of the hanshin-hangi (‘half-belief half-doubt’) epistemological attitude that adults

profess having toward their gods.

14
Conclusion – The Localization of Concern
Having first dealt with the ways in which social concern is distilled, concentrated, and personified

into concrete images and locations for children to interact with, I conclude by examining the ways

in which children are taught that that social concern is diffused throughout their daily life. I

accomplish this end by investigating how three cultural code words crop up again and again in

early childhood pedagogy. The first, mimamoru—to look after—frequently appears in

explanations of the kami and Buddhas’ activities viz. humans. In describing them thus, adults are

making an analogy between the loving care they provide for their children and the concern that the

kami and Buddhas show for everyone—and in doing so implicate them in the social order. The

second and third are more closely related, and represent one concrete manifestation of the former.

The paired concepts of mottainai—an exclamation/exhortation to avoid wastefulness—and

itadakimasu—the phrase uttered without fail before every meal to indicate gratitude—are

employed to develop within the child an awareness of the intricate social web of which they are

learning to be a part and the ramifications that their actions have on other members of that web.

It is my hope, which I will express in my conclusion, that this study will raise some important

questions for scholars working outside of the field of Japanese religion. I have chosen Japan as my

field site not because of any deep personal connection to the culture but because Japan serves as

an excellent natural experiment. In Japan, we see a modern technological and economic juggernaut,

but one which managed to weather the age of Western colonialism without falling subject to

Christian influences. We also see one of the last remaining nation-states; with a disputed 98.5% of

the population identifying as ethnically Japanese, we see a society where culture, state, and civic

space are interpenetrating and coterminous. As such, Japanese religious identity is, for the vast

majority, taken for granted as part and parcel with ethnic identity—and consequently is not the

15
subject of a rigorous pedagogy. By understanding how the Japanese become Japanese, we will be

better equipped to understand how the vast majority of people throughout human history—who

inherit their metaphysical commitments from their parents rather than choosing them later in life—

have come by said commitments.

16
Chapter 1 – Scenes and Settings

The westbound train that erupts into the first scene of Kawabata Yasunari’s novel Snow Country,

though generally agreed to have been bound for Niigata to the south and west, may just as well

have entered the mountain passage within Ōshū city limits. The mountain range on which breaks

the worst of the snows that barrel down each winter from Siberia shelters Ōshū on its western flank.

To the east, the city is similarly shielded by the range to whose high ground the survivors of the

great tsunami of 2011 first fled to safety. Like the other major cities of the prefecture, the most

densely-settled portions of Ōshū lie thus nestled between the two great ranges of Northern Japan

along the fertile valley of the Kitakami River.

Unremarkable unto itself, Ōshū is ringed by places of somewhat greater renown. The city of

Tōnō, where Yanagita Kunio collected his titular Monogatari, sits in the mountains to the

northwest.12 Children’s author Miyazawa Kenji lived and set many of his tales just a short distance

to the north in a land which he called Ihatov after Japan’s turn-of-the-century Russian vogue. To

12
Kunio Yanagita, The Legends of Tōno, Japan Foundation Translation Series (Tokyo: Japan Foundation, 1975).

17
the south, on the other hand, is the very real Hiraizumi; the Heian-era seat of the Northern branch

of the Fujiwara clan, this temple complex has been a UNESCO world heritage site since 2011,

with its main feature—the golden pavilion (konjikidō) of Chūson-ji—attracting thousands of

domestic and foreign tourists yearly.13

Seventy kilometers south of the prefectural capital of Morioka, Ōshū’s constituent townships

happily escaped the ignominy of being named—as some more northern towns are—by the number

of days it would take a mounted messenger departing from Morioka castle to reach them (i.e.

Ichinohe, Ninohe, and so on all the way to Mutsu bay); yet the legacy of this region as a backwater

is still palpable. Despite the newness of the city as an administrative entity, its name has a deeper

history. The characters used to render the name Ōshū translate roughly to “Deep Country” or

“Hinterland,” and it takes its name from a pseudonym for the defunct Mutsu province—which

from the Heian period through to the Meiji Restoration comprised the territory belonging to

modern Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate, and Aomori prefectures.

Despite being near the southern end of Iwate prefecture, Ōshū marked the northernmost

extent of the Japanese imperial ecumene at the dawn of the Heian period. The last portion of the

main Japanese island of Honshu to resist the hegemony of the itinerant but Kansai-based Yamato

court, the land of Mutsu was inhabited and by a people or peoples known in surviving records only

by the disparaging ethnonym Emishi (‘Prawn-Barbarian’).14 Their leader, Aterui (who is believed

to have been born in what is now Ōshū) led over a decade of successful resistance to military

excursions sent from Kyoto, peaking in the humiliating defeat in 789 at the Battle of Koromogawa,

13
For more on this site see Traphagan, The Practice of Concern, 109–11.
14
Historians are divided on the issue of whether the emishi represented an ethnic group distinct from the Yamato
Japanese, a rival political entity, or a catch-all term for people outside the control of the central government. For a
summary of current research, see Bruce L. Batten, To The Ends of Japan: Premodern Frontiers, Boundaries , and
Interactions (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003), 102–7.

18
before being captured and eventually executed by Sakanoue no Tamuramaro in 802. 15 His defeat

marked the end of organized resistance to the northward expansion of the ethno-politically

“Japanese” Yamato court, and with it both Buddhism and the imperially-sanctioned set of ritual

relationships with the native spirits which has come retroactively to be known as Shinto. The hill

on which Aterui is said by locals to have made his last stand overlooks both the city’s bullet train

station and a strip-mall shopping center named in his honor.

Yet for all the remoteness inscribed in the toponyms of both city and region, the Kitakami

River valley is far more accessible to the capital than anywhere else in Northern Tōhoku, as it stabs

upward into otherwise rugged Iwate from the flood plain around Sendai. An easy and direct three

hour ride from Tokyo Station by shinkansen, Ōshū City is also served by the JR Tōhoku line—

which bisects the city along the western bank of the Kitakami River—and by the Tōhoku

Expressway which passes slightly farther west.

Created in 2006 as part of a push from Tokyo to reorganize and consolidate rural

administration, Ōshū remains in many ways an administrative fiction, its five constituent

communities retaining a strong sense of community identity in defiance of outside pressure.16 Of

the five merged municipalities—Mizusawa, Maesawa, Esashi, Isawa, and Koromogawa—the

burgh of Mizusawa where I conducted the majority of my research is preeminent, both because of

its superior population size and density and because it is where Ōshū city hall resides. The

aforementioned JR Tōhoku main trunk line has only three stops within city limits, serving

Mizusawa city center, the smaller former city of Maesawa farther south, and between them the

15
William Wayne Farris, Heavenly Warriors: The Evolution of Japan’s Military, 500-1300, Harvard East Asian
Monographs 157 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 92–94.
16
https://www.city.oshu.iwate.jp/htm/ilc/en/about_oshu.html

19
small neighborhood station of Rikuchū-Orii (where I resided)—bypassing Esashi, Isawa, and

Koromogawa entirely.

The town of Esashi, the setting for the riverside lantern festival introduced in the opening

anecdote, encompasses (minus some deeply-contested gerrymandering by which the ancient and

regionally famous temples of Kokuseki-ji and Shōbō-ji, each over a thousand years old, were

annexed to Mizusawa district) all the territory from east of the river to the foot of the Kitakami

mountains. Unlike in neighboring cities Ichinoseki or Kitakami, where both bullet- and local train

service converge in a single station, the shinkansen station that serves Ōshū is located in Esashi at

a non-walkable, scarcely-cycleable distance from the regular local rail station in Mizusawa.

To the west, the Tōhoku Expressway cuts off from the rest of the city the sparsely-populated

Isawa, comprising a broad expanse of rice fields that extend to the foothills of the Ōu Mountains

which form the prefecture’s natural border with Akita prefecture. Here in the western part of Isawa

can be found the majority of the city’s natural hot springs, as well as the recently-completed dam

on which the controlled irrigation of the majority of the city’s rice fields depends. The former

village of Koromogawa is furthest south, and lies along the border that Ōshū shares with Hiraizumi,

which owing to its national cultural significance was able to preserve its independence.

Mizusawa Town
Emerging from Mizusawa local rail station on a clear day in early spring, one sees the brilliant

snow-capped peaks of the Ōu Mountains framed by the urban decay of the Station Avenue. 17

Faded billboards announce in questionably-cosmopolitan roman characters the names of shops

long since foreclosed, leaking rivers of rust down the tiled and plastic-sheeted exteriors of the

17
Despite Iwate’s reputation as a predominantly rural area, and the fact that vast swaths of irrigated rice land can be
attained from this spot by bicycle in any direction in a mere half hour, Mizusawa is decidedly an urban settlement.

20
buildings beneath. On any given day, the covered walkways to either side of the boulevard shelter

fewer pedestrians than pigeons, whose scratching and fluttering drowns out the schmaltzy

sentimentality of instrumental American pop covers from forty years ago that sigh through an

ageing sound system to brighten the spirits of long-vanished crowds.

A new women’s boutique clothier with wares and storefront as chic and well-designed as

anything one might see downtown of a prosperous American city has just opened for business

beside a vendor of footwear whose window display has not changed by so much as a single pair

of shoes in the three years of my acquaintance with the town. I wonder as I pass by (along with

the hopeful new proprietor) whether the same fate is in store for her. The Station Avenue and its

main cross-streets were the commercial and community center of Mizusawa before the

construction of the national route 4 bypass diverted most traffic east—away from downtown

toward the portion of Mizusawa between the railway and the river, where a mile-long strip of

pachinko parlors and national big-box chain retailers thrive, and where the city’s main public

library and concert hall have since been built. Once the anchor of these major roads—the festival

avenues of Mizusawa’s two major shrines, Komagata to the south and Hitaka to the west—the

Maple shopping center now sits rusting bravely.

Yet for all that Ōshū seems deserted, it is livelier than first meets the eye. As is evident in

my introduction, a surprising number of people can be found in Ōshū if only one knows where and

when to look. If one is out and about largely during the daylight hours from eight to six, as I was,

one is likely not to come into contact with either students, young parents, or working professionals,

as these are busy at their various occupations. The furiita (freelancer) appears to be a phenomenon

confined to the big cities: apart from myself and an informant, there was often not a single client

all day in a coffee shop on the station avenue which, had it been in America, would have been

21
packed to the gills from opening to last call with heavily-caffeinated young creative types hunched

over laptops. But one has only to be in the train station at rush hour, or wandering the rabbit warren

of hostess clubs and snacku bars off the main avenue on a Friday night, or attending any of the

town’s major religious festivals, and one will see the hardworking students and citizens of Ōshū

out in droves.

Outside those times, one is likely to encounter only two demographics on a daytime

walkabout. On a rickety plastic bench on the station avenue, next to an incongruous trio of bronze

musicians frozen in an eternal Dixieland riff, sits a clutch of octogenarians in orthopedic shoes and

quilted jackets waiting for a bus that will whisk them away to the aforementioned Aterui shopping

center—or else to the local hospital, where I am told they spend their day enjoying the free HVAC

and catching up with friends while they wait to be ill. Across the street, we encounter another

group dressed all in black, descending gingerly from a chartered bus onto the sidewalk before the

Mizusawa Grand Hotel, which seems to be given over entirely to the funeral banquet trade since

the completion of the business-oriented Route Inn opposite the Maple Plaza. Entering into the

plaza’s main atrium, we see still more sitting in companionable silence, silently watching both the

shopkeepers at their trade and the awkward, foreign ethnographer, as he takes a shortcut to his first

interview of the day.

As we exit the Maple Plaza and turn onto the broad festival avenue, we finally catch a

glimpse of the only other demographic represented on the daytime streets of Mizusawa. There,

coming down the festival avenue and looking for all the world like a diminutive chain gang, in

their matching neon caps, smocks, and name-tags, overseers looming ahead and behind, is a group

of a dozen preschoolers being led on a cord for their daily constitutional. Neither children nor

teachers pay much attention to me—the latter are too concerned with the safety of the former, who

22
in turn have turned their single-minded concentration to putting one foot in front of the other.

These are from the youngest age bracket at one of my field sites, and so do not have a relationship

with me that would mandate a greeting. Their big brothers and sisters, on the other hand, are a

different story, and it is to them that I now turn.

Preschool in Japan
Primary education in Japan is compulsory beginning in April of the year in which a child turns six.

Unlike in America, where matriculation falls in September after a long summer break, the Japanese

academic schedule breaks in the middle of spring after a brief recess. Longer breaks centered on

the summer (o-bon) and winter (o-shōgatsu) holidays fall in the middle of the school year.

Although enrollment in some form of pre-primary school childcare is nearly universal,18 free

public kindergarten administered as part of primary school, another feature of the American system,

is also absent in Japan. This role is served instead by two distinct systems of pre-elementary

childcare: yōchien and hoikuen.19 The first, yōchien, translates most approximately to “preschool,”

insofar as it purports to provide a more learning-centric experience for the child in explicit

preparation for the rigors of Japanese primary education.20 These institutions are answerable to,

and run according to a curriculum established by, the Monbukagakushō (the Ministry of Education,

Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, generally abbreviated in English as MEXT)—the same

ministry that oversees Japan’s primary and secondary school systems. 21 Nationwide, 60% of

yōchien are private, with 80% of the children enrolled in yōchien attending these private

18
Joseph Jay Tobin, Yeh Hsueh, and Mayumi Karasawa, Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited: China, Japan, and
the United States (Chicago ; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 152.
19
For the history of the evolution of these two distinct systems and a discussion of recent changes thereunto, see: Yuki
Imoto, “The Japanese Preschool System in Transition,” Research in Comparative and International Education 2, no.
2 (June 1, 2007): 88–101.
20
Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa, Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited, 140–41.
21
Imoto, “The Japanese Preschool System in Transition,” 88; Sarane Spence Boocock, “Controlled Diversity: An
Overview of the Japanese Preschool System,” Journal of Japanese Studies 15, no. 1 (1989): 45.

23
institutions.22 As a general rule, although private, yōchien do not tend to be religiously-affiliated.

Although disparities of wealth or status are on the whole narrower in Japan than in America, and

the Japanese are loath to discuss or even acknowledge distinctions of social class, it was

nevertheless clear that yōchien were generally viewed as being the superior of the two, having

more stringent licensing requirements for teachers, and as such are the preferred option for white-

collar salaried workers seeking educational preparation for their children.23

Conversely, hoikuen translates more closely to “daycare,” their focus being on providing

surrogate nurturance for children of working parents. This purpose is reflected in its name, with

hoiku combining the characters for ‘protection’ and ‘nurturance’; the terminal en which it shares

with yōchien meaning ‘garden’ but with the valence of -garten, its familiar Anglo-German

equivalent. Falling under the administrative umbrella of the Ministry of Health, Labor, and

Welfare (Kōseirōdōshō), the hoikuen follows no set curriculum, but rather stresses socialization to

Japanese cultural values and the importance of play.24 Indeed, every time I asked a member of

staff “in what way do you teach children such-and-so” I would be reminded—with a combination

of nervousness and irritation—that the hoikuen is specifically disallowed from engaging in

anything resembling ‘instruction’, and that therefore no such ‘teaching’ takes place. True to this

purpose of providing safe oversight rather than education, hoikuen enroll children as early as their

first year of life, whereas yōchien begin no earlier than the age of three.25

In some cases, a yōchien will have a separate facility for children aged 0-3, but will refer to

this division of their total operation as their hoikuen. These combined hoikuen-yōchien facilities

22
Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa, Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited, 143.
23
Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa, 143; Boocock, “Controlled Diversity,” 43–44.
24
Imoto, “The Japanese Preschool System in Transition,” 88; Eyal Ben-Ari, “Formal Caring Alternatives:
Kindergartens and Day-Care Centers,” in Companion to the Anthropology of Japan, ed. Jennifer Robertson (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2005), 248.
25
Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa, Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited, 140–41.

24
have grown more popular in recent years after an attempt by Tokyo to streamline preschool care,

and are often referred to as kodomoen (literally ‘child garden’).26 Similarly, although rural and

urban Japanese children alike are expected to be able to stay at home by themselves (rusuban-

suru) starting in first grade, an age that would make most contemporary American parents break

into a cold sweat but which many American grandparents would remember fondly, many hoikuen

will also open their doors after school hours to elementary schoolers who would otherwise be

latchkey children.

Although independent hoikuen also exist (one such facility served as one of my field sites),

they are often run in affiliation with either Buddhist temples or Shinto shrines. In these cases, the

primary motivation for the establishment of these schools is not the promulgation of any particular

ideology, as I shall presently show, but rather as a way for these institutions to supplement their

income by providing a valuable service to the community.

The Japanese Religious Economy

Family and Temple Finance in Rural Japan
As a matter of general agreement among Japanese, Buddhist temples tend to be better funded

than Shinto shrines. While times are tough for both, and particularly in rural areas, Buddhism still

enjoys some lingering effects from its medieval establishment, whereas the spectacular twentieth

century rise and fall of Shinto as national ideology are a matter of continued concern.

Temples make the lion’s share of their revenue off the funeral trade, from not only the lavish

initial expenditure of the funeral but also the decades’ worth of commemorative ceremonies at

critical anniversaries of the death, prayers said for the ancestors at the family altar (butsudan) at

the o-bon holiday in August, and care for the family gravesite (ohaka) if it is located within the

26
Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa, 142; Imoto, “The Japanese Preschool System in Transition.”

25
temple grounds. Nevertheless, their connection with the funeral trade and the outpouring of money

that so often accompanies fresh grief is not sufficient to guarantee a temple’s financial solvency.

At issue here is the way the Japanese family structure interfaces with the parish (danka or terauke)

system. The Japanese family is based on the household unit (ie) rather than the individual; whereas

the American individual is ushered in and out of the world with individual certificates, the Japanese

marks birth and death—as well as the transition of leaving one family and entering a new one

through marriage—by notation in a communal family register (koseki). Likewise, sectarian

affiliation—by which I mean the sectarian affiliation of the temple where one’s funeral and

ancestral rites will be performed—is tied to the specific temple by whose monks the cult owed to

the ancestors of one’s current ie have traditionally been administered.27 This relationship between

a family and its temple, which began as a de facto consequence of the gradual Buddhist usurpation

of funerary responsibility beginning with its introduction to the islands, was a matter of legal

necessity for the majority of the Tokugawa period, when families were required to register

affiliation with a temple as part of a Shogunal imperative designed to root out and eradicate

Christian converts.28

This system, which was chiefly responsible for the wealth and influence the Buddhist

establishment enjoyed during the Tokugawa, ironically now threatens to be its undoing. Although

the danka or parish-registration system was abolished during the Meiji restoration—not to mention

the anti-establishment clause written into Japan’s 1947 constitution—permitting families to

27
Variations on this paradigm are, of course, not without precedent, but it is these exceptions which prove the rule.
Converts to both ‘New Religions’ based on Shinto or Buddhism, as well as Japanese adherents to foreign religions are
many, if still significantly in the minority. For one account of how divergent religious affiliation complicates the
smooth transition from life to death in a Japanese family, see: Blaine P. Connor and John W. Traphagan, “Negotiating
the Afterlife: Emplacement as Ongoing Concern in Contemporary Japan,” Asian Anthropology 13, no. 1 (January 2,
2014): 3–19.
28
Nam-lin Hur, Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan: Buddhism, Anti-Christianity, and the Danka System,
Harvard East Asian Monographs 282 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Asia Center : Distributed by Harvard
University Press, 2007).

26
change or withdraw their affiliation at will, the cultural inertia of the danka system remains very

much in force. While there is no pressure for members of the main branch of a family (honke) to

seek affiliation with a new temple, branch families (bunke)—i.e. subaltern sons, their wives and

descendants—have little explicit incentive to retain the affiliation of the honke. This becomes a

strong disincentive if, which is very often the case in rural areas such as Ōshū, the bunke chooses

to uproot and establish itself either in the nearby prefectural seats of Morioka or Sendai, or else in

Tokyo. Furthermore, the issue of temple affiliation for these urban branch families does not even

arise until there is a death in the family, by which point it has been so long established in the new

urban center that the ties to the furusatō—the ancestral village—are too weak to warrant the

inconvenience of returning home to establish a new gravesite. This is all beside the fact that, as

Kawano Satsuki and others have observed—and as clergy of my acquaintance have confirmed—

Japanese people are now abandoning traditional funerary practices in droves in favor of more

modern, secular funeral parlors that combine cost-effectiveness with more leeway for expressions

of individual identity.29

Although some small number of couples return to their home villages either to raise late-life

children or for retirement (referred to charmingly by one informant in English as a yū-tān, or ‘u-

turn’), lateral moves to equivalently-rural places for either employment or lifestyle are almost

unheard-of. Therefore, although a temple will retain the loyalty and patronage of its danka families

thanks to the general inertia of funerary culture, it will do so provided that these families continue

to propagate within a convenient distance from the temple. Once a temple has lost a danka family

through the combined forces of extinction and migration, it will rarely be replaced.

Satsuki Kawano, Nature’s Embrace: Japan’s Aging Urbanites and New Death Rites (Honolulu: University of
29

Hawaiʻi Press, 2010).

27
 Beholden as it is to the funerals of its danka members for survival, there is very little that a

struggling temple can do to increase its congregation in terms of religious services offered. For

example, a Buddhist temple of no great architectural interest, history, or reputation that just so

happens to be located quite near to the center of Mizusawa town, and consequently has a larger

and more stable set of affiliated danka which remain established nearby, underwent a very

expensive facelift that was in its final stages when I was there in 2015. In contrast, the

aforementioned Kokuseki-ji—located in what by all rights should still be part of Esashi—which

on top of being both ancient and gorgeous is the host of a yearly festival that routinely pulls tourists

from as far as Tokyo, is struggling to make ends meet and is badly in need of repair. With only ten

remaining danka families to support it, its scion—somewhat unusually for the first son of a

Buddhist temple—works a daytime office job to supplement the temple’s income.

Funding Shinto Shrines

As bleak a picture as I paint of the Buddhist establishment, the situation is even more

precarious for Shinto shrines. While the work of a Buddhist monk is often (although by no means

always) sufficient to provide a living wage, a large proportion of Shinto priests do so as a sideline

to a more lucrative day job. No less essential than temples to the overall religious landscape of

Japan; where temples are concerned primarily with funerals, shrines are responsible for everything

else: yearly and life-cycle rituals (weddings—which more so than funerals have secularized in

recent years—childbirth, coming-of-age rites, the new year, school transitions, etc.), as well as

services related to new undertakings (a new car, a new business venture, a groundbreaking). It is

perhaps because of this that the shrine is more closely tied to the short-term economic fortunes of

a community: it thrives economically on the optimistic anxiety of new beginnings whereas

Buddhism profits—at least in the short term—from endings and decay. As such, the revenue from

a shrine’s religious activities tends to be on a nickel-and-dime scale, with quantities more or less

28
in proportion to a community’s demographic (birth, marriage, population) and economic

(construction, business deals) activities. Large white sandwich-boards tend to appear outside my

local shrine’s main gate several weeks before each of these regular occasions to drum up demand

for their blessings and talismans.

Although as Reader and Tanabe point out Japanese religion is best conceived as a

marketplace for goods and services promising good fortune and material benefit, the actual goods

on offer do not tend to differ much from place to place, or even religion to religion. 30 Trade

catalogs of omamori—lucky charms or talismans (literally ‘protections’ with an honorific

attached)—that I have seen are not geared toward Buddhism or Shinto, and one routinely sees

precisely the same cheaply-made trinkets on sale at shrines as at temples, big or small. If these

goods are differentiated at all, they are distinguished through the application of the shrine or

temple’s name to the omamori in the same way that the name of a small business will be printed

on a promotional item like a ballpoint pen or mousepad.31 Even the offerings that are distinct to a

given institution—for example, the paper o-fuda, usually inscribed by hand in-house, that

represents a satellite body of the deity to be taken home and venerated there—is only a must-have

item if it comes from a shrine or temple to which the purchasing family already bears a sense of

affiliation. While there does not seem to be a limit to the number of such paper talismans a

household can accumulate, any from other than one’s home institution will either be as a memento

from a famous shrine or temple which one has visited as a tourist, or else to secure a specific boon

or achieve a specific end for which that shrine or temple is believed to be particularly efficacious.

Having a reputation for this kind of efficacy—for matchmaking or exam success or successful

childbirth and so on—is one of the only ways a shrine or temple can drive up more than a steadily-

30
Reader and Tanabe, Practically Religious, 110–38.
31
Reader and Tanabe, 222.

29
low revenue year after year on religious services alone, and the development of that reputation is

almost entirely out of even the most PR-savvy cleric’s immediate control.

Talking about ‘Religion’ in Shrine and Temple Preschools

Religion, Irreligion, and ‘Belief’ in Japan
All of this is to say that, given the precarious nature of temple and shrine finances—

particularly in places like Ōshū where trends toward urban migration are acutely felt 32 —the

decision of many to establish daycares can be reasonably attributed more to fiscal necessity than

to an imperative to propagate any particular worldview.

Not that this should come as a surprise to anyone even passingly familiar with Japanese

religion, who would know that it is primarily a matter of ethnic and cultural identity. Mainstream

Japanese religion excites neither sub-cultural belonging nor conversion. When asked to describe

the typical Japanese pattern of interaction with religious institutions, most adult Japanese with

whom I spoke invoked the adage “born Shinto, die Buddhist” using the metonymic invocation of

an infant’s presentation at the shrine (omiyamairi) and his eventual Buddhist funeral (osōshiki) to

refer to the division between Shinto’s concern with life and Buddhism’s with the end of life.

Another phrase—less often volunteered but always confirmed when offered by the ethnographer—

“turning to the kami in times of distress” (kurushii toki no kami-danomi), articulates succinctly the

general Japanese attitude toward religion.

A word that Japanese often invoke to describe their religious commitments is that they are

mushūkyō (literally ‘without-religion’). This term does not, however, indicate the principled

rejection of religion characteristic of a western atheist, but rather the absence of the kind of single-

minded fervor that would mark one as different. There are some members of the older generation

32
John W. Traphagan, “East Asia’s Population Problem,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs 15, no. 2
(2014): 17–26.

30
who consider the pervasiveness of mushūkyō to be a sign of national moral decay; but one such

work, Toshimaro Ama’s Why are the Japanese Non Religious? presents this argument as though

he is taking a novel position by calling it into question.33 Far from a term of abuse, however, the

term mushūkyō is used by my informants as a normative statement, one which describes an

approach to supernatural that they believe to be characteristic of ‘ordinary’ (futsū, ippanteki)

Japanese—a member of which category my informants almost invariably assert themselves to be.

The noun of which mushūkyō is a negation, shūkyō, combines the characters for ‘sect’ and

‘teaching.’ As such, it reflects the understanding of religion not of the Japanese themselves, but

rather as Japanese thinkers came to understand the supernatural commitments and institutions of

their (largely Christian) missionary contacts in the West. Coined as a way to render intelligible

this foreign concept of ‘religion’ (and subsequently exported to the rest of the sinosphere, e.g.

Mandarin’s zōngjiào) the word thereby implies forms of religiosity that feature creedal

affirmations, exclusivist commitments, textualism, and sectarian divisions based on key teachers

or philosophies.34 Religious systems of this sort are not unknown in East Asia: the three religious

‘–isms’ of China are all rendered by pairing the character –jiào (the Mandarin reading of Japanese

–kyō) for ‘teaching’ or ‘creed’ with either the sect’s founder (Fójiào for Buddhism), its central

tenet (Dàojiào for Daoism), or both (Kŏngjiào or Rújiào for Confucius and his doctrine of Lu,

respectively). But as a whole generation of scholars of Chinese religion report, the linguistic

designation of these three traditions as being separate -jiào obscures the lived experience of most

Chinese people, for whom each of these philosophico-religious systems blends into one largely-

33
Toshimaro Ama, Why Are the Japanese Non-Religious?: Japanese Spirituality : Being Non-Religious in a Religious
Culture (University Press of America, 2005).
34
Thomas David Du Bois, Religion and the Making of Modern East Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011), 4.

31
undifferentiated mass of cultural activity generally albeit contentiously called “Chinese Popular

Religion”.35

Japanese religion is precisely the same. Here, Fójiào is directly imported as Bukkyō; Shintō

alone does not incorporate the character for teaching, but this is because the word originated, as

Kuroda Toshio discovered, as a terminus technicus within Chinese esoteric Buddhism of the first

century as a way (dào/tō) for manipulating the lesser gods (shén/shin) of the pantheon.36 Most

modern Japanese, however, explain this difference as being due to the fact that Shinto is different

from the other –kyō, having as it does neither dogma nor founder, and being therefore somehow

deeper and more essential to the Japanese people than any foreign religion could be—an attitude

which is largely due to efforts of the Japanese government of the Meiji through Shōwa eras to

recreate Shinto as a national ideology transcending religion,37 but which is nevertheless borne out

in everyday usage.

Therefore, according both to its etymology and everyday usage, the word shūkyō refers to a

specific subset of what a scholar working within the discipline of religious studies would consider

the totality of Japanese “religion”—namely the portion that most closely resembles the Protestant

35
Adam Yuet Chau, Miraculous Response: Doing Popular Religion in Contemporary China (Stanford, Calif: Stanford
University Press, 2006); Richard Von Glahn, The Sinister Way: The Divine and the Demonic in Chinese Religious
Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 6; Stephan Feuchtwang, “A Chinese Religion Exists,” in An
Old State in New Settings: Studies in the Social Anthropology of China in Memory of Maurice Freedman, ed. Maurice
Freedman, Hugh D. R. Baker, and Stephan Feuchtwang, JASO Occasional Papers, no. 8 (Oxford: JASO, 1991), 139–
61; Muzhou Pu, In Search of Personal Welfare: A View of Ancient Chinese Religion, SUNY Series in Chinese
Philosophy and Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998); Catherine Bell, “Religion and Chinese
Culture: Toward an Assessment of ‘Popular Religion,’” History of Religions 29, no. 1 (1989): 42–43; Robert P. Weller,
Unities and Diversities in Chinese Religion (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987); Erik Zürcher, “Buddhist
Influence on Early Taoism: A Survey of Scriptural Evidence,” T’oung Pao 66, no. 1/3 (1980): 84–147; Maurice
Freedman, “On the Sociological Study of Chinese Religion,” in Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society, by Arthur P.
Wolf, Studies in Chinese Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), 40; Arthur P. Wolf, ed., Religion and
Ritual in Chinese Society, Studies in Chinese Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), 17–18; C. K. Yang,
Religion in Chinese Society: A Study of Contemporary Social Functions of Religion and Some of Their Historical
Factors (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), 295.
36
Kuroda Toshio, James C. Dobbins, and Suzanne Gay, “Shinto in the History of Japanese Religion,” Journal of
Japanese Studies 7, no. 1 (1981): 6.
37
Helen Hardacre, Shintō and the State, 1868-1988, Studies in Church and State (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University
Press, 1989).

32
ideation of religion as something distinct from the secular or profane. My colleagues who study

religion in the ancient Mediterranean make frequent reference to the fact that the concept of

“religion” as a separate sphere of endeavor is entirely foreign to the ancient world. In recent years,

Brent Nongbri is the scholar most often cited for this assertion, although he was by no means the

first scholar to operate under this assumption.38 Indeed, I would venture to say that the Japanese

word mushūkyō is as applicable to the religious attitude of the average ancient Roman, Greek, and

Israelite as they are to the contemporary citizens of Ōshū—a point which I bring up only because

in my readings on this issue, Asianists do not seem to cite relevant research on this issue in their

regional subdisciplines—and vice-versa—despite essentially describing the same phenomenon.

To identify oneself as mushūkyō, therefore, is to specifically disavow either fervency or

exclusionary particularity of religious commitment—both of which are considered by the Japanese

as non-normative at best, and deviant at worst. This deviance, moreover, is considered distasteful

whether it comes from membership in non-mainstream domestic or foreign religions, or from any

deeply-held or idiosyncratic personal interpretations or commitments to the more mainstream

forms of religion. The taint of the Aum Shinrikyō sarin gas attacks of 1995 is at least as palpable

in Japan as the 9/11 attacks are in America, leading many to be even more suspicious of ‘Religion’

as a category than they would otherwise. 39 Even Japanese adherents of the so called ‘New

Religions’ developed in the first wave of such New Religions a hundred years ago are commonly

looked upon as eccentrics. For example, local members of the most mainstream of these, Sōka

Gakkai—whose political arm, Komeitō, is a weak third party in most elections—are viewed within

38
Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).
39
Levi McLaughlin, “Did Aum Change Everything? What Soka Gakkai Before, During, and After the Aum Shinrikyō
Affair Tells Us About the Persistent ‘Otherness’ of New Religions in Japan,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies
39, no. 1 (2012): 51–75.

33
my community with polite suspicion, and their local facility along route 4 was described by one

of my informants as appearing too conspicuously neat and tidy to be entirely on the up-and-up.40

Within the mainstream, people who would not normally merit the descriptor mushūkyō are

those for whom religion has taken on a specific and idiosyncratic personal importance. One such

group is the elderly, who Traphagan argues take on the burden of religious action for others as a

performance of concern for their family, becoming “caretakers of collective well-being.”41 Their

religious activity therefore makes up part of the division of labor in a Japanese household, where

the job of the child is to be a student, the adult to provide financial stability, and the elderly—no

longer earning a wage—to secure the blessings of the supernatural realm on behalf of the family

as a unit. In taking up religion, they do so also as an ikigai (a calling or sense of purpose)—which,

as Traphagan argues, creates a sense of activity and investment which, religious or otherwise, is

believed to help the elderly stave off boke (senility, dottiness) and prevent them from being a

burden on their families.42

Even so, there is variation. For some retirees, this turn toward religion takes the form of avid

tourism of famous shrines and temples: as this is as much a leisure activity as a devotional one,

unless the tourism is focused on a specific deity (say, touring the nationally famous circuit of 33

Kannon statues, of which one is housed in a temple near Mizusawa) to whom the pilgrim develops

a specific attachment, this does not violate the general spirit of mushūkyō. Conversely, the

nonagenarian matriarch of a family with whom I spent a great deal of time is described by her

daughter (aged 63) as having always had a particular fervency for the Shin sect of Buddhism—the

40
This attitude seems to apply only to ethnic Japanese: the religious attitudes of Mizusawa’s local Chinese community
elicit little comment, except when strings of firecrackers set off at the lunar new year disturb the peace—but this
difference is considered to be an expected feature of their foreignness, which insulates them from criticism levied
internally even as it excludes them from Japanese society.
41
Traphagan, The Practice of Concern, 27.
42
John W. Traphagan, Taming Oblivion: Aging Bodies and the Fear of Senility in Japan (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2000); Traphagan, The Practice of Concern, 64, 80–125.

34
denomination of the temple that performs that family’s funeral obsequies, and which, uniquely

among mainstream Japanese Buddhist sects, privileges a kind of single-minded lay devotion that

resembles the Christian concept of faith. This daughter, a retired nurse, is by contrast a textbook

example of the mushūkyō attitude, and yet nevertheless takes a greater interest in religious matters

than does her husband, an engineer. Generally speaking, Japanese women are expected to be more

concerned with the domestic cult than their husbands, but the possible influence of the great-

grandmother in this case is tantalizing.

Depending on their level and specificity of commitment, therefore, elderly persons thus

occupied with religion as a hobby run the risk of not being considered mushūkyō by the younger

generation. But even though their level commitment would be considered eccentric, since the

Japanese elderly are generally given license to be eccentric, it remains normative, and therefore is

an exception that proves the rule.

Another group that would not be considered mushūkyō are those who suffer from what Ara

Norenzayan calls “existential insecurity”—people with chronic illnesses, for example—who have

consequently developed a fixation on religious activity as a way of alleviating this distress. 43

Although this is not considered to be an inappropriate response in Japan—after all, if it is

normative to turn to the kami in times of distress—it is reasonable that people in perpetual distress

should orient themselves toward them more permanently, whether in a purely supplicatory role or

else as religious functionaries, themselves. The ogamisama, for example, studied by Kawamura,

adopted an interpretation of their own mental illness as evidence of a special relationship with the

kami, and embarked on careers as shamanesses.44

43
Ara Norenzayan, Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2013), 186–89.
44
Kunimitsu Kawamura, “A Female Shaman’s Mind and Body, and Possession,” Asian Folklore Studies 62 (2003):
255–87.

35
 Ordinary Shinto and Buddhist priests are somewhat trickier to categorize. Because

priesthoods in Japan are hereditary, clerics very often inherit their positions from their fathers (or,

less frequently, mothers) rather than entering the profession from any profound personal

commitment. Nevertheless, having been raised in a household where one or both parents is a cleric

will tend to shift one’s own implicit commitments away from the true ambivalence of a mushūkyō

and toward one’s parent’s—a shift which the professional training required of either a Shinto priest

or Buddhist monk will subsequently reinforce. Nevertheless, as Leonard Primiano argues, it is

ridiculous to assume that every representative of an organized clergy possesses a total and flawless

mastery of his or her sect's body of doctrine.45 As with any systematized body of knowledge, there

is bound to be variation in the aptitude of both pupils and their instructors.46 Moreover, the degree

to which an aspiring cleric’s beliefs are made to conform to the doctrinal and practical expectations

of his order can also vary. Clerical education need not necessarily depend on the adoption of a

different world view but can instead represent merely an act of specialization in one of many

systems of ritual performance.47 Finally, one must also consider that there are many motivations

to become a religious professional: in medieval Japan, for example, the decision by many widows

to take Buddhist orders often represented an attempt to maintain a modicum of self-determination

and financial independence in the wake of their husband’s deaths, as well as a desire to devote

themselves to their posthumous wellbeing.48

45
Leonard Norman Primiano, “Vernacular Religion and the Search for Method in Religious Folklife,” Western
Folklore 54, no. 1 (1995): 46.
46
Indeed, in Song China, when the licensing procedure for Buddhist clerics was made prohibitively restrictive, many
aspiring clerics decided to abandon the costly and arduous process of a rigorous Buddhist education and instead hung
out shingles as untutored religious specialists – in which guise they undoubtedly practiced unadulterated Chinese folk
religion in its purest form. Valerie Hansen, Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127-1276 (Princeton, N.J: Princeton
University Press, 1990), 42.
47
Reader and Tanabe, Practically Religious, 30.
48
Helen Hadracre, personal communication.

36
 Thus, the clergy and the laity may at times share the same world view despite the clergy’s

special status. Thus, for example, while John Embree’s reliance on secondhand reportage in his

classic ethnography of Suye Mura makes many of his conclusions suspect, his suggestions that

although the village priest understands the gist of a given sutra, he “cannot translate it in detail;”49

that he is only vaguely aware of the differences between the different Buddhist sects; 50 and that

far from following the normative rules of the sangha “the priests of both temples are liberal

drinkers, and both are married. Neither has any religious scruples concerning war. They also eat

chicken, the only meat ever seen in this region”51 are all entirely plausible. If a member of the

clergy can be so far from the ideal of his own order, then it is also conceivable that the way he

interprets his own religious performance shares more in common with the world view of his

audience than with the expectations of his co-religionists.

By way of analogy, the Anglo-American reader looking for a rough equivalent of this attitude

in his own cultural memory would do well to look at any piece of Regency or Victorian literature.

That is to say, while the characters in an Austen, Dickens, or Kipling novel are—unless explicitly

stated otherwise—presumed by virtue of their Englishness to be Christians (i.e. to have been

baptized into the Church of England and be more-or-less churchgoers in good standing), a person

is only generally described in the text as a Christian if he or she exemplifies the principal virtues

of English Christendom. In both cases the named term applies to the culturally favored group, but

whereas England favors the true believer, in Japanese usage pride of place goes to the normatively

uncommitted.

49
John F. Embree, Suye Mura: A Japanese Village (Chicago, Ill: The University of Chicago press, 1939), 233.
50
Embree, 221.
51
Embree, 233.

37
 Indeed, so unimportant to Japanese religion is the profession of belief in the existence in

supernatural beings that the word ‘atheist’—for which the term mushinronsha (lit. ‘no-gods-

hypothesis-person’) is appropriate—was not in the everyday vocabulary of most of my Japanese

contacts, who reliably stared at me uncomprehendingly for a few moments as they puzzled out the

individual meanings of each syllable. The idea of taking a metaphysical stance on the existence of

the kami—a consequence of Japan’s utterly unrecognizable secularism—is so far outside the realm

of everyday experience as to be not immediately comprehensible.52

Lost in Translation
I bring up this etymologically-heavy digression into the meaning of “religion” in Japan at

this particular point in my manuscript because of the nearly disastrous implications it had for

gaining me access to my target population.

In the eyes of the Japanese, I had three strikes against me at the beginning of my fieldwork

in August 2015. Two of these I had no control over. First, for better or worse, I was at that point

in my life an unmarried foreign male of an age where my lack of spouse and progeny caused most

Japanese even more anxiety over my wellbeing than it causes my own mother. Second, although

my skill with the Japanese language was more than adequate to the task of ethnography, it was

52
The taboo against confronting contradictions also somewhat complicates Stevan Harrell’s formulation of half-belief
half-doubt (Stevan Harrell, “Belief and Unbelief in a Taiwan Village” (Stanford University, 1974).). Jordan and
Overmyer explain the experience of a practical believer as being that of “a conjurer who both hides the rabbit in his
hat and imagines it to have appeared by magic” (David K. Jordan and Daniel L. Overmyer, The Flying Phoenix:
Aspects of Chinese Sectarianism in Taiwan (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1986), 11.). In other words,
what Harrell casts as half-and-half, Jordan and Overmyer see as all-and-all: “many, and probably most, members of a
religious community are simultaneously both believers and skeptics: that the same person who attributes a
phenomenon to God is aware of the mundane causes of that phenomenon, including perhaps his own left hand… The
point is that the believer may productively be assumed to hold the two interpretations simultaneously” (Jordan and
Overmyer, 270.). This simultaneous belief and doubt, which has elsewhere been described by Paul Veyne as mental
balkanization (Paul Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 56.), is one of the great unstudied questions in the anthropology of
religion and an integral part of pragmatic religious belief.

38
nevertheless non-native, and thus left enough room for improvement at the beginning that its

improvement over the course of nine months of immersive fieldwork was dramatic.

But the third strike against me—one that I ought to have anticipated and that was very nearly

fatal to my research—was in my self-presentation. Institutionally speaking, my training and

credentials are in religious studies; I have therefore spent (perhaps more so than some

confessionally-driven and/or monotheistically-concerned colleagues) a significant portion of the

last decade being socialized into my professional tribe by learning to think and talk about religion

as a much broader category than the word means in common parlance—in any language. Not yet

having had the teaching experience—nor, being restricted in my daily interactions to other

graduate students in religious studies, having had frequent enough cause to explain my line of

work to the uninitiated—I neglected to take this into account when making my entrée into the field.

Not wanting to be dishonest (nor risk getting into hot water with the IRB by doing so) my business

card announced (in Japanese only) my affiliation with my home department of ‘religious studies’

(shukyōgaku); likewise, I summarized my research interests to potential contacts, succinctly, as

being concerned with how Japanese children learned things relating to ‘religion’ (shūkyō ni kankei

aru koto).

The reader may, in the light of the foregoing, be able to anticipate some of the problems with

this approach which became painfully apparent as my first months in the field flew by. In the case

of Mizusawa Elementary School, the initial hesitation to cooperate stemmed largely from the

implications it had for the separation of church and state. Japan’s 1946 constitution undid the

Meiji- through Shōwa-era administrative fusion of Shinto shrines with the state, creating shrines

as independent religious corporations, which as in America, are legal persons (shūkyō hōjin).53

53
Hardacre, Shintō and the State, 1868-1988, 139–40.

39
Elementary schools in particular have a troubled legacy, as this is where indoctrination into the

cult of the emperor would begin in the pre-war period, with children reciting the Imperial Rescript

on Education each morning while addressing a photograph of the emperor.54 As a consequent of

the postwar disestablishment of religion, the public school as a state institution is constitutionally

forbidden to teach any religion. It may teach about religion, provided that this is done within the

confines of the history curriculum as a facet of human history and culture. But Japanese textbooks

are themselves a matter of contentiousness,55 and the controversy surrounds precisely the issues

of understanding the Japanese past, particularly with regard to the nation’s supposed ancient

relationship to the divine order, which would most likely arise when dealing with Japanese religion

in its historical context.

To have a foreign researcher arrive at an elementary school professing an interest in

understanding how religion might be communicated within public schools implies at least a

possibility that he believes that this is so. At best, this insinuation would be interpreted as evidence

of an insulting ignorance on the part of the foreigner. At worst, it threatens to expose the school to

an onslaught of unwanted media attention should any such smoking gun be found. This, bear in

mind, despite the fact that a Shinto talisman (o-fuda) was on prominent display in a glass case in

the principal’s office, plainly visible over said functionary’s shoulder as he conveyed to me his

initial regrets that there would be nothing of interest for me to find.

54
Hardacre, 121–24.
55
Claudia Schneider, “The Japanese History Textbook Controversy in East Asian Perspective,” The Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science 617 (2008): 107–22; J. Lim, “The Antagonistic Complicity of
Nationalisms-On Nationalist Phenomenology in East Asian History Textbooks,” in Contested Views of a Common
Past: Historical Revisionism in Contemporary East Asia, ed. S. Richter (Frankfurt, Germany: Campus, 2008), 197–
214; Christopher Barnard, Language, Ideology and Japanese History Textbooks (London ; New York:
RoutledgeCurzon, 2003); John K. Nelson, “Tempest in a Textbook: A Report on the New Middle-School History
Textbook in Japan,” Critical Asian Studies 34, no. 1 (March 1, 2002): 129–48.

40
 According to the Ministry of Health, as mentioned above, there ought not to be any

instruction being carried out in hoikuen because they are not licensed to do so, and so my inquiries

into the degree to which these facilities influenced how children learned were similarly rebuffed.

As Japanese religion is not about belief, therefore there is no explicit indoctrination; the preschool

takes its mission to provide surrogate care at face value. Individual staff members may undertake

their vocation from a position of personal values, but this position influences how the staff comport

themselves rather than informing any kind of explicit instruction.56 Of course, this was precisely

what I was interested in studying—how children acquired the tacit beliefs about culturally-

postulated supernatural forces in the absence of a system of indoctrination—but the terms with

which I initially posed the study prevented the concerned parties from understanding my intent.

The fact that I am an unmarried adult foreign man with a keen interest in children caused

enough suspicion of my motives without also considering that I wanted to talk to them about

‘religion’—and there must have been an extent to which it was feared that the interaction would

be less observation and more dialogue, and that my secret mission (an idea laughable to anyone

who knows me) was to act as a fifth column for a foreign religious interest.

The Buddhists I encountered—who, more so than Shinto clerics, are plugged into the western,

modernist conversation about ‘religion’, and who see themselves in certain settings as a ‘World

Religion’ on par with Christianity—were somewhat more amenable to my project. Even so, staff

at Buddhist daycares were wary of me at first, as it was difficult to convey with any rapidity that I

was sufficiently familiar with Japanese culture as to distance myself from their imagined version

of the typical foreigner’s misunderstanding. It usually took a long conversation to overcome their

preconceptions of my ignorance and to demonstrate the extent of my familiarity with the

56
This was also the case in the Buddhist-affiliated Komatsudani hoikuen that served as field site for Tobin et al.’s
1986 and 2009 studies. Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa, Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited, 148.

41
differences between Japanese and Western religion—an amount of time that was rarely afforded

me until late in my time in the field.

Consequently, I was met at first with polite interest—especially by the more senior members

of the local hierarchy, for whom a foreign researcher represented a particularly appealing photo

opportunity for the newspapers and a chance to parade their own pet theories about Japanese

spirituality—followed by a maddening series of delays and misdirections and hemming and

hawing when it came to securing access to specific educational institutions in any meaningful way.

Despite having secured the blessings of both the mayor and the superintendent of the board of

education—the tops of their respective pyramids—individual school principals and daycare

directors eyed me and my mission with the same suspicion they hold for Sōka Gakkai and

Jehovah’s Witnesses.

This all changed after several months of fruitless official visits and petitions when I started

referring to the object of my study as understanding the process whereby Japanese children

acquired their mastery of traditional culture (dentō bunka), with an emphasis on those practices

that related to the kami and Buddhas. It was not that I had begun disguising my real intent—rather,

I had begun referring to the object of my study using the language that my informants themselves

would have used to describe it. For them, what I had been calling ‘religion’ most closely maps to

a set of traditional practices that is so much a part of Japanese ethnic identity as to be beneath

comment. By employing the word shūkyō, in other words, I was failing to talk about Japanese

religion in its own terms.

Even after correcting my error, though, my direct access to children remained incredibly

narrow. In most places, I was ultimately allowed only two days observing everyday operations,

and these were closely shepherded and highly choreographed. I did manage to secure invitations

42
for more specific cultural events, but otherwise my observations of unscripted religion in the

course of day-to-day activities came at chance while I was on site trying to conduct more targeted

data-collection measures with small groups.

To be fair, direct interviews would likely not have been especially fruitful. As unassuming

as I may imagine myself to be, my gender nevertheless made me seem in the children’s eyes to be

less like the reassuring presence of their mothers and (still predominantly female) teachers and

more like the often aloof and imposing father,57 and my phenotypically-apparent foreignness more

problematic still. Moreover, children are often frightfully shy of strangers when they are not in

control of an encounter, and Japanese children in particular are socialized very early to believe that

questions posed by figures of authority have right answers, and that answering wrongly will

damage the adult’s favorable impression of them.58 Like their adult counterparts, they will go to

amazing lengths to avoid answering a direct question when they have no confidence that their

answer is either correct or, in the case of subjective questions, the one most desired by the asker.

During one interview I conducted at the cram school (juku) run by an important local contact, I

could not induce an otherwise gregarious girl of six years to speak above a whisper, when indeed

she answered my questions at all. With the exception of the children of one particular family with

whom I spent a number of important holidays and who have known me for several years, the

majority of my direct contact with children came over the course of a pile sorting task which I

devised for them do in groups, during which they spoke to each other far more readily and with

more emotion than they ever would have shown me directly one-on-one.

57
Befu, Harumi, “The Social and Cultural Background of Child Development in Japan and the United States,” in
Child Development and Education in Japan, ed. Harold W. Stevenson et al. (New York: W.H. Freeman, 1986), 14–
15; Ezra F. Vogel, Japan’s New Middle Class; the Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1963), 212.
58
Catherine C. Lewis, “Children’s Social Development in Japan: Research Directions,” in Child Development and
Education in Japan, ed. Harold W. Stevenson et al. (New York: W.H. Freeman, 1986), 189.

43
Conclusion
I make the above disclosures of the difficulty I encountered in the field not as an appeal to

the reader’s forbearance, but rather to introduce two essential points about the work that follows.

The first concerns method, as it is an acknowledgment that my conclusions have been based on

only so much ethnographic observation as my limited access to these populations would allow,

even after nine months in the field. In order to compensate for this paucity of access, I have had

cause to supplement my ethnographic observation with recourse to a large volume of relevant

children’s literature collected in the field—which, as it happens, and as I shall argue at greater

length in the following chapter—is in fact an essential avenue through which Japanese

preschoolers receive much of their tacit religious pedagogy in the first place.

The second point concerns the form that ‘religious’ pedagogy takes in the preschool

environment. Although one cannot prove a negative, based on my experience attending several

religiously-affiliated hoikuen and kodomoen in Mizusawa as well as for the reasons detailed in this

chapter I am nevertheless confident in my conclusion that no explicitly ‘religious’ instruction takes

place in these institutions. Not only would this be both contrary to the hoikuen’s stated purpose

and introduce a constitutional concern—at least for institutions that receive government licensure

at the national (ninka) or prefectural (nintei) level59—it would also run contrary to the Japanese

presumption that commitment to shūkyō is something optative, rather than an essential part of a

child’s normative upbringing.

However, consonant with the hoikuen’s general purpose of socializing preschool children to

the norms of Japanese society while providing supportive and cost-effective daytime child care—

there is an emphasis in the schools I visited to introducing children to the seasonal activities of

59
Imoto, “The Japanese Preschool System in Transition,” 90.

44
Japanese traditional culture (dentō bunka) of which many have unmistakably ‘religious’

components, at least as that term is defined from an etic, anthropological perspective. Thus, rather

than through direct indoctrination, it is instead through learning to perform these activities that

Japanese preschoolers absorb certain essential but tacitly-held ideas and attitudes concerning the

culturally-postulated residents of the supernatural realm. In Chapters 3 and 4 I provide

ethnographic accounts of two examples of these cultural activities as they are performed within a

preschool environment, but my analysis will also be supplemented by close readings of an

abundance of children’s literature on these subjects. As a large portion of a child’s understanding

of these practices—and therefore ‘religion’—is expected to come through the medium of

children’s literature, I turn now to a systematic overview of these sources before engaging with

specific examples.

45
Chapter 2 – Words and Pictures

If the pre-school children of Mizusawa do not receive explicit religious instruction as part of their

daily life at hoikuen and yochien, despite these facilities’ close relationships with explicitly

religious institutions, from what other avenues might this knowledge and exposure come? One

suggestion, echoed by a variety of informants, is that children receive much of their early exposure

to images and ideas about the kami, Buddhas, and other spirits through the medium of print.

In the pages that follow, I lay out a categorization scheme for the books I collected in the

field that touch on subjects relevant to Japanese religion as defined—not by the Japanese

themselves—but rather by the etic terms of my study. In defining these categories, my primary

concern has been to distinguish between books published either by or in conjunction with overtly

religious organizations on the one hand, and those printed for the secular mass commercial market

46
on the other. Within the former category, the clearest internal division is determined by whether

the participating religious body is Shinto or Buddhist. Nevertheless, as I will show, whether Shinto

or Buddhist, books with overtly religious backing appear above all to take the adult and not the

child as their primary intended audience, and their message is one primarily of touting the

importance of the publishing body as a vital organ of its religion.

Among those books made for the secular commercial market, on the other hand, the vast

majority are not marketed as having anything to do with ‘religion’ sensu stricto, but rather purport

to be on the subject of gyōji, a term of critical importance to the remainder of my study, and which

in this usage carries the meaning of ‘essential cultural practices’. It falls primarily to these books

about gyōji to inculcate children into the wide array of Japanese ritual expression and, by extension,

introduce them to the supernatural cast of characters with whom these rituals are deeply

intertwined. Among gyōji-related books there are two genres: gyōji manuals, pictorial catechisms

of the entire Japanese festival calendar, and gyōji narratives, which explain a given cultural

practice or festival to a child through a narrative framework. My analysis of gyōji literature will

further underscore how divorced this cultural learning is from traditional official religious bodies,

spearheaded instead by the printing industry, and how that which a western observer would

consider ‘religious’ is packaged for Japanese children as an essential and inextricable part of

cultural and ethnic performance.

Before I begin my analysis of the texts themselves, two brief notes about their provenance

and performative setting are in order. First, it is worth mentioning that, except where indicated,

the vast majority of books discussed below were either found in the main branch of the Mizusawa

Public Library or purchased from a local big box print retailer, of which Mizusawa has several

(Tsutaya, WonderGoo, BookOff, etc.). Although each of the preschools I visited, as well as

47
Mizusawa Elementary, was awash with shelf after shelf of well-loved picture books, those having

to do with religious themes or characters in any way were remarkably few, further reinforcing the

schools’ assertions that their childcare mission was entirely devoid of ideological agenda with

regard to religion. A small number of books relevant to this project were also available in the

public reading room (Ehon no Mori or ‘Storybook Grove’) run by volunteers in the basement of

the Maple shopping center; this is a moderately sized collection of no more than two thousand

volumes, composed largely of secondhand donations of works that are also part of the public

library collection.

Second, whenever possible, I have tried to be mindful of the performative context in which

much literature is encountered among pre- and early readers, but these observations have been

more curtailed than I would have wished. My access to school environments was necessarily

heavily formal, scripted, and limited in most cases to a single full day of embedded observation;

therefore, my ability to comment on the religious content of reading-aloud (yomikikase) in a school

environment is extremely limited. In an early attempt to mimic the joint reading activities that

would occur in a home environment, I invited a series of families with children in my target

demographic to the traditional Japanese sitting room at the local international center in order to

read to, or with, their children “as they would at home” from a selection of books I provided in

which kami, Buddhas, and various other beings appear. My hope was that I would observe in the

meta-textual discourse between parent and child(ren) some insights into the usefulness of

children’s picture books in prompting spontaneous exegetical instruction in a home-like

environment. To my great surprise and frustration, however, this exercise did not yield any useful

insights, except insofar as the absence of any special comment, question, or explanation between

parent and child where supernatural agents appeared in the narrative is itself a meaningful datum.

48
Shinto Books
Several of my contacts who suggested that children’s religious knowledge came primarily from

books made the additional claim that these books would be purchased from a shrine by the child’s

grandparents and given as a gift. While I have not witnessed such an exchange in person, the only

explicitly ‘Shinto’ books in my collection notably came into my possession as gifts from the chief

priest of Komagata shrine and nominal head of its attached hoikuen (enchō-sensei) Mr. Taniue.

Unlike the standard array of good luck charms (engimono) for sale outside the shrine office just

inside the main gate, these books were not on display but were rather being stored in an unmarked

cardboard box in the back corner of the small outbuilding in the center of the shrine grounds which

serves occasionally as an auxiliary place for the conducting of shrine business: the receipt of

donations during the shichigosan coming-of-age rites, for example, the inscribing and folding of

paper talismans, or the dispensation of sweet, hot sake during the purifying bonfire at the end of

the New Year season. The shrine had multiple copies of each, indicating that they were on hand

for easy distribution, but I could never elicit a straight answer as to the circumstances under which

they would be given out.

Dual-Register Board Books

Two of the books I received on this occasion were large format (roughly A4 size) but short

(only 11pp), with covers and pages alike printed on the same inflexible cardstock—indicative,

perhaps, of the heavy wear the publishers expected them to undergo at the hands of a particularly

young audience. Neither of these volumes has been issued an ISBN, nor do they include either

publication date or credits for text or illustration. According to their back covers, production was

supervised (kanshū) by the Osaka Shrine Office (ōsaka-fu jinja chō) and published in association

with the Marumi Press (marumi kabushiki gaisha kan).

49
 The illustrations are vibrant watercolors—largely realistic, but with child characters

appearing somewhat more stylized. The first, Omiya to omatsuri (“Shrines and Festivals”),

presents readers with a rather odd assortment of shrine festivals, of which only setsubun (See

Chapter 4) is of any relevance to children and the majority are not even practiced in Mizusawa.60

The second, Kami-sama no ohanashi (“Tales of the Exalted Kami”) is mostly a series of

memorable mythic vignettes from the Kojiki, the chief source of Japanese cosmogonic and early

historic myths.61

The text of these volumes is actually twofold, with distinct messages on each page intended

for two separate audiences. The first is directed at a child. Because these sections are written

entirely in hiragana,62 with spaces inserted at the semantic breaks and furigana glosses put above

all instances of katakana, I can reasonably surmise that this volume is targeted at very young

preschool children, probably no more than four years old. The second register uses a full adult

vocabulary, and in places the grammar is fairly complex and unforgiving. On each page, this

section of the text is preceded by a heading indicating the intended audience: o-uchi no kata e (“to

60
The festivals herein described are, in order: tōka Ebisu; hi matsuri; setsubun; hatsu-uma (which I heard spoken of
in Mizusawa but did not see performed); hadaka matsuri (of which Kokuseki-ji’s Sōmin-sai is a local manifestation);
aoi matsuri; taue matsuri (which is performed as part of a larger spring festival in neighboring Isawa by middle school
aged children); chinowa kuguri (the only straw rope gateway I have seen in Iwate was at the combination shrine/Nō
stage on the grounds of Chūson-ji in Koromogawa); yabusame; okun’chi; and tairyō-sai.
61
Kojiki, incidentally, was compiled originally only as part of a nativist backlash against the vogue of Buddhism as it
first began to dominate the imperial court. Richard John Bowring, The Religious Traditions of Japan, 500-1600
(Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 46–53.
62
The Japanese language comprises two phonetic scripts (kana) and one set of ideographic characters (kanji). Of the
phonetic scripts, the rounded hiragana used for grammatical particles, verb conjugations, and so on is the most
common, while the more angular katakana is reserved for things like foreign loan words and biological terminology,
as well as for providing a visual emphasis in text somewhat akin to italics. Children learn hiragana before katakana,
but can reliably read both before entering elementary school; the fact that hiragana superscript is added as a
pronunciation guide to katakana characters (and not kanji ideographs, above which they appear most commonly) is a
strong argument that the intended audience of this portion is not more than four years of age.

50
the hon. persons of the hon. house”) for Omiya to omatsuri, and the gendered o-kā-sama hō no

tame ni (“for the sake of the hon. mother”) in the case of Kamisama no ohanashi.63

Somewhat unsurprisingly though still worthy of comment, the children's portion says very

little of substance. For each tableau in Kamisama no ohanashi, for example, the text will focus on

a single operative action, but never the contextual ‘how’ or the ‘why’ that makes a story compelling.

For example, it mentions that the land of the Japanese archipelago (and the rest of terra firma

besides) was made by the primordial couple, Izanami and Izanagi, but the text says nothing more

about them: “In the longest of long, long agos, the two great kami Lord Izanagi and Lady Izanami

made Japan for us out of the sea. It is a good land, and easy to live on.” 64 A large part of the

narrative weight in this particular story is instead carried by the illustration, which shows the

primordial couple standing on a cloud, the male deity, Izanagi, churning the sea with the tip of a

spear, while his consort, Izanami, bends down to stroke the surface of the water.

Of course, there is a limit to how much a child of that age is able to comprehend, and so this

vagueness should not come as too much of a surprise. What is far more interesting is that the adult

portion is similarly vague. These glosses are, importantly, not expansions on the plot, nor do they

add much extra detail about the story to aid the parent in expanding on the narrative for an

inquisitive child. For example, in the Kojiki episode “The White Rabbit of Inaba,” the kami

Ōkuninushi (son-in-law of Susanoō, a storm god from Izumo province and brother of the sun

goddess Amaterasu) happens across a suffering rabbit. The rabbit reveals to the kami that he had

run afoul of some sharks who lived in a narrow strait he wished to cross by tricking them into

forming a bridge with their bodies, which they did only under the pretext that in doing so they

63
One is tempted to wonder whether the specification of the mother in this instance is merely an example of the
pervasive expectation in Japan that the mother be primary caregiver, or whether some small slight against the young
mother’s religious knowledge is implied here if the book is presented as a gift of the paternal grandmother.
64
Kamisama No O-Hanashi, Osaka Tenmangu Ehon, n.d., 2.

51
could refute the hare’s boast that his kind was more numerous on the earth than are sharks in the

seas. Realizing the trick at the last moment, however, the final shark bit the rabbit as he reached

the opposite shore, tearing the skin from his body. Adding insult to injury, a group of kami had

seen the rabbit’s distress and, wishing to cause him mischief, encouraged him with predictably

disastrous results to soothe his wounds with the salt water of the sea. The kojiki goes on to say that

Ōkuninushi took pity on the rabbit and instructed him instead to bathe in the sweet waters of an

estuary and to cover himself with a replacement fur made of the soft tufts of cattails growing

nearby. In gratitude, the rabbit delivers an oracle, the contents of which propel the next episode in

Ōkuninushi’s narrative arc.65

The illustration of this episode captures the kami and rabbit conversing after all the action

has concluded, and text of the children’s portion lacks any of the detail that makes this story a

compelling or didactically useful one, saying simply: “Okuninushi helped a rabbit who tried to

trick a shark, but got his skin pulled off instead. The rabbit was made as good as new, and then he

returned the favor.” 66 The adult portion, likewise, does not attempt to tell the story, perhaps

because it is assumed that the parent should already know the legend by heart. Instead, the adult

gloss tries to put this episode in broader context: asserting that the healing arts were an important

part of statecraft in ancient Japan, and that this episode is an example of a common East Asian

folkloric trope.67 Likewise, the explanation of the episode kunibiki (“Pulling the Land”) focuses

not on the just-so story of how the obscure deity Yatsukamizuomitsu used a rope to pull Izumo

Prefecture’s topography into being, but the fact that the original version of this story is considered

65
This episode seems to have all the hallmarks of a folktale that has been adapted to serve the needs of the broader
mythic narrative. It is revealed at the end of the episode that the rabbit is in fact a messenger of Princess Yagami, who
announces her intent to marry Ōkuninushi on hearing of his kindness—which declaration then propels the narrative
into a series of assassination attempts and ultimately to Ōkuninushi’s flight to the Kii peninsula and beyond.
66
Kamisama No O-Hanashi, 5.
67
Kamisama No O-Hanashi, 5.

52
to be a great literary accomplishment. 68 Other episodes in the book explain to ‘the honorable

mother’ why Sukunabikona-no-kami is the patron deity of the pharmaceutical industry, 69 or why

National Foundation Day is celebrated on the eleventh of February. 70 But of all the supplemental

detail that could enrich a parent’s experience of the text, why would the authors have focused on

these seemingly trivial contextual details?

The most compelling possibility is that these details help to bridge a gap between these

ancient stories and modern Japan. As a case in point, consider the frequent allusions to the religious

institutions where artifacts from these stories are still being housed today. No adult, I can imagine,

would need to be reminded of the significance of Ise as the main shrine of the imperial cult.71 But

perhaps many do not know that Kashihara Jingu is built on the putative site of the mythic Emperor

Jinmu’s original palace,72 or that Susano-ō’s sword is enshrined at Atsuta Jingu73—places to which

a person living today might consider making pilgrimage. Likewise, the inclusion of fairly obscure

and non-nationally celebrated festivals in the companion volume Ohanashi to omatsuri—such as

mounted archery competitions (yabusame), or the hollyhock festival (aoi matsuri)—invite the

readers to think of Shinto through a national, rather than local lens.

Although the myths of the Kojiki are, at least nominally, the shared cultural and mythological

heritage of all Japanese, in practice the deities therein enumerated only rarely feature in the

practical realities of ‘folk’ Shinto—that is, kami-related rituals practiced by ordinary people.

Unlike in American Christianity, say, where the familiar mythic narratives of the Pentateuch have

serious, real world implications within many communities, the founding myths of the Kojiki have

68
Kamisama No O-Hanashi, 7.
69
Kamisama No O-Hanashi, 6.
70
Kamisama No O-Hanashi, 10.
71
Kamisama No O-Hanashi, 3.
72
Kamisama No O-Hanashi, 10.
73
Kamisama No O-Hanashi, 11.

53
little bearing outside the Imperial and shrine cult. Thus, these two volumes choose to highlight

these particular myths and festivals not to involve the reader and her child in Shinto activities on

a local level, as one would perhaps expect of a volume like this, but rather to remind them that the

familiar rituals of the ‘folk’ Shinto calendar are part of a broader national heritage.

More importantly, however, in so doing, the text also serves as a reminder that the official

keeper of said national heritage is none other than the Jinja Honchō, the imperially-sanctioned

governing body of Shrine Shinto and the publisher of the volume in question. Some of the

explanatory glosses in the text appear to serve as misdirection from this end. To say that the myth

of Susano-ō vanquishing the eight-headed serpent Yamata-no-orochi is really an allegory for the

destructive effect of flooding on rice agriculture,74 or that the White Rabbit of Inaba is just one

example of a genre of folktales common throughout East Asia seems at first glance to be reducing

the religious significance of these tales—taming them by explaining them away as mere myth. But

this, I would argue, is actually a strategy for increasing the legitimacy of the text by preemptively

disavowing the kind of literalist claims made by State Shinto only a few generations ago. 75 This

concession to contemporary sensibilities then serves as the spoonful of sugar for the dubious

medicine of nationalist rhetoric elsewhere in the text: like the claim that the Japanese people have

‘always’ felt that they are the children of the kami, 76 or that the sun, to whom the Japanese

nominally look as their progenitor, is revered by all the peoples of the world.77 Moreover, the

nationalist pronunciation ‘nippon’ is used twice throughout the book to refer to Japan,78 and once

the kanji for Japan are glossed phonetically as ‘yamato,’ a Japanese ethnonym that, according to

74
Kamisama No O-Hanashi, 4.
75
For state Shinto, see: Hardacre, Shintō and the State, 1868-1988.
76
Kamisama No O-Hanashi, 2.
77
Kamisama No O-Hanashi, 3.
78
Kamisama No O-Hanashi, 2, 10.

54
several contacts in Iwate, is occasionally used as an internal division to separate Japanese with

roots in the ancient kansai region of the early Japanese state versus those who only became

Japanese after the Fujiwara conquests (Jōmon-jin, referring to the peoples of prehistoric Japan).79

The glosses intended ‘for the honorable mother’, then, are intended not to flesh out the story

narratively, but to supplement with an added relevance a narrative that the adult has already

(presumably) internalized. It helps to connect stories and images they remember from their own

childhood to real events and symbols that they encounter in the modern world, thereby reinforcing

the claim of the official priesthood to be the custodians of these ancient historic truths.80

The portion directed at the child, moreover, is also (somewhat counterintuitively) not

designed to teach these stories, or at least not in a narrative way. There is simply far too little plot

included—in either portion—for that to be the case. That work is left to other texts—those aimed

at slightly older audiences, as we shall presently see. What this volume does aim to do, instead, is

to lay an affective foundation upon which the child’s mental representation of these myths can

later be built. Here the illustrations are key. As I mentioned, they are vibrant, realistic watercolors.

They eschew all pop Japanese illustrative conventions (by which I mean they look nothing like

manga/anime). Their detail lends them an aura of religious gravitas, and the fact that they are

single-frame tableaux means that they have an allusive quality—that they hint at something vast.

The effect is similar to that which would be achieved on a contemporary child through a collection

of Grimm’s Fairy Tales or Aesop’s Fables with illustrations from the turn of the last century—the

anachronistic lack of cartoonishness makes them less accessible, and yet more significant for this

added distance. Their lack of narrative detail does not tax the child’s memory, but rather invites

her to ruminate on these static images and supply the rest of the story, so that when later in life she

79
Kamisama No O-Hanashi, 11.
80
It also, of course, serves to reinforce traditional gender roles by presuming the mother to be primary caregiver.

55
does encounter a retelling of some of these tales, they resonate with her as something at once both

familiar and weighty. Above all, then, this volume lays the groundwork for affective bonds to

Shinto and its myths—cemented, perhaps, by memories of reading on a mother’s knee—that the

child will carry throughout her life.

Manga Kojiki
The other books I received from Taniue-san were several volumes from a series of seven

small picture books intended for advanced preschoolers, published by the Federation of National

Shrine Preschool Organizations.81 Each volume takes an episode, or short series of episodes, from

the Kojiki and puts them in manga form: The Gate of the Celestial Rock Cave; The Eight-Headed

Eight-Tailed Serpent; The White Rabbit of Inaba; The Princes of Mountain Harvest and Sea

Harvest; The Emperor Jinmu, The Descent of Ninigi, The Birth of the Nation.82

The layout of each page follows a fairly standard manga format, but as with Kamisama no

ohanashi, the typical adult manga figural style is avoided. However, in this case, it is eschewed

for something much more cartoony and rough. Almost every background character, and some

named characters, look exactly the same: round-faced, red-cheeked men with wispy mustachios

and goatees, sausage-curls at their ears and pastel-colored robes and strings of magatama beads

around their necks. These outfits often change color and shape from frame to frame, shattering the

narrative continuity. The facial expressions of all the figures in these books are quite charming in

their simplicity and woodenness, almost as if the poor quality had been intended. The addition of

comic relief in the form of occasional animal companions enhances the whimsy of the series, as

81
Zenkoku jinja hoiku dantai rengōkai, http://www.morinokodomotachi.ne.jp/
82
These volumes also have precious little bibliographic information. Note that these volumes are not organized
according to the putative chronology of events therein described. Their titles in Japanese are: Amanoiwato, Yamata-
no-orochi, Inaba no shiro usagi, Umisachi yamasachi, Jinmu Tennō, Tensonkōrin, Kuniumi. All titles are rendered
syllabically except for the volume on Emp. Jinmu, where kanji are used.

56
does the fact that the man Jinmu’s entourage encounters off the coast of Honshū happens to be

riding a turtle—a fact which, to great effect, is never once mentioned in the text.83

Fig. 2.1 – Comparison of illustrations from Kamisama no ohanashi (left) and

Manga kojiki (right). Of the latter, the first is the cover of Tensonkōrin, and the
remainder are from Jinmu tennō.

Interestingly, despite their stylistic differences, certain scenes appearing in both Kamisama no

ohanashi and in the Manga kojiki series are strikingly similar in composition, hinting at a common

83
Jinmu Tennō, 2.

57
visual vocabulary in the representation of these episodes for children. Fig. 2.1 presents some of

the most compelling examples comparatively. From top to bottom: The Descent of Ninigi, Jinmu

espies Yata the Hawk, and The Enthronement of Jinmu. Although the paucity of bibliographic

information on both these sources prevents further inquiry, it is inconceivable based on the

similarities in composition and detail—despite the stylistic differences—between the two works

that the illustrator of one was not aware of the work of the other.

If, as I contend, the preference for imagery over story in Kamisama no ohanashi stems from

a desire to generate in children sympathetic feelings toward certain key images which only later in

the child’s life will be embellished with narrative detail, then it is telling that the versions of these

same episodes in Manga kojiki should replicate said scenes so faithfully all while adding the

narrative elements that are more appropriate for older readers. Unlike Kamisama no ohanashi, they

introduce characters, set scenes, and have both problems and resolutions. Because they are

excerpts from a much longer mythic cycle, of course, their narrative arc is sometimes artificially

truncated; nevertheless, these books, which a first-grader should be able to read without problem

(and, thanks to the furigana, younger children also), provide some of the material out of which the

child can build the mythic superstructure on the foundation laid by books like Kamisama no

ohanashi.

As with Kamisama no ohanashi, pains seem to have been taken to portray the Manga kojiki

series as important for children while at the same time distancing them from the stories’

complicated associations with Shinto nationalism. Twice in as many sentences, the advertising

copy for this seven volume set on the publisher’s website refers to Kojiki obliquely as the ultimate

origin (ganso; rūtsu, i.e. ‘roots’)—not of Shinto—but of Japanese folktales (mukashibanashi),

58
simultaneously stressing their overall cultural importance while downplaying any explicitly

religious connotations.

Nevertheless, these books do provide at least one piece of explicitly religious pedagogy in

introducing readers to specialized religious vocabulary that they might not encounter elsewhere.

For example, Kuniumi (‘Birth of the Nation’) describes Izanagi’s act of washing after returning

from the underworld using the technical word misogi, or to purify ritually, rather than mundane

arau. This kanji is classified as hyōgai, or ‘uncommon’, meaning outside not only the jōyō list

taught in school, but also the jinmeiyō list of characters for use in given names. There is no way a

child would have encountered this character in any other setting, and indeed, is unlikely ever to do

so except in a religious setting. Books like these, then, represent a setting in which a child may

encounter the written vocabulary of Shinto for the first time.

More importantly, however, these adaptations use tales from the Kojiki to underscore core

ethical lessons in childhood socialization. The publisher’s website stresses the improving content

of the stories, saying somewhat hyperbolically that “all of these stories are full of bravery and

aspiration (yūki to kibō ni michita).” In practice, these feelings are rather gentler. For example, in

the Kuniumi volume, when the primordial couple stirs the islands of Japan into being, Izanami says

to her partner: “Let us make [a land] so that everyone in that country gets along happily” (tanoshiku

kuraseru). As I shall elaborate further in the following chapter, the rhetoric of fun and amiability

is of critical importance in Japanese preschool education because it is the primary vehicle through

which children are coaxed to put the indulgent amae of home life away and shoulder the

responsibility of being considerate of the needs of others.

Within the narrative arc of Kojiki, the episode where Ōkuninushi rescues the White Rabbit

of Inaba is of relatively little significance, but takes a greater import when the audience is made of

59
children. The version in Kamisama no ohanashi only hints at a reciprocal relationship between

Ōkuninushi and the rabbit, saying merely that through the kami’s care the rabbit was made good

as new and that he repaid the favor (ongaeshi). 84 In the Manga kojiki version, this repayment

becomes the well-fleshed-out climax of the story. After narrating in detail both his failure in

tricking the sharks who wish to eat him and the bad advice he received from Ōkuninushi’s wicked

brothers, the rabbit then receives and carries out kindly Ōkuninushi’s prescribed cure. What is

essential when children are the audience is that the rabbit serves as a foil for Ōkuninushi’s kindness.

The fact that the story ends abruptly after this with only a narrative postscript saying that

“Ōkuninushi reigned over the Land of Izumo, and all the people loved him dearly ever after,” 85

further emphasizes that the point of the book is Ōkuninushi’s willingness to help a person in

distress, rather than his godhood.

In sum, ‘Shinto’ books—by which I mean picture books produced in association with

explicitly Shinto organizations—show little concern with the kind of shrine-based religiosity that

is the majority of lived religious experience in a place like Mizusawa. They emphasize instead

both idiosyncratic local festivals of nonetheless national importance, and, more importantly,

certain essential myths from the Kojiki. In doing so, the publishers seem to be entirely unconcerned

with providing instruction in the performance of Shinto ritual, nor even in conveying meaningful

details about kami who are of practical, immediate, or ongoing benefit to mankind. Rather, in

stressing things like the mythic origins of specific shrines, or the importance of the Kojiki as the

source and historic charter for the more familiar aspects of shrine practice, Shinto books remind

parents of the authority of the priesthood within a religious apparatus that, experientially at least,

feels as though it unfolds spontaneously without much need of supervision. Above all these books

84
Kamisama No O-Hanashi, 5.
85
Inaba no shiro usagi, 20.

60
are meant to reassert, albeit indirectly, the ultimate primacy of the priesthood in kami-related

affairs.

To the extent that these authors are conscious of the way their works will be received by

children themselves, it seems that instruction is meant to unfold in two stages. The first,

represented by Kamisama no ohanashi, is concerned with generating a strong affective relationship

with certain scenes and stories among early pre-school children. The second, represented by

Manga kojiki, then embellishes this affective stance with narrative elements that echo lessons in

socialization that the preschooler encounters elsewhere in his or her environment. The

unmistakable visual similarities between certain scenes across these two works cannot be

coincidental and is a compelling argument that the embellishment of Manga kojiki is meant to be

iterative of the affective effects of Kamisama no ohanashi.

Buddhist Books
Religion or Tourism?
Shinto-related books are not the only children’s literature to place heavy emphasis on specific holy

sites rather than more readily accessible aspects of general religious practice. Like Omiya to

omatsuri, the two explicitly Buddhist picture books I collected also appear to be written to be

vicariously touristic. These books came from Taiyō Hoikuen, a Buddhist kindergarten in

neighboring Kanegasaki, one train stop and a short walk north of downtown Mizusawa. Combing

through the collection of picture books on low shelves by the children’s cubbies just inside the

school’s main entry hall, I was not terribly surprised to see almost no texts that struck me as

explicitly Buddhist. There were, in fact, only two of these, and as the school had multiple copies

of each I was presented with a pair of the more gently-used ones as a gift.

This pair of books is closely tied to Fukushima prefecture, 150 miles south of Ōshū. The first,

Nippon-ichi no kannon-sama (“The Kannon of Nippon-ichi Village” 2007), gives a heavily

61
didactic, simplified history of a statue of the Bodhisattva Kannon in the village of Nippon-ichi,

and the hall in which it is venerated. The second, Obake ga deru zo! (“The Ghost is Coming to Get

You!” 2009) weaves another improving story around a locally-famous painting of a ghost86 in the

main hall (hondō) of the nearby Tōsen-ji temple. Both volumes were illustrated by Itō Miwako, a

Fukushima native whose work I have not encountered elsewhere, written by Sakai Shōji, a public

elementary school principal 87 and chief priest of two Buddhist temples in Kōoriyama city,

Fukushima, and published under the auspices of the publications division of the Fukushima

prefectural public relations bureau (fukushima minpōsha jigyōkyoku shuppanbu).88 As with the

Shinto examples above, neither has an ISBN.

Each of these books comprises a main story intended for child readers (the contents of both

of which I will discuss in greater detail in Chapter 5) and a centerfold section on the final page

including an illustrated map showing the location of each religious site and its surroundings on the

left, and on the right, several paragraphs in an adult speech register explaining in copious detail

the history of the site, interspersed with photographs of the original works of art.

Like the Manga kojiki series, both of these books convey moral messages to the child reader

that reinforce general points of good behavior—in this case, truthfulness, obedience to parental

authority, and respect for personal property—with no suggestion that the Buddhas are the sources

of this moral code nor exhortation to any specific feelings of reverence toward them. It appears

86
The word obake is technically as general as yōkai insofar as it refers to the ability of the being to change forms
(bakeru), but is generally used instead of the more precise yūrei to indicate a ghost or specter.
87
A kindergarten principal, or enchō sensei, is essentially a ceremonial figurehead and honorary adviser, largely
uninvolved with day to day life with the children. According to a 1986 Monbushō report, 91% of enchō sensei are
male, with an average age of 63. Most are appointed to this position upon their retirement from another education-
related profession, and almost 40% retain employment responsibilities of another sort during their tenure—such as
but not limited to priesthood. The actual work of running the school falls to the kyotō sensei or shuji sensei, who are
overwhelmingly female. Peak, Learning to Go to School in Japan, 50.
88
Sakai Shōji, Nippon-Ichi No Kannon-Sama (Kooriyama City, Fukushima: Fukushima Minpōsha Jigyōkyoku
Shuppanbu, 2007); Sakai Shōji, Obake Ga Deru Zo! (Kooriyama City, Fukushima: Fukushima Minpōsha Jigyōkyoku
Shuppanbu, 2009).

62
instead that these books serve the same purpose as the Shinto examples: to bring awareness of

these specific religious sites to an adult audience under the guise of being a generically morally

improving story for children.

Heaven and Hell

To the extent that self-consciously Buddhist interpretations of supernatural beings and phenomena

do make their way into children’s literature, they do so largely in books about the Buddhist hells

(jigoku), and to a lesser extent heavens (gokuraku). Even so, I have encountered only one example

of this from an explicitly Buddhist perspective. My use of the singular is somewhat misleading, as

the book in question exists in multiple forms: a pair of books on A4 format entitled simply Ehon

jigoku (1980) and Ehon gokuraku (2009), as well as a small handheld version that combines both

into a single volume entitled Jigoku to gokuraku (2011).89

Instead of illustrations composed exclusively for this work, the pictures in Jigoku and

Gokuraku are made up entirely of portions of medieval manuscripts and mandalas reproduced and

lightly edited—in particular, an etoki scroll belonging to Enmei-ji in Awa-gun, Chiba prefecture,

and the Seisho raigō zu mandala of the descent of Amida Buddha at Hōzen-in in Kyoto. When

these images were first painted they were used much in the same way as here, with itinerant

performers describing each part of the image in the context of a narrative tour of hell (jigoku

meguri). These books superimpose onto excerpts from these images a running narration from the

perspective of a person, recently deceased, who is making his painful and terrifying journey into

the underworld. Because the images have no visible protagonist, the reader is invited to experience

these scenes firsthand with the narrator, and the effect is chilling.

89
Oya Tsugio, Ehon Jigoku (Tokyo: Futōsha, 1980); Nishikawa Ryūhan, Ehon Gokuraku, ed. Masudae Ishin (Tokyo:
Futōsha, 2009); Oya Tsugio and Nishikawa Ryūhan, Jigoku to Gokuraku (Tokyo: Futōsha, 2011).

63
 In the case of the two-volume pocket edition, the secondary dust jacket ribbon which

accompanies many Japanese books features a manga-style young mother weeping openly with

gratitude, holding an angry, shouting infant in one hand and giving a peace-sign salute with the

other (See Appendix Illus. 2.1). A speech balloon reads: “Thanks to this book, our child doesn’t

misbehave anymore!” and indicates that this quote is from manga artist Higashimura Akiko.

Beside it, another block of text announces proudly that Ehon jigoku appears in volume 4 of

Higashimura’s manga essay on Japanese childrearing, Mama’s Temper List. While the two volume

edition was first published in 2011 and was by 2015 was in its seventh printing, the large format

Hell-only version has been in print since 1980, and with over 130,000 copies sold qualifies as a

‘long-seller’.

Despite their slim size and hard covers, however, these books are unrestrained in their use of

kanji and include pronunciation guides only for those specialized terms that even an adult might

not necessarily recognize. As such, insofar as these books are meant to be used in childrearing—

as based on their marketing they most certainly are—it is clear that they are intended to be read to,

and not by, the child in question, and that they are meant to be used in enforcing discipline with

the threat of posthumous supernatural punishment—a subject which I will examine in detail in

Chapter 4.

The majority of books I encountered dealing with Buddhist hells and heavens intended for a

child audience are actually from the secular market and are fairly common despite their grim

subject matter. Unlike in the explicitly Buddhist Jigoku to gokuraku, however, this grimness is

mitigated by a variety of strategies in the secular examples.

The book that cleaves most closely to the jigoku meguri genre is Mizuki shōnen to nonnon-

bā no jigoku meguri (“Young Mizuki and Granny Nonnon’s Tour of Hell” 2013) by famed

64
children’s Manga artist Mizuki Shigeru, whose passing while I was in the field in 2015 was much

mourned in the national media. The titular characters, who appear intermittently throughout

Mizuki’s body of work, are fictionalized versions of the author (Mizuki shōnen, i.e. ‘Mizuki as a

young boy’) and his grandmother. The medieval illustrations that inspired Mizuki’s own manga

versions were on display in a temple near his childhood home where his grandmother used to bring

him as a child. This volume was important for him to write, he explains in an afterword, because

he credits these images with sparking his interest in the supernatural and inspiring him to create

the character for which he is most famous, Gegege no kitarō.

As with the explicitly religious examples above, the connection with a specific place (in this

case, both Shōfuku-ji, where the images are, and the Shimane Peninsula, where local tradition

posits the entrance to the land of the dead) is highlighted in this case as well. But whereas in

previous examples in which the sheer existence of these specific sites is used to imply their

relevance and veracity, Mizuki instead uses this context as an opportunity to give a psychological

reading of hell. He says that the images were so compelling that it was easy to feel as though these

places existed (jigoku ga hontō ni aru yō na kimochi)90 and that, “it was as though, by looking at

them, I had really entered into the places they depicted (e no naka ni hairikonda yō no kibun).”91

He also cites his grandmother’s conviction that this was an accurate depiction of the afterlife—

without committing himself either way—as the source of his fascination.92

Finally, although his fictional counterpart is terrified at every turn (See Appendix Illus. 2.2),

the adult Mizuki looks back on these images fondly: “I miss it dearly. [...] It’s a way of returning

to the feelings I had when I was a small child.”93 Of course these authorial bookends do little to

90
Mizuki Shigeru, Mizuki shōnen to nonnon-bā no jigoku meguri (Magazine House, 2013), 1.
91
Mizuki Shigeru, 27–28.
92
Mizuki Shigeru, 27–28.
93
Mizuki Shigeru, 27–28.

65
take away from the terrifying emotional force of the manga of the main text, but nevertheless they

provide a tool for an adult co-reader or a more advanced child reader to temper their emotional

reaction by seeing it contextualized as metaphor.

Another strategy used to temper the terrors of hell is temporal displacement: Jigoku no Sōbē

(“Sōbē in Hell” 1978) by Tajima Yukihiko, written in thick Kansai dialect and illustrated in his

signature riotous style, tells the story of the descent into (and escape from) hell of the titular Sōbē,

an Edo-era street performer. Full of grotesque violence and scatological humor, the story amuses

as much as, if not more than, it terrifies—all from the safety of a bygone era (See Appendix Illus.

2.3).94 No attempt is made to explicitly impress on the child that this hell is something eternal that

threatens those presently alive. Although other books in the Adventures of Sōbē series bring him

to both Amida’s paradise (Sōbē gokuraku he yuku, 1989) and the Hall of the Dragon King from

the Lotus Sutra (Sōbē fushigi na ryūgūjō, 2011), it is worth noting that only Jigoku no Sōbē seems

to have become a classic, appearing in multiple libraries and bookstores in the field.95

Finally, one volume of Shinju Mariko’s Mottainai bāchan series, Tengoku to jigoku no

hanashi (“Granny Waste-Not’s Tale of Heaven and Hell,” 2014), sidesteps this issue entirely by

avoiding all comment on how the residents of heaven or hell arrive there in the first place. The

story opens with Granny Waste-Not taking a stroll and ending up without any explanation at the

gateway to hell, where a fearsome demon (oni, see Chapter 4) is stirring a large pot of soup. As

with the other books in this series, the story revolves around the titular character chiding

wastefulness (her name, mottainai, is an exclamation commonly used to decry such behavior) and

praising conscientiousness and thrift. In this case, granny scolds the residents of hell for spilling

94
Tajima Yukihiko, Jigoku No Sōbē: Katsura Beichō Kamigara Rakugo Jigoku Hakkei Yori (Tokyo: Doshinsha,
1978).
95
Tajima Yukihiko, Sōbē Gokuraku He Yuku (Tokyo: Doshinsha, 1989); Tajima Yukihiko, Sōbē Fushigi-na Ryūgū-
jō (Tokyo: Doshinsha, 2011).

66
soup in their struggle to satisfy their hunger, and, when the demon supervising the soup line strikes

her so hard with his iron club that she flies up to heaven, she then praises the neat, orderly lines in

which she sees the blessed taking their own nourishment (See Appendix Illus. 2.4). In this example,

then, the blow of hell’s existence is softened by reversing the causal link: people are not in hell

because they are wicked, but rather the infernal setting is indication that the people therein are

selfish and wasteful. This accounts for the lack of supernatural punishment depicted in this version

of hell, and explains why granny seems to have no compassion for the damned, who suffer only

the same immediate and logical consequences of their rash behavior that they would have on earth.

The story makes use of what appears to be a known moral dichotomy in order to explain that

orderliness and thrift are better than disorder and waste.

What, then, do we make of the uses of hell in children’s books? The purpose of depicting

Buddhist hells to children, in cases where there is a broader purpose at all, seems to be to provide

ammunition to parents wishing to use a threat of supernatural punishment in curbing poor

behavior—an approach best exemplified in the promotional material that accompanies Jigoku ehon.

I will have much more to say on the scared-straight disciplinary strategy in Chapter 4, but for the

moment it is worth mentioning that books that presume the existence of hell (unlike Christian

pamphlets one might be handed in an American subway) do not seem terribly preoccupied with

asserting the literal reality of these places of punishment. As I have shown, it is generally sufficient

simply to show the imagery of hell and let the pictures speak for themselves. The hells that these

books are united in presenting are examples of what Dan Sperber has called ‘semi-propositional

representations’: assertions that a given claim has been made (‘it is said that hell exists’) which

are easily taken by hearers as though they were assertions that the original assertion is true (‘hell

67
exists’).96 All that is necessary to create a hell in the mind of a child, to all practical purposes, is

for Jigoku ehon and Mizuki shōnen to show that there are gruesome depictions of hell in medieval

artwork. As Sperber writes, “when all the members of your cultural group seem to hold a certain

representational belief or semi-propositional content, this constitutes sufficiently rational ground

for you to hold it too.”97 Jigoku ehon explains that its images are drawn from a medieval scroll in

order to rely on the tacit presumption that antiquity lends gravitas and veracity, and that a medieval

scroll should be as accurate a piece of evidence as a snapshot when it comes to religious subjects.

Mizuki shōnen also frames its narrative as relying on medieval pictures, but in this case the author

describes the semi-propositionality of his own representation of hell (and thereby undermines its

power) by attributing his fascination explicitly to the emotional force of the original images and to

the convictions of a trusted third party.

Buddhist Ethics Manuals

Finally, it is worth mentioning a pair of Buddhist books intended for elementary school-aged

children at the upper end of my target demographic. They were new releases at the time I found

them for sale at a chain bookstore across from the food court in a local shopping mall, and so I

cannot comment on the extent to which they do or do not get used in my community. Buddha ga

sensei and Kokoro no fushigi (“Buddha is my Teacher” and “Mysteries of the Heart”) by Miyashita

Makoto are aimed at a first- through third grade audience (shōgakkō teikagunen) and are broken

down into short 1-2 page long essays based on a single declarative statement. Buddha ga sensei,

for example, categorizes its contents based on areas of the child’s life (everyday living, friends and

family, work and play, etc.), and teaches lessons on compassion, reciprocal social relations, and

96
Dan Sperber, “Apparently Irrational Beliefs,” in Rationality and Relativism, ed. M. Hollis and S. Lukes (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1982), 169–77.
97
Sperber, 177.

68
the importance of good thoughts as well as deeds. Interspersed throughout these are also insets to

explain certain key words—some common, some not—that have their origins in Buddhist

terminology, such as: mysterious (fushigi), disturbance/rudeness (jama), inconvenience (meiwaku),

or omen (engi).

Throughout these books the historical Buddha, Shaka nyōrai in Japanese, is portrayed

without any supernatural abilities or significance, but merely as a moral exemplar. Only one

centerfold section of Buddha ga sensei is given over to explaining who the Buddha was. In this

section, entitled “Gotama Buddha is Everyone’s Teacher,” Miyashita explains very simply that the

historical Buddha was born a prince in the land of Shaka in north India; seeing that people were

sick and starving, he decided to leave his castle to begin austerities. After six years he achieved

satori, which caused him to understand everything in the world (yo no naka no shinri o subete

shiru koto). He preached how to live correctly until he was eighty; his teachings are called

Buddhism (bukkyō), and it has become a world faith (shinkō). 98 Note that the elaborations of

Mahayana metaphysics are entirely absent, as is any reference to the funereal or afterlife aspects

of Buddhism that make up the majority of the contemporary Japanese interaction with Buddhism

and its temples. Although Miyashita uses the term shinkō, which has even stronger post-Axial,

modernist connotations than the more common shūkyō as a word for ‘religion’, it is clear that the

most important aspect of the Buddha and the only one he intends to impress upon his child

audience is the Buddha’s moral teachings, whose merits are presented as being self-evident and

without need of supernatural origin. Even, then, for Buddhism, which unlike Shinto is openly

affirming of its status as a religion/shūkyō on a clerical level, it nevertheless chooses to portray

98
Miyashita Makoto, Buddha Ga Sensei (Tokyo: Nagaoka Shoten, 2015), 38–39.

69
itself in these texts as a totalistic philosophy for living rather than a ‘religion’ that exists in

competition with others.

Gyōji Literature and the Secular Market

Had I restricted my investigation of religious content in children’s literature to only those books

either published by religious presses or with explicitly proselytizing intent, I would have been

compelled to end this chapter at the end of the preceding section. As I have shown, books of that

description are relatively few in Mizusawa and appear to be more overtly concerned with asserting

the importance of their institution’s priesthood and holy sites to an adult interlocutor than they are

with communicating to children essential facts about the denizens of the supernatural universe or

common modes of interacting with them. However, as was the case in my ethnographic

conversations, where it turned out that—from the Japanese perspective—the real subject of my

inquiry fell within the domain of ‘traditional culture’ (dentō bunka) rather than ‘religion’ (shukyō),

the books wherein the most important religious information can be found are not those published

by religious authorities, but rather those on the subject of traditional culture that are published by

the secular press. More specifically, this pedagogy centers on the concept of gyōji.

Gyōji and Gyōji Manuals

The term gyōji (行事) is not generally considered to be a terribly specific term in Japanese, and in

common usage means simply ‘event’ or ‘function’ and can be applied to a wide variety of

scheduled activities.99 However, within the domain of children’s literature, the word is used in

such a specific and technical way that I am compelled to leave it untranslated for the remainder of

the present study. Gyōji—or, more specifically wa no gyōji (‘Japanese gyōji’)—refers to those

99
Combining as it does the characters for ‘occurrence’ and ‘thing (conceptual, as opposed to physical)’, one would
almost be tempted to translate gyōji into colloquial, informal English as simply ‘thing’, as in: “I’d love to come with
you but I’ve got a thing this afternoon.”

70
traditional customs and practices that make up the Japanese cultural and religious calendar. While

some gyōji would strike an outside observer as unmistakably religious (the cleaning of ancestral

graves and leaving of sacrificial offerings at o-higan, for example), others, like the doll festival or

the seasonal changeover of wardrobes, seem to be entirely without ‘religious’ import. Because

gyōji are also nested—the observation of the New Year holiday is a gyōji, but so are all its

constituent components: the sending of postcards, the traditional meal, the visit to the shrine to

purchase lucky charms, and so on—the majority of gyōji combine both religious and non-religious

elements. Ultimately, however, the extent to which gyōji are or are not ‘religious’ is immaterial to

the present discussion as this is not a distinction that matters to the Japanese, who apply the term

equally to both.

I collected two types of gyōji related literature during my research. The first I have called

gyōji manuals. Gyōji manuals present either a whole year or sometimes a single season’s worth of

practices in a non-linear visual catechism, sometimes with a very loose year-in-the-life type

narrative flow. They tend not to be organized thematically or theoretically, but rather according to

their place in the calendar. Generally, these manuals present information on multiple levels at once,

with one main, loosely narrative through-line supplemented with explanatory insets, digressions,

and illustrated diagrams explaining parts of relevant objects (decorations, foods, etc.) and

performative instructions (how to ritually clean oneself at a shrine, where to place certain

decorations, etc.).

Although these gyōji manuals are written with kanji—and because of the sometimes esoteric

nature of their contents, often quite advanced and unfamiliar ones—the characters are entirely

glossed with furigana, allowing children of any reading level the ability at least to sound out the

text even if the vocabulary is occasionally beyond them. This advanced language, moreover, is

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usually confined to the supplemental insets (which in fact comprise the majority of text on any

given page), while the narrative through-line is always in the biggest print and the simplest

language, often in the form of rhetorical questions, ensuring that even the youngest of readers can

grasp the basics.

Significantly longer than most picture books, these books are not meant to be read from cover

to cover, but rather to provide easy reference for a child—or more properly a child and adult

together—to understand a given seasonal practice more deeply and to ensure that they are

participating in as many of its canonical facets, correctly, as they desire. These gyōji manuals are

presented as a kind of visual catechism, providing answers to frequently asked questions about

their contents, explaining how to do them, where they came from, and what they mean. Among

the examples I was able to collect, there is no information on the books themselves about their

intended age range (a datum that sometimes appears on picture books’ back covers), nor do they

have entries on the website ehonnavi.net, a database of Japanese children’s literature with reviews,

publications, and suggested age ranges.100 The absence of such a recommendation suggests that

these manuals are meant for too wide a range of ages to specify, as children can with gradually

lessening levels of parental assistance make use of them as reference books throughout their

childhood. An Amazon.co.jp review I found of one of these manuals from the mother of a 4-year-

old boy said that he had enjoyed it but that she had to simplify it a little (mō sukoshi kamikudaite

yomu) for him.

One unifying feature of all the gyōji manuals I collected is their use of animal protagonists

instead of humans. In the pages that follow I will refer to these three gyōji manuals extensively.

Two of them have inconveniently similar titles. Wa no gyōji o tanoshimu ehon (“Having Fun with

100
The word ehon being a direct calque for ‘picture book,’ with the navi presumably short for ‘navigator’.

72
Japanese Gyōji Picture Book”, 2014, hereafter ‘Tanoshimu’) covers an entire year of religious and

cultural festivals and practices through the perspective of a family of anthropomorphized deer—

playfully dubbed the Shikamura family. The second manual is actually a two volume set (Vol. 1

covering Spring/Summer, and Vol. 2 Autumn/Winter), called Wa no gyōji ehon (“Japanese Gyōji

Picture Book”, 2007, hereafter ‘Wa no gyōji’), whose protagonists are four animal families whose

children are all friends: fox, bear, rabbit, and tanuki. The use of non-human animal protagonists in

these books, although by no means uncommon in children’s books of all kinds, serves to reinforce

a feeling that Japanese cultural activities are both natural and universal aspects of life. They do not

intend to suggest that these gyōji are not idiosyncratically Japanese nor that they are not essential

aspects of Japanese ethnic and cultural identity—rather, the use of animal protagonists creates a

space for the child where hegemonic cultural Japaneseness is so thoroughly assumed that the

entirety of nature follows along as a matter of course, and all forms of sentient life echo the child’s

own cultural experience.

The third example is also a series and deviates slightly from the others in a few significant

respects. First, only the two main characters are animals while the supporting cast are all human.

Kawaura Yoshie’s Shiba wanko no wa no kokoro (“Shiba Wanko’s Spirit of ‘Wa’) series follows

the adventures of the titular pet shiba inu and his cat friend, Miké Nyanko, as they are introduced

to essential Japanese cultural practices by their human family. The scope of each of these books is

also somewhat broader than either Tanoshimu or Wa no gyōji, incorporating aspects of the

traditional Japanese habitus that do not necessarily partake in the public nature of gyōji, such as

seiza posture, the correct way to place floor cushions or unworn shoes, chopstick etiquette, and the

way to wear geta, yukata, and kimono.

73
 Indeed, I am somewhat hesitant to classify the Shiba wanko series as gyōji manuals at all,

since their stated subject is not gyōji, but rather ‘wa’—a Japanese ethnonymic particle as well as a

catch-all term for all things considered to be essential to a felt sense of Japaneseness. These books

take pains to define wa for its young readers, and includes the same definition at several points

throughout the series:

一、穏やかなこと 1) calmness, gentleness, or quietude

二、仲良くすること 2) to be friends with, to get along well
三、ほど良く整うこと 3) to be arranged well, to be orderly
四、調子を合わせること 4) to harmonize with
五、数個の数をかえた値 5) the sum when adding numbers
六、日本 6) Japan

Interestingly, this definition does not attempt to delve into the sense of wa as a synonym for the

total Japanese cultural apparatus, following instead a simplified dictionary definition with no

supplemental explanatory text. Letting this passage stand alone, Shiba wanko lets the remainder

of the series do this work instead, drawing the connection from doing things ‘decorously’

(definition 1) and ‘just-so’ (definition 3) on the one hand, to the idiosyncratically Japanese

activities that must be so done on the other.

Naturally, important gyōji are treated over the course of this series since they are important

components of wa—activities in which the expression of wa is most crucial and expected—but

they are distributed throughout the series. Treatment of the day of the dead (o-bon), for example,

appears in volume three (Nichinichi ni tanoshimi, or “Daily Fun”) along with Boys’ Day and

gardening, while the fourth volume (Kyō wa yoki hi, or ‘Today is a Good Day’) comprises not only

the festivities of the year’s end, but also engagement gifts, folktales, and the city of Kyoto. The

volume that promises to most closely resemble other gyōji manuals is the second, Shiki no yorokobi

(“Joys of the Four Seasons” 2002), but even this contains lengthy sections on kabuki theater,

traditional Japanese confectionery (wagashi), and how to use the postal system. Even so, when the

74
Shiba wanko series does present gyōji, it covers the same constituent elements in the same format

as Wa no gyōji and Tanoshimu.

Although the way Tanoshimu’s cover is typeset significantly underplays the opening clause,

the full title of the volume is “I Want to Transmit to My Child Four Seasons Having Fun with

Japanese Cultural Practices Picture Book” (Kodomo ni tsutaetai shunkashūtō wa no gyōji o

tanoshimu ehon). Whereas adults are ultimately the primary consumers of picture books in terms

of marketing, the fact that the longer title of this manual addresses adults directly suggests that it

is also to be purchased with the intent of using it actively as a tool in pedagogy about culture.

Tanoshimu also begins with a two-page prologue addressed to the adults of the household (o-uchi

no kata e) that lays out the author’s philosophy regarding gyōji and their importance in

conscientious childrearing. On the second of these centerfolds, Miura explains the five benefits

she sees to a comprehensive gyōji education by using an image of a tree as a metaphor for a human

child. For her, gyōji 1) are the nutrients that cause a child to grow the strong roots a child needs to

remain standing in the face of adversity; 2) are an expression of parental love; 3) communicate the

essential Japanese morals of compassion and respect for nature; 4) instruct the child in the rules of

etiquette, and by extension, in the wisdom that that cultural competence implies; and 5)

reinvigorate a person with a spirit of fun.101 The kami, it is essential to note, are not cited anywhere

in these five points, which instead describe the benefit of gyōji to the child in entirely relational

terms. The first point adds that mastery of gyōji leads to a strong sense of Japanese identity

(nihonjin toshite no aidentiti ni tsujimasu), and therefore a feeling of belonging, while the others

cite the strengthening of the familial bond, the development of competence in the rules and

expectations of society, and the encouragement to be active participants in communal life. As I

Miura Yasuko, Kodomo Ni Tsutaetai Shunkashūtō Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon (Tokyo: Nagaoka Shōten,
101

2014), 4–5.

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shall show in the proceeding chapters, the kami are very much present throughout this literature,

but it is significant that they do not make up part of Miura’s stated rationale, which is to use gyōji

as a way of raising socially-integrated, wise, and compassionate children.

Gyōji Narratives
Whereas gyōji manuals seek to present a year or season’s worth of cultural practices in handy

reference form, instances of the genre I call gyōji narratives focus instead on a single major cultural

practice and provide a more or less complete exposition of the various components of said practice

within a more robust narrative frame. The reader learns the ins and outs of a given festival by

watching it be performed by, and explained where need be to, the characters of the story.

Of all the literature I have examined thus far, the only works for which a concerted effort

seems to be made to disseminate them to children appears to be gyōji narratives. In the weeks

leading up to many of the year’s major gyōji, the Mizusawa Public Library collects and displays

the relevant gyōji narratives from their holdings in places children are more likely to run across

them: the set of shelves in the center of the raised, carpeted area where their picture books are

stored, or on a folding table set up between the circulation desk and the children’s section. The

New Year, setsubun, the doll festival (hina matsuri), boys’ day (koi nobori) and so on all were

singled out for this sort of display; around the time of the autumn matsuri, a display and booklist

also appeared collecting works on the various matsuri of Japan and beyond, both for child and

adult readers.

Gyōji narratives are also the only type of the above literature I have seen in performative

context. Tokiwa Kindergarten incorporated one into their observation of setsubun, which I will

describe at length in my conclusion to Chapter 4. School staff used a photocopier to expand and

edit this book into a larger format with text on the reverse for easier performative reading. This

book, Setsubun da mamemaki da (“It’s Setsubun! It’s time for the bean toss!” 2000), is an excellent

76
example of the genre. It introduces modern children to setsubun by allowing them to follow along

with a human family—this one appearing to be from the generic in illo tempore which in Japan

almost always looks like the Edo period—as they celebrate it. They do many—but not all—of the

constituent practices that are covered in gyōji manual treatments of setsubun. Over the course of

the book, the family members make and affix to their doorway the traditional iwashi (sardine) and

holly charm that is said to ward demons away; they count out roasted soybeans in the number of

their years plus one; and of course they perform a domestic mamemaki, in which the children of

the house chase off their father, disguised as a monster, by pelting him with beans. Rhetorical

questions about each action are put into the mouths of the family’s children, giving the mother and

father the opportunity to explain them in satisfactory detail.

While some gyōji narratives simply explain the gyōji in narrative form, most incorporate

some kind of plot device to make the narrative an engaging story and not just an instruction manual

in story form. One understandably popular plot device is the child waiting impatiently for his or

her father to come home from work in order to spend time with the family.102

It is worth mentioning that some of the gyōji narratives I collected also include expository

inset pages that interrupt the flow of the narrative with non-diagetic supplemental information

similar to that provided in gyōji manuals. These insets, which are generally written with a higher

concentration of kanji, provide either deeper explanations of the activities undertaken by characters

in the book or instructions for seasonal crafts, and are therefore intended either for the benefit of

the adult reading along, or to give an added level of understanding to more advanced child readers.

102
Kowase Tamami, Oninoko-kun ga yatte-kita! (Tokyo: PHP Shoten, 2000); Mogami Ippei, Kyō to Ashita No
Sakaime, Gyōji No Yurai Ehon (Tokyo: Kyōiku Gageki, 2000); Nishimoto Keisuke, O-Shōgatsu-Sama Gozatta
(Tokyo: Kosei Shuppan-sha, 1993).

77
 Although gyōji narratives are intended as stand-alone stories, they are frequently linked with

picture books about other gyōji in order to create a cohesive set covering the highlights of the ritual

calendar. The aforementioned Setsubun da is one of eight volumes by a variety of authors that its

publishing house, Kyōiku Gageki, calls its Gyōji no yurai ehon collection (“Origins of Cultural

Practices Picture Books”). Others in this series cover the New Year, the doll festival, children’s

day, mother’s day, tanabata, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. As was the case with gyōji manuals,

we can see that these collections are by no means all ‘religious’ practices, but gather religious,

cultural, folkloric, and even foreign observances under a single editorial umbrella. Some longer

series, while they are not gyōji series as such, nevertheless incorporate familiar gyōji among their

titles. One such series is the Juppiki kaeru (“Ten Little Frogs”) series by Madokoro Hisako and

illustrated by Nakagawa Michiko, in which the titular ten little frogs of Hyōten Swamp undertake

a mix of familiar secular activities (field day, singing contest, errands, picnic) and gyōji (shōgatsu,

the autumn matsuri, moon viewing, the doll festival).

Other series are intended by their authors to be entirely gyōji related. Obāchan no ehōmaki

(“Granny and the Good Luck Sushi Roll” 2010), for example, is part of a series in which a

grandmother visits her city-dwelling family in order to help them prepare the signature dishes of

four cultural festivals: the other three being New Year (Obāchan no osechi, 2008), the festival of

the seven herbs (Obāchan no nanakusa gayu, 2014), and the doll festival (Obāchan no hina

chirashi, 2015). Like the more advanced and robust gyōji manuals, this series combine what we

would call both religious and secular festivals under a single editorial umbrella—in this case,

focusing on the alimentary aspects of these festivals and, consequently, on both the role of the

grandparental relationship in cultural pedagogy and the role of sexual differentiation in a child’s

experience of these practices. I conclude this chapter with a close reading of Obāchan no ehōmaki

78
in order to demonstrate by example the kind of subtle cultural and religious pedagogy that gyōji

manuals seek to accomplish.

Cultural Pedagogy in Obāchan no ehōmaki (2010)

Obāchan no ehōmaki explains many of the same parts of setsubun that are covered in

Setsubun da mamemaki da: how and why to make the sardine-and-holly charm, to count out and

eat one’s age-beans, and of course to do the bean toss exorcism. But unlike Setsubun da—and

other setsubun stories we will cover in greater detail in Chapter 4—the focus of Ehōmaki is not on

the mamemaki but rather on the making and eating of the titular dish: the fat, uncut sushi roll that

is consumed on setsubun as one of many yearly ritualized wishes for good fortune. By contrast,

the mamemaki takes up sixteen of Setsubun da’s thirty pages, and is clearly the narrative’s chief

preoccupation. Why this discrepancy?

The answer is that these two volumes are intended for different aged children, and as such

serve different ends. Although the grandmother figures prominently in the Obāchan series, its real

protagonist is Kirika, a girl who we can deduce by the number of beans she consumes to be either

six or seven years of age (depending on whether or not the scene’s illustration includes the extra

bean for the upcoming year) and therefore almost certainly in the first grade. It is she with whom

the reader is meant to identify.

The tension between Kirika and her little brother, Kōta is essential to the text; based on the

relative importance of the mamemaki to Kirika and Kōta, and the way it appears in the text, we

can surmise that the mamemaki in practice—at least in an educational setting—is primarily geared

toward preschoolers. The first time that the mamemaki is mentioned in Ehōmaki is when Kōta,

shepherded by their mother, returns home from hoikuen wearing a paper oni mask. “So, today, an

oni came to the hoikuen,” he volunteers, hands raised in excitement, interrupting Kirika and her

grandmother as they prepare the fried egg component of the sushi roll, “it was scary, but all of us

79
threw beans at it and chased it off!”103 There is no indication that Kirika did a mamemaki at her

own school (gakkō) before coming home, and later in the evening when the family does mamemaki

together it is Kōta (and not the father, as is most often the case in setsubun stories) who wears the

oni mask.

In contrast, the picture book Setsubun da appears to be intended primarily for preschoolers.

Its final page, on which it asks its readers whether they themselves plan to do the practices therein

explained this year, shows an oni being chased out of a cheery little gingerbread schoolhouse with

anzelu yochien (or ‘angel preschool’) inscribed on its lintel. Its appropriateness for a preschool

audience is confirmed by the fact that this text was also adapted by teachers at Tokiwa hoikuen

into a kamishibai that they performed at their school’s setsubun event, which I will describe at

length in Chapter 4.

That the raucous mamemaki should be the highlight of a child’s experience of setsubun

should come as no surprise, but what is somewhat surprising is the stark distinction between the

preschooler and the first-grader as described by Ehōmaki. The sympathy of the text for Kirika—

particularly when read against the foil of her younger brother Kōta—encourages its young readers

to emulate Kirika’s example, to transcend the infantile engagement style of the little brother and

instead to cleave more closely to the example of her elders.

The fact that Kirika has not performed the mamemaki at school, for example, suggests that

she, having already made the difficult transition from preschooler to public school pupil, now has

more in common with the adults than with her little brother. Kirika’s engagement with the other

gyōji of setsubun is as a small, inexperienced adult. Whereas the children in Setsubun da have to

ask their parents what the fish head charm is, Kirika speaks from a position of familiarity:

103
Kyō ne, hoikuen ni oni ga kitandayo. Kowakattakedo, minna de mame o butsukete, yattsuketanda!

80
“Grandma, you put up a sardine head again, just like last year!” 104 Which the grandmother

confirms, adding—presumably for the sake of readers who are aspiring to Kirika’s level of

understanding—that the smell and spines deter demons from entering the house.

What does it mean to interact with a festival in an adult mode? Attention to performative

detail, and awareness of the social function of the given practice. The next several pages of the

book—up until Kōta arrives with his mask—are essentially a recipe in narrative form, with

Grandma talking Kirika through every step of the process. Although Kirika has outgrown the

mamemaki, her questions imply that she is new to the ehōmaki, as she seems not to remember it

from years past. Grandma’s explanation of the sushi roll is exceptionally pragmatic in terms of

both process and result. Her cooking instructions are detailed enough to be followed with no

omission, and written entirely without kanji (like the rest of the book) and therefore at a first-grade

reading level. When it comes to the why of the ehōmaki, she is focused on the end result: “if you

eat [an ehōmaki] on setsubun, you will have a good year,” she explains; she also draws a

connection between the seven ingredients of the filling and the seven kami of good fortune

(shichifukujin), who are illustrated in the text with their names written in kanji augmented with

furigana. “If you use the seven ingredients associated with the shichifukujin, they say your luck

(engi) will be good.”105 Later, when the family is counting out their age-beans, Grandma makes

another ends-oriented exposition: “If you add one more to that and eat it, you’ll be able to spend

one more year free of disease.”106

104
Obāchan, kotoshi mo genkan ni iwashi no atama ga kazattearu ne.
105
My use of “they say” is meant to stand in for the quotative particle ending the phrase engi ga iin datte, which
indicates that something is said generally without specifying a speaker. This is another perfect example of what Dan
Sperber would classify as a ‘semi-propositional representation.’ Here, the grandmother is not commenting on the
veracity of the original claim, but rather is merely asserting that this claim exists as hearsay.
106
Sore ni hitotsu tashite taberu to, byōki o sezuni ichinen ga sugoseru no yo.

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 By way of contrast, the father’s exposition just before the family consumes the roll is a little

more detailed than his (presumably) mother’s: he explains to his attentive family, arranged around

him at the heavily-quilted kotatsu, that the ehōmaki custom originated in the Kansai region; that

the ‘ehō’ expresses the desire that this year’s luck (here engi rather than fuku) will be good; that

the filling represents the luck (fuku) trapped inside, and that the whole thing is to be eaten at once

without speaking or else the luck will be cut off.107 At first glance this might not seem like a richer

or more compelling explanation than the grandmother’s—and indeed it does largely fail to account

for the substance of the how of this custom’s efficacy that a scholar of religion might hope to hear.

But in Japanese terms, where elaboration often takes the form of additional detail with no sense of

synthetic, causative argument (as the speaker does not wish to offend the listener’s ability to

connect these dots himself), 108 this is entirely consistent with the expectations of a complete

explanation of the phenomenon.

The discrepancy between father and grandmother may seem somewhat digressive, but I think

it points to a broader gendered dynamic in the text. Among the children’s books I collected, this

series is one of the only ones that has a female protagonist. Kirika engages with setsubun not

simply as a young adult, but specifically as a young woman: she dons an apron with a scalloped

fringe along the straps that mirrors the neckline of her grandmother’s sweater and that reads

visually as stereotypically feminine, and wraps her hair in a matching kerchief. The majority of

her action throughout the book is domestic labor, and when it comes time for the family to make

their setsubun wishes, Kirika wishes to become a good cook. As she and her grandmother interact,

it is clear that she is learning the skills that she will need to become an obāchan herself someday,

as presumably her own mother—who throughout the book is entirely absorbed with Kōta, her

107
‘en’ ga kirenai yō ni, kirazuni marugoto, ehō o muite taberun da.
108
Lewis, “Children’s Social Development in Japan: Research Directions,” 195.

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firstborn son and heir—will someday be for Kōta’s children. This returns us to the differences

between grandma and her son: grandma presents essential feminine information—how to do the

domestic ritual correctly and the ultimate why—whereas father contributes supplemental but

ultimately inessential elaboration.

We see the socializing message of the text most clearly in the scene where the family lines

up and silently makes their setsubun wishes. The little brother—the chōnan—appropriately placed

at the center of the family, wishes simply to hurry up and eat it, his right eye open and looking for

his cue to eat. (Perhaps Kirika does not remember the ehōmaki because she had a similar level of

engagement to her brother’s in years past.) The parents, on the other hand, devote their wishes

entirely to the benefit of the family unit: using a grammatical formula that will be crucial in the

following chapter (—emasu yō ni), the mother wishes that everyone live together peacefully

(nakayoku), the father that everyone be in good health (kenkō de). Kōta, still a preschooler, is the

epitome of self-centeredness, focusing only on his own gratification, while the parents represent

the ideal of selfless devotion to the family. Kirika, in her stated desire to become a good cook, is

somewhere in between—the desire is for a skill for herself, but a skill that is clearly for the benefit

of her future family. It is worth noting also that when the time comes to eat, Kōta takes a bite and

then places the ehōmaki on his head, laughing, and still evidently preoccupied with the mamemaki

declares himself to have sprouted a demon horn. The parents remain absorbed in their eating, but

Kirika stops to scold her brother, reminding him (imperiling her own wish thereby) of the

consequences of speaking. This is entirely in keeping with the sense of responsibility of older for

younger siblings that inheres in Japanese families. The grandmother, meanwhile, wishes to be able

to go to Hawaii. Her wish is also selfish, and like Kōta’s, it is not unacceptably so; whereas Kōta

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has not yet taken on the mantle of social responsibility, grandma has largely passed that mantle on

to the next generation, and is able to enjoy the privileges that advanced age in Japan confers.

Gyōji Literature and Cultural Pedagogy

In her prologue to Tanoshimu, Miura points to an aspect of parenthood in Japan that explains

why examining gyōji literature—and, indeed, the entirety of the present study—is so essential to

our understanding of Japanese religion in general. She begins her foreword with the simple

observation that “as soon as you have a baby, you might notice that the opportunities you have to

celebrate Japanese traditional festivals increase.”109 She then goes on to mention a difficulty that

some new parents might face when reintroducing themselves to these festivals and customs:

“Despite the fact that you have a general sense of how to celebrate these gyōji, aren’t there a lot of

things you don’t understand now that you try do them by yourself [and that] you may be unable to

explain to your children?”110 The importance of these two passages cannot be overstated. First,

they imply that between the time when a child is first learning how to perform the essential customs

and when she becomes the competent authority for her own children, there intervenes a period of

latency in which participation in these customs is expected to fall off. At the end of this latency

period, moreover, the new parent finds herself unable to explain to her child customs and practices

that she has heretofore largely taken for granted. This is an example of what cognitive scientists

refer to as the illusion of explanatory depth (IOED), a term coined in 2002 by Leonid Rozenblit

and Frank Keil to refer to the tendency for people to “feel they understand complex phenomena

with far greater precision, coherence, and depth than they really do.” 111 Having once been

introduced to an idea—and being aware that there are others in one’s community to whom one

109
Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon, 2.
110
Miura Yasuko, 2–3.
111
Leonid Rozenblit and Frank Keil, “The Misunderstood Limits of Folk Science: An Illusion of Explanatory Depth,”
Cognitive Science 26, no. 5 (September 1, 2002): 521.

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could turn for more detailed information if necessary—a person tends to believe that they

understand said idea or process well, becoming disabused of that notion only when the necessity

of explaining it to others throws their actual lack of understanding into sharp relief. For Miura,

parenthood occasions this realization among many Japanese, and so gyōji manuals are designed to

step in to fill this void, instructing the adult in the how and the why of her essential cultural

practices at the same time as they are instructing the child.

As we saw, and shall continue to see, in gyōji narratives, essential cultural knowledge is often

placed by the author into the mouths of parents and grandparents. The elder generation, these texts

presume, is the keeper and normative transmitter of vital information. And yet, as Miura’s prologue

suggests, these very adults may often feel like they are not as confident in their ability to explain

these customs to their children as they ought to be. Whether the authors of these books conceive

of their work as an essential substitute for a vanished elder generation which in (imagined) times

past would have been more culturally competent I am not presently able to speculate. Nevertheless,

if Miura’s surmise is correct, it appears that the cultural instruction contained in children’s books

is not merely essential to understanding how children learn about their culture, but in fact is

essential to understanding how grown adults understand their culture as well. If a new parent finds

herself unable to explain these essential practices to her child, as Miura says, it stands to reason

then that she has not undergone a more advanced or rigorous regimen of cultural or religious

instruction since childhood. Rather, in the words of the proverb, to teach is to learn twice. Although

books of religious esoterica are available to any adult who takes a personal interest in their contents,

for the majority of adults, the shape of their adult understanding of their cultural and religious

practices is predicated largely on engaging for a second time with explanatory materials that were

written to be intelligible to a child. Granted, the adult approaches these teaching aids with greater

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life experience, sensitivity to nuance and detail, and so on, but the source materials remain the

same. As I shall demonstrate in the chapters ahead, although there are gyōji manuals written for

adults, they do not generally go into any greater explanatory depth than their child-oriented

counterparts—and, moreover, they depend on the active interest of the adult reader in their subject

matter to be read, whereas the children’s gyōji materials can be prompted by an adult. In short,

then, children’s literature on gyōji informs not only the child’s understanding of his culture and

religion, but in a very vital way the parent’s understanding as well.

Conclusion
If we were only to examine children’s books published by religious bodies, we would conclude

that books, like preschools, do not play much of a role in communicating religious ideas to children

at all. Not only were such books relatively hard to find, but they were also largely geared not to

the children themselves but to the adults in charge of reading to them. These books were also

largely self-referential, concerned more with underscoring for the adult the official religious

body’s status within a broader culture of religious praxis than with communicating to the child

anything that is truly essential about religion as it is practiced. In the case of Shinto books, the

importance of the priesthood was communicated through a preoccupation with the myths of the

Kojiki—a mythic corpus whose gods are by and large not the ones whom one encounters in shrines,

but which bestows divine legitimacy on the imperial cult and, by extension, the Shinto

establishment that serves as its priests. Two of the Buddhist books I collected, similarly, use

children’s books as a way to point to specific Buddhist holy sites that, in their own way, point to

the veracity and importance of the system as a whole. Other Buddhist books are slightly more

relevant to the child’s experience of the supernatural insofar as they depict visions of hell and can

therefore be used in a coercive disciplinary strategy about which I shall have more to say in Chapter

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4—but these, too, derive their force from the fact that they refer to sacred works of art under the

protection of a Buddhist religious entity. Notably, by the time a child is in elementary school, the

Buddhist message is largely a modernist one, concerned with portraying Buddhism as an ethical

and philosophical system and entirely omitting its metaphysical or supernatural aspects.

When we expand our concern to include books from the commercial sector, we find the

literary avenue through which the majority of information about Japanese religion is conveyed to

children. Looking at children’s literature as a whole, particularly in light of the way my informants

disavowed any religious pedagogy while being more than happy to discuss gyōji, it is undeniable

that the majority of a child’s early exposure to the supernatural residents of the other world is not

through direct teaching. While conducting the ethnographic portion of my research, I was better

served to phrase my research in terms of ‘traditional culture’ rather than ‘religion,’ and the same

proved true of literary research as well. What is deemed essential to the child’s proper upbringing,

based on the sheer volume of available literature on the subject, is an understanding of gyōji—the

essential cultural practices of the Japanese festival calendar, and the practical elements of Japanese

culture under which rubric the rituals of Japanese religion fall. Manuals of gyōji provide many

layers of explanation for the major events of the Japanese year and are meant to be used as

reference books throughout the child’s life, from before they can read until elementary school

when they can read the entire book unaided. Even more important are gyōji narratives, picture

books that use a narrative frame to explain the major elements of a given festival. Full of questions

and answers, they are meant to supplement the child’s own experience of the festival at home, or

even to let them experience it vicariously in the event that their family does not observe a gyōji in

its entirety. Ultimately, it is through books about gyōji—encyclopedic reference works or

standalone narratives—that children gain their greatest textual exposure to the rites of their

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religion: what they are, how to perform them, and what they mean. And it is through the reading

aloud of these books to their children that adults refresh their own cultural understanding through

engagement with these juvenile texts.

Having seen the necessity of looking for Japanese religion under the umbrella of ‘traditional

culture’ and having argued for the importance of books about gyōji in understanding how children

learn essential aspects of their culture, I will now turn in the chapters that follow to a thorough

examination of two gyōji—both as they are represented in contemporary children’s literature and

as they are practiced among the people of Mizusawa—before looking at this literature more

broadly for ways that ideas about kami and Buddhas are communicated directly.

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Chapter 3 – Hopes and Dreams

“I want to become a cool elephant.”

—Child-authored ema tablet

As I argued in Chapter 1, the religious preschools of Mizusawa understand their mission primarily

to be providing affordable childcare for local families while at the same time helping to ensure the

financial stability of their parent institutions. For their part, parents of children in these schools are

more concerned with the price, convenience, and reputation of the preschool than they are with its

religious affiliation. There is, therefore, neither ideological nor competitive pressure for a

preschool to distinguish itself by offering a strong sectarian curriculum. This leaves much of the

child’s religious education to the family, which, in turn, as we saw in Chapter 2, means a reliance

on books to introduce children to Japanese religion through manuals and narratives about gyōji—

the essential cultural practices of the traditional festival calendar.

Nevertheless, despite the absence in their curricula of explicit religious indoctrination,

preschools do play an important role in organizing performances of some of these cultural

activities for the children under their care. In this and in the chapters that follow, I will be

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concerned with several gyōji as they appear in both literature and practice, and the implications

this exposure has on the way children come to construe the supernatural world.

Although they are visible in almost every shrine in Japan, ema (votive tablets) are a relatively

minor part of worship there—an optional activity that occurs peripherally to the more essential

ritual action of sampai.112 Nevertheless, particularly as they are used at Komagata shrine, ema

provide a remarkable window onto the role of religion in early childhood experience, bringing

children, their parents, the preschool, and the kami together in a single ritual event. How are they

used, and what can the process tell us about the way children are made to understand the kami?

Ema in Performative Context

Equine Envoy, Public Prayer
Japanese religious culture, whether shrine or temple related, has a robust commercial aspect,

with a variety of religious goods available for purchase at every shrine and temple of more than

moderate size. Some of these goods—omamori お守り and ofuda お札—are intended, in the words

of Ian Reader, “to contain the sacred powers of the deities enshrined at the religious site and...are

taken away as representations and symbols of that power,”113 either carried about one’s person or

placed in one of the domestic altars (kamidana, butsudan). Other goods, rather than serving as

containers of divine power, represent instead a means of communication between humans and the

divine. Paper fortunes—omikuji お御籤—are small slips of paper printed with predictions and

advice about a variety of personal concerns—love, business, health, and so on—as well as an

overall indicator of the level of good or ill fortune the recipient can expect in the forthcoming year.

112
A word which is used to refer both to the act of paying homage at a shrine and, by extension, the act of visiting a
shrine for this purpose; see Chapter 5.
113
Ian Reader, “Letters to the Gods: The Form and Meaning of Ema,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 18, no.
1 (1991): 23.

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As the omikuji is the divine oracle—one means by which deity speaks to human—the ema 絵馬 is

the means by which human speaks to deity.

An ema is a wooden plaque about the size of an open hand, with one side illustrated and the

other blank so that the purchasers may write their wishes and however much or little personal

identifying information they see fit to include. An ema is generally purchased, inscribed, and

dedicated in a single visit to a shrine or temple; any religious site large enough to have a stall for

vending such items will also have racks where inscribed ema can be displayed. These are generally

fence-like, roofed wooden frames with rows of pegs on which the ema can easily be hung. While

smaller shrines may have one or two of these commensurate with demand, large

tourism/pilgrimage sites often erect enough of these racks on their grounds as to form a network

of passageways, heavily laden with wishes.

Although other shapes exist, the most typical for ema is that of an irregular pentagon—a

rectangle whose upper edge when held in a landscape orientation is bisected by a peak (Fig. 3.1).

Although both homemade and artisanal ema do exist, the overwhelming majority are purchased

by temples and shrines through national wholesalers, either from a set repertoire of standard

designs, or commissioned specially by the religious site so that their illustrations reflects a specific

local concern—an image of the deity therein enshrined or a scene from the site’s origin legend.114

Among the more standard images, representations of that year’s zodiacal animal (to express wishes

for the new year) are common, as are images and shapes associated with the petitioner’s desire,

such as heart- and phallus-shaped ema for, respectively, romantic and reproductive success. As is

the case with Japanese traditional culture more generally, wordplay and visual puns are common

on ema, where they are used to indicate the desired boon: in what Ian Reader calls “ema language,”

114
Reader, 23, 32.

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some depict an octopus (tako) meant for the amelioration of warts (tako), and a pentagon (gokaku)

for school exam success (gōkaku).115

Ema in Gyōji Manuals

Despite the ubiquity of ema in the material culture of Japanese religion, the gyōji manuals I

collected in the field have surprisingly little to say about them, devoting at most an inset paragraph

to ema as one of many possible activities one can do at a shrine. As is often the case with these

manuals, they prioritize accounts of the history of the practice rather than its purpose or intent.

Each of the three children’s gyōji manual series I consulted explained that the practice began as

the dedication (osameru; hōnō suru) of living horses (hence the name, ema, meaning ‘picture-

horse’), before being gradually replaced by simulacra made from earth or wood. 116 The Shiba

wanko series goes into a little more historical depth, explaining that the horse was a fitting sacrifice

because of its value and that the typical boon desired was rain or sun—but it says nothing about

the ema’s contemporary purpose that could not be deduced from context.117 The other two manuals

indicate simply that ema are objects on which a wish is to be written (onegai-goto o kaite) without

specifying at all the nature of those wishes.

The adult gyōji manual Nihon no Shikitari is similarly terse. It relegates the topic of ema to

a short definition in a glossary section at the back of the book. What the children’s manuals called

“olden times” (mukashi), Nihon no Shikitari designates more precisely as the Heian Period (794-

1185), although technically the earliest known wood-plaque ema date from the slightly earlier Nara

period (710-794).118 The manual does cite one example of contemporary usage: “ema for success

115
Reader, 31–33.
116
Wa no Gyōji Ehon - Aki to Fuyu no Kan, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Asunaro Shobō, 2007), 44; Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji
O Tanoshimu Ehon, 18; Kawaura Yoshie, Shiba Wanko No Wa No Kokoro, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Hakusensha, 2002), 23.
117
Kawaura Yoshie, Shiba Wanko No Wa No Kokoro, 1:23.
118
The Heian period is often cited in everyday conversation as a metonymic catch-all for the classical period of
Japanese history, after the Stone Age but before the samurai. Reader, “Letters to the Gods,” 26.

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in school (gōkaku kigan).”119 According to Haruo Sakurai in his 2012 Shrine Manual for Beginners,

requests to the kami for success on entrance exams (juken gōkoku) are indeed one of the most

common categories of request—along with romantic fulfillment (ren’ai jōju), recovery from

illness (byōki heiyu), and family safety/security (kanai anzen).120

Surveys of ema conducted by Ian Reader in 1987 and 1988,121 as well as those supervised by

Shiobara Tsutomu for the Shūkyō Shakaigaku-no-Kai in 1985,122 reveal that ema production at the

sites they examined was most prevalent among young adults, and that this prevalence was due in

turn to the incredible anxiety surrounding the grueling competition to get into the top high schools

and universities. Luckily for the pre- and early elementary school-aged children of Mizusawa, the

competitive admissions pressure has not begun to affect them in the same way that it does their

peers in Tokyo or Manhattan struggling to get into the best primary schools—or at least not to

such a degree that this pressure is visible in the ema I collected. If they are too young to suffer

from the anxieties of exam hell, then, for what wishes do children between three and seven years

of age dedicate their ema? Before I begin to answer this, a brief word is necessary about the way

children interact with ema at my main field site, Komagata shrine.

Children’s Ema at Komagata Shrine

My research into children’s ema use was greatly facilitated by the presence at Komagata

Shrine of an ema format intended specifically for young children. There is, of course, nothing to

stop families from purchasing standard ema at a shrine or temple for their young children to fill

out, and many do. But it is remarkably difficult to determine with certainty, for reasons I will

enumerate below, whether and to what extent a child was involved in the dedication of any given

119
Minimaru and Blockbuster, Irasuto de Yoku Wakaru Nihon no Shikitari (Tokyo: Saizusha, 2013), 118.
120
Haruo Sakurai, Sashiki zero kara no jinja nyūmon (Tokyo: Gentōsha, 2012).
121
Reader, “Letters to the Gods,” 40–42.
122
Shūkyō Shakaigaku no Kai, Ikoma no kamigami (Osaka: Sōgensha, 1985).

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tablet encountered in the wild. The ones I analyze below, on the other hand, were all specially

designed for and distributed to pre- and early elementary school aged children. In addition to those

gathered during my field research in 2016, my sample set also includes a number of ema from this

shrine originally photographed by John Traphagan in 2006.

Of these photographs, roughly half appeared to be of a type that is readily distinguishable

from ‘standard’ ema by several key physical features (Fig. 3.1). Children’s ema are about 4cm

larger on each side than the most common pentagonal adult ema, which are roughly 15cm wide by

8cm tall; they are also thinner—approximately 5mm rather than the more standard 15mm—so thin

that they warp easily when exposed to the elements. Instead of displaying a pre-printed color

illustration typical of an adult ema, the obverse of these children’s tablets is printed with a

simplistic line drawing of a bunny with a bow on her head,123 flanked by the words onegai ema

(“wish-tablet”) and the name and official title of the shrine.124 On the reverse are printed prompts

for the supplicant’s wish, the date, and their name. Suitably for their intended audience, these

prompts largely eschew the use of kanji: the phrase onegai-goto (‘wished-for thing’) is rendered

as おねがい事 with furigana over the latter, rather than the more advanced and un-glossed 願いご

と that sometimes appears on adult versions, which are often blank on the reverse. Likewise ‘name’

is なまえ (namae, given name) rather than the more formal 氏名 (shimei, or full name). The prompt

for address is omitted entirely in favor of date (‘day’ and ‘month’).

Standard practice for ema tablets is that they are usually purchased, inscribed, and dedicated

in a single visit to a shrine. Likewise, these child ema are available for purchase alongside the

123
Although it would be tempting to suggest that this bunny represents the Year of the Rabbit from the 12-animal
Chinese zodiac (J. jūnishi), this does not appear to be the case. The most recent two years of the rabbit were in 1999
and 2011, while children’s ema from 2006 and 2015 all had the bunny on their face, suggesting that the rabbit repeats
every year regardless of the zodiac.
124
陸中一宮駒形神社, or “Komagata Jinja: First Shrine of the Province of Rikuchū,” this latter an obsolete toponym
largely coterminous with modern Iwate, created in the Meiji restoration from the subdivision of Mutsu province.

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standard array of charms at the shrine’s main vending window. In 2015-6, the asking price for a

child ema was ¥300 (approximately USD2.40), compared to a seemingly national standard of ¥500

($4.00) or ¥800 ($6.40) for small and large adult ema, respectively. Signage declared their purpose

as “wish tablets for children” (kodomo yō onegai ema).

These child tablets, importantly, are not distributed through sales alone. The prevalence of

completed child tablets—well over 200 appeared at Komagata over the 2015-6 New Year

holiday—is due primarily to the fact that they were given away for free to every child whose

parents and grandparents brought them to the shrine in November for the shichigosan coming of

age festival, where it was included in a congratulatory goody-bag along with the customary chitose

ame (‘thousand-year sweet’), a traditional red and white striped hard candy associated with

children’s festivals. Even more significantly, these children’s ema are also distributed to every

pupil of Komagata kindergarten. Each member of the kindergarten’s oldest class of students

receives an ema at the conclusion of a field trip to the shrine where they witness a demonstration

of the shichigosan ritual that many of them are soon to undergo. The ema distributed in this manner

were wrapped in a clear cellophane bag which also contained a small gift; in 2015 this was a small

terrycloth hand towel with a cartoon bear, but in years past it has reportedly sometimes been a

cookie. The bags are stapled closed through a label indicating that the package is a congratulatory

gift (oiwai) for shichigosan, with the following usage directions: “please color in the bunny, write

down the child’s dreams (wished-for thing), and dedicate it at the New Year.”125

As he dismissed the children from the shrine, chief priest Taniue instructed them to go back

to their classrooms and fill out the ema with their teachers’ help. Several teachers later reported

that they had in turn sent the ema home with the children to do with their families. Consequently,

125
「うさぎ」に好きな色をぬって、お子様のゆめ（お願い事）を書いて新春に奉納して下さい。

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I was unable to witness what happened between the distribution of these ema packages in mid-

November and when the majority of them reappeared on the display rack at the shrine over the

New Year holiday,126 and am therefore unable to comment firsthand on the process whereby adults

guided these children through the inscription of an ema tablet—perhaps their first. Nevertheless,

certain conclusions can still be drawn about this collaborative process after the fact, and by

extension, the way that parents approach performing this religious action with their children.

Children’s Ema as Collaborative Process

According to one teacher at Komagata kindergarten, “Since these are certainly relatively

small children, they think it’s fun to eat the cute, tasty cookie, then color in the bunny and write

their own wish.” But although the packaging and distribution pattern of these ema clearly indicate

that they are ‘for children,’ (kodomo no yō) this designation obscures the fact that these ema are in

most cases a collaborative effort. In the words of a second teacher, “the ema are written at home

and then brought to the shrine. Children who can write fill them out themselves, while children

who can’t receive help from their mothers.” What exactly this ‘help’ constitutes is difficult to say.

To begin with, we cannot say for certain whether the wishes expressed are the child’s own

independent desires or whether they were coached, whether they are wishes expressed by the

parent for the wellbeing of the child, or whether the parent is placing his or her own wishes for the

child in the child’s voice. The lack of personal pronouns in Japanese does not help to clarify this

126
I was also, unfortunately, unable to photograph the entire year’s crop of ema before they were removed from view
by shrine staff and presumably committed to the purifying flames of the dontō-yaki. In order to be minimally obtrusive,
I was compelled to take my photographs in batches. Despite the kind access to the shrine and its grounds that I was
granted by Komagata’s chief priest, I was not universally welcome; there was one older kannushi in particular who I
was told had a particular dislike of foreigners, and whom I suspect to have removed the children’s ema very shortly
after he encountered me photographing them—despite my having his superior’s permission to do so. The dedication
rack at Komagata shrine formed a corner just outside the main gate, and each of its two faces had three rows of pins
from which to hang ema. I had finished photographing all but the bottom left row when the ema disappeared—tragic
because the lowest row was the easiest for children to reach, and therefore was more densely filled than the rows
higher up by a significant margin. A total of 76 tablets are therefore missing from the sample.

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issue. Undoubtedly, and as we shall see, all of the above scenarios seem to be at play in the ema

that make up my sample.

Moreover, it stands to reason that parental involvement comprises assistance not only with

the intellectual task of forming the wish but the physical act of inscription as well. Corresponding

to the ages involved in the shichigosan (“7-5-3”) rite, the children who received these tablets

ranged from three- to seven years old, with the majority of cases being the five-year-old pupils of

Komagata kindergarten who received them as part of their field trip. The level of physical and

literary abilities of these tablets authors therefore vary considerably, from almost complete

dependence on parental help among the youngest children to complete independence among the

oldest—with the majority falling somewhere in the middle. Nevertheless, it is fairly

straightforward in most cases to judge the author’s age, with questionable examples being decided

with reference to textual context.

Because I am working backward from found evidence, my conclusions about whether a child

or an adult was responsible for each portion of a completed ema is necessarily inductive and

subjective. I made my evaluations based on five aspects of the ema: (1) the bunny drawing on the

obverse, (2) the body of the wish (onegai-goto), (3) the date of inscription, (4) the name/signature,

(5) the presence or absence of any supplemental drawing on the reverse. Each of these was scored

based on whether the content seemed to have been authored by an adult or by a child, by both in

collaboration, or was omitted.

In determining whether the bunny was colored by an adult or a child, the most significant

factor is the regard of the artist for the pre-printed lines. On the whole, bunnies shaded with an

even stroke, completely within the lines, and with different colors chosen for each of its constituent

parts (hair bow, inside the ears, foot pads) I have coded as having been colored by adults—except

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in cases where the text (both handwriting and kanji use) on the reverse strongly indicates that the

author is a child at the upper range of likely recipients of the ema tablet (i.e. around seven). We

can reasonably say that bunnies colored by younger children have a much more erratic, less

delicate shading stroke, are colored either with no- or minimal regard to the lines, and/or combine

multiple colors in a single field with little regard for the geometry or anatomy of the character.

When a bunny shows evidence of multiple hands—tidy, even shading paired with a number of

errant strokes, say—it is marked as a collaboration. Attributions of the supplemental pictures or

decoration on the text face when they appear follow the same logic.

Determining whether a given text was written by an adult or a child is similarly fraught, but

can likewise be deduced with a reasonable amount of confidence. One easy indication of age of

authorship is the selective deployment of kanji. Tablets using kanji that are not part of the national

curriculum (kyōiku kanji) until after the second grade (i.e. students over eight years of age) are

almost certainly written by adults. As I will have cause to demonstrate later, however, the absence

of kanji is not a guarantee of child authorship. In cases where kanji are absent, the quality of the

handwriting is the best indicator of authorship. Although by no means do all adults have

impeccably clear handwriting, a steady and even hand is a sure indicator of adult authorship.

Hallmarks of child authorship, on the other hand (and again, particularly with reference to older

preschoolers), are that the character shape and/or spacing is exceptionally poor or inconsistent,

that some kana characters are written in reverse, or that hiragana and katakana syllables are

occasionally interchanged or deployed in idiosyncratic ways. In cases where I believe the ema text

to have been written by advanced first- and second graders (rather than sloppy adults), although

kana characters are formed correctly, they often betray a lingering lack of fluidity and elegance—

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particularly in cases where the children use kanji they have but recently learned and form them

with a lack of the balance and ease that come with years of practice.

With these criteria in mind, I can now make some preliminary claims about the authorship

of my sample. Of the 227 children’s ema I photographed in the weeks around New Year’s Day

2016, a small but meaningful portion (59, 26.0%) of the sample is written exclusively and

incontrovertibly in a child’s hand—meaning that a child has inscribed the tablet with the wish text,

the date of composition, and his or her name. In all but three of these the child has also colored in

the cartoon bunny; in twelve he or she has added supplemental drawings or decoration to the face

containing text. It is worth mentioning here that three additional tablets (1.3%) are almost entirely

child-authored but show a very small amount of adult help: on two of them, the date and child’s

name have been supplied in a more adult hand than used in the body of the wish, while the third

shows both adult- and child levels of skill at work in shading in the bunny.

On the other end are those tablets (29, or 12. 8%) that are entirely adult-authored—insofar

as they show no evidence that a child has personally marked them in any way. Even so, I do not

mean to suggest that a child may not have been involved in their production in more passive ways.

For the majority of these adult-authored tablets (23 out of 29), the adult, despite being sole author,

has nevertheless taken the trouble to color in the bunny and/or add supplemental decoration to the

text on the reverse. Given that the bunny is included on the ema in the first place to entice even

pre-literate children into involvement, an adult inscribing an ema entirely on his or her child’s

behalf would presumably not have taken the trouble to color the bunny had that child not been

physically present and attentive at the time of inscription. An adult-colored rabbit, that is, is colored

to please and engage the child, and not primarily as an exercise in adult self-expression.

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 The same is true in six more cases in which an adult has drawn supplemental pictures or

decoration. Three of these include what seem to be cartoon portraits of the child (two girls with

long hair and one infant—a smiley face with a single curly lock on its forehead), characters from

Anpanman, and Thomas the Tank Engine. Another example frames the text with colored

highlighting and a cheerful floral scroll. One tablet that expresses a desire to graduate to ordinary

chopsticks includes a foreshortened pair of chopsticks realistically executed in colored pencil.

While it is possible that the adult involved added these embellishments purely for his or her own

amusement, it seems more likely that they were included to amuse and engage a child who, though

unable or unwilling to participate actively, was nevertheless a witness to the act of inscription.

Even on adult-authored tablets where colors and supplemental pictures are absent, there is

still evidence that the child was a passive participant in its creation. In the entire sample, there are

only six of these plain adult tablets, written entirely in plain black ink and utterly devoid of

embellishment. It would seem at first glance that the adult author has undertaken to complete the

bare minimum of ema production on his or her child’s behalf—composing and writing his or her

own wishes for the child without consultation. And unsurprisingly, the only two tablets in the

entire sample that use upwards of twenty distinct kanji characters drawn from all grade levels—

i.e. that employ undiluted adult literacy—belong to this group. But the other four, despite their

visual starkness, nevertheless show evidence of deliberate linguistic simplification. None of them

uses kanji in rendering the child’s given- and surname (as the former two did), one eschews the

use of kanji entirely, and the other three largely limit themselves to simpler characters which a pre-

school child may be able to read, if not write. The adult author’s deliberate choice to reduce the

number of unintelligible characters implies that they intended for the child to be able to read their

ema, either during or after production.

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 The remainder of the tablets show varying degrees of parent-child interaction. The most

common pattern comprises those tablets where the adult has supplied the text and the child has

supplied (in whole or in part) the decoration. There are 110 of this type (48.5%). A further 18 ema

(7.9%) follow this same pattern but with the addition of the child’s signature in his or her own

hand. Finally, six tablets (2.6%) include wishes in both adult and child handwriting, the former

seeming to be an interpretive gloss of the latter; on two of these the child has also contributed a

signature which the adult has also glossed. Two tablets were illegible due to exposure to the

elements and were therefore unclassifiable; one, strangely, omitted a message entirely, with the

child contributing color and the adult the name and date.

In sum, the making of the children’s ema from Komagata shrine is clearly a group endeavor.

Although I was unable to observe the act of production, much can be inferred about the

pedagogical content of those conversations through a close reading of the ema texts. My reading

of these documents has led me to four inter-related assertions. First, based on adult helpers’ use of

language, we can deduce that the parents understood the primary audience for these tablets to be—

not the kami to whom they are ostensibly addressed—but rather the children themselves. Second,

because their children are the primary audience, supervising adults use the act of making ema as

an opportunity to highlight a variety of important values to which they are working to socialize

their children. These values relate not only to the importance of the shrine to Japanese cultural

identity, as might be expected, but more importantly to the central issues in early childhood

socialization in Japan. Third, in being prompted to make wishes that have prosocial implications,

these children are being socialized to think of the contents of their tablets—much like adults do—

less as wishes such as are made to a genie in a bottle, and more as vows of diligence and effort in

pursuit of those ends. By encouraging their children to think of the ema in this way, finally, parents

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help construct for their children an understanding of the kami not as the bestowers of fortune but

rather as supernatural witnesses to their vows of self-improvement.

Language Use and the Issue of Audience

The primary audience for ema—at least from the perspective of the supervising adult—is not

the kami to which it is ostensibly and ultimately addressed, but the child whose wishes are therein

represented. The best indication of this is the extent to which language is modified to selectively

avoid kanji when writing ema. Table 3.1 illustrates the relationship between tablet authorship and

the use of ideographic kanji in its composition. Tablets of exclusive child authorship show a

majority (71.2%) that eschew kanji use altogether, which is consonant with expectations based on

the literacy of children aged 3-7. As mentioned above, while many solely-adult-authored ema show

unrestrained use of kanji (17 of 29, 58.6%) in their composition, the remainder utilize either simple

kanji drawn from kyōiku curriculum grades 2 and below (3 of 29, 10.3%) or none at all (9 of 29,

31.0%), indicating that in these latter cases the adult is changing his or her writing style to be more

easily readable for a child who was at least present for the ema’s production if not actively involved.

Table 3.1 – Kanji Usage Based On Putative Tablet Authorship

Child Only Child & Adult Adult Only Total
Kanji not used 18.5% (42) 26.0% (59) 4.0% (9) 48.5% (110)
Kanji in name only 2.2% (5) 1.8% (4) 0.0% (0) 4.0% (9)
Kanji grades 1-2 2.2% (5) 8.4% (19) 1.3% (3) 11.9% (27)
Kanji grades 2+ 3.1% (7) 25.1% (57) 7.5% (17) 35.7% (81)
TOTAL 26.0% (59) 61.2% (139) 12.8% (29) 100.0% (227)
When we consider the majority of tablets to which children and adults both contributed (139 of

227, 61.2%,), we see two parental strategies at play. Although unrestricted adult use of kanji

appears on a significant portion of collaborative tablets as well, it does so with less frequency than

among exclusively adult-authored tablets—41.0% (57 of 139) of collaborative tablets compared

to 58.6% (17 of 29) of adult-only ones. The proportion of collaborative tablets employing kanji

only from grades 1-2, which the child may not yet be able to produce independently but that are

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common and simple enough that they might already be on the fringes of his or her passive written

vocabulary, is at its highest when tablets are composed collaboratively—13.7% (19 of 139)

compared to 8.5% of child-authored tablets (5 of 59)127 and 10.3% of adult-authored tablets (3 of

29). Only one ema in the entire sample employed pronunciation guides (furigana) with the kanji

it used, in addition to using kanji sparingly—six characters in total, with all but one under the

second-grade reading level. Its contents are quite general: “May it be that this year is full of smiling

faces and that everyone is genki.”

When we take the adult-only and collaborative columns together, the pattern of kanji use is

distributed fairly evenly between those in which the adults are restricting their use of unfamiliar

characters (94 of 168, 56.0%) and those in which kanji use is unrestrained (74 of 168, 44.0%),

with a slight preference for restraint. This matches closely the distribution among collaborative

tablets, the majority of which combine adult text with child coloring (59.0% restricted kanji, 41.0%

unrestricted), suggesting that adults writing completely on their own nevertheless limit their use

of kanji at the same frequency that they do when a child is definitively present.

The case for deliberate linguistic simplification is even more compelling when we consider

the selective use of ideographic versus phonetic script in the rendering of two of the most

frequently-occurring words in the sample: genki (‘lively, energetic’) and ‘sugosu’ (‘to pass time’

or ‘to get by/along’). Although they appear on roughly the same number of ema (56, 52), the kanji

used to write them are from vastly different reading levels: genki (元気) combines characters from

grades 1 and 2, while sugosu (過す) is not taught until grade 5. Therefore, even children at the

127
It is somewhat misleading to compare the use of simple kanji between those tablets written by children and adults.
Obviously if a child writes a character him or herself it is part of that child’s active vocabulary. Child-authored tablets
naturally skew toward the older end of the 3-7 age spectrum in question.

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upper end of the sample’s age range will not have encountered the ideogram for sugosu in school,

but some of them may be able to write, and many be able to read, the characters for genki.

This surmise is borne out in Table 3.2; child-only tablets using the word genki are evenly

split between kana and kanji, whereas none of them attempts to render sugosu except phonetically.

Consonant with the above assertions, adult-only tablets show a slight preference for kanji use in

both cases. Most interesting is the difference between collaborative tablets using these two terms:

when an adult is writing an ema for a child we know to be present, he prefers (64.7%) to use kanji

in writing genki, but prefers kana (61.8%) when rendering the more advanced and unfamiliar

character for sugosu.

Table 3.2 – Kanji/Kana usage for two common words: ‘genki’ and ‘sugosu’
‘genki’ (Gr.2) Kana Kanji ‘sugosu’ (Gr.5) Kana Kanji
Adult-Only 6 10 16 Adult-Only 6 8 14
Collaborative 12 22 34 Collaborative 21 13 34
Child-Only 3 3 6 Child-Only 4 0 4
21 35 56 31 21 52
Furthermore, although none of the small number of ema that only use kanji in rendering the child’s

name (9 of 227, 4.0%) were written exclusively by adults, all four tablets on which kanji appear

exclusively in the child’s name are written in the hand of the contributing adult. That is to say,

although children who write their own tablets occasionally use kanji in signing their name (5 of

59, 8.5%) they do so only when they are its sole author; when a child contributes his name only to

a tablet that was written by an adult on his behalf (18 of 227, 7.9%), it is invariably in kana.

We can conclude from all this that, broadly speaking, when adults contribute most or all of

the text of an ema, they are slightly more likely than not to attenuate their use of kanji so that the

child will be more capable of understanding the meaning of the words written on her behalf. If the

adult participants all believed the kami to be the primary audience for these ema, it stands to reason

that they would have felt little need to modify their natural writing style to facilitate child

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comprehension. In the majority, however, pains have been unmistakably taken to ensure that the

child be able to read the tablet being made for her. But to what end?

Children’s Wishes and their Social Ramifications

To one extent, the selective modification of written vocabulary among adult helpers suggests

that they use the making of ema as an opportunity for language pedagogy. By carefully printing

the child’s wishes and limiting themselves to characters within, or just outside, the child’s passive

written vocabulary, the adults involved employ ema as another means of facilitating language

acquisition by demonstrating to the child how his or her words translate into written form.

In translating the children’s spoken words to written text, parents also make choices about

the use of speech registers. Most examples (113 of 227, 49.8%) are written in the deferential and

indirect style appropriate for addressing the deities—emasu yō ni (“may it be that...”), or similar.

Others, however, preserve what must undoubtedly be the child’s own phrasing, using instead the

less polite, declarative endings –tai (23) or –tai desu (21). None of the 2016 tablets used the even

more imperious –zo, although there were two instances of this ending in 2006.128 These less formal

examples, I would argue, represent instances when the adult wanted to demonstrate for the child

how his or her exact words translated into written form. Conversely, in the cases where more

ritually appropriate language is employed, the adult is modeling for the child a way to express his

desires and ambitions in a socially appropriate manner.

In helping the child to rephrase his or her wishes in a contextually-appropriate way, the

supervising adult elects to use the ema as an opportunity to demonstrate not simply how speech is

transformed into writing, but also the more abstract social lesson of how to judge which modes of

128
This suffix is generally appended to the infinitive form of the verb to indicate a command or, reflexively, a
declaration of intent. It is never used in the polite register, but is reasonably common in the casual register where the
suffix –tai is also appropriate, particularly with men and boys.

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self-expression are warranted in any given circumstance. As we shall see below, each of the major

categories of children’s wishes can be understood as an object lesson in important social values:

not only the value of the shrine in Japanese cultural life, but more importantly the value of active

participation in group life.

Generic Wishes for Health and Well-Being

Of the types of wishes reported in Reader’s and Shiobara’s surveys of ema in the 1980s,

many of the most commonly represented are irrelevant to the lived experience of young children.

As mentioned before, the desire for success in school entrance examinations is common among

adolescents and young adults and parents making wishes on their behalf. Successes in occupational,

romantic, and sexual endeavors, though common among adult petitioners, are likewise not of

pressing concern to children.

In the absence of a specific desire (particularly the case in ema dedicated as part of the New

Year festivities) adults will frequently make a generic apotropaic wish that nothing unforeseen

occur, and that a present state of normative felicity be allowed to continue unabated—that the

wish-maker and everyone to whom he or she is connected may enjoy a life free from the untoward.

This is a common attitude among the Japanese that Winston Davis has called ‘thaumaturgical

pragmatism.’ It is, in short, the modest prayer of the everyman, asking nothing more than for his

plans to bear fruit, unimpeded, commensurate with his efforts and diligence—for “his cow to calve,

his wife to bear, the drought to end, the plague to pass him by.”129

Correspondingly, wishes for good health and safety are made by petitioners of all ages.

Looking at Reader’s and Shiobara’s surveys collectively, the vast majority of requests not dealing

with education have something to do with health: either the healing of a specific ailment, the

129
Winston Davis, Dojo: Magic and Exorcism in Modern Japan (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1980),
84.

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maintenance of good health, or the avoidance of injury.130 One of the most commonly expressed

wishes in the children’s ema I collected, likewise, is for some form of sound health. Of the 2016

sample, 44 (19.4%) contained wishes of this kind. These were phrased either positively as the

desire for good health (kenkō, 21) and vigor (sukoyaka, 2), or negatively as wishes to avoid the

common cold (kaze, 13), illness (byōki, 6), and injury (kega, 2).

Happily, none of the ema I collected showed any evidence of children suffering from grave

illnesses. That the only illness named in the sample is the common cold—an illness with which

the child is most likely to have personal experience—rather than something truly dangerous, like

cancer, suggests that the adults involved have intentionally crafted their wish for sound health to

be relevant and intelligible to the child (although there may be an element of superstitious

avoidance at play here too—avoiding proactive naming of a grave illness lest the child

consequently contract it). Even so, the young child who conceives of his own fragility with enough

clarity to be anxious about it is rare indeed, and so we can reasonably surmise that child ema

expressing a concern for good health are more likely to be expressions of anxiety of the parent on

behalf of the child rather than the child’s own authentic sentiment.131

In cases where child ema mirror the generic apotropaic content of adult tablets, it stands to

reason that the supervising parent’s interpretation of the task was to introduce his or her child to

the ema simply as a traditional cultural practice, rather than as a means by which the child can

express particularistic desires. In doing so, the parent helps fulfil the shrine’s purpose in

distributing these ema for free both to its daycare pupils and to all children who participate in the

shichigosan rites—that is, to provide an incentive for families to continue their patronage of the

shrine two months later when they dedicate their ema as part of their New Year worship. “I think

130
Reader, “Letters to the Gods,” 40–42.
131
This vicarious parental anxiety will crop up again in my treatment of the oni in the following chapter.

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that...the dedication of ema...is part of the inheritance (keishō) of Japanese culture,” writes one

teacher at Komagata nursery, framing this practice as a part of fostering cultural identity. By

ensuring that they are exposed to it positively in childhood, the shrine and parents work together

to instill in these children the self-evidence of the idea that shrine activities like ema are an

important cultural activity.

Children’s Wishes and Value Socialization

The function of ema in early childhood socialization is not limited merely to socializing the

next generation of Japanese into the ritual life of the shrine. Rather, in addition, when we

interrogate the content and style of these ema more carefully we find that the collaboration of adult

and child in the making of ema is frequently also used as an exercise in reinforcing the social skills

that make up the backbone of Japanese preschool education.

A number of studies in the 1980s and 1990s seeking to explain the achievement gap between

Japanese and American preschoolers revealed that, contrary to popular belief, it is the preschool

and not the home that serves as the training ground for early childhood socialization in Japan.

According to Lois Peak, “the primary cultural goal of the preschool experience is not that children

acquire academic facts or learning readiness skills but that they assimilate the behavior and

attitudes appropriate to life in public social situations.” 132 The home and school are radically

different environments; conforming to the broader classification system of uchi and soto—inside

and outside—the home is where the individual’s need to have his dependency (amae) indulged is

supported and even celebrated, whereas in the school as in the rest of the world beyond the home,

132
Peak, Learning to Go to School in Japan, 6–7. See also: Tobin, Wu, and Davidson, Preschool in Three Cultures;
Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa, Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited.

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one must show restraint (enryo), and consequently, “learning to recognize and act in accord with

the needs of others...is a major focus of the child’s socialization.”133

Let us then reconsider wishes for good health through this lens. Very much related to the

idea of good health is the Japanese concept of genki, which means “lively” or “energetic,” and

which signifies more broadly a sense of holistic wellness that is considered normative. The

Japanese equivalent of the pleasantry “how are you doing?” for example, being ogenki desu ka?

or “are you genki?” It is considered especially important that children be genki in their activities

both domestically and in society, as it signifies not only vigorous physical and mental health but

also a brightness and willingness to participate fully in the social world around them.

Correspondingly, 56 (24.7%) of the 2016 sample use the word genki in their wishes. Indeed, even

wishes for good health are portrayed in social terms: one tablet from 2016 says “may it be that I

am able to go back and forth to hoikuen every day without catching cold.” Continued good health,

then, although desirable on its own merits, is here framed in terms of the equally desirable end of

consistent social participation.

Apart from genkiness, the wishes expressed on children's tablets that serve the purpose of

social education can be broken down into five basic categories: fanciful wishes, aspirational wishes,

wishes for academic success, wishes for developmental milestones and cohort advancement, and

wishes regarding amiability. Although these five groupings seem quite different, on further

examination we see that each of them reflects the socialization goals that are so central to early

childhood education in Japan.

Fred Rothbaum et al., “The Development of Close Relationships in Japan and the United States: Paths of Symbiotic
133

Harmony and Generative Tension,” Child Development 71, no. 5 (September 1, 2000): 1131.

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Fanciful Wishes
The first category is by far the most amusing, as it gives us a glimpse into the unfettered

imagination of the Japanese preschooler. Of the fanciful requests, the vast majority involved

licensed characters from children’s media. In the 21 tablets from my 2016 sample expressing

fanciful wishes (9.25%), five mentioned the classic animated toddler hero Anpanman; five the

series Kamen (Mask) Rider, two from Ninninjā, and two from Ultraman (all of which programs

belong to the tokusatsu genre—lit. ‘special effects’—familiar to Americans of a certain age by

way of its exported offspring, Power Rangers); four mentioned various characters from the girls’

anime Pre-Cure; two mentioned the princesses from Disney’s ubiquitous 2013 hit Frozen, and one

mentioned a princess more generally. Seven examples from the 2006 sample (13%) reflect both

continuity and change in children’s pop culture: ten years ago, one child expressed a wish to

become Harry Potter; one wanted to be friends with, while another wanted to live with a dinosaur;

one wanted to be Ultraman, and three others were inspired by the Magi-Rangers (another tokusatsu

program, aired 2005-6).

With some caution,134 we can divide the 2016 wishes into three groups based on the target

age and gender demographic of the media entities whose characters are mentioned: female wishes

(Pre-cure, Frozen, princess), male wishes (Kamen Rider, Ultraman, and Ninninja), and the unisex

wishes of the Anpanman crowd. Anpanman merits separate consideration not only because it has

been a universally loved fixture of Japanese childhood since the 1970s, but because its target

demographic skews younger—before the onset of socialization to sexual role differentiation.

According to a 2011 industry report by the Ban-Dai Corporation of a national sample of 1000

134
Many Japanese given names are unisex, so it is difficult in many cases to be certain of the gender of the child
making the wish. While there is nothing at all to say that girls can and do not enjoy the spastic violence of the genre
to which Power Rangers, Magic Rangers, Ultraman, Kamen Rider, and Ninninja belong—nor boys the princesses of
Pre-Cure—the following market analysis suggests that this is nevertheless a safe assumption to make.

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children, Anpanman is the favorite character of children in the 0-2 age bracket (64.4%), and third

favorite of children 3-5 (18.8%)—as well as being the overall favorite character among children

under 12 for each of the ten years leading up to the study. Both the Pre-Cure and Kamen Rider

series, meanwhile, take the number one (23.8%) and two spots (21.2%), respectively, in the 3-5

age group, ceding this prominence only to Pokémon among children 6-8 years of age. Characters

from Kamen Rider do not rank in the top ten favorite characters of girls under twelve, nor Pre-

Cure characters for boys.135

These flights of fancy have much to tell us about ema and Japanese religion more broadly.

First, although a Western observer might object that this kind of whimsy is out of place in a

religious setting, the Japanese do not approach religion with the same presumption of dignity and

gravitas. Indeed, the fact that all but one of the 21 fanciful requests from 2016 (95.24%) were

written in an adult hand (one aspiring Kamen Rider penned his own tablet)—although six others

were supplemented by the child’s signature—indicates that the adult involved was entirely

complicit, or at least did not succeed in dissuading the child, if indeed she attempted to do so at

all. The same was true in 2006, with six out of the seven also being entirely adult-written. Therefore,

we must think of these ema as not merely “not-antithetical” to the spirit of the exercise, but rather

that they are in fact considered by parents to be entirely appropriate to the medium.

It is not just that the ema is a place where selfish desires are acceptable, however. On further

investigation, we find that references to pop-culture heroes are often phrased so as to highlight the

character’s admirable qualities. Among girls, all but one expressed a desire to become the character

in question; one wished both to meet and to “become as kawaii as Elsa” from Frozen. Three of the

seven female wishes specifically use the word kawaii, which translates roughly to ‘cute’ or ‘pretty’,

135
“Bandai Kodomo Anketo Repoto Vol. 190,” 2011.

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but which is laced with undertones of intentional cultivation of an air of helplessness. Role

conformity—including but not limited to traditional gender roles—is often stressed in Japan as an

essential component of early childhood socialization,136 and the cultivation of kawaii among young

girls has broad cultural support in Japan as an important and desirable feminine trait.

Among boys, the traits most often mentioned was their idols’ strength (tsuyoi) and their

coolness (kakkoii)—the unisex/masculine counterpart of exclusively feminine kawaii. The word

kakkoii—literally ‘good appearance’—is somewhat more pro-social than its usual English

equivalent ‘cool’, which is characterized often by both aloofness and a certain transgressive

indifference or hostility to authority. Because they are the protagonists of their respective programs,

one can presume that the strength referred to is not exclusively physical, but can refer as well to

moral strength insofar as it involves a commitment to the punishment of wrongdoing. One of the

children who referenced the Magi-Rangers in 2006 did so because he or she “want[s] to become

as strong and friendly as the Red Ranger” (magiretto no yō ni yasashiku tsuyoku naritai); a similar

if more virile sentiment crops up ten years later when one boy has his parent write for him “May I

be able to become Kamen Rider Specter. I will defeat the bad guys!” (kamen raidā supekutā ni

naremasu yō ni. Warumono o yattsukeru!!). The moral rectitude of these heroes, rather than the

desirability of their vehicles or gear, is the aspect that children are most often made to desire.

Among the Anpanman set, there was a greater emphasis on meeting the hero than on

becoming or emulating him. Perhaps this can be attributed to a lesser ability (or desire) to

distinguish rigidly between fact and fiction among the youngest age bracket. Of the children with

an eye toward emulation, however, one’s wish says: “May I be able to become a friendly, strong,

and splendid Anpanman-like big brother” (yasashikute tsuyokute rippana Anpanman mitaina onii-

136
Takie Sugiyama Lebra, Japanese Patterns of Behavior (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1976), 149.

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chan ni naremasu yō ni!!). Remembering that these wishes are all written in an adult hand, one

can imagine a conversation whereby a child, stating a wish to become Anpanman, has this desire

modified by a parent, who points out traits of Anpanman’s that she wishes her child to emulate.

Alternately, the addition of Anpanman may be the parent’s way of rendering intelligible to the

child the traits that she wishes him to commit to developing, citing a role model with whom the

child is already intimately familiar. One can also imagine that a similar conversation went on

behind the ema that reads, somewhat confusingly, “May I become a cool older brother and

Anpanman” (kakkōii onii-chan to Anpanman ni naremasu yō ni). By emphasizing the older brother

role, the parent involved in this tablet I believe is encouraging the child to start the transition from

complete dependency to a role where they must serve as exemplars—like Anpanman—of

friendliness and good character for younger children.

Despite first appearances, then, when taken all together these tablets should be read not as

expressions of selfish desire, but as an expression of a commitment to moral cultivation using

exemplars from pop culture. Yet even those wishes that are more self-absorbed—particularly those

expressing the self-centered desire to meet a fictional hero rather than to become or emulate

them—are not entirely out of place. In a culture that places value on self-restraint (enryo) over and

against one’s own desires (kimama), once a child enters the social realm they “are discouraged

from making their wishes known; instead, they rely on others to sense and meet their needs.” 137

The ema represents one of the few outlets available outside the home for children and adults alike

to express those secret, selfish wants that are inappropriate to give voice to in other social settings.

As Reader observes, ema “provide a blank slate upon which all may express themselves and their

wishes directly and personally to the deities.”138 For adults, he continues, this medium of self-

137
Rothbaum et al., “The Development of Close Relationships in Japan and the United States,” 1128.
138
Reader, “Letters to the Gods,” 43.

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expression is useful primarily as a cathartic outlet for the constructive release of anxiety and

concern.139 Although adults tend to think of childhood as being a time before worry, we must

remember that the concerns of a child are every bit as important to him or her as ours are to us,

regardless of how trivial they may seem from an adult perspective. The fantasies of becoming

strong and brave like Anpanman or the Masked Rider, or as cute—and therefore, in a regressive

sense, desirable and valuable—as a princess, though primarily a mark of playful imagination, may

also be motivated by an underlying anxiety about one’s smallness and relative powerlessness of a

child in an adult world. Regardless of whether these wishes are playful, anxious, or both, however,

the ema provides an outlet for these feelings to be expressed and channeled into a commitment to

consistent self-improvement.

Aspirational Wishes
Tablets expressing personal aspirational desires can be thought of in the same light as those

concerning fictional characters. Of the 47 children (20.7%) expressing these aspirational desires,

29 of their wishes were career-oriented. Fifteen of these, in turn, wanted to become purveyors of

sweets, whether as a cake-maker (kēki-ya-san, 12), a pâtissier (2), or an ice cream vendor (1, aisu-

ya-san). Beyond those concerned with a career in confections, three other children mentioned

wanting to join the police force. The remaining eleven career-oriented wishes comprised one each

of the following: a designer (this child wrote ‘dezainā’ with no elaboration as the whole text of his

or her wish), a game creator (gēmu kurieitā), a train conductor (densha no unteshi [sic]), a driver

(of either the liveried or racecar variety, kuruma no untenshu-san), an idol (aidoru, i.e. pop star),

a dancer/model, a beautician (biyōshi-san), a ballerina, a soldier (senshi), a kindergarten teacher,

and a doctor. The next most common aspiration regards sports, of which there were nine tablets:

139
Reader, 44.

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four involving soccer, two mentioning baseball, and one each ice hockey, basketball, swimming,

relay, and baton. Five additional tablets expressed a desire for certain fun experiences: riding the

shinkansen (2), going to Disneyland (2), and frequenting the hot springs (onsen, 1).140

Unlike vocational wishes, which concern the more distant future, these latter experiential

desires are more within the power of the supervising adult to fulfil. We may therefore see them in

the same light as one ema reported by Reader “which bore the words kozukai UP shimasu yō ni

(more pocket money) [and] was probably designed as much for his parents’ eyes as for

Kannon’s.”141 These ema presented the child an opportunity to ask, in a roundabout way, to make

a request of his or her parents. The three additional tablets that express a desire to eat certain

specific foods—melon (1), mandarin oranges (mikan, 1), and bread (1)—can be interpreted

similarly.142 They are, in a sense, a Japanese version of the western letter to Santa Claus, minus

the elaborate deception.

The remaining three of the 47 aspirational wishes are sui generis. One child wanted to

become skilled at the piano, a second wanted to buy a castle, and a third, quite charmingly, wished

that “When I get older, may it be that I have a yard for small birds and that I am able to care for

them,” and illustrated this wish with drawings of various birds.

Whereas the fanciful desires involving interactions with fictional characters were almost

exclusively written in an adult hand, 30 (60%) of the aspirational ones have wish-texts that are

written by the children themselves. This stands to reason, as it takes a certain level of maturity to

conceptualize the future in any personal concreteness. In particular, the career aspirations that

140
This child also wanted to become a cake-maker, hence the discrepancy in ema count.
141
Reader, “Letters to the Gods,” 36.
142
Seven more tablets not here considered express the desire to eat a lot (takusan taberu, or similar), with two of these
specifying ‘tasty things’ (oishii mono, oishii gohan). Whereas the mentioning of specific foods is likely evidence of a
child’s own personal taste, the desire for the child to eat copiously is expressed alongside desires to sleep and play a
lot, and therefore is more likely evidence of parental concern that the child have a healthy appetite commensurate with
an ordinary, genki lifestyle.

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related to neither confections nor law enforcement were overwhelmingly child authored (90.91%).

Perhaps this is due to the fact that the child graduates from stereotypical to idiosyncratic career

aspirations as he ages, coming to his or her career less in terms of consumption habits (i.e. “I like

eating cake, ergo I should sell it”) and more in terms of his or her own developing personality. The

self-concern shown in these tablets may also be reflective of a reduction in adult oversight, and a

more authentic child voice.

As was the case with the fanciful desires treated in the last section, demonstrating to the child

that an ema is a safe and appropriate place to express the deepest desires of his heart—far-fetched

or impossible though those desires may be—the supervising adult is teaching an object lesson in

the art of making distinctions among different social situations. Although there is nothing

unseemly in having aspirations for one’s future, whether in terms of career or leisure, these

personal concerns are usually relegated to secondary importance in situations when there is a

collective goal or desire to consider. We have seen already that a large portion of children’s ema

comprise formulaic wishes that express the desire for a more diffuse beneficence. But this is not

mandatory. Children who are allowed and encouraged to express personal wishes for their own

future on their ema are being taught that these represent an appropriate medium for the public

expression of these desires.

Academic Achievement and Literacy

Only twelve of the 227 tablets from the 2016 sample refer to explicitly academic

achievements. Five of them are concerned with mastering the art of writing the kana syllabaries,

using adverbs like skillfully (jōzu ni), properly (chanto), and ‘clearly and without deviation’ (kirei

ni magaranai de). Of the three tablets from 2006 that specified achievements in letters are one

instance of learning to remember hiragana, two for the slightly rarer and therefore less intuitive

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katakana, and one of learning to write one’s name.143 This latter tablet is written with kanji by an

adult, and signed very shakily by the child. Learning how to write one’s name—phonetically, of

course, as the kanji for personal and family names are sometimes very complex and are often rarely

used otherwise—is considered a good first step in learning the 46-character hiragana syllabary.

Although formal instruction in the Japanese writing system begins in primary school, it is generally

expected that children are able to read kana before entering the first grade, and that this learning

will take place in the home.144 Children expressing a desire to master kana, therefore, are probably

around five years of age.

Children old enough to be either in- or contemplating the transition to elementary school

show a slightly greater concern with intelligence and academic success. Another child expresses

(in his parent’s hand) the desire for lots of 100% marks once he starts going to elementary school

(gakkō ni ittara ippai hyakuten ga toremasu yō ni), a sentiment echoed by a slightly older child

who wishes—along with the ability to skip rope for twenty seconds—to get a perfect score on her

multiplication tables. A final student mentions some of the major subjects in the first grade

curriculum: Japanese (kokugo), math, life skills, and drawing.

This latter, notably, does not wish for good grades, but rather for the ability to persevere

(ganbaru)—as does another who wishes to be able to study a lot (takusan o-benkyō ga dekimasu

yō ni). One of the younger children concerned with hiragana also mentioned practicing (renshū).

Of the two children who express a desire to become smart (atama ga ii), one acknowledges her

own responsibility in the matter by saying “may it be that I listen to my teacher and I get smarter”

(sensei no hanashi o kīte, atama ga yoku narimasu yō ni). This tablet is written in an adult hand,

but signed and dated by the child herself.

143
One of these tablets mentioned both forms of kana script.
144
Tobin, Wu, and Davidson, Preschool in Three Cultures, 57.

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 It is worth noting here that intelligence in Japan is often construed in pro-social rather than

individualistic terms. According to Tobin, “Japanese tend to view intelligence as closely linked to

moral action and to associate the terms orikō (smart) and atama ga ii (intelligent), when applied

to young children, with traits such as kashikoi (obedient, well-behaved), erai (praiseworthy), ki ga

tsukau (sensitive to others), and wakareru (understanding).” 145 By exhorting their children to

academic success, parents are implying the desirability of the obedience, sensitivity, and

attentiveness that are necessary preconditions of intelligence. Furthermore, the majority of wishes

also acknowledge in one way or another the importance of strenuous effort in academic

achievement—as opposed to the discourse on ‘giftedness’ that is more common in America. To

be intelligent, then, is above all to be a diligent and receptive member of a group.

“I want to become a cool elephant”

When asked their wishes for the future, it is understandable that many children will express

an eagerness to grow up. Not yet familiar with the grind of adulthood, they are free to imagine all

the benefits of a life unconstrained by the physical or social limitations of diminutive stature. “I

want to grow up quickly!” one child writes in his own hand. In the 2006 sample, one child wanted

merely to grow up (ōkikunaru), another to be taller (se ga takaku naru), and a third wanted his

muscles to get stronger (kin’niku de tsuyoku naru).

Most of the wishes that related to developmental milestones, however, seem to be more

heavily influenced by parental wishes for the child. One tablet expresses a desire to conclude toilet

training quickly; another the desire that the child stop popping his wrists and sucking on his fingers;

a third to be able to pick up after himself. Three separate tablets express a desire to learn how to

use chopsticks well, one (mentioned above) specifically mentioning the transition to ‘ordinary

145
Tobin, Wu, and Davidson, 36.

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chopsticks’ from the jointed ones generally used by children under two or three. One tablet from

2006 worth mentioning here reads: “may it be that [I] am able to talk much more” (motto takusan

o-hanashi ga dekimasu yō ni), which may indicate a parent’s wish for a very young, pre-verbal or

perhaps shy child.

The majority of tablets that deal with developmental milestones, however, have to do with

cohort advancement. When I first started going through the 2006 sample taken at Komagata that I

received from John Traphagan, I encountered one tablet that said, matter-of-factly, “Ren wants to

be an elephant,” and initially classified it with the aspiring Harry Potters and Ultramen. In fact,

however, this tablet is expressing another, more mundane desire: the desire to advance with his

cohort to the next grade of preschool. My consternation at finding not one but three children

expressing such ardent desire to be transformed into pachyderms—in 2006 one child even went so

far as to make two tablets expressing the same wish—was resolved upon my arrival in Mizusawa

when I realized that the zōgumi, or elephant group, to which they all aspired was in fact an age

cohort/classroom at Komagata kindergarten. According to Tobin, in order to reinforce the

solidarity of a preschool age cohort and drive home the idea of the dōkyūsei as a cohesive unit, all

the children in a given class are frequently made to wear a pin or other identifying marker depicting

the animal with which their class is meant to identify.

The tablet written by Ren-kun also includes an explanatory gloss in an adult hand, which

reads, “When spring comes, may it be that I am able to become an older brother of the cool elephant

class” (haru ni nattara kakkoii zō gurūpu no onīsan ni naremasu yō ni). A further gloss to the left

of Ren’s signature identifies him as a member of “smiling section; panda group” (nikoniko gumi

panda gurūpu). From this information we can infer that when this tablet was written in 2006, Ren

was four years old and a member of the panda class, was able to write his name and a simple

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sentence in his own hand, and was looking forward to graduating to the elephant class in March.

Ten years later, in 2016, I was unsurprised to find several more references to the elephant class.

One, which I use above as the chapter epigram, simply states the desire to become a kakkoii

elephant. Another, the intention to try his best (ganbaru) at school field days (undōkai) when he

graduates to the elephant class. A third reads: “may I become a friendly older sister like the older

sisters of the Elephant and Panda groups” (zōsan, panda-gumi no onēsan no yō ni yasashii onēsan

ni naremasu yō ni).

Three tablets from 2006 express a desire to graduate from the hoikuen to primary school: two

citing their eagerness to be first-graders (ichinensei) and another to be an elementary schooler

(shōgakusei). This remains a feature of tablets from 2016. We have already seen the one tablet

(toilet training) discuss the pending graduation from yōchien. One more expresses her hopes for

what this new routine will bring: “In April I will enter elementary school. [...] May my new daily

routine be fun.” Another girl writes in her own hand of her wish “to become a splendid older sister

of the elementary school,” invoking the same language of fictive kinship, and acknowledging that

her transition comes with added responsibility. It is worth mentioning at this point that the desire

to become a kakkōii older brother or sister does not necessarily indicate a biological sibling

relationship, but rather refers equally often, as in the above case, to the pervasive fictive kinship

among young children where older children are all big brothers and sisters to members of younger

cohorts, and vice versa. The metaphorical sibling relationship between kindergarten age cohorts is

the early childhood equivalent of the sempai-kōhai relationship that begins in primary school and

continues in many cases until death.

Compulsory education in Japan begins at six years of age, so we can deduce that these

children would have been five when they received the ema in November, and that if they had not

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yet turned six years old by the time of dedication on the New Year, they would do so before

matriculating in April. Many of the children who express a desire to grow up or enter school say

they wish to do so quickly (hayaku, sugusugu, etc.). Considering that matriculation dates and the

age of compulsory education are fixed, we should take this, as in English, as an idiomatic

expression of eager anticipation—that is to say, these children are looking forward to an

eventuality rather than asking divine assistance in achieving a goal whose fulfillment is uncertain.

This distinction is actually quite important, as these avowals of desire may, counter-

intuitively, be acts of strategic coercion on the part of parents to coax a reluctant child to go to

school. The transition from home to school in Japan is a particularly difficult one. Aside from

feelings of separation anxiety, for many Japanese children the preschool is the first place where

their impulses have been curbed in a systematic way. Consequently, “during the first month of

school, passive withdrawal, tears, temper tantrums, and refusal to attend school are common.”146

Parents may additionally be afraid that, should their children fail to adjust to preschool, they may

increase their susceptibility to other, more severe antisocial behaviors, such as school refusal

(gakkō kyōfushō, literally “morbid fear of school”), or even join the swelling ranks of hikikomori:

young adults who shun all social contact. Parents wishing to protect their children from developing

these more serious antisocial tendencies encourage them to think of going to preschool as a

desirable activity, and the ema provides an opportunity to reinforce their willing compliance.

Wishes Regarding Amiability

This desire to encourage appropriate forms of social interaction is also at the core of the fifth

type of children’s ema: those concerned with amiability, friendliness, and good humor. Sixty-four

tablets (28.2%) in the 2016 sample have to do with these traits in one form or another. At face

146
Peak, Learning to Go to School in Japan, 145.

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value, these seem like self-evident children's concerns: a desire to play (asobu, 14), to have fun

(tanoshii, 17), and to make or spend time with friends (tomodachi, 17). However, on further

consideration, these ema are less concerned than we might suppose with the individual’s desire to

have a good time, and more with the desire to operate successfully as part of a group.

The role of Japanese kindergartens and preschools in fostering a sense of other-awareness by

no means implies a kind of insidious or authoritarian group consciousness; rather, according to

Joy Hendry, its aim is “to impress upon the child that the world is full of people just like itself

whose needs and desires are equally important.” 147 To that end, the rhetoric and disciplinary

strategies of a Japanese preschool are geared towards generating the idea that being part of the

group is more fun than being by oneself. Isolation is to be avoided, and togetherness the highest

good.

Recalling the eleven aspirational tablets above that treated desire for success in sports, it is

worth noting here that only one of these children wished to become a professional. Seven of them,

on the other hand, expressed a desire to become a member of a team. The three remaining ema

express a desire for skill (jōzu ni nareru), which despite being an individual goal, is also a

necessary precondition for achieving the inherently social goal of becoming a member of the team.

Of course skill and team membership are mutually reinforcing goals, but it is telling that the

rhetoric of these ema overwhelmingly favors the social over the personal.

More instructive still is another set of words used in ema that have to do with amiability: key

phrases here are nakayoku (16), which means ‘to be on good terms with’ or ‘to get along well’,

yasashii (10), which when describing people carries a connotation of tenderness and sympathy,

and egao (11), or ‘smiling face’—the outer manifestation of a friendly and sympathetic character.

147
Hendry, Becoming Japanese, 64.

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Although a few tablets specify the names of specific friends, the majority are non-specific, with

eight stressing explicitly the desire to be friendly and get along with everyone (minna to).

Some ema describe colorfully the type of pro-social person that the writer hopes the child

will be: a person with “a strong and sympathetic heart” (tsuyoi kokoro yasashii kokoro), “a person

strong and kind in heart and body” (kokoro mo karada mo takumashiku yasashii hito), “a child

who always plays gently with his friends” (itsumo tomodachi to asobu yasashii ko), “a wise, tender,

and sturdy person” (kashikoku yasashiku takumashii hito), and “a strong and tender child”

(tsuyokute yasashii ko). Although not identical, these terms and phrases would fit in perfectly with

the list of desirable traits in pupils reported in polls taken by Shigaki (1983)148 and White and

Levine (1986). 149 Preschool teachers cited empathy (omoiyari), gentleness (yasashii), social

consciousness (shakaisei), kindness (shinsetsu), cooperativeness (kyōchōsei), obedience (sunao),

enthusiasm (akarui), energy (genki), perseverance (ganbaru), and receptivity (yutaka) as the most

desirable traits in a preschooler—and therefore the traits that a preschooler is most likely to repeat

back.

Children’s Ema, Vows, and Indirect Communication

To the extent that adults have helped children to compose wishes for their ema, therefore,

they have done so in ways that reinforce the major goal of preschool socialization: “to transform

dependent, selfish toddlers into group-minded youngsters ready to function in a group-oriented

school system and society.”150 Fanciful wishes involving pop culture exemplars are phrased so that

those characters’ most desirable traits are forefronted as models to emulate. Wherever possible, as

148
Shigaki, I., “Child Care Practices in Japan and the United States: How Do They Reflect Cultural Values in Young
Children?,” Young Children 38 (1983): 13–24.
149
M. White and R. LeVine, “What Is an Ii Ko?,” in Child Development and Education in Japan, ed. R. Stevenson,
H. Azuma, and K. Hakuta (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1986).
150
Tobin, Wu, and Davidson, Preschool in Three Cultures, 71.

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in the case of sports, parents seem to encourage their children to conceptualize their desire in terms

of team membership rather than individual skill. In speaking of academic achievement, emphasis

is consistently placed on diligence and personal effort as the keys to success, 151 and on the

importance of listening to and obeying the teacher. 152 Finally, wishes related to advancing in

school along with one’s cohort, and to friendliness and amiability, all seek to encourage the child

to think of belongingness as the highest good.153

But where are the kami in all this? Historically and officially, the ema are a means of

conveying the innermost wishes of the heart to one’s supernatural protectors. They are, in the

words of Morizaki Kazue, “letters to the gods and buddhas” (shinbutsu e no tegami).154 And yet,

as I have argued, the primary audience for these tablets seems to be the children themselves, with

the kami operating very much in the background. In cases where adults express generic apotropaic

wishes on behalf of a child in language he or she can understand, the child is exposed in a general

way to the idea that the dedication of ema is instrumental in securing the well-being of the family,

and by extension, tacitly, that the kami in the shrine are somehow responsible for this protection.

But what is the kami’s role in bringing about these ends? How is their agency construed?

Like tablets written by adults, which almost never mention the deities explicitly, only one

tablet in the entire children’s sample mentions kamisama at all,155 and the kami do not ever appear

to be being asked to intervene in order to bring about these desired ends. When a child expresses

a wish to grow up quickly, to take an obvious example, we naturally take this as an expression of

151
De Vos, Socialization for Achievement.
152
White and LeVine, “What Is an Ii Ko?,” 56–57.
153
Lewis, “Children’s Social Development in Japan: Research Directions,” 192; Peak, “Learning to Become Part of
the Group,” 116–17; Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa, Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited, 120.
154
Morizaki Kazue, “Kami e no shishin,” in Ema hisshi, by Iwai Hiromi (Tokyo: Nippon Hōsō Shuppan Kyōkai,
1983), 82; Reader, “Letters to the Gods,” 25.
155
This ema is otherwise unfortunately almost entirely undecipherable, written in a handwriting that I suspect belongs
to a child of no more than four years of age.

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eagerness and impatience and not a request for supernatural aid—the kami do not make a habit of

speeding up time. Rather, crucially, the wishes we have seen are almost entirely ones that are

within the child’s control to fulfil. The child may not be able to meet Anpanman, but he can

certainly become equally strong and brave. Likewise, it is primarily up to the child whether or not

he will rise to the occasion of meeting each new day with genki-ness and a willingness to make

friends. In short, the ema are not phrased as requests for supernatural aid at all, but rather as vows

on the part of the petitioner to work towards his stated goal.

One tablet from 2006 is a perfect example of the ema as vow. It reads: “I will do my best

(ganbaru) at athletic meets and school recitals without crying. I will make lots of friends (ippai

tomodachi).” This child, it is safe to assume, had a history of poor sportsmanship, and would cry

often enough at school functions that his parents were concerned with the possible social

ramifications of this behavior. Ending as it does with the emphatic declarative “-zo!” rather than

the more passive -emasu yō ni underscores the fact that the text was meant to be in the child’s

voice, if not his handwriting, and thus that it represents a pledge of future good conduct—of intent

and commitment rather than passive hope. Crucially, although the text is written in an adult hand,

the signature belongs to the child himself—rendering him complicit in the pledge being made on

his behalf.

That the ema are meant to be understood by the children in this manner was acknowledged

explicitly by chief priest Taniue as he distributed the ema at the end of his shichigosan

demonstration:

If you feel you want to be such-and-so kind of person when you grow up—I
want to become a kindergarten teacher, I want to be cool, I want to be strong—
write down those wishes, and as you do, think about how hard you will
persevere (ganbaru) as you work to become that person. [...] From time to
time, when you pass by the shrine, you may encounter the ema that you put
up, so don’t forget—when you see that you’ve written ‘when I grow up I want

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 to be a nurse,’ or ‘I want to be a kindergarten teacher,’ it will remind you that
that was what your dreams were once. That’s what I hope will happen for you.

Taniue-san himself, then, presents the ema to this class of elephants as tangible reminders of their

goals—to be read not only at the time of writing but possibly at later visits to the shrine as well—

and as spurs to the efforts necessary to bring these desires to fruition.

The use of ema as a public pledge and a way of creating accountability for the stated outcome

has been documented elsewhere among adult supplicants.156 Reader writes of one young woman

who often dedicated ema in the course of pursuing her goals; when asked how she believed this

action would help her, she averred that their effect was for her entirely psychological. “By defining

and bringing into the open an inner feeling,” Reader concludes, “that wish or need is structuralized

and given form, and as such its realization as an actuality is set in motion; ema, along with

talismans and amulets, represent a medium through which such volition and will may be channeled

and given external form by being explicitly and outwardly stated.” 157 In the case of this adult

woman, her motivation comes from within, and her ema—much like the one-eyed daruma doll

that the Japanese often use as visual reminders of an unfinished project—serves to help her remain

committed to her goal.

The usefulness of public statements of commitment has lately been the subject of research

among behavioral scientists on dedication and productivity. 158 Making a pledge publicly, they

conclude, creates accountability which in turn bolsters resolve. In making a pledge public,

therefore, the petitioner also enlists the help of anyone in his community who witnesses it. Thus

156
Traphagan, The Practice of Concern, 122.
157
Reader, “Letters to the Gods,” 44.
158
Todd Rogers et al., “Beyond Good Intentions: Prompting People to Make Plans Improves Followthrough on
Important Tasks,” Behavioral Science & Policy 1, no. 2 (2015): 33–41; Katherine L. Milkman et al., “Using
Implementation Intentions Prompts to Enhance Influenza Vaccination Rates,” Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences 108, no. 26 (June 28, 2011): 10415–20; Long JA et al., “Peer Mentoring and Financial Incentives to
Improve Glucose Control in African American Veterans: A Randomized Trial,” Annals of Internal Medicine 156, no.
6 (March 20, 2012): 416–24.

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far I have only considered children as a possible audience for these tablets. In many cases, however,

the parent wishing to make her child commit to a certain course of self-improvement may in the

same stroke be attempting to use the ema as an opportunity to communicate her goals for her child

indirectly to their primary daytime caregivers, and enlist their help in bringing about the desired

behavioral change. Peak reports that although parents and teachers alike report a mutual desire for

open and honest communication about a child’s behavioral progress, the norms of Japanese

communication greatly hinder this kind of openness—especially when there are problems. She

writes that:

even when children have daily difficulties and frequent tantrums in class over
a certain issue, such as dressing themselves, teachers rarely mention the
problems to the mothers. Similarly, when children have obvious difficulty
adjusting to preschool, crying and refusing to attend, parents rarely discuss
what happens at home frankly with the teacher. Both parties’ preferred method
of handling the situation is to hope that each will somehow notice the other’s
difficulty.159

If that is the case, it then may be possible to read some ema as an exercise on the part of the parent

to communicate indirectly with her child’s preschool teacher. The examples above of children

struggling to meet certain developmental milestones may in fact represent a covert attempt to

solicit extra help in this area from other caregivers. Conversely, the child who vowed not to cry at

recitals and field day competitions may have been prompted to do so as a means of letting his

parents communicate to the teacher that they are aware of the problem and are committed to

curbing the behavior in a domestic environment.

The use of ema for this kind of indirect communication is by no means uncommon; Reader,

for example, notes that ema left at a famous lovers’ shrine at Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto beseeching

the kami to secure the affections of a love interest “can be seen as a Japanese form of graffiti

159
Peak, “Learning to Become Part of the Group,” 100. For indirect communication of problems between parent and
teaches see also: Shing-jen Chen and Miyake Kazuo, “Japanese Studies of Infant Development,” in Child Development
and Education in Japan, ed. Harold W. Stevenson et al. (New York: W.H. Freeman, 1986), 140.

127
designed to be read not just by the kami but by the desired partner as well.” 160 Likewise, as

Traphagan has observed, inscribing an ema with a wish for a benefit for someone else is a means

of expressing care and concern for that person, and expressions of interpersonal affection that

might not have easy outlets elsewhere.161 In a similar way, a mother steering her child to vow that

he or she is looking forward to joining a new classroom may, in addition to trying to bring about

this frame of mind in her child, be trying to express indirectly to the teacher that her son or daughter

is still in need of some convincing to leave the nurturing, indulgent amae environment of the home

behind and participate voluntarily in an environment where one must be conscientious about the

will of others.

The open nature of an ema pledge as a request for accountability may, finally, help to

construct for the child a model of divine agency. Reader notes that the aforementioned young

woman considered her ema to be binding in a legalistic sense: “It served as a reminder of her

obligations in the matter for, in writing it and asking for the cooperation of the deities, she also

was undertaking a commitment, indeed virtually a contractual obligation entered into with the

deity [my emphasis].”162 Requests in Japanese often do not mention or even address directly the

party performing the favor, the speaker choosing instead to mention merely the sought outcome

and its desirability and leaving the listener to connect the dots himself. The formulaic expression

–emasu yō ni (‘may it come to pass that—’) that is standard for both adult and child ema is a

perfect example of this polite grammatical obliqueness. Although the kami are generally

understood to be the addressees of ema phrased in this manner, because no audience is

grammatically specified, the responsibility for helping the petitioner comes to be borne by the

160
Reader, “Letters to the Gods,” 36.
161
Traphagan, The Practice of Concern, 126.
162
Reader, “Letters to the Gods,” 45.

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community at large—leading the child to think of the kami and his community of caregivers as

fulfilling the same structural role.

Conclusion
As an unintended side effect of their creation, therefore, ema help to underscore the mission

statement of Japanese preschool education. Working backwards through my argument, we saw

that the ema that expressed a desire for amiability provided a means for children to declare their

intention to act in a socially conscious way—to exhibit the behaviors that will ensure that they are

able to get on well with others. Tablets also serve as a medium for parents to model language,

especially deferential forms of speech to be used with kami and social superiors alike. Expressions

of eagerness to grow up and go to school represent a child’s commitment to step outside the

sheltering comfort of amae and to learn to function successfully as just one node in a network of

competing self-interests. Finally, ema provide an acceptable outlet for expressing those profound,

personal desires—whether aspirational or fanciful—that the preschool environment is designed to

curb and redirect. Thus, each of the five categories of wish found in children’s ema is in some way

related to the central goal of early childhood socialization.

The ema, moreover, are portrayed—both by parents and the shrine—as vows rather than

wishes, and the public nature of their dedication creates accountability by communicating these

goals to others who have an interest in the child’s emotional growth. The kami, then, assume the

role not of beings that will grant the child’s wish, but rather, just of other members of the child’s

community, witnesses to his pledges of pro-social conduct. As such, the child comes to think of

the kami in the same terms as he understands his community: as belonging to a network of loving

care.

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 To go one step further, moreover, while individuals of great importance to the child—parents,

teachers, friends—are accessible to the child directly over the course of daily life, the child is

nevertheless situated in a broader community of care and support whose members are not always

visible, and whose work to support the child are not always readily apparent. By structuring these

open letters to the community as open letters to the kami, the practice of writing ema encourages

children to think of the kami not simply as members of the community, but rather as symbolic

faces placed on the point of interaction between the individual child and that diffuse network of

care.

Fig. 3.1 - Child ema for sale at Komagata shrine

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Chapter 4 – Demons and Danger
Oni ga kuru kadōka wakaranai kedo…
—Teacher, Tokiwa hoikuen

At what age do children recognize the

difference between fact and fiction? The
answer to that is another question: At what
age does the baby laugh when we play the
game of “Boo”? 163
—Jerome Griswold

In the previous chapter, I examined the ramifications of one particular gyōji practice adapted for

preschool children—the inscription of ema tablets—on the way the kami come to be tacitly

explained to and understood by children. In this chapter, I examine another gyōji—this time,

setsubun, the celebration of the end of winter and the beginning of the agricultural cycle. Whereas

the religiosity of ema practice is overt, however, and its relationship to the kami unmistakable, the

specifically religious ramifications of setsubun are less readily apparent, as the supernatural being

most intimately involved is not the kami at all, but rather the folkloric demon, oni. What light do

163
Jerome Griswold, Feeling like a Kid: Childhood and Children’s Literature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2006), 50.

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oni- and setsubun-related books and cultural practices shed on early Japanese socialization, and

what do they have to tell us about how children come to conceptualize divinity?

In the pages that follow, I will examine the ways in which the oni—primarily but not

exclusively as he appears in relation to setsubun—is used as an instrument of early childhood

socialization. On the one hand, the ‘traditional’ oni is a supernatural punisher of recalcitrant

children, emerging from his lair deep in the mountains or far beyond the seas to menace children

who misbehave. He is, therefore, I will argue, the symbolic face of parental authority, and therefore

something to be avoided through obedience (sunao, odayaka), one of the pillars of early childhood

ethical training.

But there are also metaphorical interpretations of the oni communicated to the preschooler

that complicate this relationship, presenting a cogent and surprisingly sophisticated message of

self-improvement for pre-school children. Certain interpretations of the mamemaki rite tell the

child that the ‘real’ oni is not a monster living off in the mountains, but a way of speaking about

real evils in the world, from disease and natural disaster to acts of human malfeasance, teaching

the child that the oni is but one of many supernatural metaphors for mundane processes—processes

that can be interacted with through the medium of culturally-sanctioned ritual action.

By offloading the oni’s evil onto external forces, moreover, sources that take this approach

allow the oni to become a more fun and sympathetic character. Literary interpretations of the oni

from the latter half of the twentieth century have seen the oni’s reputation rehabilitated, with

children’s picture books especially recasting the oni as something fun and sympathetic, a wild

plaything for children rather than their chief tormentor. In this way, I shall argue, the oni becomes

in this literature an analog for the child himself—like the oni, the preschool child is wild and free,

still partially unconstrained by the rules of human society. But rather than robbing the oni of its

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power as a symbol of adult authority, the sympathy created between child and oni encourages the

child to develop the introspection necessary to scrutinize the monstrosity that exists in his own

heart and behavior, and to use the ritual exorcism at the center of setsubun—like the ema—as an

opportunity to make a public pledge for self-improvement. The oni is thus simultaneously the face

of coercive parental authority, the personification of those traits against which that authority sets

itself, and the child’s helper in overcoming flaws in his character.

Setsubun and the Oni

The Rites of Spring
I have touched upon the subject of setsubun briefly already in Chapter 2, when I discussed

the picture book Obāchan no ehōmaki (2010).164 This book, which focuses on the experience of a

first-grade girl as she prepares for and celebrates setsubun with her extended family, provides the

child reader a peer model who has made the transition to primary school and can therefore begin

to engage with ritual activity in an adult mode. We see in Obāchan no ehōmaki an attempt to bring

the early elementary school child out of the solipsism of preschool—represented by the little

brother—and to begin to take on adult social responsibilities. The protagonist Kirika engages

actively in the full complement of the festival’s constituent elements, learning both the practical

steps necessary to perform these rites independently in the future (and to pass them on to still later

generations), and the moral imperative to make her new year’s wishes for the sake of others than

herself.

The contrast that I drew, however, between the adult-like engagement of Kirika and the more

jejune approach of her little brother Kōta—for whom the setsubun seems to be simply fun—

obscures the fact that setsubun is also an instructive time for the preschool set as well. The liveliest

164
Nomura Takaaki, Obāchan no ehōmaki (Tokyo: Kōsei Shuppan-sha, 2010).

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and most essential part of setsubun—for adults as well as children—is the mamemaki.

Characteristically for Japan, the mamemaki is named after a ritualized action rather than its

metaphysical underpinning. Literally the “bean toss,” the mamemaki involves throwing handful

after handful of roasted soybeans (or, in places where ground nuts are commonly grown—like the

Tōhoku—peanuts) while shouting Fuku wa uchi! Oni wa soto!, a formula which can be

satisfactorily rendered as “Good luck come in! Demons begone!” The beans are then collected,

and a number of them are eaten for good luck equal to a person’s age plus one. As with most

Japanese rituals,165 there is a reasonable variation in setting and implementation of the mamemaki.

Its most essential performance occurs at home as part of domestic religion and takes place on

setsubun evening, March 3, the last day of winter according to the old lunar calendar. It is this

observance that we saw enacted in Obāchan no ehōmaki.

The mamemaki is also performed on the community level at both temples and shrines, and

its scheduling can be somewhat more flexible in order to maximize attendance. The observance

which I attended took place at the Chūson-ji, in the Hiraizumi temple complex, on Feb 6, 2016.

While the mamemaki is a favorite of children and the likelihood that it will be performed in the

home seems to be directly correlated to the presence of small children there, the mamemaki is not

exclusively a children’s activity. At Chūson-ji, the mamemaki was performed twice in succession

during the same event: once by a group of local children, and then again with even more

enthusiasm by adult members of that year’s yakudōshi cohort—those whose ages the traditional

astrological almanac declares to be inauspicious and who therefore have special need for the good

luck mentioned in the chant. As I also intimated in my analysis of Ehōmaki, the bean toss is also

165
For such variation in ancestral veneration, see: Robert John Smith, Ancestor Worship in Contemporary Japan
(Stanford University Press, 1974).

134
a staple celebration in preschools, such as the one I was able to observe at Tokiwa kindergarten,

on March 2, which occasion will feature prominently at the conclusion of this chapter.

For small children, the mamemaki is clearly the most fun part of setsubun, the portion that

they most look forward to, the sine qua non of the festival, and the metonym that stands in for the

whole in their memory. It is for setsubun what an egg hunt is on Easter morning and what the

opening of presents from Santa Claus is on Christmas. And indeed, like these two western

analogues, the mamemaki involves—or can involve, at least—a supernatural visitation. Except this

visitation is not from an unambiguously benevolent figure, like Santa Claus, but rather from a

nominally fearsome demon—the oni—to whom I now turn.

Oni for Adults and Children

We are accustomed to thinking colloquially in the west of folkloric beings as inhabiting a

largely separate imaginary from that of our religious beings, and that the fairies and ogres of the

Brothers Grimm do not exist side by side with Christ or the Virgin Mary. Of course this has not

ever been so in fact: the folkloric literature is in fact full of crossover with religious figures, but

the stories that have become prominent in contemporary popular culture do not tend to be the ones

in which these imaginaries converge.166 And yet there is a tendency in religious studies to discount

folkloric beings as somehow beneath our serious inquiry, belonging more properly to the domain

of folkloristics.167 While this is not the appropriate venue in which to argue against this tendency

in the abstract, it is nevertheless essential to argue that the oni is not only entirely contiguous with

the more exalted beings of the Japanese religious imagination but is also of critical importance to

the ways Japanese children are taught to engage with their religious culture.

166
Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York: Vintage
Books, 1977), 14.
167
As just one example of this attitude: Justin L. Barrett, “Why Santa Claus Is Not a God,” Journal of Cognition and
Culture 8 (2008): 149–61.

135
 According to a common adult interpretation of the oni—such as that appearing in the gyōji

manual Nihon no shikitari, for example—the demon is a way of personifying a number of different

forces, including the insalubrious qi (J. ki, from Chinese geomancy) of winter, the once-mysterious

causes of contagious disease or natural disaster, or bad fortune more generally.168 Correspondingly,

in adult or adult-centric observances, a costumed impersonation of the oni is not strictly necessary.

Domestically, in households with no small children to terrify or entertain, the mamemaki unfolds

in absentia dæmonīs by beginning in the most interior room of the house and working outward,

throwing beans and shouting the aforementioned formula, and closing doors as one goes until

finishing in the genkan and the front door. In this way, the demonic forces (however construed)

are said to be chased out in an orderly fashion with no way to retreat back into the house. No such

orderliness inheres in temple or shrine observances, where the beans tend to be tossed from the

verandah of the main hall out into a waiting crowd, which tries to catch as many beans as possible,

as these are considered by many to be especially potent when eaten as part of the year-number

beans portion of setsubun that I described in Chapter 2.

But for children, the oni takes on a special reality as a being who roams throughout Japan on

setsubun night, looking for naughty children to gobble up. Whereas domestic observances without

an impersonation presume the oni already to be invisibly present in the home as the aniconically

personified accumulation of a year’s bad qi, when an oni is impersonated (or represented in

setsubun children’s literature), he is portrayed as a visitor from outside come to punish the child’s

transgressions. The children’s literature I surveyed suggests a belief that costumed oni visitation

on setsubun was more common when village life was more tight-knit, when households with

children would have been more abundant and closer together. In Setsubun da mamemaki da (“It’s

168
Minimaru and Blockbuster, Nihon no Shikitari, 104–5.

136
Setsubun! It’s Time for Mamemaki!” 2000), which appears to be set in the medieval period, a

group of fathers conspire to dress as oni and visit all the houses in the village.169 In this way, the

oni of setsubun is virtually identical to the namahage traditions elsewhere in Tōhoku, most

famously on the Oga peninsula in Akita prefecture, in which the oni is believed to visit on the eve

of solar, rather than lunar, new year.

Generally speaking, full-body costumed oni now seem to appear only in larger gatherings—

those at preschools, shrines, and temples—although a cursory search of YouTube will yield a

number of videos taken and uploaded by (evidently reasonably affluent, judging from their dress

and furnishings) Japanese families who have taken the trouble to procure a moderately-convincing

full-body costume with which to frighten their children. More commonly, domestic mamemaki

make use of simple masks of plastic or cardstock threaded with elastic which are available at any

¥100 shop or—in the case of the family with whom I personally celebrated setsubun—offered for

free in grocery stores with the purchase of a family-size cellophane sack of peanuts. Masks are

also made in preschools like Tokiwa as a craft project and sent home with the children for use in

their domestic observances later that evening. In all these latter cases the ruse is entirely transparent,

and all but the very youngest of children will be aware of the reality behind the pantomime. Indeed,

care is not always taken to keep the roles of oni and exorcist distinct; both in literature and in my

personal experience, it is not uncommon for children as well as adults to wear oni masks, and for

them to cast beans as they do so—even though according to the conceit of the rite it is the oni’s lot

to be struck by the beans rather than to throw them. The mamemaki upends the domestic order,

providing a time when running around the house, shrieking with delight and throwing things, is

not only permissible but encouraged.

169
Sakurai Nobuo, Setsubun da, mamemaki da (Tokyo: Kyōiku Gageki, 2000).

137
 Despite his fearsome aspect, then, the oni is seen as much a harbinger of fun and delight for

children as he is a real supernatural threat. The figure of the oni, then, is multivocal for children,

combining terror and play, reality and metaphor.

Oni Iconography and the Kami Connection

The contemporary oni has a fairly consistent iconography. His most essential features are his

horns (usually two but sometimes only one), his fangs, and his loincloth made of a tiger pelt. The

oni is also usually depicted as having fiery red skin, except where appearing in a group in which

case different primary colors are often used to differentiate among individuals. His hair is usually

long and wild, but I have also seen it curly; his body is larger than a human’s and more muscular,

his nose and eyes are larger still, his maw unbecomingly wide—all traits that invert the emic

understanding of the normative ethnic Japanese body. Extending this otherness, like many mythic

beasts, the oni is thought to reside in places beyond the sphere of human activity: in the deep

mountains,170 on an island far beyond the seas,171 in the depths of hell,172 or even in the clouds—

in which form he is known not as oni but as kaminari, the personification (/god) of thunder and

lightning.173

The most common emic explanation for this imagery—espoused by gyōji manuals for adults

and children alike,174 as well as in the displays at the Oni Museum in nearby Kitakami—is that the

most essential aspects of the oni’s physical form are a reference to the kimon or ‘demon gate’ that

170
Tomiyasu Yōko, Mayu to oni: yamanba no musume mayu no o-hanashi (Tokyo: Fukuinkan Shoten, 2004);
Masaoka Keiko, Kyō wa setsubun, fuku wa dare? (Tokyo: Sekai Bunka-sha, 2011).
171
Kawasaki Hiroshi and Kunimitsu Erika, Sorekara onigashima (Tokyo: Iwasaki Shoten, 2004); Miyajima Tomomi,
Akadon, Aodon, Kiidon (Tokyo: Aslan Shobō, 2002). And of course the legend of Momotarō.
172
Mizuki Shigeru, Mizuki shōnen to nonnon-bā no jigoku meguri; Shinju Mariko, Mottainai Baachan No Tengoku
to Jigoku No Hanashi (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2014); Tajima Yukihiko, Jigoku No Sōbē.
173
Kako Satoshi, Daruma-Chan to Kaminari-Chan (Tokyo: Fukuinkan Shoten, 1968); Satō Wakiko, Sentaku
Kaachan (Tokyo: Fukuinkan Shoten, 1978).
174
Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon, 11; Masuda Yuuko, Setsubun waiwai mamemaki no hi! (Tokyo:
Bunkeido, 2012), 22.

138
the Japanese inherited from Taoist geomancy, which holds that evil qi comes from the north-west

in the quadrant defined by the astrological signs of the ox (hence the horn) and the tiger (the fangs

and pelt). Noriko Reider, however, in her encyclopedic study of oni from antiquity to the present,

argues that this ushitora (‘ox-tiger’) explanation should be regarded as a folk etiology.175 Instead,

Reider identifies a number of strands of influence which coalesced to form the oni in his present

form: the indigenous Japanese, Chinese tradition broadly construed, and within the latter the

traditions of Buddhism and the branch of Taoist/geomantic thinking that in Japan became

onmyōdō.176

The oni, Reider observes, relies heavily on Buddhist iconographic conventions. Anything in

Buddhism that is indicative of power and ferocity is fiery, muscle-bound, great of eye, and fierce—

and the oni shares a certain visual similarity with the Myō-ō, with more antique representations of

Daikokuten or Bato Kannon, and with the guardian figures that are so often housed in temple gates,

guarding their entrance. Deriving ultimately from localized Indian spirit deities—the genii

locorum (yakshas and rakshasas) whom early Buddhists ‘converted’ to the dharma and pressed

into service as its protectors177—all of these figures are ultimately benevolent, their fearsome mien

set not against mankind but against the forces of ignorance and the temporal enemies of Buddhism.

Reider points to the genre of hell scrolls as the proximate origin of contemporary oni iconography,

with the grotesque, red-skinned demons who carry out the upsettingly savage but ultimately

beneficial purgative functions of the Buddhist hells. 178 These torturers provided a convenient

iconographic face for an otherwise/theretofore aniconic malevolent spirit.

175
Noriko T. Reider, Japanese Demon Lore: Oni, from Ancient Times to the Present (Logan, Utah: Utah State
University Press, 2010), 7.
176
Reider, 2–13.
177
Reider, 10–11; Robert DeCaroli, Haunting the Buddha: Indian Popular Religions and the Formation of Buddhism
(New York: Oxford University, 2004).
178
Reider, Japanese Demon Lore, 10–11.

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 What precisely the oni would have been in pre-Buddhist Japan is a more difficult question

to answer and is beyond the scope of this study, as it is deeply implicated in unanswered questions

about prehistoric Japanese theology. The on’yomi (Chinese) pronunciation of the character which

is currently used for this being, 鬼, is ki, and is cognate with Pinyin guĭ (Wade-Giles kuei). This

word in Chinese indicates the spirits of the dead—particularly those which may be malevolent or

who have not been satisfactorily pacified by ancestral rites. It is generally agreed that the native

Japanese word (kun’yomi) which became associated with that character, ‘oni’, seems to be a

corruption of the syllable ‘on’, meaning ‘occluded’ (the same on of onmyōdō, or ‘yin-yang way’,

where yin and yang represent occlusion and apparentness, shadow and light, respectively).179 The

word oni, then, would have been a way of referring to any being which hid itself from the

phenomenal world, and—relevant to my present purpose—would therefore have applied equally

to monsters and demons, spirits of the dead whether benevolent or malevolent, and sometimes

even to the kami themselves.180

The differences among the residents of the supernatural world have never been terribly well

defined in Japan. It is axiomatic that divinity in pre-Axial religious systems is often morally

ambiguous, with taxonomic boundaries among spirits being notoriously fluid. One way in which

this is understood in Japan is by saying that all spirits have both a beneficial and harmful aspect—

nigimitama/aramitama—making the dividing line between god and demon (like many things in

Japanese culture) somewhat arbitrary and dependent on context.181

179
Reider, 5.
180
Reider, 2–3.
181
Herbert Plutschow, Matsuri: The Festivals of Japan (Japan Library, 1996), 21; Nelson, A Year in the Life of a
Shinto Shrine, 27; Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan: An Anthropological View
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 38.

140
 The idea that the oni at his core is merely powerful and not unfailingly villainous is amply

confirmed in the gyōji manuals. The manual Tanoshimu explains that “Although the oni is a

thoroughly bad guy, in Japan we also have stories of good oni as well. That’s because in Japan,

since time immemorial, many oni have been beings (sonzai) on whom humans are able to rely

(tayori ni sareru).”182 The manual then goes on, in a moment of nationalism, to blame the Chinese

for the oni’s poor reputation, noting that the mamemaki began in China as the tsuina exorcism,

which was performed on the New Year to rid the court of the evil influences that entered through

the aforementioned demon’s gate.183

In a system that construes power residing outside the community in supernatural terms,184

oni do not even necessarily have to imply a supernatural being in its strictest sense. Reider argues

that, particularly during the Fujiwara regency, the term oni was in wide use in government

documents to refer to—literally to demonize—humans who were opposed to or merely outside of

Imperial control. Legends of Shuten Dōji, the oni king of Mt. Ōe, near Kyoto, for example, may

be based in legends of bands of outlaws who took up residence outside the capital, or, alternately,

the oni’s association with lightning and his use of an iron rod may also encode a reference to a

community of (Korean) metallurgists who were known to have operated in the area of Ōeyama,

plying their foreign technologies on the fringes of society. 185 Ethnographic literature from

elsewhere in the world is full of cultures that cast the power of blacksmiths in a demonic light—

sinister because of their immense technological power.186 In either case, the attribution of oni-hood

182
Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon, 30.
183
Miura Yasuko, 11; Masuda Yuuko, Setsubun waiwai mamemaki no hi!, 25.
184
Teigo Yoshida, “The Stranger as God: The Place of the Outsider in Japanese Folk Religion,” Ethnology 20, no. 2
(1981): 87–99.
185
Reider, Japanese Demon Lore, 48–49.
186
Yoshida, “The Stranger as God,” 88, 95.

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inheres when it is in the interests of the speaker to situate a given actor beyond the realm of

civilized humanity.

We see something similar occurring with some of the earliest uses of the word kami as well.

Breen and Teeuwen point to the example of a gazetteer (fudoki) from Hitachi commissioned

around 720CE, which “depicts the kami as the original owners of the land. They are dangerous and

violent and allow the people to live on the land only if soothed with offerings and prayers.”187 The

kami, according to the gazetteer, had serpentine bodies with horns on their heads and were chased

off their land only by military force. It is enticing to say that these kami, like oni, could be the

targets of a sinister euhemerism, with the displaced inhabitants of land into which the Yamato

culture wished to spread being reimagined as either gods or spirits, able to bless and curse in equal

measure. If the chief difference between kami and yōkai (a generic category of hobgoblins of which

oni are the prime example) is that kami are worshipped and yōkai are not,188 it means that the oni

is much more than a folkloric bogeyman, a relic from folk culture not to be taken seriously. Rather,

he is part and parcel with the entire Japanese supernatural universe, cut from the same cloth as and

entirely contiguous with the kami and Buddhas.

Demons and Discipline

I have now established what the oni is generally: he is a ubiquitous monster, a familiar fixture of

the Japanese religious imaginary, with one foot in the folkloric tradition of a vanished, pre-modern

Japan and the other in the still living world of Japanese religion, existing within the same

culturally-postulated imaginary as the more ‘official’ deities of Shinto and Buddhism. Now I turn

187
John Breen and Mark Teeuwen, A New History of Shinto, Blackwell Brief Histories of Religion Series (Chichester ;
Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 25.
188
Reider, Japanese Demon Lore, 12; Ichirō Hori, Folk Religion in Japan; Continuity and Change, ed. Joseph Mitsuo
Kitagawa and Alan L. Miller, Haskell Lectures on History of Religions, New ser., no. 1 (Tokyo: University of Tokyo
Press, 1968); Herbert Plutschow, “The Fear of Evil Spirits in Japanese Literature,” Transactions of the Asiatic Society
of Japan 3, no. 18 (1983): 133–51.

142
my focus to the interaction of this monster with children, and the ways he is used as an instrument

of pedagogy and socialization. The first of these concerns the role of the oni as fearsome

supernatural punisher.

In his sensitive and insightful investigation of children’s literature, Jerome Griswold spends

an entire chapter on “scariness” as an essential trait of emotionally meaningful and instructive

children’s books. Children are drawn to fear on one level because it is fun. If the essence of humor

is the violation of expectations, then there is nothing more fun than the terror followed by relief of

a good scare. 189 More importantly, Griswold argues, confronting fear through the medium of

literature helps to arm children against the very real and terrifying world in which they live.

[F]ear is more acute in kids’ lives than in the lives of grown-ups. It may be
the terror of going to bed alone in the dark. It may be the threatening sound of
the vacuum cleaner or the sucking bathtub drain. It may be bullies in the
schoolyard. It may be the one house in the neighborhood, occupied by an old
woman or an old man, avoided by all the kids. Or it may be still other adults,
ones they have been warned about, the ones who lie in wait to snatch them.190

According to Griswold, there are two purposes to which fear is employed in children’s

literature: one that uses terror to scare children away from bad behavior, and another that seeks to

embolden them against a terrifying and uncertain world. 191 Although Griswold’s argument is

specifically about literature, the same is true of cultural practices like setsubun—which, if they are

a story a society tells itself about itself, are essentially enacted texts.192 Both of these strategies are

in play in Japan—both in literature and practice—and I shall examine them in order.

189
Griswold, Feeling like a Kid, 31–50.
190
Griswold, 35–37.
191
Griswold, 38–40.
192
Clifford Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic
Books, 1973), 452.

143
Scared Straight: Oni, Punishment, and Parental Authority
The classic example of Griswold’s ‘scared straight’ category of fear in Western children’s

literature is the German tale Struwwelpeter by Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann, first published in 1845.193

Strewwelpeter comprises a series of verse tales in which naughty children—all but one of them

boys—all meet nasty ends that fit their crimes. Expanding over the course of several editions,

Strewwelpeter eventually came to include stories about perpetrators of all sorts of undesirable

childhood traits: thumb-sucking, not looking where one is going, gluttony, carelessness with

matches, and slovenliness.194 A more recent example, Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate

Factory (1964), recapitulates this theme by having each of the golden ticket holders be undone by

his or her greatest weakness. These stories are very much in keeping with the 19th century approach

to child rearing dictum that sparing the rod spoils the child. Jack Zipes situates the pedagogical

aims of Strewwelpeter within a particular class dynamic, namely that of bourgeois German society:

“throughout the nineteenth century the child became regarded more and more as an investment for

the future and the measuring stick of the moral and ethical qualities of a particular family and

society. Therefore the failure of a child reflected upon the stature of the parents.” 195 Rigid

discipline was believed necessary to raise effective children, and parents were not above

concocting phantoms to help enforce their norms.

The traditional forms of oni-related practice, I believe, partake of this same disciplinary

motivation. Both setsubun and the related practice of namahage nominally involve grown men—

the fathers of the village or neighborhood—dressing as oni in order to terrorize houses with small

children. While this does not appear to happen with regularity any longer in Mizusawa, the practice

193
Griswold, Feeling like a Kid, 37.
194
Griswold, 38.
195
Jack Zipes, Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children’s Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry
Potter (New York: Routledge, 2001), 158.

144
is being preserved in some places elsewhere in the Tōhoku region. The namahage museum in Oga,

Akita Prefecture, for example, stages this visitation year-round for tourists, who crowd into a soot-

blackened and tatami-floored traditional living room, listen to a docent explain the festival, and

finally, come face to face with costumed museum staff who invade the room in a reenactment of

traditional namahage practice. For an extra fee, the actors can be asked to personalize their

admonitions, a fact which I discovered when the oni admonished me (at the behest of my host

mother, she revealed later) to persevere in my studies. There were no children present when I

attended this performance, but later on in the museum a child burst into tears seeing the namahage

costume on a mannequin. Because the namahage is an important regional cultural property, statues

and images of oni are all over Akita—and troupes of namahage performers sometimes do

exhibition tours throughout the region. The younger of my two host sisters had brought her brood

of three to see such an exhibition in the year before my fieldwork when it came to Morioka where

they live.

This same sister, it is worth mentioning, uses the threat of oni (and another fascinating

supernatural being, the tengu) 196 to secure compliance when her children are misbehaving.

Unfortunately, because she lived an hour away in Morioka, I was unable to see how frequently she

employed this disciplinary strategy under more ordinary circumstances. Nevertheless, I was able

to make some observations. First, it is worth noting that there are differences in usage of this tactic

between the two adult sisters of my host family. The younger sister (mother of 3, aged 2, 4, and

6), whose education was in the hospitality industry, used it far more often than the sister who went

to school for early childhood education (mother of 2, aged 3 and 5). I only observed the elder sister

threaten an oni visit on a single occasion, and I believe she did so for my benefit, as we had been

The most thorough examination of whom remains Marius W. De Visser, “The Tengu,” Transactions of the Asiatic
196

Society of Japan 36 (1908): 25–99.

145
discussing my interest in the practice only moments before. The elder daughter said that she does

not like to use this strategy, preferring instead to engage with and redirect her children’s less

desirable behavior through more direct, non-supernatural means. This is consonant with her

training as an early-childhood educator, for whom (as I discussed regarding the ema) disciplinary

problems are typically dealt with by a combination of limited intervention and redirection of the

child’s energy.

Interestingly, when I have seen the threat of supernatural punishment used, it nevertheless

conforms to the general Japanese tendency to avoid arguments from authority when dealing with

childhood discipline and is phrased instead as an argument from emotional consequence. 197 The

Japanese parent does not generally use appeals to personal authority in discipline, as these would

threaten the closeness of the bond of indulgent love (amae) that Japanese parents, especially

mothers, work so hard to develop. Rather than threaten this sense of closeness with arguments

from authority (“because I said so”), the Japanese parent is far more likely to frame disciplinary

desires in terms of positive consequences for the child (“you will feel better if you do”) or the

feelings of others (“how do you think that makes me feel?”).198 So essential to the child’s sense of

security, moreover, is this indulgent closeness that the mother's ultimate threat, when faced with

extreme obstinacy, is to yield to the child, but using terms that imply that, should the child persist

in following this course of action, that he is choosing to terminate this relationship.199 Maintaining

the idea of the adult as omnibenevolent caretaker is essential in the preschool environment as well,

where teachers likewise avoid arguments from authority in disciplinary situations. As I have

197
Thomas P. Rohlen, “Order in Japanese Society: Attachment, Authority, and Routine,” Journal of Japanese Studies
15, no. 1 (1989): 20.
198
R. D. Hess et al., “Family Influences on School Readiness and Achievement in Japan and the Unites States: An
Overview of a Longitudinal Study,” in Child Development and Education in Japan, ed. Harold W. Stevenson et al.
(New York: W.H. Freeman, 1986), 156.
199
Hess et al., 156.

146
already shown in my discussion of ema, one of the chief strategies of the preschool teacher in

resolving disputes is to position herself as an outside observer, intervening only when necessary

in order—as parents do—to encourage the child to think about his or her actions in terms of their

emotional consequences for other members of their peer set. As Catherine Lewis observes, not

only does framing criticism of a child’s actions as coming from peers rather than adults help ensure

that the child’s future good behavior be self-motivated, but also it does not threaten the child’s

understanding of him- or herself as an intrinsically good child.200 By framing “negative sanctions

as intrinsic consequences of their acts,” the adult manages to curb the child’s negative behavior

without threatening the strong affective bond between them or implying that the child is essentially

or irredeemably bad.201

This same disciplinary pattern inheres in the way threats of supernatural punishment are

made. The parent, in my experience, never positions herself as an active instrument of vengeance

(e.g. “stop that or I will call the oni”), but rather as a dispassionate observer that a supernatural

visitation is a natural consequence of the child’s poor behavior. She casts her admonition in the

neutral terms of an observation: hora! Mita no? Look! Did you see that? Outside! I think I saw an

oni (tengu, etc.). He’s probably coming because you are crying / won’t eat / hit your sister / etc.

That’s awfully scary; I would change my behavior if I were you—you wouldn’t want him to eat

you...and so on. When the oni is employed as an instrument of coercion, it allows the parent to

apply direct discipline while preserving a certain culpable deniability—for it is not the parent who

is enforcing the rules but rather the supernatural punisher. The parental admonition, then, becomes

an act of loving concern for the welfare of a child who, through his misbehavior, renders him

susceptible to harm by marauding oni and the like. The parent thus positions herself within the

200
Lewis, “Children’s Social Development in Japan: Research Directions,” 189.
201
Lewis, 189.

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intimate, caring space of a concerned third party, powerless to stop an independent supernatural

actor, but able to guide the child to the means of self-salvation.

The same concerned outsider stance is made possible through a smartphone application—

Oni kara denwa, or Oni-by-Phone—which this same younger sister uses with her children. The

app simulates a phone call with a supernatural being who speaks to the child through a prerecorded

reprimand. Although it is called Oni kara denwa, the version my host sister used also includes

other beings, some of them non-Japanese: for example, her middle son (age 4), she reports, is

particularly afraid of the uchūjin (space alien). It is essential to note that the application is meant

to be triggered by the parent discreetly, and that it mimics the ringtone of an incoming call that

must be answered before the supernatural being speaks. The parent, therefore, as before, does not

portray herself as teaming up against her child or calling in supernatural reinforcements, but rather

as the passive conduit through which an oni or other being reaches out independently to admonish

the misbehaving child. In this way, the parent teaches the child that the oni and other beings are

able to see the child’s malfeasance even from a great distance, thereby inculcating in the child the

sense that a wrong need not necessarily be observed to be punished—an attitude which Ara

Norenzayan has argued is one of the backbones of religion’s use in the construction of complex

societies.202 By positioning herself as an interested third party, the parent is able to preserve the

indulgent intimacy (amae) of the parent-child relationship from the damage of an overt show of

anger or force. The parent is not the rulegiver, as the rules of society exist independently of parental

authority, but rather the person who can show the child how following the rules is his surest

safeguard against danger.

202
Norenzayan, Big Gods.

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Overcoming Fear and the Power of Ritual Performance
I now turn to Griswold’s second suggestion, that fear is employed in children’s literature so

that, in learning to overcome it, the child will develop the resources for dealing with other of life’s

less overtly monstrous vicissitudes. Reacting against the graphic excesses of early children’s

literature like Hoffmann’s, the majority of contemporary children’s literature now eschews the use

of fear out of a mistaken belief that childhood is a time of innocence and that that innocence must

be preserved at all costs.203 But in rejecting the coercive use of fear in the creation of bourgeois

conformity, as Jack Zipes has it, we cut our children off from other meaningful uses of fear in their

lives. This sentiment is best captured by Maurice Sendak—acclaimed author of Where the Wild

Things Are—on the occasion of his acceptance of the Caldecott medal:

Certainly we want to protect our children from new and painful experiences
that are beyond their emotional comprehension and that intensify anxiety; and
to a point we can prevent premature exposure to such experiences. That is
obvious. But what is just as obvious—and what is too often overlooked, is the
fact that from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with
disrupting emotions, that fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their
everyday lives, that they continually cope with frustration as best they can.
[...] It is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means
they have for taming the Wild Things.204

Sendak, like Griswold, attributes the success of Wild Things to his recognition of a child’s fears

and a willingness to represent them honestly. By acknowledging both the fearfulness of childhood

and the child’s capacity to engage with it, terror, apart from being fun, can also be instructive.

In some books, the oni is used to represent the child’s fear of a social “other” and in this role

reassures them that there is more to a person than meets the eye. In Oni ja nai yo, onigiri da yo

(“We’re not Oni, We’re Onigiri” 2012), a group of gray-skinned, physically unthreatening oni

spend their days picnicking in the mountains, devouring vast quantities of onigiri (roughly

203
Jackie E. Stallcup, “Power, Fear, and Children’s Picture Books,” Children’s Literature 30, no. 1 (January 1, 2009):
129.
204
Maurice Sendak, Caldecott & Co.: Notes on Books & Pictures, 1st ed (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux,
1988), 151.

149
triangular balls of sticky rice pressed around a variety of fillings, and wrapped in dried seaweed

for portability).205 When they unintentionally frighten off a group of humans who stumbled on

their picnic spot, the oni conspire to show their good intentions by preparing a feast of onigiri to

bring down to the village below. They try to make this delivery several times, but each time the

villagers take flight before the oni can make their intentions plain. When at length the oni realize

that the humans are afraid of them, they disguise themselves to look like onigiri, covering their

heads (and telltale horns) with rice. The humans then accept their friendship and send them back

to the mountaintop with goodwill and cartloads of gifts.

Tsuki matsuri no yoru (The Night of the Moon Festival, 2002) portrays kind oni somewhat

more passively.206 As the title suggests, this does not take place on setsubun, but rather on the night

of the mid-autumn moon-viewing festival. Lolo the rabbit wants to stay out all night for the

moonlight dance, but her older brother, thinking she will be too scared, teases her by saying that

the oni will be out. But Lolo’s mind is made up, and she sneaks out of the house in the middle of

the night. She quickly loses her way and stumbles across a drum circle of dancing oni in a clearing

of an unfamiliar wood. Mistaking her ears for horns in the shadows, a cute oni child (chibi oni)

beckons her out of her hiding place to join the dance (See Appendix Illus. 4.1). Lolo enjoys the

bacchanal until she stumbles, disrupting the dance and giving herself away. It looks as though the

oni are going to eat her for intruding, but when she begs them not to they laugh. “No matter who

they are, anyone who arrives on the night of the moon festival is our guest,” the oni reassure her.207

When the dance ends, the chibi oni brings Lolo back to her house, where her brother is waiting.

205
Shigeta Sayaka, Oni Ja Nai Yo, Onigiri Da Yo (Tokyo: Ehon no Mori, 2012).
206
Masamichi Kahoru, Usagi no Lolo tsuki matsuri no yoru, Watashi no Ehon (PHP Shoten, 2002).
207
Masamichi Kahoru, 24–25.

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The oni vanishes off across the moonlit field, but not before accepting Lolo’s thanks and promising

to come back next year.

Although they appear frightening in the flickering light of the bonfire, the oni turn out to be

no threat at all. When she joins the dance, she sees that there are adult oni and children oni, boy

oni and girl oni—they have a society and family structure just like humans (or, in this case, their

stand-in, rabbits). As in other examples, the story uses a child-oni as the point of contact for the

child protagonist—the use of the word ‘chibi’ underscoring the oni’s cuteness.

The moral, here, is this: that which may have seemed monstrous from a distance can actually

be quite unthreatening. In this way, Tsuki matsuri no yoru satisfies Griswold’s criterion that the

monster story embolden the child against his fear—in this case, the fear is of initially-terrifying

members of an out-group and of feelings that one may be an unwanted intruder in novel social

situations. The dust jacket suggests that it is intended for children between 4 and 5 years old, which

seems about right for the age when children are beginning to find themselves in stressful social

situations outside the home. Even so, the story nevertheless reinforces certain in-group/out-group

boundaries: the oni cite the festival as the cause for their forbearance, leaving open the possibility

that an intrusion at any other time might have led to more dire consequences. The oni child’s

promise to come back and play in a year’s time further reinforces the idea that contact at other

times may not necessarily be appropriate.

Sorekara onigashima (“Afterward on Oni Island” 2004) purports to pick up where the legend

of Momotarō leaves off, after the hero and his three animal companions had subdued the oni who

had been menacing Onigashima.208 In this case, however, it appears that the oni had actually been

living happily on the island alongside its human residents; their children were fast friends, and

208
Kawasaki Hiroshi and Kunimitsu Erika, Sorekara onigashima.

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everyone carried on in peace and goodwill (See Appendix Illus. 4.2). Under the able leadership of

Momotarō, whom we see advancing deep into old age as the story progresses, the island is home

to a prosperous and thriving community of human and oni. Punning on the classic formula, the

story says that when setsubun rolled around, the children’s refrain was fuku wa uchi, oni asobō—

or, ‘in with good luck, let’s play with oni.’ This particular example is rather banal when compared

to Naita akaoni or Onigiri. Its main message seeming simply to be that camaraderie in spite of

difference is to be valued, it dwells less on the drama of alienation and more on the satisfaction

that follows its successful resolution.

In examining the ways in which the monster is used to teach a lesson in overcoming a child’s

fear, it is instructive to consider as well the means by which that fear is overcome, and the source

of the child-protagonist’s salvation. In her article on the uses of fear in American children’s

literature, Jackie Stallcup brings our attention to the common but problematic use of the parental

figure as the ultimate source of aid and comfort. The clearest example of her point is the case of

Ghost’s Hour, Spook’s Hour (Bunting/Carrick, 1987). A little boy is afraid of the dark and wanders

in increasing terror through a once-familiar house that is contorted by the darkness into

unrecognizably menacing forms. His fear is dispelled not through a personal transformation or the

confrontation or vanquishing of an imagined enemy, but rather upon attaining the room in which

his parents, still awake and illuminated by an evil-banishing glow, offer him comfort and

security.209 On its face, this story intends to reassure the child reader that there is nothing in his

own darkened home to fear; but, as Stallcup argues, it does so through the implicit message that it

is his parents—not himself—on whom the child must rely for existential security. 210 This

209
Eve Bunting and Donald Carrick, Ghost’s Hour, Spook’s Hour (New York: Clarion Books, 1987); Stallcup, “Power,
Fear, and Children’s Picture Books,” 132–34.
210
Stallcup, “Power, Fear, and Children’s Picture Books,” 134.

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reinforces a power-dynamic between parent and child that is, of course, in line with the parent’s

sense of self-importance, and in so doing, echoes the warning from Griswold, Sendak, Bettelheim

and others that by providing children exclusively with literature in which peril is trivialized and its

banishment externally provided, we rob them of the resources to develop resiliency in

themselves.211

If we examine the resolution of conflict in Japanese examples, however, we find an entirely

different argument being made. Whereas Stallcup’s examples show the parent serving as the

intercessor and savior, we largely see the Japanese protagonist saving him- or herself—and, more

importantly, saving himself through performance of ritual. Let us consider a few examples.

Mayu to oni (Mayu and the oni, 2004) tells the story of a wild yamanba-ko (‘mountain hag

child’) who is lured back to the lair of a hungry oni who she thinks just wants to play. He engages

her in helping to build the means of her own devouring under the pretense that she is helping him

build—not a cauldron—but rather a soaking tub which they will enjoy together, a task which she

accomplishes handily through her superhuman strength. Mayu—still clueless—triumphs by

naively applying a lesson in etiquette she learned from her mother, deferring the honor of first

entry to her oni playmate when the time comes to enter the scalding cauldron (See Appendix Illus.

4.3). The oni is badly burned, and in her goodness Mayu carries him bodily to her home where her

mother cures the oni’s wounds and makes him a feast, winning his friendship forever.212

Inter-generational co-bathing in Japan is normal in a family setting, so this is not intended to

send up red flags of sexual predation, although the stranger danger element is absolutely present.

The story establishes a clear dramatic irony: the reader is aware of the oni’s evil intent even if

Mayu is not, which impresses on the child reader to use caution when trusting the intentions of

211
Griswold, Feeling like a Kid; Sendak, Caldecott & Co.; Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment.
212
Tomiyasu Yōko, Mayu to oni: yamanba no musume mayu no o-hanashi.

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members of the out-group. As Mayu never realizes the oni’s plans, his undoing is entirely a

consequence of his own ill will. The reader learns through Mayu’s example the lesson that acts of

kindness and generosity can convert enemies into friends, and Mayu, for her part, saves herself

from certain destruction through the application of good etiquette—inspired by mindfulness of an

admonition of her mother’s to always observe politeness (reigi).

Iikara iikara (2006) deals with a slightly different kind of oni—namely kaminari-san, the

personification of thunder, who is consistently illustrated in contemporary fiction with

iconography identical to that of the oni.213 It is a widely held belief among Japanese children that

kaminari-san occupies himself with the theft of belly buttons, and children who are afraid of

thunderstorms can often be seen clutching their navels protectively against this violation. In Iikara

iikara, a parent and child pair of kaminari descend from the clouds unbidden, but rather than being

chased away are instead treated very hospitably by the protagonist’s kindly grandfather. Because

it is their nature to do so, however, the kaminari pair do steal both grandfather’s and grandson’s

belly buttons when they leave. But because they had been welcomed so warmly the oni return the

belly buttons on the following day with a note thanking the humans for their hospitality. 214

Although it is the grandfather who ultimately suggests the more hospitable course of action,

thereby saving his grandson from peril, the story portrays the grandfather not as a powerful

intercessor (as are the parents in Ghost's Hour, Spook's Hour) but rather as a source of information

and a model of correct behavior. On each page, the grandson performs for the child-oni the same

hospitable actions that the grandfather performs for the adult oni (See Appendix Illus. 4.4). It is

213
Satō Wakiko, Sentaku Kaachan; Sena Keiko, Dorakyurā-tte kowai no? (Tokyo: Komine Shoten, 2008); Kako
Satoshi, Daruma-Chan to Kaminari-Chan; Hasegawa Yoshifumi, Iikara Iikara (Ehon-kan, 2006).
214
Hasegawa Yoshifumi, Iikara Iikara.

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not the grandfather, then, who saves the day, but rather a coordinated correct observation of the

rules of hospitality.

Thus far, I have examined only stories with oni antagonists in which the acts of ritual

conformity that serve both to overcome the demon and, more importantly, convert him into a friend

are applications—not merely of fearlessness, as in the case of Lolo the rabbit—but of ritualized

prosocial behavior. Naturally, many stories that deal with the oni as he relates specifically to the

observations of setsubun also rely on the demon-banishing power of ritual, specifically the ritual

of mamemaki. One such book is simply entitled Setsubun (2009) and belongs to the Kyōgen ehon

series of picture books that seeks to introduce children to kyōgen, a type of traditional Japanese

comic theater which is performed as a lighter intermission between acts of nō drama.215 Setsubun

tells the story of an attractive wife left alone at home on setsubun night. An oni arrives at her door

exhausted by an uninterrupted flight from the mythical island of hōrai. Briefly deterred by a sprig

of holly on the lintel, he removes his invisibility-granting straw hat and raincoat and raps on the

door. He is smitten at once by the young wife when she answers, despite both her terror and her

courageous insistence that he depart immediately. But the oni presses his suit aggressively, albeit

with a broadness and goggle-eyed, leering incompetence that obscures somewhat the rapacious

misogyny of the plot, and will not take no for an answer (See Appendix Illus. 4.5).

Rebuffed a final time, the oni resorts to weeping as his final gambit. The oni’s tears bring to

the young wife’s mind the words of a proverb—oni no me ni mo namida (“there are tears even in

the eyes of an oni”)—and with it, two essential pieces of oni lore. The first is that the oni is in

possession of both a straw cloak of invisibility and the wish-granting mallet that is also associated

with the kami of good fortune. The second—somewhat surprisingly, since she had already

215
Motoshita Izumi, Setsubun, Kyōgen ehon (Kodansha, 2009).

155
prepared the holly charm—was that the oni can be driven out by fukumame (consecrated soybeans)

and the traditional invocation that accompanies the mamemaki. Changing her demeanor entirely,

she requests the oni’s magic items as a pledge of his devotion, which he hands over gladly, before

she chases him out into the night, never to be seen again.

While the young wife is the instrument of her own salvation, it is notably not through her

direct and forceful denial of the oni’s advances that she achieves deliverance but rather through

her recourse to tradition. Not only does she save herself from danger, but in doing so she enriches

herself and her husband with the treasures that the oni leaves behind, thanks to her recollection of

cultural knowledge and application of ritual.

Hitoribocchi no kamisama (“The Lonely Kamisama,” 1980) also resolves its major dramatic

tension through the application of the mamemaki exorcism.216 The titular lonely kami ventures out

of his little, neglected urban shrine (which has been hemmed in by urban sprawl in the years since

his last sortie) to go on a walk. Stumbling across a larger and livelier shrine, he realizes by the

mamemaki he sees in progress that it must be setsubun. Going to sit on a bench in a nearby park,

he then overhears a group of oni who, finding themselves suddenly homeless, are hatching a plan

to infiltrate the home of two children who have been left by themselves for the evening—and

therefore have no one to procure fukumame for them. Hearing this, the kami springs into action,

rushing back to the shrine to collect a sackful of fukumame before arriving in advance of the oni

at the house in question. He then assumes the physical form of the children’s grandfather—who

resides in distant Hokkaido—and, being welcomed inside, oversees their raucous mamemaki (See

Appendix Illus. 4.6). Here, too, the oni are very much a real threat, and they are driven away

216
Takezaki Yūhi, Hitoribocchi No Kamisama (Tokyo: Kin-no-hoshi Shuppan-sha, 1980).

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through the agency of the children. The kami/grandfather may have intervened to provide the

children with the means to drive away the evil, but it is they who have the power to execute it.

The familial role is even more pronounced in Setsubun da mamemaki da (2000), and here,

too, tradition is the savior.217 A troupe of three fathers disguised as oni threaten to seize and gobble

up any crybabies, cowards, and bullies in the house. The elder two of five siblings step in to protect

their little brothers and sister—older sister holding the little ones close for comfort, and the older

brother daring the oni to eat him first. The mother, whom the reader knows to be a party to the

deception, affirms that there are no children matching that description to be found in her house,

and begins hurling fukumame at the oni. The rest of the children soon follow her example (okā no

mane o shite). Once the father has fallen and exposed the ruse, he declares, laughing, “and that is

why there is neither crybaby, coward, or bully in our house. It’s all thanks to a good oni!” (See

Appendix Illus. 4.7). The willingness of the older siblings to come to the defense of the younger

is sufficient to demonstrate both their good character and the absence of any badness in the house.

In a metaphorically sophisticated twist, Setsubun da demonstrates that efficacy of the mamemaki

is self-fulfilling—that willingness to stand up to the oni banishes those traits that they were sent to

punish

As with Mayu, Iikara, and Hitoribocchi, the sage advice of an adult is instrumental, whether

in providing the physical apparatus of the exorcism or in providing the knowledge and wisdom to

overcome the oni. Setsubun kyōgen differs only in that, being a fully-socialized adult, the young

wife needed no such instruction, but rather merely recollection of past instructions received,

presumably, before her marriage and therefore (from a pre-modern perspective) before attaining

adulthood. The correct observation of ritual behavior banishes demons, whatever they may be.

217
Sakurai Nobuo, Setsubun da, mamemaki da.

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Children, then, in being taught how to overcome the oni, are learning to value tradition in a way

consonant with adult expectations, just as Kirika does in Ehōmaki. Adherence to traditional ritual

expectations is efficacious, and doing what everyone else does ensures good results.

Monsters and Metaphor

But in order for this lesson to be optimally efficacious, not only must the child be taught that

an answer to most problems can be found in the conscientious performance of ritual and etiquette,

but he or she must also be given the means to understand that the oni is a metaphor. When scholars

of children’s literature or fairy tales talk about giving children the means to banish their demons,

the demons of the most effective tales are always symbolic representations of real dangers in the

child’s life. Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are would be poor consolation if it were taken as an

instruction manual. That these Japanese setsubun narratives offer as prescription engaging in a

ritual activity to be performed at a specific day and time (I have never seen a Japanese child be

encouraged to throw fukumame at any other time of year) limits its applicability somewhat as a

method of taming other, realer demons beyond the comforting pale of fantasy.

But this criticism only obtains if we take the superficial view that the child sees the oni as a

real threat to his or her safety, one that exists somewhere in the world and has the ability to appear

in the flesh to menace the child at setsubun, during the namahage, or at any other time to gobble

him up if he is willful or recalcitrant. Of course we know that there is no oni—but to what extent

does the child take a literal view of the oni who comes at setsubun, and to what extent is the child

taught to interpret that oni figuratively?

Mamemaki and Masquerade – How ‘Real’ is the Setsubun Oni?

The sacrosanctity with which the Santa Claus myth is guarded in large swaths of

contemporary American society goes largely without saying. The child’s belief in the literal

existence of Santa Claus is jealously guarded by adults, many of whom look on their own discovery
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of Santa’s unreality as an important, if traumatizing, rite of passage. We take great pains to ensure

that no children are in earshot whenever the deception is discussed, and even those among us who

consider the whole deception to be mean-spirited think twice before presuming to ruin the illusion

for children not under our guardianship.

No such conspiracy exists in Japan with respect to the oni who arrives at setsubun. That the

oni of the mamemaki is a human in disguise is hardly even obscured enough to qualify as an open

secret. It is simply overt. Take as an example the way it is treated in Setsubun da. There is an

element of deception involved here: while the children are out of earshot the father and mother

discuss his plans to dress in oni garb and scare them.218 When at the end of the book the father/oni

makes his appearance, the children—and the complicit mother—respond as though he were

genuine. The father/oni trips and falls as he is fleeing the mamemaki, losing his mask and exposing

his face. In this moment, the child protagonists realize the ruse, and everyone is in good humor.219

Nor is this text unique in presenting the assumption of the oni role plainly. Even stories where

‘real’ oni appear as characters refer openly to the mamemaki masquerade. One such story,

Oninoko-kun ga yatte kita! (“A Little Oni Child Came to Visit!” 2000) is framed by a boy waiting

for his salaryman father to come home and honor his promise to ‘become the oni for him.’220 And,

of course, children’s books make no secret that this masquerade is undertaken by the children

themselves at their hoikuen and yochien. 221 Indeed, domestic practice of mamemaki does not

demand that the oni be played by a parent—or even be personified at all. One portion of Wa no

gyōji tanoshimu ehon addresses the question of whether it is acceptable for someone other than

218
Sakurai Nobuo, 16–19.
219
Sakurai Nobuo, 22–29.
220
Otōsan, mamemaki no oni ni nattekireru tte, yakusoku shita no ni na. Kowase Tamami, Oninoko-kun ga yatte-kita!,
2–3.
221
Nomura Takaaki, Obāchan no ehōmaki; Kowase Tamami, Oninoko-kun ga yatte-kita!; Masuda Yuuko, Setsubun
waiwai mamemaki no hi! etc.

159
the father to play the role of oni,222 answering that yes, the mamemaki can be fun no matter who

plays the oni so long as he is easily identifiable.223

The family in Setsubun da uses an elaborate costume, some parts of which the father

enumerates in the text: his oni shoes, his iron club. The illustrations present the father as completely

transformed, visually identical in every respect to the ‘real’ oni that appear elsewhere in the

narrative. But the setting for this story is an idealized traditional past. When the father in the

contemporary Oninoko-kun finally does come home, he changes into ordinary street clothes and

puts on a simple paper mask—and the very same mask is reprinted on the back cover of the dust

jacket, demarcated with a dotted line, and on the inside flap a speech bubble from the titular

oninoko exhorts children to cut it up and use it to that purpose at home. Similar masks appear on

preschoolers in several other books which they received as part of a classroom activity; 224 and the

children of Tokiwa kindergarten prepared their masks in advance to be used at school on setsubun

during the day, and then again later at home when they did mamemaki with their families.

All of which is to reiterate, then, that there is no serious attempt to represent the domestic

mamemaki oni—either in literature or in practice—as a ‘real’ oni. When the deception behind the

pantomime is exposed in children’s books, it is not framed as though it were shattering an illusion,

but rather as common knowledge: that the child reader of the text sees through the deception before

the characters do presumes that this will not come as a surprise to them. As indeed it shouldn’t.

The Santa Claus illusion is easy to sustain not only because of the coordinate collusion of broader

culture in the deception, but also because he works his magic in secret. The domestic oni, on the

222
“Otōsan ga oni ni nattemo ii no kana?”
223
“Wakariyasuku oni no yaku wo kimete mo tanoshimemasu ne.” Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon,
29.
224
Nomura Takaaki, Obāchan no ehōmaki; Masuda Yuuko, Setsubun waiwai mamemaki no hi!; Kowase Tamami,
Oninoko-kun ga yatte-kita!

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other hand, is useless if he is not observed. Moreover, he is usually only thinly disguised, and even

in the case of a more complete transformation his presence generally necessitates the absence of a

parent—the Clark Kent to his Superman—a substitution which would not take much for an astute

child to see through, especially not if the parent unmasks himself at the end. And yet, when I asked

whether teachers at Tokiwa would console children by saying that the costumed visitors were not

real, I was told in partially-idiomatic English that doing so would “shatter their dreams” (i.e. break

the illusion)—so there is a degree to which culpable deniability is maintained. For the adults to

confirm what the older children already suspect would be doing too much. And that also discounts

the very real possibility that an unknown adult in a full-body costume is a frightening thing unto

itself.

If there is a purpose behind the dramatic irony in stories like Setsubun da where the reader

but not the child characters are aware of the deception, I think it is to reassure the reader that if

they have at any point been afraid of a mamemaki oni, it was entirely due to an asymmetry of

information that has since been resolved. Though he may have been fooled once, the child has now

been initiated into the secret and can participate in the fun knowingly. And as such, he now is more

like the adults than like his younger siblings who may not yet be in on the secret, beginning his

assimilation to full adult knowledge that will intensify, as we saw in Obāchan to ehōmaki, in

primary school.

Even so, that the mamemaki oni is known to be a family member in disguise does not

necessarily mean that there are no ‘real’ oni lurking elsewhere. Genuinely frightening oni, when

they do appear in the literature I surveyed, only seem to appear openly in fantastical settings far

removed from the reader: Mayu to oni takes place deep in the mountains, Setsubun kyōgen is safely

set in the distant past, and so on. Where the oni do appear in contemporary settings, moreover,

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they do so unseen to the humans around them. For example, Ehōmaki closes on an exterior view

of Kirika’s house, on which both night and a light snowfall have descended. Hunkered down on a

first story roof just under the sill of Kirika’s bedroom window, seemingly illuminated from within,

is a little red oni—the only one to appear in the story.225 In Hitoribocchi, too, the oni move about

the human world, but the only character to see them is the titular kamisama—who in turn is only

visible to humans when he takes on the appearance of the children’s grandfather.226

The father in Setsubun da says that the oni are things you can’t see (me no mien no yo).227

This operates on two levels. Children may not see oni simply because they are clever at hiding

themselves, and mostly stay out of human affairs. But oni are also invisible because ‘real’ oni are

something else for which the pantomime is merely a symbolic representation. In the pages that

follow, I would now like to examine the various metaphorical interpretations of the setsubun oni

that children encounter through literature and practice. The first, the one that most closely

resembles the adult interpretation, is that the oni represents the uncertainty and calamity that might

imperil the family and community more generally. The second asserts that the real oni is not a man

in a costume, but rather any person out in the world who is perpetrating wickedness. Shifting the

moral opprobrium to more mundane forms of wickedness, in turn, allows space for the red-skinned

oni to be portrayed more sympathetically, with many children’s books encouraging their readers

to think of the oni not as a frightening other but rather an analog for the juvenile self. In doing so,

this third and final metaphorical interpretation encourages the child to wonder whether the ‘real’

oni might not be something he ultimately carries within himself.

225
Nomura Takaaki, Obāchan no ehōmaki, 31.
226
Takezaki Yūhi, Hitoribocchi No Kamisama.
227
Sakurai Nobuo, Setsubun da, mamemaki da, 6–7.

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Oni, Disease, and Disaster
The aforementioned Setsubun da mamemaki da opens on a scene where a group of children

are fleeing from a traditional timber-frame farmhouse, driven out by the smoke and stench of what

we find on the next page to be sardines being grilled to make the apotropaic charm against oni.

This prompts the children, now standing out in the yard, to ask about oni. The father then explains

a prayer (o-inori) that has been prayed since long ago: If the oni should get up to no good, may it

come to pass that the children not fall ill, that no great rains bring flood, that the house not be

consumed by fire nor the forest burn.228 Each of these events is illustrated on a separate page, and

the framing of the illustration indicates that what is being presented is coming from the father’s

imagination, a representation of a possible event that he hopes to avoid. In the scene where a

mother bends over sick and feverish children, an oni snickers to himself from a place of

concealment (See Appendix Illus. 4.8);229 in the scene where strong rains threaten to carry the

village away, the oni stand safely atop the thundercloud (contributing to the blurriness of the

distinction between oni and kaminari) throwing huge ladles full of water on the valley below.230

The illustrations invite the reader to imagine these oni as really working their ill effects, but the

father’s statement that oni cannot be seen instead implies that the oni personifies forces of illness

and natural disaster.

In all these cases, the calamities that the oni can bring are of general concern to the prosperity

of the family, and not of specific concern to children. That children are mentioned specifically as

targets of the oni’s malevolence in Setsubun da speaks both to the solipsism of the audience—

inviting them to imagine a sickness that impacts them directly—and to the spirit of parental

protectiveness which privileges the wellbeing of progeny over self. In its presentation of oni as the

228
Sakurai Nobuo, 8–11.
229
Sakurai Nobuo, 8.
230
Sakurai Nobuo, 11.

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personification of the specific misfortunes of disease and natural disaster, Setsubun da appears to

advance an interpretation that most closely cleaves to the ‘official’ adult version of the mamemaki.

This is the interpretation advanced by the children’s gyōji manuals I collected as well as one gyōji

manual I encountered that was written for adults.

All three of these agree on major points: that the mamemaki originated in China as the tsuina

rite of onmyōdō,231 which was performed on the eve of the lunar New Year to exorcize (oiharau)

the imperial court—and thereby the country—of oni. When it comes to explaining what the oni

are, these sources are equivocal. On the one hand, the oni are described—like in Setsubun da—as

the perpetrators of mischief against mankind. In the words of Tanoshimu, “Disasters, illnesses, and

other things outside of man’s control come about through the deeds of oni.”232 In Wa no gyōji, “the

winter’s cold, and illness, and other bad things that bring about catastrophes for humans—all of

these things are believed to be oni.”233 Similarly, the adult gyōji manual, Nihon no shikitari, echoes

this, saying specifically that it is “oni that brought about epidemics and calamity.”234 This is utterly

in keeping with the Heian-period preoccupation (shared with the medieval Chinese) with plague

demons and is a subject that has received considerable attention elsewhere.235

On the other hand, these manuals also delve much deeper into yin-yang theory than one

would have expected for literature intended even partially for child consumption. Each of them

explains in greater or lesser detail how the image of the oni derives from the concept of the kimon

(‘demon gate’) and the ox and tiger zodiacal signs that flank it. Wa no gyōji alludes to qi cryptically,

saying merely that a rite parallel to the Chinese tsuina had been practiced in Japan since remote

231
Or ‘yin-yang way’—a way of referring to Taoist/geomantic esoterica.
232
“hito no chikara dewa dōnimo naranai” Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon, 30.
233
Takano Noriko, Wa no Gyōji Ehon - Aki to Fuyu no Kan, 2:54.
234
Minimaru and Blockbuster, Nihon no Shikitari, 105.
235
Plutschow, “The Fear of Evil Spirits in Japanese Literature”; Neil McMullin, “On Placating the Gods and Pacifying
the Populace: The Case of the Gion ‘Goryō’ Cult,” History of Religions 27, no. 3 (1988): 270–93; Von Glahn, The
Sinister Way; Hansen, Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127-1276.

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antiquity, and that its purpose was “driving out and purifying both oni and bad qi.”236 Tanoshimu

elaborates somewhat more, saying that “towards the new spring, we cleanse both the bad qi and

winter’s cold qi.”237 Whereas the former allows the reader to draw his own conclusions about the

relationship between oni and bad qi, the latter actually makes it explicit: “The oni that are driven

out at setsubun are symbols (shōchō) for the bad qi and cold qi of winter.”238

Interestingly, this explicit interpretation of the oni as being symbolic for bad qi is not present

in the adult gyōji manual Nihon no shikitari. Perhaps this is because adults would reasonably be

expected to take this for granted. Any adult purchasing for himself a guidebook to his own culture’s

customs (written in Japanese, this volume is conclusively for a domestic audience) is likely doing

so as a refresher of cultural competence, as it offers more breadth than depth, and focuses far more

on the how than the why of any given custom. Remember that this pragmatism was the primary

concern of the grandmother in Obāchan no ehōmaki and is representative of an adult approach. If

anything, it is more likely that an adult will read a children’s gyōji manual than one for adults, as

the act of raising a child in a way consonant with cultural expectations confronts the parent with

the difficulty of transmitting cultural knowledge that he himself may have heretofore taken entirely

for granted and would likely find no real need to study except in the case of an idiosyncratic

personal interest in the subject matter. The adult consulting a manual is looking for a primer on

correct procedure; the parent needs to be armed against the ever-present ‘why?’

Lest I give the impression that these manuals are entirely non-literal with their presentation

of the supernatural, it is worth mentioning that all three of the texts examined agree on the power

of the consecrated soybeans. Tanoshimu holds that “a spiritual power resides inside the beans”

236
Takano Noriko, Wa no Gyōji Ehon - Aki to Fuyu no Kan, 2:54.
237
Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon, 30.
238
Miura Yasuko, 30.

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which gives them their oni-banishing powers.239 Wa no gyōji ehon is somewhat more circumspect,

deferring the burden of proof onto antiquity: “It was believed by ancient people that, within the

soybeans, which were an important crop, resided the spirit of cereals, and their power could make

evil spirits withdraw.”240 Each of these manuals goes on to make an argument from homophony

which is the hallmark of much magical reasoning: that the word for bean, mame (豆), can also be

written with Chinese characters that indicate both ‘evil-eye’ (魔目) and ‘evil-banishment’ (魔滅),

by which logic the bean is said to be an appropriate projectile for striking the eye of evil and

thereby banishing it. The adult manual Nihon no shikitari concludes that “we call the way of

thinking in which there is a spiritual power in the beans kokurei shinkō (‘faith in grain spirits’),” a

term which I have not encountered elsewhere.241 Collectively, these manuals leave the distinct

impression that the standard interpretation of oni is as a symbolic representation of the many evils

that may befall humankind. The evils which are the most often cited—contagious disease and

natural disaster—are the ones that would have been of most pressing concern to the pre-modern

population, and as such remain prominent in explanations of the rite. By extension, the oni

becomes the symbolic face of all sorts of misfortunes that have no obvious perpetrator.

Oni and the God of Good Fortune

If a child learns a single thing about setsubun, that thing is the invocation shouted during the

mamemaki. As the mamemaki is a metonym for setsubun, the phrase “Fuku wa uchi! oni wa soto!”

stands in turn for the mamemaki. The phrase, which means “In with Good Fortune! Out with Oni!”

is, when coupled with the bean toss, an Austinian performative utterance: it expels demons

(however construed) from the house or community, and in their place welcomes in good fortune,

239
“Reiryoku ga yadoru,” a term which will be important in the following chapter. Miura Yasuko, 29.
240
Takano Noriko, Wa no Gyōji Ehon - Aki to Fuyu no Kan, 2:54.
241
Minimaru and Blockbuster, Nihon no Shikitari, 105.

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which follows as a matter of course.242 It is worthwhile, then, to spend a little time with the other

half of this equation.

Although also, like Setsubun da, set in a generic Edo-flavored mythic past, the book Fuku

wa uchi, oni mo uchi (2004) is not primarily concerned with the details of the celebration as it is

practiced, but rather presents a novel dramatization of the rite’s central conceit.243 The title consists

of a pun on the classic formula, and translates roughly to “In with Good Fortune! In with Oni!”

Oni mo uchi opens on a snowy setsubun evening at a farmhouse where a patriarch has been left

home alone by his wife and five children. A troupe of three oni passes by outside, lamenting that

they have been forced out into the cold from the homes where they had been residing. Hearing this,

the patriarch (who from his disheveled appearance has been enjoying a tipple himself) takes pity

on the oni and coaxes them inside, plying them with copious home-brewed hospitality. The oni,

incidentally, are uncharacteristically deferential and politely decline the farmer’s invitations an

appropriate number of times before eventually acquiescing (See Appendix Illus. 4.9).

When the wife returns home with their children, the sight of her besotted husband dancing

around the house and singing with the three oni makes her furious. Although these monstrous

guests cause the matriarch to freeze in terror, we discover from her reaction that the danger the oni

pose to the family is not to immediate life and limb but rather to the long-term economic prosperity

of the household. “Stop it! This poverty is already bad enough! You have to turn the oni out!”244

the wife scolds, pounding on her husband’s back, as the children yell “The kami of good fortune

isn’t going to come!” Whereas the oni of Setsubun da were to be feared as the active perpetrators

242
J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, The William James Lectures 1955 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962).
243
Uchida Rintarō and Illus. Yamamoto Takashi, Fuku wa uchi, oni mo uchi (Tokyo: Iwasaki Shoten, 2004).
244
Yamete. Konna binbō-gurashi wa mō akiaki ya.

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of specific calamities, those of Oni mo uchi, fearsome mien notwithstanding, are dangerous

because their presence will keep kami of good fortune away.

Attracted as he passes by the cheerful hubbub inside, the kami of good fortune decides to pay

the family a visit. A more common way of referring to Daikoku, one of the shichifukujin, or Seven

Gods of Good Fortune, fuku-no-kami here shares in this figure’s iconography: his fat belly and

ruddy cheeks framing a face beaming with good humor, a slouching bonnet, a great sack thrown

over his shoulder and his magical wish-granting mallet in hand. A Japanese Father Christmas, he

is the embodiment of prosperity and joy.

The kami of good fortune steps into the home only to turn immediately in flight when he sees

the oni. But the children cling to him, and with a coy smile the wife plies the kami with the same

homebrew until he himself joins the festivities. The next morning, the oni excuse themselves

gratefully, bowing deeply while thanking the family for their hospitality and agreeing, when

invited, to come again next year. The kami of good fortune, meanwhile, declaring himself well

pleased by the party, resolves to dwell thereafter with the family. In the final full page of the book,

we see him perched on the family’s kamidana, their heads bowed to him and hands clasped in

thankful prayer. His scale is slightly diminished from earlier to fit into the frame of the illustration,

and the billowing movement of his robe and sash seem to suggest that he is vanishing, genie-like,

into the miniature shrine (See Appendix Illus. 4.10).245

This is the only setsubun book I collected in which fuku-no-kami appears as a character.246

The kami of good fortune does, however, appear in both a kamishibai—a large-format un-bound

245
Uchida Rintarō and Illus. Yamamoto Takashi, Fuku wa uchi, oni mo uchi, 30–31.
246
In Setsubun waiwai mamemaki no hi (2012), about which I shall have much more to say below, it is worth noting
here simply that when a malevolent oni hears the joyful laughter of a classroom full of kindergarteners, he flees the
school in terror. Laughter, he explains as he does, is the harbinger of fuku-no-kami. This kami never appears in person,
and we are left to conclude that the only precondition for good fortune to occur is for bad influences to be driven away.
Good fortune follows as a natural consequence; there is no vacuum of neither good nor bad fortune.

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picture book with the text printed on the reverse to facilitate reading to an audience—and picture

book format in the Mizusawa public library entitled Binbōgami to fukunokami (“The God of

Poverty and the God of Fortune,” 1980).247 The story does not take place at setsubun, and as such

does not feature oni. Instead, it pits the titular kami of good fortune against another of his natural

complements, the kami of poverty, who has taken up residence (much like the kind of oni that is a

personification of illness causing miasmas) in the home of a kindly old couple. The god of good

luck is illustrated with the iconography of Daikoku, while the god of poverty appears emaciated,

blue skinned, and with a wild head of gray hair (See Appendix Illus. 4.11). While it is evident that

the two gods cannot both inhabit the same home, the story is careful to portray the god of poverty

not as the ultimate cause of the family’s poverty, but rather the personification thereof. The family

is not poor, that is, because he is present; rather, he is there because the family is poor.

Like Oni mo uchi, Binbōgami encourages its child readers to show compassion to the usual

antagonist. Once they discover him, the good old couple takes pity on the god of poverty, feeding

him from their meager stores. When the long-awaited god of good fortune arrives at the house, he

does not behave like he does in Oni mo uchi, but instead he antagonizes the god of poverty, high-

handedly threatening to throw him out of the house. The old couple refuses to allow this, saying

that the god of poverty is their guest, and asking the god of good fortune to leave. By their act of

generosity, the god of poverty is invigorated and ever after serves the family in the same way that

the god of good fortune would have, protecting them and granting them prosperity.

The moral of these two stories, then, is that prosperity comes about not solely from simple

ritual formulas like fuku wa uchi, oni wa soto, or from the exorcising of one spirit and the

welcoming of another, but that it also accrues from an attitude of generosity and prosociality

247
Ookawa Essei, Binbōgami to Fukunokami, Kodomo Ga Hajimete Deau Minwa 9 (Tokyo: Poplar Press, 1980).

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toward an archetypal enemy—the oni or the kami of poverty—of whom both stand in

complementary opposition to the personification of generalized good fortune. Neither ritual nor

generosity is more important than the other, nor is one sufficient unto itself. Things turn out well

for those engaging in the correct ritual as well as demonstrating through other deeds their concern

for the wellbeing of others around them. By seeing these two deployed together, the child comes

to see the rituals of setsubun not as an empty gesture, but as a demonstration of sincerity and good

will.

Oni as Metaphor for External Evil

Other authors choose to let the oni stand for something more specific than the generic undesirable

“misfortune” that the standard adult interpretation prefers. One such interpretation holds that the

‘real’ oni are not solely misfortunes that are largely beyond human control, but also deliberate and

morally culpable acts undertaken by human actors.

Oni taiji (“Oni Extermination” 2012) picks up the idea that the fukumame is infused with a

spiritual power by telling the story of anthropomorphized beans who, having been thrown during

a shrine mamemaki, go out in search of oni to exterminate.248 Like the books examined at the

beginning of this section, Oni taiji does not shy away from presenting the mamemaki oni as a

masquerade: on finding himself hurtling toward what appears to be an oni, the first of these beans

says to himself, “the man wearing the oni mask over there is merely playing the role of an oni.

He’s really just an ordinary ojisan.”249

More interesting is who the book claims the ‘real’ oni (honmono no oni) to be. The first bean,

flying far beyond the shrine grounds, happens to spy a man in a dark turtleneck and a sinister

248
Mori Eto, Oni taiji (Kin-no-hoshi Shuppan-sha, 2012).
Ojisan is technically ‘uncle’ but is used colloquially to indicate any adult man too young to be considered an ojiisan,
249

which itself is literally ‘grandfather’ but used generally for all old men. Mori Eto, 6–7.

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goatee in the process of stealing a bicycle from someone’s front yard. “Surely this must be the act

of an oni! This bean forbids it!”250 he cries before striking the would-be thief squarely between the

eyes (See Appendix Illus. 4.12). This declaration is the first instance of a formula that repeats

throughout the book. Next, a group of two beans interrupt a bank robbery in progress and resolves

it in the same way.251 The third group comprising three beans improbably flies all the way to the

African savannah, where it interrupts a poaching expedition by striking the hunters on their pates

and causing their wigs to fly off.252 Reaching the final extent of their mobility in search of oni, the

remainder of the beans swarm into outer space, where they find an alien spacecraft whose crew is

plotting to seize the earth. They swirl around the spaceship so quickly that the aliens grow

disoriented, their eyes replaced with spirals, and beg for forgiveness as they flee back to their home

world.253

In varying degrees of severity, the different acts of malfeasance in Oni taiji are all

permutations of theft: from a bicycle or money to animal life and the earth itself. A thief also

appears as the ‘real’ oni in the book Kyō wa setsubun: fuku wa dare? (“Today is Setsubun: who is

good fortune?” 2011). Here, a bored oni-child decides to descend from the depths of his mountain

home to spend a day among the humans. 254 Arriving in a seemingly-deserted traditional farm

village, he approaches the largest house but has to duck for cover under the veranda when a shout

and clamor come from within. There, he meets a mysterious figure in black. The oni introduces

himself to the figure; the latter responds by saying his name is fuku before vanishing into the house

when its inhabitants seemingly summon him inside. The oni, meanwhile, is distracted by the beans

250
Masani oni no shiwaza. Kono mame ga yurusanai zo! Mori Eto, 8–11.
251
Mori Eto, 14–17.
252
Mori Eto, 20–23.
253
Mori Eto, 24–29.
254
Masaoka Keiko, Kyō wa setsubun, fuku wa dare?

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that slip through the floorboards of the veranda—trying one, he declares it to be delicious—and

goes off to collect as many from the yard as he can. This leads him to a cow shed, to whose

occupant he introduces himself. The title, Fuku wa dare?, is derived from the conversation that

follows, in which the oni child and cow try to determine who the mysterious fuku figure was. In

the middle of their conversation, the figure emerges from the house carrying a sack over his

shoulder. A perversion of the imagery of the god of good fortune bringing prosperity to the house,

he is revealed instead to be a thief bent on stealing the fruits of prosperity away. But the cow butts

the thief with his horns, and he drops his sack as he flees.

It is evident here that the authors are attempting to make the child understand that the danger

the oni represents is not necessarily abstract, nor is it an act without an actor—in the case of disease

and calamity. The ‘act of an oni’ can also be a conscious act of ill will on the part of a human actor.

It is perhaps telling that both of these authors chose theft as the specific act with which to make

this metaphoric equation. Although none of the malefactors is a child, any child who has mastered

the idea of “mine” can understand the wrongness of theft—at least insofar as he empathizes with

the victim.

If the ‘real’ oni is a human thief, then, what does that do to the horned and red-skinned oni

in the story? After the fukumame of Oni taiji congratulate themselves with a rousing banzai!, the

final page shows the costumed man, his oni mask in hand, marveling to himself that he managed

to escape the festival without being hit by a single bean.255 The mamemaki rite had no effect on

him because he is not a ‘real’ oni at all, but rather a human actor who had done nothing wrong.

Likewise, the oni of Fuku wa dare? has no idea that today is setsubun, nor even what that means—

somewhat undermining confidence in the literal efficacy of the mamemaki. He wonders aloud why

255
Mori Eto, Oni taiji, 30–32.

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the people inside are shouting at him to stay out, as he has evidently never heard the phrase before.

Moreover, far from apotropaic, the beans turn out to be very pleasing to the oni child, who eats

them happily. In both of these books, the oni character is entirely robbed of his fearsome aspect,

whether by unmasking him in the case of Oni taiji, or by setting him up as a sympathetic naïf in

Fuku wa dare? to serve as the child reader’s point of entry into the story. In order to advance a

metaphorical interpretation of the oni, then, these stories shift the opprobrium away from the oni

himself and onto the original causes of human misfortune, be they dispassionate (disease, disaster)

or agentive (theft and wrongdoing)—and in so doing, portray the oni in a more sympathetic light.

Sympathy for the Devil

As I have shown, one consequence of shifting the opprobrium from the oni to the more

ultimate causes of misfortune for which the oni is merely a symbol serves to rob the oni of his

fearsome aspect. Many works of contemporary children’s literature, moreover, are designed to

make the oni even more approachable by bringing the oni down to the child’s level. One way this

is accomplished is by featuring, not oni, but rather oninoko—oni children.256 Whereas adult oni

when they appear serve as metaphors for power beyond the reader’s control (Mayu to oni, Iikara

iikara, etc.), oninoko are proxies for the child. By occupying the same relative position in an age

hierarchy, the oninoko becomes less monstrous; he has more in common, structurally, with the

human child than his parents do. The oninoko are always depicted as friendly, and when they

appear they tend only to appear to children, remaining unseen or unnoticed by adults. In doing so,

they allow the child reader to step into the text—not in the role of monster-slayer, as in fairy tales—

but rather into the role of monster, all while still remaining safely within the bounds of parental

256
Masaoka Keiko, Kyō wa setsubun, fuku wa dare?; Kowase Tamami, Oninoko-kun ga yatte-kita!; Masuda Yuuko,
Setsubun waiwai mamemaki no hi!; Miyajima Tomomi, Akadon, Aodon, Kiidon; Kawasaki Hiroshi and Kunimitsu
Erika, Sorekara onigashima; Masamichi Kahoru, Usagi no Lolo tsuki matsuri no yoru.

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protection. But why, given the fact that the oni is elsewhere used for coercive discipline, would it

be at all desirable to make the oni sympathetic or accessible in the first place?

The earliest example of a recent trend in adult literature to recast oni as sympathetic, and

arguably its ultimate progenitor, comes from the realm of children’s literature. Naita Akaoni (“The

Red Oni Who Cried,” 1933) by Hamada Hirosuke (1893-1973) has become a classic of Japanese

children’s literature, with countless adaptations and editions;257 it is also, incidentally, one of three

videotaped kamishibai incorporated into an on-demand storytelling kiosk in the Oni no Yakata

museum in neighboring Kitakami.

A red oni, saddened by mankind’s fear of him and wishing only to be friends, confesses this

desire to his friend the blue oni, who devises a plan to bring this friendship about. The blue oni

decides to stage an attack on the village during which the red oni will be seen to intervene on the

humans’ behalf, earning their love and respect. When the plot is carried off successfully, the blue

oni leaves the village, causing the red oni to cry tears of gratitude. The many illustrators of

Hamada’s text have taken care to preserve the essential oni iconography while abandoning the

intimidating scowl, size, and musculature that mark him as a villain. The real villain, from

Hamada’s perspective, was the sense of alienation that resulted from the fast-paced modernization

of the Shōwa period which he felt had begun to tear the Japanese from their embedded village

social structures and refashion them as cogs in the machine of state. 258 The oni’s desire for

257
Hamada Hirosuke and Illus. Ikeda Tatsuo, Naita Akaoni (Tokyo: Kaiseisha, 1965); Hamada Hirosuke and Illus.
Kurosaki Yoshisuke, Naita akaoni (Tokyo: Froebel-kan, 1987); Hamada Hirosuke and Illus. Kajiyama Toshio, Naita
Akaoni (Tokyo: Kaiseisha, 1993); Hamada Hirosuke and Illus. Iwamoto Kōnosuke, Naita Akaoni (Tokyo: Sekai
Bunka-sha, 2003); Hamada Hirosuke and Illus. Imoto Yōko, Naita Akaoni (Tokyo: Kin-no-hoshi sha, 2005); Hamada
Hirosuke and Illus. Urasawa Naoki, Naita Akaoni (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 2011); Hamada Hirosuke and Illus. Nishimura
Toshio, Naita Akaoni (Tokyo: Iwasaki Shoten, 2012); Hamada Hirosuke and Illus. Nomura Takaaki, Naita Akaoni
(Tokyo: Kodansha, 2013); Hamada Hirosuke and Illus. Tachida Nobuko, Naita Akaoni (Tokyo: Asunaro Shobo, 2016).
258
Reider, Japanese Demon Lore, 171.

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friendship and community was that of an alienated, modern Japanese wishing to rejoin a familiar

social structure.

But for all that the oni has come to be a potent symbol of feelings of modern anomie, this

interpretation should theoretically undermine the use of the oni in childrearing as a way of coercing

good behavior. How is the oni able to be, at once, both sympathetic and fearsome? Can it be both?

By robbing the oni of his fangs (figuratively, if not literally), one may be tempted to suggest that

contemporary Japanese authors of children’s books are committing the sin of bowdlerization that

Griswold, Bettelheim, Sendak and others identify as undermining the efficacy of much

contemporary western children’s literature. Unwilling to admit to themselves that the world of the

child is dark and full of terrors, are authors who rehabilitate the image of the oni to make them less

fearsome coddling their readers, robbing them of psychological resources to grow in a healthy

way?

I do not believe this to be the case. In rendering the oni sympathetic, authors are able to invite

their child readers to imagine themselves in the role of oni—an exercise in make-believe that in

turn has significant ramifications for the child’s understanding of his actions and his relationship

to the world of adults.

Oni, Childhood, and Otherness

One of the purposes of portraying the oni sympathetically to the child is by way of

acknowledgment of the ambiguous place that the child has in adult society.

The oni has long been a literary symbol for “otherness” which, as Reider defines it,

“represents those marginalized persons or groups who are partially or entirely excluded from

participation in the political, historical, and cultural affairs of hegemonic society, and who suffer

from cultural, intellectual, legal, geographical, and/or physical disadvantages attached to their

175
status.” 259 In her treatment of the legend of Shuten Dōji, Reider points out that, although the

audience is meant to identify primarily with the monster-slayers, the tale’s many manifestations

never fail to elicit sympathy for the oni chief as well. A warlord, opposed to the central government

and camped out deep in the mountains, Shuten Dōji has a penchant for women and wine. Villain

though he may be, his villainy nevertheless appeals to our deeply held antisocial fantasies: violence,

rebellion, secrecy, liberty, lust, and gluttony. That the audience sympathizes with the oni chief

even while cheering on the warriors from the capital gives them the means to affirm alternate

perspectives (perspectives they themselves might hold) outside the official top-down narrative of

good versus evil, the state against its enemies.260 By making him monstrous, the story removes

Shuten Dōji’s ‘otherness’ to a distance from which sympathy for these alternate perspectives can

be safely exercised.

But what does this have to do with children? Here it is worth remembering what we

encountered above in investigating the oni as a tool of parental coercion. The use of supernatural

fear in children’s books, according to critics dating back to the Victorian era, has been “a means

of transmitting ideology, repressing children, and assuring adult mastery.”261 Indeed, a number of

recent publications have gone so far as to describe the power relationship between adults and

children in explicitly postcolonial language. 262 According to this way of thinking, the child is

presented as yet another helpless victim of (White/Western/Cis-gendered/Male/Adult) hegemonic

259
Reider, 45.
260
Reider, 43.
261
Stallcup, “Power, Fear, and Children’s Picture Books,” 129.
262
Jack Zipes, “Second Thoughts on Socialization through Literature for Children,” The Lion and the Unicorn 5, no.
1 (January 1, 2009): 19–32; Perry Nodelman, “The Other: Orientalism, Colonialism, and Children’s Literature,”
Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 17, no. 1 (1992): 29–35; John Stephens, Language and Ideology in
Children’s Fiction, Language in Social Life Series (London ; New York: Longman, 1992).

176
oppression. The Hegemon seeks to mold the child in its own image just as it did with other

‘other’s—its colonial subjects, its domestic minorities, and its female half.263

Fashionable though it may be to suggest, however, one is nevertheless loath to take this line

of reasoning too far—not least because it cheapens the suffering of colonial subjects to characterize

a dependent child’s position in society as one of oppression or subjugation. Rather, as Stallcup

rightly argues, “initial socialization into a cultural group cannot be conflated with pressing a new

social order onto subjects who are already embedded in a culture.”264

Nevertheless, these scholars’ insight that children do exist on the periphery of hegemonic

adult society is a sound one, and quite useful to my present purpose. For while a child, being raised

within his native context, is on the one hand the very opposite of the ‘other’ as Reider and Komatsu

construes it, the fact remains that the child—while still a child—is nevertheless wanting the same

degree of socialization that an immigrant other might. In fact, the child is to some extent even more

‘other’ than an adult entering the community from elsewhere, provided that said adult has been

properly socialized in his place of origin to standards locally recognizable as cognate.

It is worth recalling at this point the common proverb shichi made wa kami no uchi—“until

the age of seven, a child is in the house of the kami.”265 William LaFleur, in his study of funerary

rites (kuyō) for the stillborn and aborted (mizuko), provides a broader context for this phrase.

Summarizing the work of Kuroda Hideo, LaFleur writes that since the medieval period, the

Japanese “widely understood that the unseen world of the gods and Buddhas interfaced with the

visible world of human beings in such a way that both being born into this world and exiting it

263
Stallcup, “Power, Fear, and Children’s Picture Books,” 134.
264
Stallcup, 142.
265
By the traditional method of counting, in which a child is born at one year of age and advances with the New Year,
we would recognize this as being closer to five or six—the age at which a child leaves the family and enters primary
school.

177
through death were processes rather than fixed points.”266 In this scheme, biological and social

existence are separate milestones; a child who has not yet attained the age of majority exists, à la

Turner, “betwixt and between” the categories of fully human and fully spiritual.267 Just as an older

adult passes upon retirement into the twilight of senescence, thereafter to be drawn ever closer to

the world beyond, so too does the young child, not yet fully initiated into adult society, exist as a

(possibly temporary) visitor from the land of the gods, from which he has lately come. LaFleur

writes:

Children, it was felt in medieval Japan, had about them an “other-worldliness,”

something they demonstrated even by their playfulness, their inability to
connect to the serious—but essentially profane—adult world of work and
production. In this sense the “playfulness” of children was the structural
equivalent of senility and absentmindedness of the aged; both were indices to
a positive kind of unworldliness.268

We know from the Japanese veneration of ancestors what model we must employ for speaking of

the elderly as they transition into the world beyond. They are, at once, both hotoke-sama and senzō-

sama—Buddhas in the Pure Land and benign ancestral kami. To the extent that young children

and fetuses ‘return’ to the spirit realm and are commemorated through Buddhist rites, they too

partake of this hotoke symbolism. But the living, robust, genki child is, I would argue, something

else entirely—he is the oni.

This generational syllogism, I think, is perfectly captured in Hitoribocchi no kamisama. The

titular kami who steps in to save the brother-and-sister pair from the oni who menace them

disguises himself as the children’s grandfather. The transformation is perfectly convincing to the

children, and it is worth mentioning that the faces of the grandfather and kami remain identical,

though his clothes and hairstyle change.269 The reader is meant to equate the ascendant generation

266
LaFleur, Liquid Life, 32–33.
267
LaFleur, 35.
268
LaFleur, 37.
269
Takezaki Yūhi, Hitoribocchi No Kamisama, 24–25.

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with the benevolent, protective kami. The child protagonists, meanwhile, are more closely

associated in the text with the oni. Although their interaction is portrayed as antagonistic, the

children are nevertheless stand-ins for the oni. As in all other such books, the children wear oni

masks during the mamemaki. Within the warm glow of the home, there are only humans: the

grandfather and human children. Outside the home, not only are the oni confined, but here too the

grandfather displays his divine form. Humans belong on the inside, while outside—the domain of

the ‘other’—is the place for oni and kami alike.

Moreover, when the kami and oni are out in public, neither of them is noticed except by the

other, even though they are illustrated as being perfectly corporeal and unhidden. Whereas ‘outside’

is the domain of the supernatural other when set against ‘inside’, the book also establishes a

dialectic between ‘domestic’ and ‘public’—the former being where the children and the old appear,

whereas the latter is the realm of the social, where the fully-human adults are. The majority of

adults depicted in the book appear in a scene at the large shrine—a public, social space at the

traditional heart of the community—gathered around to catch the beans the priests are throwing

from its veranda. Whereas the very young and the very old are shown domestically, the fully adult

are seen engaging with the broader community.

But why should it be that children make more sense as oni than as kami? First, as I have

argued, the line between oni and kami is not as distinct as the terminology would suggest. Both

beings belong to the same contiguous religious imaginary, and both oni and kami are able to bless

as well as curse.270 When one arrives, the other departs—not because they are antagonistic, but

270
Indeed, as Reider argues, the oni and the kami of good fortune are in fact two sides of the same coin—the rough
and placid manifestations (nigimitama/aramitama) of the same deity. One reason that the oni is sometimes said to
possess the same magical wish-granting mallet (as we saw in Kyōgen setsubun, for example) that is more commonly
associated with fukunokami is because the latter, before he took on the imagery of soft corpulence, began his life as
the fierce demon-queller and martial guardian of the Buddhist law, Daikokuten. Reider, Japanese Demon Lore, 26–
28.

179
because they are the complementary halves of a singular idea. This complementarity may help to

explain why in Binbōgami to fukunokami, the god of poverty (who, remember, is functionally

equivalent to the oni) is able to serve the kindly old couple as faithfully as though he were himself

the god of good fortune. Given, then, that the kami and oni can be seen as two halves of the same

whole, then if the wisdom and venerability of the aged assimilate them to the kami—the largely

benevolent aspect of divinity—then it is the wildness, the unruliness, the rawness of children that

likens them to oni, its rough aspect.

If children are a kind of ‘other,’ they are, perhaps, an even clearer and more present danger

to adult tranquility than is any other type of intruding stranger. For all that they are a welcome and

essential component of a strong family, young children are also a fifth column of otherness—

immigrants from another world, woefully ignorant of custom and decorum, who cannot be turned

away or driven out but who must instead be embraced and nurtured. Stallcup writes of

representations of children in certain pieces of modern American media (from Children of the

Corn to South Park) that there is a pervasive fear among adults of children who step outside of the

normal socialization paradigm; that the lawless anarchy of childhood, if left unchecked, threatens

to destabilize adult society.271 In their attempts to prevent this erosion of order, it makes sense for

adults to conceptualize their children as oni. Especially in the period before they begin to be

socialized to group life, as I argued in the previous chapter, children’s antisocial impulses are

gently redirected through the superior cunning of their caregivers instead of forcefully opposed

through superior strength. Interestingly, this is precisely how the oni of folklore have tended to be

overcome. The child may at times be wild and uncouth and seemingly unstoppable, but—just like

an oni—they can also be outwitted.

271
Stallcup, “Power, Fear, and Children’s Picture Books,” 130.

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 Another oni proverb, oya ni ninu ko wa oni no ko (“a child who does not resemble his parents

is the child of an oni”), speaks to the ambivalent position of the child from the perspective of adult

society. Although one can interpret this in terms of changeling lore—and indeed, Yanagita Kunio

in “Mountain Life” attests to belief that children with physical deformities, particularly those born

with teeth,272 are seen as the offspring of oni—the more common context is to describe the child’s

behavior. A child who does not take after his parents’ example—that is, one who is acting in

defiance of the expectations of socialization—is by this proverb disowned by the realm of humans

and colloquially remanded back to the oni whom he resembles and from which he came. In

identifying a wild child as an oni, an adult tells the child that—from an adult perspective—he

represents all the external chaos against which the adult world defines itself. Hence the need for

the child to be socialized, tamed—reclaimed from his feral, oni state and remade in the image of

adult society.

Confronting the Oni Within

It makes sense, then, that when seen from an adult perspective, the child can be very much

like an oni in his wildness and imperfect grasp of the rules of adult society. One purpose of drawing

a sympathetic connection between oni and child through literature is, from an adult perspective at

least, to acknowledge the child’s inherent otherness. For their part, children themselves embrace

this. They are often selfish and loud and uncouth and wild, and the wildness of oni play appeals to

them. Indeed, in addition to the playing of the oni role at setsubun, two of the child’s most essential

schoolyard games are named after oni. The Japanese game of ‘tag’ is called onigokko, or “playing

at oni,” in which the child playing ‘it’ takes the role of oni; likewise hide-and-seek, or kakurenbo,

refers to the seeking party as oni. And yet, for all this, the child is not simply allowed to revel in

272
Reider, Japanese Demon Lore, 21.

181
this self-identification as oni except on select occasions, nor is this the intent of making the oni

into a sympathetic character. Rather, part of the purpose of encouraging children to step into the

role of oni in the first place is to encourage them to celebrate their moments of antisocial otherness

while at the same time accepting the adult paradigm whereby those traits are considered to be

outside the bounds of ordinary acceptability. In doing so, these sources encourage children to begin

to examine the monstrosity in their own character with a critical eye.

One of the ways in which oni literature helps children to work through their impulsive

tendencies is to valorize the very traits that make them appear like oni in the first place. For

example, Akadon Aodon Kiidon (“Red Oni, Blue Oni, Yellow Oni,” 2002) is the story of three

titular oni living together on their own. Despite their independence, the oni are depicted as toddlers,

with round heads, plump cheeks and limbs, and the vocabulary and mannerisms of the preschool

set.273 Each of them is named after the color of its skin, plus the onomatopoeia -don, the sound of

a thunderclap or the striking of an iron club. The red oni, Akadon, is introduced as strong

(chikaramochi) and conforms most closely to the standard image of the oni. The blue one, Aodon,

is called a crybaby (nakimushi), and the yellow one, Kiidon, is a glutton (kuishinbo).

What follows is a variation on a three-little-pigs type tale (See Appendix Illus. 4.13). Rather

than a big bad wolf, there appears one day a bakeinu who threatens to gobble up everything in his

path. The bakeinu translates roughly to ‘monster dog,’ combining as it does the word for dog, inu,

with the prefix bake as in obake (ghost) or bakemono (monster), indicating a vague and sinister

otherworldliness, the capacity for deceit, and a sense that it has been transformed in some way to

achieve its present state. Unlike the oni, tengu, yamanba, or other recognizable beings, the bakeinu

is neither a common nor especially memorable type of Japanese monster.274 The bakeinu is drawn

273
Miyajima Tomomi, Akadon, Aodon, Kiidon.
274
Harvey Whitehouse would likely argue that this is because it is insufficiently counterintuitive.

182
almost as a cloud—his whiskers, claws, and pelt all swirl, and his volume seems to be in flux, the

contours of his body corresponding to no interior anatomy other than the correct number of limbs.

When he first enters the scene, the bakeinu declares, “I am a bakeinu, and human or oni or anyone

at all, I have come to gobble you up!”275 The explicit parallel drawn between human and oni here

further underscores the fact that the child is meant to identify with the oni protagonists.

Also unlike the tale of the three little pigs, where in its original form the first two piglets are

devoured for their lack of foresight, the three little oni work together to defeat the bakeinu, each

using his own unique talents. The crybaby cries so loud that the bakeinu fears his ears will burst;

the glutton bites down hard on his snout when he pokes it through their window; and the strong

one pulls him down by the tail when he tries to mount the roof. These three incidents combine to

give the bakeinu the impression that a much more ferocious monster (kaibutsu) than he is present

within, and he promptly flees the scene.

Interestingly, the three traits are not all negative. Although much of early childhood

socialization is aimed at getting children not to be crybabies, here that trait is valorized: it is

Aodon’s disconsolate wailing that scores the first victory against the dog monster—much though

it also irritates the red oni, who grimaces and plugs his ears whenever the blue one cries. The

yellow oni is the plumpest of the three and is called kuishinbo, which I have translated as ‘glutton’

but which can also mean the more value-neutral ‘gourmand.’ While eating to excess is frowned

upon, there is a cultural cachet in Japan to well-fed babies, and parents often praise their children

for eating with gusto even well into adulthood. Thus it should be no surprise that Kiidon’s

ravenousness is also instrumental to vanquishing the monster. Part of the purpose of praising a

“Hitodemo onidemo nandemo kucchimau osoroshii bakeinudazo,” Miyajima Tomomi, Akadon, Aodon, Kiidon,
275

10–11.

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healthy appetite is to grow up big and strong—a trait which Akadon has already. He, then,

represents the fruition of the childhood aspiration to be strong beyond his size.

The inchoate, amorphous danger of the monster dog—who stands for nothing in particular,

and therefore for everything that might be scary—stands in opposition to the toddler’s id, fractured

into three. From the child’s perspective the oni’s triumph is a story of wish fulfillment: that one’s

crying will be efficacious, that one’s hunger will be productive, and that one will someday be

stronger than one’s enemies. For the parent, the three oni all have traits familiar in small children

which, though undesirable under other circumstances (obstinacy, terror, and gluttony), combine

instead to save the day when used for prosocial rather than selfish ends.

It is worth noting that a similar end is pursued in the treatment of monstrosity in children’s

literature in English. Consider for example Go Away, Big Green Monster (Emberley, 1992). Each

of its pages features a cutout that exposes a different part of the titular monster, who only appears

in full at the end of the book. On each successive page, the child is prompted to banish the monster

part by part. But when the final piece is put together and the child declares, seemingly once and

for all, to go away “and don’t come back,” the text then ends with “…until I say so.” 276 Stallcup

writes of this ending that “the book encourages children to embrace rather than reject the ‘monster’

that resides in all of us: the impulse to anarchy that we must control in order to fully participate in

mutual interactive social relations.”277 Rather than seek to deny our inner monstrosity—again what

Freudian theorists would style the id—books that celebrate the child’s wildness instead seek to

give the child ways to think about these impulses in order to wield them in constructive and

socially-acceptable ways.

276
Stallcup, “Power, Fear, and Children’s Picture Books,” 136.
277
Stallcup, 137.

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 The selective celebration of various oni traits is, of course, by no means the only way in

which the identification of child with oni is used, nor is it the most common. Another group of

children’s books makes the metaphysical assertion that the oni is not an external force at all, but

rather is a personification of the bad traits within us. One inset on the setsubun page of Tanoshimu

reads:

Although the oni is a symbol for bad qi, since everything is made up of yin
and yang, oni can lurk anywhere… Because they are the same whether they
are in the house or in the heart, the mamemaki has the effect of ensuring that
the bad qi does not get restless wherever it is. The customs of both throwing
and eating the beans, it is also acceptable to say “I cast out the oni of such-
and-so from my heart!” From ‘The Oni of Untidiness (chirakashi-oni)’ to
‘The Oni of Staying Up Too Late (yofukashi-oni)’—there are lots of different
kinds of oni, aren’t there?278

For this manual qi is the basis of the oni metaphor—explicitly described as a symbol (shōchō)—

and in turn qi itself is a metaphor for bad character traits that ‘live’ in the heart/mind (kokoro) as

much as they also live in the physical environment. The idea that the oni is a habit of mind is not

a recent development or one unique to children’s literature. Peter Knecht writes of a tendency

among early medieval commentators to refer to as ‘oni’ the “hard to express and invisible

disposition in one’s mind, namely the dark and evil side of one’s heart, such as evil or mischievous

thoughts and feelings toward fellow humans.”279

The best and clearest expression of this approach appears in Onaka no naka ni oni ga iru

(“There’s an Oni in your Tummy” 1982).280 The story begins in a preschool classroom where

children are coloring in oni masks for their school mamemaki. After the narrator asserts that there

are oni inside each of us, he describes the oni belonging to four children in turn while the illustrator

shows the oni in question surrounded by a silhouette of its child host (See Appendix Illus. 4.14).

278
Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon, 30.
279
Knecht in Reider, Japanese Demon Lore, xiv–xv.
280
Ozawa Tsutomu and Illus. Nishimura Tatsuma, Onaka no naka ni oni ga iru (Tokyo: Hisakata Child, 1982).

185
Acchan’s oni is sky blue and is an oni of laziness (nesoberu), which impels him to stop his labors

prematurely and lounge around. Fū-chan’s is the yellow oni of gluttony, who causes her to want

to keep eating even after she knows she’s had enough. Natsuko-chan’s is a pink crybaby

(nakimushi). Worst of all is Goron-chan’s, a dark red oni of perversity (hesomagari) and

rambunctiousness (abarenbō). His failings are greatest because they do not affect him alone but

also cause him to hurt others, as he does when he decides to color his classmates’ masks in the

same red as his own, making Natsuko cry.

One of the most interesting things that this book does is to assert that the indwelling oni

affects all of us equally, even cautioning particularly obedient children against being too self-

congratulatory. The narrator describes Natsuko as “obedient (otonashii), kind to her friends, and

attentive to her teacher”—in short, the kind of child one would not necessarily think had a demon

inside her.281 This stipulation, I believe, is intended to teach a lesson in humility, as well as to

forestall any schoolyard debate as to who is or is not possessed of a demon.

Equally interesting is the fact that it does not seek to blame the child for having contracted

an oni in the first place. When Acchan abandons his unfinished mask, the narrator is clear that

even though he has very bad manners, “it isn’t Acchan’s fault [because] the oni in his tummy is

bad.”282 This impulse to avoid blaming the child, I believe, is an attempt to give the child mastery

over his own misbehavior by avoiding the suggestion that that misbehavior is in any way essential

to the child’s character—a strategy that Tobin observes elsewhere in Japanese preschool

disciplinary strategies.283

281
Ozawa Tsutomu and Illus. Nishimura Tatsuma, 14.
282
Ozawa Tsutomu and Illus. Nishimura Tatsuma, 9.
283
Tobin, Wu, and Davidson, Preschool in Three Cultures, 23; Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa, Preschool in Three
Cultures Revisited, 107.

186
 Even so, the children are not entirely off the hook for their bad behavior. Even though it is

not their fault for having contracted an oni in the first place, it is nonetheless expected that they try

to overcome their oni—and to do so through participation in the ritual of setsubun. While the other

children hang their masks on the wall when told, Goron-chan insists on wearing his; and when the

other children use their roasted soybeans to ritually cast out the oni from within themselves, Goron

eats his, declaring himself unafraid of the oni and changing the formula to oni wa uchi!—or ‘oni

come in!’284 Hearing this, the oni expelled from the other children then rush into Goron’s belly.

The last scene in the book shows them all crowded inside him while the narrator asks if the reader

might be able to come and lend a hand.

But if the oni is conceptualized as an entity that possesses a child and causes him to

misbehave, how is this reconciled with the oni who comes from elsewhere to punish misbehaving

children? How can the oni be both punisher and punished? One solution is to present oni as coming

in two different types: one helpful and one harmful. This is the strategy employed by Setsubun

waiwai mamemaki no hi (“Setsubun Yippee It’s the Bean Throwing Day”, 2012). The story begins

in the playground of a hoikuen with a game of hide and seek. 285 Takashi’s friend Tsuyoshi is

behaving strangely; whereas the role of oni has always been chosen fairly by janken (rock-paper-

scissors), this time Tsuyoshi has decided unilaterally that Takashi will take on this role. Takashi

acquiesces sadly. As he is counting, an oninoko appears to him. He introduces himself as Kitchi

and explains that Tsuyoshi’s odd behavior is the result of having been possessed (tsuichatteiru) by

a bossy (ibarinbō) oni named Rinrinbō. “When a bad oni possesses you,” he explains, “you turn

284
Ozawa Tsutomu and Illus. Nishimura Tatsuma, Onaka no naka ni oni ga iru, 26–35.
285
Masuda Yuuko, Setsubun waiwai mamemaki no hi!

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into a bad child.”286 The existence of a category “bad oni” necessarily implies its opposite, i.e.

Kitchi.

Kitchi explains that in order for Takashi to help defeat Rinrinbō, he must agree to be turned

into an oni. In a puff of smoke, the transformation is complete, and the two hurry off to the hoikuen

where the mamemaki is just starting. Many of Takashi’s classmates, he sees, having donned oni

masks, have become oni. Tsuyoshi, on the other hand, is maskless; rather, in the role of human, he

shouts the customary formula while throwing the beans with terrible force, his face contorted into

a frightening grimace (See Appendix Illus. 4.15).287 Clinging to his back, meanwhile, we see a

somewhat larger, black-skinned oni whom we deduce to be Rinrinbō. Unable to pry him physically

from Tsuyoshi, the pair decide to tickle the bully, causing the chain reaction of laughter that causes

Rinrinbō to flee, fearing the arrival of fukunokami. Tsuyoshi then returns to normal; Kitchi runs

away back to the bamboo grove, Takashi turns back into a boy, and on the next day the role of oni

is once again chosen by janken.

Again a distinction is being made between the oni as metaphor for antisocial behavior and

the oni as a folkloric being—and between the masquerade and the metaphor. Even though Takashi

and his classmates have ‘become’ oni through magic and costume (some more visually convincing

than others), the ‘real’ oni is Tsuyoshi, possessed by a wicked demon that only other demons can

see, but whose presence is plainly evident in Tsuyoshi’s behavior. Bad behavior, then, is explained

in terms of possession by a bad oni. And yet the same oni that cause one to behave badly are also

capable of exorcising one of that badness.

I have not mentioned it yet, but Tsuyoshi’s is not the only demon exorcized in Setsubun

Waiwai. When Takashi explains his predicament to Kitchi, the oni accuses him of being a

286
Warui oni ga toritsuku to, waruiko ni nacchaun da yo. Masuda Yuuko, 7.
287
Monosugoku kowai kao de mame o naketekimasu. Masuda Yuuko, 14.

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yowamushi for not standing up to Tsuyoshi’s unilateral decree.288 But through his willingness to

face down Rinrinbō, Takashi is cured of his cowardice-bug. Interestingly, in order for Takashi to

stand up to his fears he must be turned into an oni, again conflating cure and disease. The oni after

all is a strong and powerful figure. As we saw in Akadon, oni traits are not necessarily bad so long

as they are used for good—in this case, defeating an even more frightening monster for the benefit

of one’s friends.

Setsubun waiwai takes care not to valorize the oni’s strength too much: when Takashi is

transformed, he notices that despite not having changed in apparent size or musculature, “he

suddenly felt himself grown much stronger.”289 The independence of an oni is his strength, but it

is only a selfish, personal strength. Tsuyoshi gets his selfish way because he is possessed by an

oni, and Takashi must borrow an oni’s powers to match him. A single person acting selfishly can

be stronger than any individual member of a group; but when the group bands together against this

selfishness, as we see in the power of the class’ laughter, it prevails against the individual.

Another, final strategy for overcoming the cognitive dissonance between oni as punisher and

oni as metaphor for malfeasance is to find another scapegoat on which to blame the child’s

misbehavior. Let us consider again the traits that are the targets of the oni’s punishment. The oni

in Setsubun da demand to know whether there are any crybabies (nakimushi), cowards

(yowamushi), or bullies (ijimekko) among the children of the house;290 likewise, Oninoko-kun adds

hot-heads (okorimushi) to a list of punishable traits that include crybabies and cowards, and a host

288
Masuda Yuuko, 6.
289
Masuda Yuuko, 9.
290
Sakurai Nobuo, Setsubun da, mamemaki da, 22–23.

189
of unnamed others.291 Bossiness (ibarinbō) and cowardice are the two traits mentioned by name

in Setsubun waiwai.292

The attentive reader will have noticed that several of these traits end in –mushi, which is the

Japanese word for insect. Nakimushi (crying-bug) and yowamushi (weakness-bug), at least, are not

unique to this setting, but are the most common words in Japanese used to refer to crybabies and

cowards. Interestingly, at the same time that oni were held by medieval medical practitioners to be

the causes of illness, other strands of Chinese-inspired medicine conceptualized all sorts of

maladies of both character and body as insects (mushi) that resided in the patient’s body and were

made active through the outside influence of a malevolent being or spirit. 293 In her study of

Japanese preschools, Joy Hendry observed that the idea that mushi are the causes of misbehavior

remained a feature of parental thinking into the in the 1980s, and although she does not note the

historic connection that this ideology has to setsubun, she does report that “a child may even be

taken to a specialist to have such an affliction treated and there are apparently rites at both Shinto

shrines and Buddhist temples for this purpose.”294

This interpretation of character-flaw-cum-insect is employed by Oninoko-kun ga yatte kita!

(“A Little Oni Child Came to Visit!” 2000) to help rehabilitate the oni into a helpful figure. The

book begins with a little boy, Yū-chan, waiting impatiently for his father to return from work to

play the mamemaki oni. When Yū-chan opens the front door to look outside, an oninoko rushes in

past him. Reacting to the boy’s surprise, the oninoko explains, “it’s setsubun! Of course an oni

should be here! … My job is to collect everybody’s bad bugs—yes, yours too—and get rid of them

291
Kowase Tamami, Oninoko-kun ga yatte-kita!, 20–21.
292
Masuda Yuuko, Setsubun waiwai mamemaki no hi!, 7.
293
Knecht in Reider, Japanese Demon Lore, xiv–xv.
294
Hendry, Becoming Japanese, 16.

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for you.”295 Incensed, Yū insists that he has no such bugs inside him; the oni retorts that Yu’s

angry reply is proof of the existence of an okorimushi (anger bug). Yu then compounds his problem

by threatening to run and tell his mother, and then by crying, which confirms for the oninoko that

there is a yowamushi (weakling-bug) and nakimushi (crying bug) to be dealt with as well.

At that moment, the oninoko’s father arrives, a full-sized adult oni. He strikes his iron club

on the ground and orders all of Yū’s mushi to leave his body. They proceed to flood out of him

through his navel to populate the room, a tumult of small, fuzzy spheres with sinister eyes and

frowning mouths (See Appendix Illus. 4.16). At this moment, Yū’s pet cat, Mio, who has been at

his side throughout, goes and fetches a sack of fukumame with which the two begin to pelt their

unwelcome guests. The oni flee in confusion, but not before scooping up Yū’s mushi into the adult

oni’s great sack. As he runs away, the oninoko calls back over his shoulder “Yū-chan! I’ve still

got your anger-bug, your scaredy-bug, and your crybaby-bug! Starting tomorrow, you’ll be a good

kid!”296 Yū thinks to himself that the oni might not have been so bad after all, and later that night,

after his father has returned and the family is eating their year-beans, he says to himself “I hope

you come back again next year, little oni! After all, can you be sure you got all of my bugs…?”297

This last statement is a concession to the inevitability of recidivism: Yū admits that a single

exorcism will be insufficient to rid him entirely of his bad bugs. Like Emberley’s Big Green

Monster, the oninoko is being invited back again—except here the purpose is not purely the fun of

confronting one’s fears, but rather the acknowledgement that ridding oneself of bad traits is an

ongoing process. Yū realizes that he will never be perfect and is able to accept it, because the

295
Kowase Tamami, Oninoko-kun ga yatte-kita!, 8–9.
296
Yūchan, okorimushimo yowamushimo nakimushimo, minna motteikukarane. Ashitakara iikodayo! Kowase
Tamami, 26–27.
297
A somewhat more liberal translation of: Oninokokun. Mata rainen kitto kite ne. Yowamushi ya nakimushi ya
okorimushi ga, tamatteshimau to komaru mono ne. Kowase Tamami, 30–31.

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pantomime of the mamemaki provides him regular opportunities to refresh his commitment to be

an ii ko, a good kid.

The Oni Comes to Tokiwa Preschool

The interpretation of setsubun as an opportunity to confront and expel the oni in one’s own

heart is not restricted to children’s literature. It was also the main focus of the setsubun activities

I observed at Tokiwa preschool. The second day of March in 2016 was appropriately snowy for

setsubun, the last day of winter according to the old almanac. The entire school assembled at

around ten in the morning in the main hall of the hoikuen, about a hundred children in all from all

six totem classes: stars (hoshi), doves (hato), cherry blossoms (sakura), pandas, bunnies (usagi),

and chicks (hyoko). Each of them was carrying an oni mask that they had made earlier, each class

having followed a different model. After a brief recognition of children whose birthdays were this

week, the teacher leading the day’s exercises asks the children whether they knew what day it was;

this was met with a chorus of affirmation.

The festivities begin with a pair of pre-selected representatives from each class standing at

the front of the hall and explaining how they all made their masks—undoubtedly a combination of

public speaking training and a way for the harried teachers to fill time. Next, the children sang and

danced along to a recording of “The Oni’s (Under)pants” (Oni no Pantsu).

The oni’s underpants are good underpants Oni no pantsu wa ii pantsu

How strong! How strong! Tsuyoi zo! Tsuyoi zo!
They’re made out of a tiger skin Tora no kegawa de dekiteiru
How strong! How strong! Tsuyoi zo! Tsuyoi zo!
They’ll never rip, even after five years! Go nen haitemo yaburenai
How strong! How strong! Tsuyoi zo! Tsuyoi zo!
They’ll never rip, even after ten years! Jū nen haitemo yaburenai
How strong! How strong! Tsuyoi zo! Tsuyoi zo!
Let’s put on, lets put on the oni’s pants! Hako! Hako! Oni no pantsu
Let’s put on, lets put on the oni’s pants! Hako! Hako! Oni no pantsu
You, and you, and you, and you, Anatamo Anatamo Anatamo Anatamo
Let’s all put on the oni’s pants! Minnade hako oni no pantsu

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I reproduce this here because it is an incredibly popular children’s song in Japan—the children of

the family I spent setsubun evening with all knew it as well—and because it reinforces the

sympathetic link between children and the oni. Stepping into his (tiger) skin, they arrogate his

power, his freedom, his aspect to themselves.

Once the children have calmed down, the teachers then perform the handmade kamishibai

adaptation of Setsubun da mamemaki da. The children watch on mostly in silence, the older grades

far more attentive to the story than the younger ones. A few cries of “scary!” (kowai!) erupt on the

page where three fathers appear in full oni regalia. One little boy in the sakura class (3-4),

meanwhile, ceases his desperate attempts to catch my attention and instead begins fishing

imaginary beans out of the satchel around his neck and casting them enthusiastically around the

room. When the kamishibai is finished, the announcer retrieves a sardine-and-holly charm made

out of construction paper and explains its elements in some additional detail. The festivities then

move on to a second pre-recorded song that the children have evidently been rehearsing in their

individual classrooms. The words make explicit reference to the internal, symbolic nature of the

oni:

Oni-san Can’t Stand It Oni-san Korya Tamaran

The crybaby oni who lives in my eyes O-meme ni sunderu nakimushi oni
But now this child is lively Konogoro konoko wa genki ni natte
He’ll go a little crazy...... Nandaka chōshiga kuruchau……
Fuku wa uchi! Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi! Oni wa soto!
He hates to have the beans thrown at him! Mame o makarecha korya tamaran
And the oni all ran away Oni tachi awatete nigedashita

The oni of quarreling who lives in my mouth O-kuchi ni sunderu kenka oni
But now this child is friendly Konogoro konoko wa yasashiku natte
He’ll go a little crazy…… Nandaka chōshiga kuruchau……
Fuku wa uchi! Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi! Oni wa soto!
Ow ow ow ow! He can’t stand it! Aitata itatata korya tamaran
And the oni all ran away Oni tachi awatete nigedashita

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The oni, the song affirms, is not a force from outside, but rather a force that resides within the body

part that manifests the trait: the crybaby lives in the eyes, the quarrelsome in the mouth. By chasing

the oni away with beans, the child brings about these traits’ antitheses: the crybaby (nakimushi)

becomes energetic and willing to participate (genki), the quarrelsome (kenka) becomes affable and

friendly (yasashii).

Having thus introduced the concept of the internal oni, the lead teacher then calls on two

members from each class (at random this time, it seems) to come to the front and confess to their

peers which oni they struggled with the most. Because of the children’s diction and the poor

acoustics in the room, I was only able to capture some of the oni in question: quarreling (kenka-

oni), untidiness (chirakashi-oni), hot-headedness (okorembō-oni), cowardice (yowamushi-oni),

bullying (ijiwaru-oni), and two instances of crybaby (nakimushi-oni). It may be worth noting here

that even those traits that end in –mushi had, in this instance, the word ‘oni’ affixed as well,

suggesting that these traits were not being conceptualized within the framework of mushi as a

substance or being separate from oni. Later on, the teachers will also make a similar confession to

the children—although from their body language and the children’s seeming inattention, this

confession seemed to be more for the teachers’ entertainment than the children’s edification. Of

the traits I managed to capture were hot-headedness (okorembō-oni), sadness (kanashimbō-oni),

and an unwillingness to tidy up (katazukenai-oni). The way that the children delivered their

confessions suggested to me that they had been coached, and that the words they used were not

ones that would otherwise have been part of their active vocabulary but rather ones that were

introduced by teachers in the lead-up to the setsubun festivities. The headmistress (enchō) later

explained to me that each classroom establishes its own behavioral goals which each teacher makes

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up as needed, tailoring them to the needs of her students, and that it would have been these traits

that then came out as inner oni in this public confession.

There then followed a series of different permutations of the mamemaki. The first involved

throwing colorful, fist-sized plastic balls at three hand-painted pictures of friendly-looking oni that

had been taped to the front wall of the room. Two groups of children—first the combined hyoko

and usagi classes (0-2), then the panda class (2-3)—were allowed to attack the posters to their

hearts’ content for as long as the recording of oni no pantsu played, then return the balls to their

cardboard boxes for the next group.

Next, the balls were put away and a real mamemaki began, each child using roasted soybeans

they carried in a paper satchel strung like a necklace. The members of the sakura (3-4) and hato

(4-5) classes were divided seemingly arbitrarily into oni, who put their masks on and ran around

in a circle, and throwers, who left their masks off and stood in the center throwing outward. They

then swapped roles. When it came time for the oldest class, the hato (5-6), the division into oni

was made on the basis of gender—the boys being oni first—perhaps in preparation for their debut

into official society—elementary school—in just over a month, at which time gender divisions (as

we saw in Ehōmaki) take on a new significance. These children also abandoned both the rigid

mask/no-mask role and the circular pattern, wearing or not wearing masks as they pleased and

running just as they liked.

The teachers then take the final turn as oni (after their confessions, which occur here), putting

on their own masks and running away from a hail of soybeans thrown by all age cohorts at once.

At this point, I am so buried in the viewfinder of my camera that I do not notice that a teacher

(presumably) has just emerged from the stairwell that leads to the classrooms on the second level

dressed from head to toe in a reasonably impressive red oni costume. A ripple of terror washes

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over the room as more and more children notice the newcomer, screams of delight now

intermingled with screams of terror.

Fig. 4.1 The oni arrives at Tokiwa kindergarten

I notice suddenly a crowd of tiny little people at my feet pressing ever toward the wall behind

me. I back up farther and farther to give them space, but they continue crowding in on me. Before

long I find myself backed up all the way to a tiny little reading alcove, a step stool conveniently

sheltering my feet from being trod upon. There isn’t enough room for me to pick my feet up

without losing my ill-fitting industrial slippers or kneeing anyone in the head, so I stand firm.

Before long I realize that the children are trying to get past me, and so I step up into the alcove,

and in an instant the children follow me in to crowd the window at my back. A look at their

headgear says they are almost all from the hoshi (5-6), who knew me from other occasions on

which I had aided in English-language activities (the price of ethnographic access). Most of them

are crying inconsolably, although one of them (incidentally a boy) is unexpectedly unperturbed. I

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realized that a teacher dressed as a green oni had also joined the fray at some point when she came

to my alcove and tried to pull some of the children out into the open.

When I emerged from my alcove the bolder majority of children had massed at the foot of

the stairs, enthusiastically throwing beans in the direction of the costumed oni’s late retreat. The

teachers who remained in the room led the children—even the bawling ones—in a chorus of oni

wa soto, fuku wa uchi, and it had an emotion and a sincerity that was surprisingly touching. As a

backdrop to this last act of the pantomime, one of the teachers had put a dramatic, staccato piece

of koto music on in the background, enhancing the otherworldly mood of the oni’s flight.

A teacher went upstairs to confirm that the oni had really gone, and returned after a short

while with two scrolls about four or five feet long by one wide, on which had been written “don’t

be bullies” (ijiwaru suru na yo) and “let’s be good children” (ii ko ni shiro yo) and each signed

Akaoni, Midorioni. Something was chanted out loud at this point, but the words were inaudible

through the weeping, and soon all semblance of order in the room was entirely ruined as the

children broke into countless overlapping conversations. Maddeningly imperceptible, too, were

the words that followed the phrase oni ga kuru kadōka wakaranai kedo… (“I can’t say whether the

oni will come or not, but…”) that I overheard one teacher saying to a girl whose tears looked only

barely under control. To bring the room back to order, a teacher then played a looped audio

recording of people clapping the sanbonjime pattern ( /// /// /// / ) which in Japan is a common

signal for ending a group event. The children, many still visibly shaken, were exhorted to repeat it

until the whole room had joined in and come to order, and succeed only around the third attempt.

Order restored, the children filed off to their classrooms, and I was characteristically whisked away

from any fruitful follow-up interviews and out the door.

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 The performance of setsubun at Tokiwa kindergarten weaves together all the strands of oni

interpretation covered in this chapter. Reading aloud Setsubun da mamemaki da communicates

and reinforces the traditional understanding of the oni as representations of misfortunes beyond

human control—particularly disease and disaster—and instructs the children of the important

aspects of setsubun practice: the timing of the festival, the meaning of the holly and sardine charm,

and of course the power of the mamemaki beans. The songs, meanwhile, underscore the fun and

playful aspect of the oni—exhorting the child to put on, metaphorically, the oni’s underpants in

order to partake temporarily of the oni’s un-socialized power and express the child’s own inner

wildness. Here the child’s inner oni is not criticized but rather valorized—it is a cheerful

recognition that a child in his most natural state (kodomo-rashii) exists on the periphery of the

socialized adult world, very much like an oni. The carnivalesque fun continues with the raucous

pelting of simulacra of oni, in the forms both of posters and of the children’s thinly disguised

classmates. Yet by this point in the festivities the purely playful aspect of the oni has become

complicated by rhetoric that stresses that the ‘real’ oni is inside each of us, and that while we may

revel from time to time in our oni-like qualities, it is nevertheless incumbent on us to stand up

publically and repudiate these impulses through the ritual of mamemaki. Not only is it fun for the

child to don the mantle of the oni, but it is cathartic as well. Yet finally, having thus been

constructed for the children as this delicate metaphor where he is at once good and bad, internal

and external, the oni appears suddenly in his terrifying role as punisher, interrupting the children’s

playful festivities with what—to many if not all the children—is a genuinely terrifying apparition.

Negative traits that had been delicately and playfully carved away from the children’s character

are suddenly and terrifyingly brought to life.

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Conclusion
In The Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim writes:

There is a widespread refusal to let children know that the source of much that
goes wrong in life is due to our very own natures—the propensity of all men
for acting aggressively, asocially, selfishly, out of anger and anxiety. Instead,
we want our children to believe that, inherently, all men are good. But children
know that they are not always good; and often, even when they are, they would
prefer not to be. This contradicts what they are told by their parents, and
therefore makes the child a monster in his own eyes.298

The fearsome, punitive oni of folklore preserves the illusion that the evil that most threatens us is

a purely external force that erupts unbidden into our otherwise safe domestic places. But as

Bettelheim observes, monstrosity can also be found in human actions as well—not just the actions

of distant strangers, or even in those of people close to us, but in our own deeds as well. Yet, rather

than create a repressive environment where the child is tortured by the specter of his own

monstrosity—one where his natural tendencies to selfishness and disorder are constantly attacked

as being incompatible with adult society—he is given the oni as a symbolic medium through which

to work through the competing needs of his innate childishness and the ever-increasing demands

of social conformity. As I have shown, common behavioral issues in Japan are not seen by parents

or educators to be evidence of poor intrinsic character.299 Rather, they are entirely appropriate to

the state of childhood, valorized in the term kodomo-rashii, literally ‘childlike’ but having the

nuance of being something entirely befitting the state of childhood, but ultimately necessary to

grow out of.300 As is so often the case in Japan, a given behavior is seldom intrinsically wrong, but

only situationally inappropriate. It is not wrong to be like a child when a child, and thus a certain

amount of nakimushi is to be expected. The purpose of early childhood socialization is not to wage

298
Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment, 7.
299
Lewis, “Children’s Social Development in Japan: Research Directions,” 189.
300
Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa, Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited, 108.

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war against the demons of childhood, but rather to teach the child how—at the appropriate time—

he or she can choose to put childishness aside and willingly step into a new role.

The proximate purpose of setsubun, then, is to give children the tools to look dispassionately

at their own behavior and to use the setsubun rites as opportunities for positive character growth.

In this, it is similar in intent to the ema of the previous chapter, a gyōji which when adapted

specifically for preschool participation becomes an arena for social pedagogy. The writing of an

ema and the throwing of beans in the mamemaki are both public pledges of good behavior, the

former a positive aspiration, and the latter a renunciation of those traits that keep the wisher from

full communion with his fellow playmates. And as we saw with ema, in participating in the gyōji

children have the opportunity to come to an understanding of the residents of the supernatural

world at least obliquely, through the roles that they play in these practices. As the inscribing of

ema serves in part to construct the kami as a symbolic face to put on the investment of the

community in the child’s success, so too does setsubun construct the oni as a face for all the things

that are undesirable—both out in the world and within the child’s character.

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Chapter 5 – Being, Dwelling, and Greeting

Having established the important role that literature—particularly gyōji literature—plays in

communicating to Japanese preschoolers essential information about their religious culture, I then

turned to examine the way children participate in two such gyōji: ema and setsubun. In both of

these cases, I have concluded that parents and teachers are not primarily concerned with

indoctrinating children into any particular metaphysical beliefs, but rather use gyōji as occasions

during which to teach and reinforce key lessons in socialization more generally. We saw in Chapter

3 that, as part of their usage in reinforcing the lessons of socialization to group life essential to

preschool education, ema engage the shrine kami as witnesses to children’s vows of self-

improvement, and in so doing help to construct an image of the kami as metonymic representations

of the loving concern of the child’s community under whose watchful eyes they are encouraged to

become their best selves. In Chapter 4, we saw how children were encouraged to use the

supernatural figure of the oni to think through their own personal faults by imagining him

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alternately as helpful and harmful, an external punisher of wrongdoing as well as a projected

manifestation of the child’s own inner demons—a face projected not only onto community censure,

but also on their loving investment in the child’s continued growth.

Lessons about culturally-posited supernatural entities that are learned during this process of

acculturation, however, whether kami or oni, have tended to be learned more or less incidentally,

not only because these beliefs are secondary to the adults’ main purpose but also because

knowledge of these beings among adults is held so tacitly that detailed explanations are not deemed

necessary. But what is said to a child about what the kamisama are on the occasions when this

question is addressed directly?

Simply put, the most essential thing for a young child to learn about the kamisama is that

they are in the shrine. This, at least, was the answer I was given by the chief priest Taniue of

Komagata shrine when I asked him to explain the kamisama to me as though I were a child of

seven—a tactic favored by ethnographers of Japan even when not specifically researching

childhood experience.301 In his precise words: kamisama wa, koko ni imasu (“the kami are here”).

He went on to explain that because the kamisama had been protecting (mamoru) their forbearers

since time immemorial, it was essential to continue to greet (aisatsu) the kamisama so that we can

be protected by them and have our hearts/minds (kokoro) strengthened by them in turn. Leaving

aside the issue of protection until I can address it more fully in the concluding chapter, the two

most essential aspects of Taniue-san’s response are the following. The first, very simply, is the

importance of attentiveness to the shrine as the/a place where the kami is. The second is that the

interaction with the kamisama that takes place at the shrine is presented to the child as a greeting

(aisatsu).

301
E.g. Kawano, Ritual Practice in Modern Japan, 14.

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 These two positions are mutually-reinforcing, and as we shall see, repeat themselves across

both literature and practice. According to the first, the child is impressed upon to think of the

container for divine presence as coterminous with the supernatural being. While Taniue-san was

speaking specifically about shrine kami, I shall also demonstrate that the same is equally if not

more true of the way Buddhist statuary is spoken about as though they were identical to the

Buddhas they represent. Once the sacred object has been accepted as equivalent to the divine

person, then, the second position argues that the object therefore commands the same social

protocol as a human, which is to say, a greeting. But this is perhaps putting the cart before the

horse, since in order to instill in the child a sense that the kami or Buddha is a socially significant

actor in the first place, one must treat them—through their physical representation—as human-like

by establishing them as a target of social interaction.

In the pages that follow, then, I will address the ways in which literature and practice combine

to construct sacred places and objects as persons, and in so doing, address the implications that

this construction has for the ways the child comes to imagine these beings. I begin by showing

how the shrine situates itself to benefit from a child’s interest in other, lesser supernatural beings

(yōkai), and presenting itself as a place where supernatural encounters of all sorts are possible. I

then continue by showing how, in the case of enshrined deities (saijin), children are taught to think

of these kami as being functionally coterminous with the structures that contain them. This is,

however, only the case with the deities who are present in the community in purely architectonic

form: other kami—in particular, the kami of the New Year—are believed to arrive from elsewhere

in order to spend time in the home. In these cases, more care is taken to present the kami in human

form, in order to underscore for the child the personhood of the objects that contain the kami for

the duration of the festival. The identification of person and object is even more strongly made in

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the case of Buddhas, whom children are made to understand through literature and discourse are

coterminous with their statues. Finally, having seen how children are made to understand these

objects as persons conceptually, I turn to investigate the ways this perception of personhood is

reinforced through action: namely, by extending the social imperative of ritual greeting (aisatsu)

to bring these object-persons within the child’s social sphere.

Kami, Yōkai, and Constructing Sacred Space

I have mentioned in the previous chapter the inter-permeability of the categories of kami and yōkai,

of which the oni is the most prominent example. The oni terrifies children, but only in order to

transform their behavior; in some respects he is intelligible as the god of good fortune in disguise,

as the rough aspect (ara-mitama) of the deity of the changing year. Far from inhabiting a parallel

yet separate imaginary domain from more serious religious persons (as we are accustomed in the

West to separate, say, Rumpelstiltskin from the Virgin Mary), yōkai belong to the same conceptual

universe as the kami, and are deployed in such a way as to reinforce for children the idea that

shrines and temples are places of divine presence.

One book, Ie no naka no kamisama (“The Kamisama Inside the House,” 2014, to which I

return in more detail in the concluding chapter),302 is the story of a boy from Tokyo to whom the

various kami living in an old farmhouse reveal themselves when he is left there with relatives for

the afternoon. The first supernatural entity he encounters is not one of the titular kamisama in the

strictest sense, but rather an oni, whom he mistakes at first for a cat darting under the house’s

verandah to hide (much like the oni-no-ko in Fuku wa dare?). Like the other kamisama of the

house, the oni is illustrated in shades of gold to indicate their shared otherworldliness, and he is

drawn with benign expression and unthreatening, rounded edges (See Appendix Illus. 5.1).

302
Motoshita Izumi, Ie no Naka no Kamisama (Tokyo: Mitsumura Kyōiku Tosho Kabushiki-gaisha, 2014).

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 Even more so than the house, though, it is the shrine which children’s media more often point

to as a place where yōkai are likely to be encountered. In some books, this association is only

gently hinted at: the only structures depicted in the illustration of the island of the three oni in

Akadon Aodon Kiidon, for example, are their straw-thatched hut and a torii erected by the shore,

suggesting that the entire island is, in effect, sacred ground.303

Other books make the association of shrine and yōkai even more explicit. Mecchara

Mocchara do’on don (rendered by the publisher in English as “The Land of Playful Fellows,”

1985) opens on a boy named Kanta wondering aloud why his friends have not yet arrived to play

in a deserted shrine grove. Although the shrine’s honden (main hall) and komainu (guardian lion

statues) are far in the background of the scene they anchor the illustration, with Kanta standing at

the page’s edge, his back to them, constructing a piece of visual irony in which the shrine setting

is of more interest to the reader than to the character (See Appendix Illus. 5.2).304 Kanta is singing

a nonsense song to pass the time when a mysterious voice begins to call out to him from a hole in

the roots of a great shimenawa-bound tree.305 The voice praises his song and beckons him closer,

and when he obeys he falls into the hole and finds himself transported to a magical land. There he

meets and befriends three characters based on religio-folkloric precedents: monmon-byakko (a

variation on the white fox messenger of Inari), shikkaka-mokkaka (a wild yamanba girl who

resembles the heroine of Mayu to oni), and o-takara-monchin (a visual cross between the two good

luck gods hotei and fukurokuju). Likewise, in Miyazaki Hayao’s Tonari no totoro, a similar hole

in the roots of an enormous tree ringed with shimenawa on the grounds of a remote shrine is the

route through which the younger sister Mei passes into the grotto in which she first meets the titular

303
Miyajima Tomomi, Akadon, Aodon, Kiidon, 1–2.
304
Hasegawa Setsuko, Mecchara Mocchara Do’on Don (Tokyo: Fukuinkan, 1985), 2–3.
305
Hasegawa Setsuko, 4–5.

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monster, a character who, like many of Studio Ghibli’s creations, is inspired by the yōkai tradition,

although perhaps not so directly as are, say, the patrons of the bathhouse in Spirited Away (Sen to

Chihiro no Kamikakushi, 2001).

The supernatural beings encountered in the shrine grove need not always be benign like the

trio in Mecchara mocchara or Tonari no totoro; such is the contention of the darkly

monochromatic Yoru no jinja no mori no naka (“Nighttime in the Shrine Grove” 2015).306 Here,

too, the shrine is in use as a playground for a group of boys. One of the boys finds an ornate fan,

and Kenji, the strongest among them—simultaneously both protagonist and heel—decides to keep

it for himself. The group then disbands, agreeing to reconvene after dinner to go see a fireworks

display down by the river. Walking by himself later that evening, Kenji is stopped by a group of

yōkai who accuse him of having stolen the fan from the great tengu who lives in the shrine grove

and then conduct him there as their prisoner. Kenji’s mounting fear is dispelled, however, upon

meeting the tengu at his treetop perch, as the latter is inclined to forgive the theft as an indiscretion.

The moon rises, and the tengu sends Kenji on his way with an Orphean warning neither to run nor

to utter a single sound lest disaster befall him. Kenji attempts to do so, but his resolve to ignore

the menacing whispers of the surrounding yōkai vanishes as the final torii comes in sight and he

breaks into a run. Kenji makes it to the street having missed by a hair’s breadth being fallen upon

by a grotesque, disembodied oni head as he passed under the torii gate. The story ends with Kenji

standing face to face with one of his friends, a great dark spot on the front of his trousers

(unremarked upon in the text), and a voice laughing at him from up in the trees.

The book concludes with a short encyclopedia of the yōkai that appear in the narrative, using

a slightly higher concentration of kanji to do so, suggesting that this portion is intended for more

306
Ohno Ryusuke, Yoru no Jinja no Mori no Naka Yōkai Roku (Tokyo: Rokurin-sha, 2015).

206
advanced readers or as an explanatory aid for parents reading aloud. The choice of a shrine as

setting is not meant primarily to make children afraid of the shrine so much to rely on the shrine’s

pre-existing reputation as a place where supernatural encounters are more plausible. I say

‘primarily’ because an admonition at the end of the book gently ties Kenji’s misfortunes to

misbehavior on shrine grounds. Addressing itself “to all good children” (yoi ko no minasan e) it

cautions its readers in four bullet points: (1) to quit rough (hageshii) ball-playing, (2) not to damage

trees, or (3) to cause mischief with offertory boxes while they are in shrines or temples,307 nor (4)

to enter them at night for no good reason. That the admonitions here are not against play in general

but only against such play as would be destructive or disruptive suggests that such play is not

strictly forbidden—and indeed the use of religious sites as playgrounds is not an uncommon sight

even in Mizusawa, where open space congenial to play is more plentiful than in major metropolitan

areas where I imagine they might present more of a temptation.

Importantly, it is not only secular children’s authors who use religious sites as the settings

for scary stories. Rather, the shrines themselves occasionally use their connection to lesser

supernatural beings to their advantage. Shortly after returning from the field in 2016, a colleague

informed me of a tweet308 in which user @differentoceans posted a photo of a notice that had been

posted in a shrine in Hiroshima. The notice was directed at players of the augmented reality game

Pokémon GO that had just been released, which requires users to use their mobile devices’ GPS

function to collect monsters seeded throughout the real-life landscape. The monsters appear most

densely in public places, which in Japan, as can be expected, drove a significant number of users

307
A problem that has been of increasing concern in recent years, particularly in less population-dense and
economically struggling places like rural Tōhoku.
308
https://twitter.com/differentoceans/status/756394514940518401

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into shrines in pursuit of these collectible creatures. The staff at Miyazaki-jinja in Hiroshima, it

seems, looked at this as a mixed blessing, as is evident in their public notice:

ポケモントレーナーのみなさんへ To all Pokémon Trainers

本殿や神殿付近にいるポケモンたち Pokémon in the vicinity of the honden and

は、参拝しています。参拝中のポケモ shinden are doing sampai. Please do not
ンをとるのは、やめてあげてね。みん capture these pokémon while they are in
the middle of sampai. You should all first
なもまずは参拝をして、神さまに挨拶
make sampai as well, and greet (aisatsu)
をしましょう。参拝がおわったら、み the kamisama. Once you have finished
んなで楽しくポケモングットだぜ。 your sampai, you can keep playing
Pokémon together.
神社にお参いしている人達に迷惑にな So as not to disturb other visitors to the
らないように、マナーを守って、ポケ shrine, mind your manners (manā) while
モン GO をプレイしましょう。 you are playing Pokémon Go.

神社の建物や、石垣の中には入らない Please do not enter any of the shrine

でください。ポケモンがいても、それ buildings or go past the stone walls. Even
は野生のポケモンではなくて、神さま if there are pokémon there, those pokémon
might not be wild ones, but rather servants
のお使いかもしれません。
of the kamisama. Don’t approach these
近づこうとしないで、出てくるのを待 pokémon, but rather wait for them to come
ちましょう。 out instead.
森のなかでは、足元や周りに注意をし Please watch your step and be aware of
て歩きましょう。もしかするとポケモ your surroundings as you walk through the
ンだけじゃなくて、カブトムシやクワ grove. There may also be rhinoceros
beetles, stag beetles, and wild tanuki here
ガタ、野生のたぬきがいるかもしれま
as well as pokémon.
せん。
珍しいポケモンがいたら神主にも教え If you do see any rare pokémon, though,
てくださいね (`･∀･´)/ please tell the priest! [Smiling, waving
face]

Rightly concerned with the possible disruption to the shrine’s ordinary activities by hordes of

distracted pedestrians—adults and children alike—the shrine staff nevertheless approach the issue

with a playful good humor that is characteristic of much religion in Japan. Moreover, the authors

of this memo appear to see the game as an opportunity to engage players in ritual activity.

Significantly, they do so by implicating the pokémon themselves into the broader mythos of the

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shrine, and in two ways. On the one hand, the shrine suggests that pokémon, no less than humans,

come to the shrine in order to perform sampai—the ritualized greeting (aisatsu) directed toward

the kamisama—thereby placing them on an even plain with humans as fellow supplicants. But on

the other, the shrine tacitly assimilates the pokémon into the world of the kami by suggesting that

those discovered in forbidden areas may, in fact, be servants of the kamisama (kamisama no o-

tsukai). This term is a common one used to describe other culturally-significant animals believed

to be in service to the gods: horses (recall the ema), deer, and the white fox who is so closely

associated with Inari-sama as to be frequently misinterpreted as the kami him-/itself.309

Although Pokémon GO had yet to be released when I left the field and shrine staff have since

been unavailable for comment, children’s popular culture did appear on the grounds of Komagata

shrine in the form of laminated cutouts of characters from the currently popular multimedia

phenomenon Yōkai-watch, affixed to the rear wall of a semi-permanent structure in the middle of

the shrine compound used as an auxiliary shrine office (shamusho/uketsuke-sho) separate from the

more permanent one by the main gate (Fig. 5.1). The Yōkai-watch franchise resembles Pokémon

insofar as it involves the same capture-and-fight mechanic. But whereas Pokémon (and the genre’s

progenitor, Digimon) is based on entirely proprietary creatures, Yōkai-watch borrows heavily from

the already sizeable catalog of familiar Japanese spooks and haunts to populate its universe. I asked

the junior priest who was responsible for putting these characters up within the shrine—a young

part-timer with a puckish sense of humor—whether he had done so for any particular purpose. He

insisted (albeit with a knowing smile that hinted at motives concealed) that he simply liked the

cartoon and that it otherwise had nothing to do with the shrine or its business. The most he was

willing to disclose to me was that the characters from Yōkai-watch suited the shrine (jinja ni au)

309
For this example of theological incorrectness, see Karen Ann Smyers, The Fox and the Jewel: Shared and Private
Meanings in Contemporary Japanese Inari Worship (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999).

209
more than would, say, characters from Anpanman. One day in November, when one of the Zō-

gumi classes of Komagata Daycare was exiting a demonstration of the shichigosan ritual in the

main haiden of Komagata shrine, their path led them past this display. Many of the children

stopped when they noticed it, pointing out to each other excitedly the characters they recognized

before being hurried along to be led in a group sampai at a secondary shrine.

Finally, the shrine is not alone in its use of monsters in self-promotion. But whereas the

shrine is most suitable for the pandemonium of yōkai, the Buddhist temple—as the locus of

funerary practice—is tonally more appropriate for association with ghosts. One of the books I was

given by the Buddhist-affiliated Taiyō kindergarten, Obake ga deru zo! (“The Ghost is Coming to

Get you!” 2009), weaves a broadly didactic story around a painting of a ghost310 in the main hall

(hondō) of the locally-famous Tōsen-ji temple in Fukushima. Friends Shōta, Toshibō, and Mari

have all been told that the obake will gobble them up if they misbehave; when the two boys

ultimately do wrong—Shōta by lying to his parents in order to get a bicycle, and Toshibō for

mocking Shōta when he injures his face—each is haunted by the obake in a dream and vows to be

good thereafter. Mari, on the other hand, who always did her homework before playing and obeyed

her mother and father, receives a dream vision in which the obake smiles at her beatifically and

praises her for her virtue. We have of course seen the threat of supernatural punishment used before,

with more nuance, in my examination of oni; it is worth mentioning here because it relies on the

general association between the temple and the dead, but also because this particular volume relies

on the alliance between moral cultivation and supernatural coercion to advertise this particular

shrine and its cultural properties for the purposes, presumably, of increasing regional tourism and

civic pride.

310
The word obake is technically as general as yōkai insofar as it refers to the ability of the being to change forms
(bakeru), but is generally used instead of the more precise yūrei to indicate a ghost or specter.

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 In both literature and practice, then, the shrine and temple are presented strategically so that

the broader culture of supernatural folklore feeds into them. For children’s authors, religious sites

are natural settings for protagonists to encounter otherworldly things—a nexus for all that is bukimi

(eerie, uncanny) in Japanese traditional culture. Where shrine staff is concerned, the fearsome

aspect of bukimi is underplayed in favor of the playful and friendlier ramifications of a world

populated by a multitude of unseen beings (Mecchara mocchara, Tonari no totoro), although

neither shrine nor temple is above using its more sinister aspects (Yoru no jinja, Obake ga deru

zo!) to teach a lesson in both habituating respectful use of sacred places and in the ideology that

these are places where one should expect to encounter certain culturally-postulated supernatural

beings.

Shrine as Kami in Children’s Literature

We have seen, then, how children are led to think of shrines and temples as places where

yōkai and obake congregate. Is the presence of the kamisama themselves within the shrine equally

supported by children’s literature? Interestingly, I have not encountered many books in which kami

appear in the contemporary world of men in relation to a shrine. Often, when a shrine is depicted

in a children’s book, the kami whom it enshrines is nowhere to be seen. Gyutto dakko shichigosan

(2008)311 shows a family of five performing the sampai for the children’s shichigosan, but the

illustration of this action is drawn from within the haiden building itself; the only supernatural

apparition in the book is a Godzilla-style monster, the object of the three children’s play in the

pages leading up to the shrine visit, who appears perched atop the shrine building in a family

311
I am not entirely certain how the title of this book should be rendered into English. Apart from shichigosan, the
name of the coming-of-age rite, the other words of the title are onomatopoetic and uncommon. To the best of my
understanding, gyutto indicates firm pressure, while dakko is a children’s word for a hug or embrace. Perhaps “The
Firm Hug of Shichigosan” would be appropriate, although it is not in keeping with the contents of the story.

211
photograph that is developed some days later (See Appendix Illus. 5.3).312 A 2014 adaptation of

Kurushima Takehiko’s (1874–1960) classic Suzumushi anthropomorphizes both a shrine bell and

the komainu statue, but leaves the shrine’s main kamisama out of the narrative entirely.313

It must be said here that children’s book illustrators do not seem to have an aversion to

anthropomorphic depictions of kami in general. Remember from Chapter 2 that illustrated versions

of Kojiki tales are fairly common, produced by secular and religious presses alike, and that certain

gods appear with reasonable frequency, such as those that appear in Kako Satoshi’s Daruma-chan

series, or, as we shall presently see, Yamasue Yasue’s Shichifukujin books. Rather, the aversion

seems only to apply to those kami who are closely associated with shrines—saijin, or ‘enshrined

deities’.

Particularly illustrative of this phenomenon is Yamasue Yasue’s Shichifukujin to o-shōgatsu

(“The Seven Gods of Good Fortune and the New Year,” 2000)—published by Kyōiku Gageki as

part of the eight-volume collection Gyōji no yurai ehon (“Gyōji Origin Picture Books”).314 This

series, which the publisher advertises315 as appropriate for children between three and four years,

comprises two books about the New Year festival, as well as books on the hina-matsuri, koinobori,

mothers’ day, tanabata, Christmas, and the setsubun narrative Setsubun da mamemaki da we

encountered in Chapter 4.

Shichifukujin to o-shōgatsu follows a boy named Kento as he celebrates New Year’s Day

with his family. After a busy morning completing some of the lesser traditional activities of the

New Year—consuming the traditional New Year meal (osechi-ryōri), receiving pocket money

(otoshidama), and reading New Year’s postcards (nengajō)—the family goes to its local Hachiman

312
Uchida Rintarō, Gyutto Dakko Shichigosan (Tokyo: Iwasaki Shoten, 2008).
313
Kurushima Takehiko, Suzumushi, Kurushima Dōwa Meisakusen 5 (Tokyo: Gentosha Renaissance, 2014).
314
Yamasue Yasue, Shichifukujin to Oshōgatsu, Gyōji No Yurai Ehon (Tokyo: Kyōiku Gageki, 2000).
315
http://www.kyouikugageki.co.jp/bookap/detail/267/

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shrine for hatsumōde, the first sampai of the New Year. Although Kento comes face to face over

the course of the book both with the titular Seven Gods of Good Fortune as well as with

toshigamisama, the god of the New Year, the same cannot be said of the kami Hachiman, who is

not illustrated anthropomorphically. Hachiman does not appear as a character in the narrative at

all except in one significant sense: that when Kento talks about the shrine where his family is

performing hatsumōde, he refers to it not as ‘jinja’ but by the name of the kami therein enshrined.

“Usually Hachiman-sama is quiet, but today it’s lively,”316 he says upon arrival at the shrine. When

he is looking for a good place to fly the kite he purchased, he finds one on “the mountain behind

Hachiman-sama.”317 In my experience this does not appear to be a feature of adult discourse; I can

recall no occasion on which my main field site was referred to by anyone as Komagata-sama. As

this story is not primarily about Hachiman-sama but rather is concerned with explaining the

descent of the New Year god to the reader, it makes sense that a cameo by an anthropomorphic

Hachiman might have simply been superfluous to the author’s purposes. But, I would argue, the

more compelling reason for Hachiman’s absence is the fact that—in the case of shrine kami

(saijin)—the god and his house are experientially the same.

The paucity of kami in stories about shrines is partially explicable because it mirrors the

child’s lived experience of a shrine, where the kami is not visibly present. Although

anthropomorphic portrayals of kami are by no means forbidden, Shinto tradition remains largely

an aniconic one, with the object (go-shintai, or ‘august divine body’) that serves as the body of the

deity for the duration of a ritual being more commonly a non-representational object—the mirror

is favored—and, more importantly, obscured from view. The most common form of ritual activity

in a shrine is the sampai greeting sequence performed directly before the shrine’s haiden, which

316
Itsumo wa shizuka na Hachiman-sama ga, kyō wa nigiyakada, Yamasue Yasue, Shichifukujin to Oshōgatsu, 9.
317
Hachiman-sama no urayama, Yamasue Yasue, 13.

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although it appears to be the shrine is in fact an audience chamber built in front of, and connected

to by means of a covered walkway, the honden, or main hall, in which the image of the deity is

kept. Only on special occasions—hatsu-miya-mairi and shichigosan, for example—is the haiden

entered, and even then the numinous presence is occluded from view by drapery and doors. To all

practical purposes, then, the kami associated with a shrine need not be illustrated separately

because the kami is coterminous with the shrine building itself.

Indeed, the only kamisama I have seen acting independently of their shrines in children’s

literature are the two who appear in Hitoribocchi no kamisama (“The Lonely Kamisama” 1980),

which I discussed in Chapter 4. We meet the titular kami on the first page where he is shown

exiting via the torii arch from his tiny urban shrine, whose single wooden structure seems barely

large enough for his human form to fit inside, standing with his arms outstretched (See Appendix

Illus. 5.4). Later, the corpulent kamisama of the larger shrine from whom the lonely kami borrows

beans for the mamemaki is shown standing in the shrine courtyard like a homeowner greeting a

visitor. The text has him waddling out from the depths of the shrine building in response to the

visiting kamisama’s call. 318 Within this narrative, then, at least, the implication is that these

kamisama exist as a matter of course within the buildings where they are enshrined—although

they are of course able to leave as they choose.

Why, then, does Hitoribocchi no kamisama alone differ from this otherwise apparent

aversion to illustrating shrine kami as beings separate from their architectural vessels? First,

remember that Hitoribocchi does not present its shrine without a ritual context—it belongs to the

category of gyōji narratives, and its setting is setsubun. Although the lonesome kami is portrayed

as simply going for a walk, his decision to do so on this of all days functions to involve him in the

Omiya no oku kara, bukubuku futotta kamisama ga dete-kimashita. Takezaki Yūhi, Hitoribocchi No Kamisama,
318

17–18.

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oni’s plot to menace the brother and sister left home alone on setsubun. He appears, that is, because

he is relevant to the story that the author wishes to tell—which, as I mentioned in passing in the

previous chapter, is in part to illustrate for the child that the mental model most appropriately

applied to the kamisama should be that of a loving, indulgent grandparent.

In allowing him to leave his shrine on a walk, Hitoribocchi is the exception that proves the

rule. It implies that the shrine kami should in all other circumstances be thought of as residing

therein, as opposed to the equally if not more theologically correct stance that the kami reside

elsewhere and only descend to the shrine when summoned by worship. 319 It may be worth noting

here the aloof stance that the kami of the larger shrine takes toward the proceedings of the

mamemaki. Responding to his lonely colleague’s request, he replies “Hmm. I’m sorry. You see,

I’ve just been sitting here all day, watching, so these aren’t really my beans...”320 That is to say,

although he is present in the shrine during the festival, he is not made to seem as though the human

proceedings concern him directly. After all, the kami plays no active role in the mamemaki ritual,

which takes place among two groups of humans (throwers and catchers), the oni, and occasionally

319
Official theology is unclear as to the location at any given time of shrine kami. This is more an issue of complexity
than confusion. The pat answer is that the kami dwells in the shrine. Not simply the shrine, though, but in the building
(shinden) behind the operative hall where rituals are performed (haiden). More deeply than that, the kami is within
the shintai, which is either inside that building or even underneath it as it is at Ise. Further than this, the shintai is not
a permanent vessel of the kami but rather a vessel that is filled by the kami when it is summoned there for a ritual
purpose. When the kami is not present, it could be in any number of other places; at Komagata (as at many, many
others), there is a shrine to the chief deity on a nearby mountaintop (a refurbishment was just recently completed, and
a DVD of the process is available to parishioners in the shrine office for a fee)—but even this is not the actual home
of the deity but yet another relay station and point of meeting. This recursively referential nesting helps to facilitate
the Sperberian semi-propositional nature of the shrine as a locus of divine presence: there is no guarantee that at any
moment the kami is or is not present, but we can only trust that it will respond to summons according to a ritualized
process sanctified by time. This is, of course, more detail than most adults would have about kami theology, and indeed
more than is operative in most shrine interactions, even among adults. While being aware to a greater or lesser extent
that the kami is not necessarily concretely localized within the shinden, an adult is aware that the shrine is nevertheless
a place set aside for the ritualized interaction with the kami. For a discussion on the importance of occlusion and
wrapping, see Joy Hendry, Wrapping Culture: Politeness, Presentation, and Power in Japan and Other Societies,
Oxford Studies in the Anthropology of Cultural Forms (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). For semi-propositional
representations, see Sperber, “Apparently Irrational Beliefs.”
320
Soryaa komatta ne, washi wa koko ni jitto shite-oru dake de, washi no mame janain'da. Takezaki Yūhi,
Hitoribocchi No Kamisama, 17–18.

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fuku—who, when anthropomorphized, takes the form not of a shrine kami but rather of Daikoku-

sama arriving from elsewhere. Uninvolved with the ritual taking place around him yet having no

compelling reason to be elsewhere, the kami is expected to be at home when called upon as a

matter of course.321

That the kami are able to come and go from their shrines in theory is something that a child

also learns as part of his habitus training. Children caught walking down the middle of a shrine’s

pedestrian footpath or through the center of a torii or gate are gently shepherded to one side by

attending adults; either simultaneously with this bodily correction or if the child persists in this

behavior, the point is then reinforced verbally with reference to the fact that the center is the space

reserved for the kami’s use. This space is not completely off-limits to humans, of course, and many

adults walk along it with seeming unconcern particularly when a shrine is crowded. But because

the kami is invisible (me no mienai), I have heard it explained, one can never be certain whether

one might be in the way of the kami at any given moment, so the most conscientious choice is to

avoid the space altogether.322

Thus, if shrine kami are thought to exist by default inside the shrine except when they have

a compelling reason to be elsewhere, this explains why Hachiman does not appear in Shichifukujin

to o-shōgatsu. His role in the New Year festivities requires him to remain in residence in order to

receive social calls from his parishioners. In a sense, the role of the shrine kami at the New Year

shrine visit is more analogous to the recipients of nengajō postcards than to the New Year kami—

321
It also bears mentioning here that while the two kami are clearly distinguishable from each other as individuals,
neither is illustrated in such a way as to be evocative of any particular, recognizable kami. Both wear what amount to
sparkling white track suits and slippers, with white hair to match—the lonely kamisama with a wild mop of hair and
a white cane, and the bigger kamisama mostly bald with a compensatory goatee and a string of what appear to be
magatama beads around his neck. In their manner of dress, they most closely resemble the simple sack-clothing worn
by Ō-kuni-nushi and Jimmu-tennō in both sets of illustrated Kojiki discussed in Chapter 2, albeit without both some
supplemental detail in their clothing and the typical mizura hairstyle known from Yayoi-era grave goods and now most
frequently encountered in depictions of the named kamisama of the Kojiki.
322
Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon, 18.

216
a node on the ordinary social network to whom one must refresh one’s connection periodically.

To have illustrated Hachiman fulfilling another role would have distracted from a narrative

primarily intended to explain the yearly descent of toshigamisama; to have shown him within the

shrine receiving these greetings may have set young readers up for disappointment should they

subsequently try and catch a glimpse of a kami in his home.

Kami and Mikoshi

The kami may also not generally be depicted anthropomorphically exiting from the shrine

because the going and coming of a kami from the shrine is already ritually instantiated in the form

of the mikoshi procession—the ornate palanquin on which the kami is said to ride during a matsuri.

Although in common parlance the word ‘matsuri’ now indicates any kind of festival, the

prototypical matsuri implies as its main event that the kami enters the mikoshi and is taken on a

tour of its jurisdiction. The matsuri defines the boundaries of the community, creates another

forum in which the community can interact with its tutelary deity, and provides a forum where

interpersonal disagreements can be worked out symbolically.323

Although the god’s palanquin—o-mikoshi—when it debuts at all, is the centerpiece of these

festivals, these events also feature dancing (both traditional community dances that resemble a

conga line, and street performances of traditional-inspired dance troupes), taiko drum ensembles,

fireworks displays, amateur sumo competitions, and of course the food stalls that are as repetitive

as they are ubiquitous. In my experience, the timing of the major festivals of each town tend to be

deliberately staggered in order to draw revelers from nearby communities, so that a matsuri

aficionado could conceivably spend every weekend in July and August gorging himself on

323
Plutschow, Matsuri: The Festivals of Japan; Schnell, The Rousing Drum; Kawano, Ritual Practice in Modern
Japan.

217
steaming bowls of offal soup, fried octopus balls, and French fried potatoes—probably meeting

the same itinerant vendors at each.

Because the matsuri is an intensely local phenomenon, gyōji manuals and narratives largely

resist the urge to generalize about them. Both volumes of Wa no gyōji, for example, mention as

small insets only specific mikoshi processions of national significance, but do not include the

summer matsuri as a general cultural practice. In its entry on the summer festival, Tanoshimu uses

the heterogeneity of matsuri as an opportunity to suggest that the child reader do some research

with his or her parents on the meaning of their local festival.324 Many individual gyōji narratives,

likewise, such as Ise Hideko’s Matsuri (2010), Akiyama Tomoko’s Ame o Yobu Ryū (2009), and

Imae Yoshitomo’s Nande Den’nen Tenma Han (2003), for example, are each concerned with a

specific festival of national renown, and largely seek to communicate to readers the vivid somatic

experience of being at this festival—its sights, sounds, and tastes that are the main draw for adults

and children alike.325

In Ōshū, the adult mikoshi procession has largely disappeared as a feature of shrine matsuri.

Komagata-jinja possesses a comparatively splendid palanquin which I have seen only where it is

kept behind glass in a small outbuilding in the shrine’s parking lot. Because of a lack of interest

and paucity of members of Komagata’s seinenkai (young persons’ association), it has been years

since the mikoshi has debuted in a Mizusawa matsuri. This practice has been replaced at Komagata

with a mikoshi procession exclusive to children, in which the single large mikoshi has been

replaced with a series of smaller ones made primarily of cardboard (seven in 2012, Fig. 5.2). While

these mikoshi appeared to have been handmade, a similar children’s matsuri I attended at the small

Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon, 90.

324

Ise Hideko, Matsuri (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2010); Akiyama Tomoko, Ame o Yobu Ryū: Yonen ni Ichido no Amegoi
325

Gyōji (Tokyo: Doshinsha, 2009); Imae Yoshitomo, Nande Den’nen Tenma Han: Tenjin Matsuri (Tokyo: Dōshinsha,
2003).

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Chinjufu Hachiman shrine in nearby Isawa in autumn of 2016 used a single, store-bought

cardboard mikoshi (Fig. 5.3). Consulting with the manufacturer’s website, I found that this mikoshi

retailed for a princely ¥88,000 (approx. USD775 at time of writing).326

In the case of Komagata, delegations from several different local kindergartens, dressed in

festival coats and headbands and accompanied by their teachers, convene on the grounds of the

shrine on the morning of the festival, the first Saturday in August. Chief Priest Taniue, dressed in

athletic shorts and a white t-shirt, emcees for the assembled crowd while an officiant in priestly

garb blesses in turn both the row of small cardboard mikoshi set up before the shrine and then the

assembled crowd. A pair of adult men then present a sakaki branch to the kami on behalf of the

crowd, who then bow and clap in unison when prompted by Taniue. The officiant then presents

Taniue with the o-fuda paper talismans that serve as the body of the kami; Taniue in turn distributes

them to the adult helpers to affix to the leading face of each mikoshi. After reciting a rehearsed

portion of a poem,327 the children then hoist the mikoshi on their shoulders (the majority of the

mikoshi’s weight being carried by adults to fore and aft) and, to shrill whistling and rhythmic

chants of wasshoi! wasshoi! (heave ho!), process out of the shrine and down the festival boulevard,

before turning right to proceed down station avenue a short way before finally setting down the

palanquins and disbanding for snacks in front of the Mizusawa Grand Hotel. The whole procession

takes no more than thirty minutes.

Unfortunately, the only performance of Komagata’s children’s matsuri I was able to attend

took place in 2012 when my Japanese comprehension was significantly weaker. When asked

subsequently what he typically says to the children during his address, Taniue-san paraphrased

326
http://www.taiyo21.co.jp/page007.html
327
Ame ni mo makezu (Be not Defeated by the Rain) by famed local poet Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933). “Not losing
to the rain / nor to the wind / not losing to the snow nor to summer's heat / with a strong body.”

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himself as having said simply that “kamisama comes in the o-mikoshi; let’s show the kamisama

around our town cheerfully.” This is entirely in keeping with the general idea that what is necessary

to convey to children is the content of the ritual process rather than its metaphysical significance,

on which subject only the immanence of the deity is essential. The majority of Taniue’s address—

as well as the instructions that were given to the children at the Chinjufu Hachiman-gu matsuri—

concerned the mundane details of the procession and was as much for the benefit of the supervising

adults as it was for the children: how to time the body’s movements with the sound of the whistle,

where the parade route went, what to do with the mikoshi at the end, and what to do in the event

of a toilet emergency. The role of the mikoshi as a vehicle for the deity was not in either case the

topic of any great discussion.

As we have seen elsewhere, children’s literature provides some of the explanation that is

absent in discourse surrounding these events, but as with ema and setsubun, the description

remains largely concerned with history and form. Several gyōji manuals and narratives attribute

the summer matsuri to a concern about the infectious diseases that were common during that

season in the distant past, 328 but in general they describe its purpose in the generic terms of

practical benefits (genze riyaku) of more concern to adults than children: exorcism (yakubarai),

good health (mubyō sokusai), the protection of agricultural output, the clearing away of fire and

calamity, and the general bestowal of blessings (megumi o atae-ureru).329

In the few cases when the mikoshi is described at any great length, however, it appears that

pains are taken to present it as a locus of divine presence. The second entry in Yamasue Yasue’s

Shichifukujin series in particular (Shichifukujin to natsu matsuri 2002) articulates the link among

328
Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon, 90; Yamasue Yasue, Shichifukujin to Natsu Matsuri (Tokyo:
Kyōiku Gageki, 2002), 11.
329
Yamasue Yasue, Shichifukujin to Natsu Matsuri, 4; Kawaura Yoshie, Shiba Wanko No Wa No Kokoro 2: Shiki No
Yorokobi (Tokyo: Hakusensha, 2002), 41; Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon, 90.

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kami, shrine, and mikoshi with precision. The narrative opens on Emi-chan, who is crying at her

town matsuri because her older brother has gone off with the older children to carry the children’s

mikoshi (See Appendix Illus. 5.5). Descending from their magical treasure ship, the Shichifukujin

promise to keep her company until her brother’s return. She asks Benten, “Hey, why do we carry

the mikoshi at the matsuri anyway? Wouldn’t it be better to leave it in the shrine all the time?”

Benten answers, “the o-mikoshi is the vehicle of the kamisama who is enshrined (matsurareru) in

the shrine. To carry the o-mikoshi is to carry the kamisama.”330 That the mikoshi is a vehicle for

the kami is of course the standard explanation given for this festival procession; it appears in all

the gyōji manuals I examined as well.331 The point is reinforced somewhat out of the blue, however,

when the mikoshi returns to the shrine. Emi-chan draws near to it and exclaims “It’s true! The

mikoshi really does have the same shape as a shrine! That’s because it’s the kami’s vehicle.”332

Yamasue here seems to be using Emi’s surprise not only to underscore the idea that the shrine

and the mikoshi are functionally equivalent, but also—as he did by avoiding depictions of

Hachiman in Shichifukujin to o-shōgatsu—to assert that both the shrine and the mikoshi are

coterminous with the deity itself. Because the mikoshi is, experientially, the deity, Yamasue

describes it as engaging in interpersonal modes. To carry the mikoshi, the goddess Benten explains,

is to be with the deity (kamisama to issho ni naru koto na no desu). 333 The mikoshi-as-kami

receives the gratitude of matsuri-goers, and as it proceeds through the community, it allows the

infirm to greet the kami by having it brought near to them in imitation of the visitation of the sick

330
Yamasue Yasue, Shichifukujin to Natsu Matsuri, 10.
331
Kawaura Yoshie, Shiba Wanko No Wa No Kokoro 2: Shiki No Yorokobi, 40; Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O
Tanoshimu Ehon, 90.
332
Yamasue Yasue, Shichifukujin to Natsu Matsuri, 24.
333
Yamasue Yasue, 10.

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(o-mimai) performed among humans.334 Finally, when the mikoshi returns to the courtyard, one of

the Seven says as well that the kamisama has returned home.335

The personification of the mikoshi takes a slightly different turn in Juppiki no kaeru no aki

matsuri (The Ten Little Frogs’ Autumn Festival, 2010) by Madokoro Hisako and illustrated by

Nakagawa Michiko, part of a series in which the ten little frogs of Hyōten Swamp undertake a mix

of secular activities (field day, singing contest, errands, picnic) and gyōji (o-shōgatsu, aki matsuri,

o-tsukimi, hina-matsuri). The story follows the titular frogs as they seek to recover the finial that

was stolen from the top of their mikoshi on the eve of the autumn matsuri of Kerokero-jinja, or

‘Ribbit-ribbit shrine’ (See Appendix Illus. 5.6).336

More accurately, the text indicates that the frogs, in their quest to recover the finial, are in

fact seeking to recover the deity himself. At each point in the narrative where the finial is

mentioned, it is referred to simply as o-kaeru-sama, or ‘Exalted Lord Frog’. The elder frog alerts

the reader to this Chekhov’s gun in the opening scene when he explains for the ostensible benefit

of the ten little frogs who had been born the previous spring that Lord Frog was a treasure of

Kerokero-jinja. Juppiki no Kaeru is unique in this interpretation of the mikoshi finial—which in

all other cases is understood to be purely decorative—as being the body of the enshrined kamisama.

Rather than the customary golden phoenix, the frogs’ mikoshi is surmounted with a smiling golden

frog, seated on a lotus blossom, his hands holding fans outstretched, wearing a headdress of jagged

plumage evocative of the phoenix tail.337

334
Yamasue Yasue, 10–11.
335
Yamasue Yasue, 25.
336
Madokoro Hisako, 10-Piki No Kaeru No Aki Matsuri (Tokyo: PHP Shoten, 2010), 2–3.
337
The mikoshi also reflects its amphibian makers’ self-conception in other subtle ways: the symbols on each face of
the mikoshi roof are two smiling tadpoles circling each other in a manner reminiscent of both the symbol for yin and
yang, as well as the mitsudomoe, perhaps to suggest a family crest for the frogs’ ujigami. From the eaves, moreover,
hang down a string of pompoms that are also have the smiling comma-shape of tadpoles.

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 This choice must have been deliberate. But why? It does not serve a narrative purpose to

have done so—the rat who is ultimately discovered to have been the thief is only interested in the

statue as an object of aesthetic and monetary value, and he is large enough to have been plausibly

able to make off with the mikoshi in its entirety. My surmise is that Madokoro and Nakagawa

elected to treat the finial as the deity in order to underscore the personality of the divine object. By

referring to the finial throughout with no acknowledgment of its representationality, the authors

invite their child readers to think about it as a person rather than an object. Moreover, as the gods

of the Thracians are proverbially pale and red-haired, so too are the kami of the frogs frog-shaped.

By rendering the divine object theriomorphically, the illustrator invites children to reason that the

kami of their own communities are shaped as they are. The creative license exercised on the

configuration of the mikoshi, in other words, is deployed in the purpose of encouraging children

to think of it as having other human qualities.

Being versus Dwelling: Toshigamisama and the Customs of the New Year
In his comment that began this chapter, Chief Priest Taniue stressed the continuous, living

presence of the kamisama within Komagata shrine in his choice of the simple verb ‘to be’ used for

animate things (iru/imasu), rather than inanimate (aru/arimasu). That he did not employ the

honorific irassharu or gozaru may have been in deference to perceived linguistic deficiencies of

his interviewer, but it is more likely that the omission reflected instead the way he would approach

an audience of young children. Although children of this age are still learning to master honorific

speech (a system so complex that there is an adult market for how-to books on the subject), it is

doubtful that the honorific form of ‘to be’ would be completely unintelligible to them. Rather, in

his choice of the simple polite form imasu, Taniue-san is choosing to stress the aliveness of the

kamisama rather than to acknowledge the kamisama’s elevated status with respect to humans. This

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is a simple point, but an important one: that when presented with a choice between stressing

immanence and importance, the chief priest chooses the former.338 By saying “the kamisama is

here,” then, Taniue constructed for his hypothetical child audience an understanding of the shrine

itself as the permanent body of the deity. As we have seen, in the cases of the deities of shrine and

mikoshi (saijin), literary representations echo this sentiment by avoiding any visual representations

that would challenge this identity of aniconic structure with divine person.

But this is notably not the case with regard to one specific kami: the toshigamisama, or kami

of the New Year. In this case, the verb used most frequently in children’s literature is not iru but

rather yadoru, or ‘to dwell/to lodge,’ a verb that carries a connotation of temporariness and

provisionality (as opposed to sumu, which means to reside in a more permanent sense). This is

because, for the duration of the New Year holiday, the house becomes a shrine to the

toshigamisama. Correspondingly, because the places where the toshigami dwells are not ordinarily

marked as sacred during the rest of the year, children’s literature takes extra pains to construct the

person of toshigamisama, both by stressing the deity-beckoning powers of New Year decorations

and by rendering the toshigamisama anthropomorphically.

Children’s gyōji literature gives the greatest amount of space to the festivities surrounding

the New Year holiday, most of which coverage is devoted to its more celebratory aspects: the

special foods, the writing and receiving of postcards, the playing of card games, the flying of kites,

and so on. But these are only part of New Year: in the words of Shiba wanko, “At o-shōgatsu,

there are gyōji in celebration of the New Year, but there are also gyōji for welcoming the

338
It is perhaps also worth noting that by using the locative koko (‘here’) in his assertion, Taniue takes the existence
of the kami entirely for granted—whereas a cleric of the western creedal traditions might feel it necessary to begin by
asserting the existence of a god (credo in unum deum, lā ʾilāha ʾillā llāh, etc.) before localizing him or describing his
salient traits (‘God is love,’ etc.). Had he been making a purely existential claim anticipatory of skepticism, Taniue’s
assertion would have looked more like kamisama ga son shimasu, or simply kamisama ga imasu.

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‘toshigamisama’ as well.”339 According to Tanoshimu, the toshigami should be thought of as “an

important guest,” for whose sake the home should be transformed into a place of relaxation and

entertainment.340

This transformation is accomplished with the three essential decorations (o-shōgatsu-kazari)

which every gyōji manual describes: shime-kazari, kadomatsu, and kagamimochi. Having

undertaken the equivalent of spring cleaning in the days leading up to the holiday, straw rope

decorations (shimenawa, shime-kazari) are recommended for all boundary points within the home

in order to indicate that the home has been purified and made ready for the deity’s arrival. 341

Likewise the kadomatsu, which has a variety of regional variations but usually includes a cluster

of three bamboo stalks cut on a sharp bias, is placed outside the dwelling’s front door where it

serves as a signal or beacon (mejirushi or michi-shirube) to guide the kami to the home.342 This is

precisely the language that I have heard used to describe to children the function of both

shimenawa and shimenawa-clad trees and rocks on the grounds of Komagata shrine: respectively,

that they designate a space as having been purified for the kami, and serve as a signal beacon for

the kami’s descent. Moreover, in a pile sorting exercise, children between five and seven years

uniformly recognized objects with shimenawa as being associated with the shrine. These two

decorations, then, borrow from the physical apparatus of the shrine to signal to the child that the

home has become sacred ground, and therefore hosts the same kind of divine presence as a shrine.

If the house becomes a shrine, then something must serve as the body (shintai) of the deity.

This object is the kagami-mochi, the third essential decoration, which consists of two pounded-

339
Kawaura Yoshie, Shiba Wanko No Wa No Kokoro, 1:12.
340
Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon, 13.
341
Matsuo Kōichi, Negai Wo Kanaeru Kamisama, Mitai! Shiritai! Shirabetai! Nihon No Kamisama Ezukan 1 (Tokyo:
Minerva Shobō, 2012), 9; Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon, 14; Kawaura Yoshie, Shiba Wanko No
Wa No Kokoro, 1:12.
342
Matsuo Kōichi, Negai Wo Kanaeru Kamisama, 9; Kawaura Yoshie, Shiba Wanko No Wa No Kokoro, 1:14; Miura
Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon, 14.

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rice dumplings stacked together on top of the same type of offering stand as used in shrines and

temples. The identity between kagami-mochi and toshigami seems at first glance to be somewhat

equivocal. According to Tanoshimu, the “kagami-mochi is an offering to the toshigamisama, as

well as a place where the toshigamisama dwells (yadoru).” It is called kagami-, or mirror-mochi,

moreover, because mirrors have long been used as shintai.343 In explaining this phenomenon, Wa

no gyōji goes one step further, saying that “anciently, it was taught that the mirror was either a

place where the kamisama dwelt, or the kamisama itself.”344 The Guide to Japanese Deities (Nihon

no kamisama ezukan) differs, however, saying instead that the kagami-mochi is merely an offering;

nevertheless, its presence in the home is a sure indicator that a kami is nearby, since “strictly, it

ought to be placed in the tokonoma or kamidana—places where the toshigamisama dwells.”345

This apparent disagreement can be resolved by looking at the way illustrations of the kami-

mochi pairing are executed. Ezukan asserts that the mochi are merely an offering, and its

illustration shows the year god who receives it seated cross-legged directly behind the kagami-

mochi, his posture mimicking the snowman-like pyramidal shape of the offering before him (See

Appendix Illus. 5.7).346 The kami does not dwell within the mochi so much as the mochi indicates

the place where the kami is present, the decorative offering becoming a synecdochic representation

of the kami’s unseen presence. That the kagami-mochi is the visible representation of an unseen

being is indicated even more strongly in Shichifukujin to o-shōgatsu. Using the same terms used

by gyōji manuals, Benten explains to the protagonist Kento that “the kagamimochi is where the

toshigamisama dwells”347 while he is in the home for the New Year. When Kento looks down on

343
Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon, 14.
344
Mukashi, kagami wa “kamisama no yadoru mono de ari, kamisama sonomono” to oshierareteimashita. Takano
Noriko, Wa no Gyōji Ehon - Aki to Fuyu no Kan, 2:41.
345
Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon, 14.
346
Matsuo Kōichi, Negai Wo Kanaeru Kamisama, 9.
347
Kagamimochi wa, toshigamisama no yadoru tokoro desu, Yamasue Yasue, Shichifukujin to Oshōgatsu, 25.

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his own house from the deck of the shichifukujin’s iconic flying treasure boat, 348
the

toshigamisama is visible through a window, seated seiza atop the kagamimochi, his body

translucent such that he does not obscure the orange at its peak (See Appendix Illus. 5.8). When

the next scene brings us inside the home, the shichifukujin have joined Kento and his parents

around the festive banquet table as the toshigamisama looks on from his perch. Interestingly,

although the shichifukujin are sensible to the human characters in the scene—Benten entertaining

the group with a song on her biwa—the group does not appear to perceive the toshigamisama or

to engage with him in an interpersonal way. When Kento turns away from the group in the next

and final scene to look at the kagamimochi, he—the only human to have perceived the kami in the

first place—realizes that the toshigami has vanished.349 As in Shichifukujin to natsu matsuri, the

narrative relies on the appearance of the titular Seven Gods of Good Fortune to use their magic

powers to show the protagonist (and thereby to the reader) aspects of the festival they might

otherwise not have seen, and in so doing explain them. In this case, the child reader is able to see

through Kento’s eyes what otherwise is invisible to him or her in the phenomenal world: the kami

whose presence in the home the kagami-mochi assures.

Other books go somewhat farther by anthropomorphizing the kagami-mochi itself. Nagano

Hideko’s O-shōgatsu-san don-doko-don (“Mr. New Year Bum Bada Bum” 2011) follows a pair

of siblings, their grandmother, a cat, and an octopus as they prepare their house for the New Year

festivities. Leading the group through a deep clean, Grandmother tells them, singing, that o-

shōgatsu-san will come only once the house is clean.350 On the next page the deity arrives, shown

348
Although there is no phraseological equivalent to the expression “one’s ship has come in” in Japanese, the image
of the takarafune captures precisely the same sentiment.
349
Ki ga tsuku to, toshigamisama no sugata wa mō mienakatta. Yamasue Yasue, Shichifukujin to Oshōgatsu, 30.
350
Kirei ni naru to o-shōgatsu-san ga dondoko dondoko yattekurun da yo. Nagano Hideko, O-Shōgatsu-San Don-
Doko-Don (Tokyo: Sekai Bunka-sha, 2011), 6.

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not in anthropic form but rather as a smiling kagami-mochi (See Appendix Illus. 5.9). Although

the smile disappears on all subsequent illustrations, the text underscores the identity of mochi with

kami on the following page: when one of the children asks why it is called kagami-mochi, she

responds, “Because it’s said that the kamisama is in the mirror.”351

Another, Omochi no kimochi (“The Mochi’s Feelings” 2005), which was being heavily

marketed in bookstores for its tenth anniversary during New Year 2015-6, dispenses with kami-

language entirely in telling the story of a kagami-mochi who, having seen his siblings pinched off

and covered in all sorts of typical toppings (including the much-reviled nattō), resolves to run away

from his perch in the tokonoma alcove of the mochi-maker’s house (See Appendix Illus. 5.10).

While no attempt is made here to equate the animate mochi with the deity as in Don-doko-don, it

nevertheless accomplishes the same purpose by encouraging its readers—albeit playfully—to

think of the mochi as a person rather than a thing.

The toshigamisama exists in the home only for the duration of the festivities—but what is it,

and where is it the rest of the time? The literature is less certain. Tanoshimu says that “Toshigama

comes from out in the distance. That is to say, from places like the mountains or from the ehō (that

year’s geomantically felicitous direction).”352 The word I have translated as distance—kanata—

indicates a generic ‘out there’ whose location is non-specific. It goes on to say that “in whichever

case, it flutters down (maiorite-kuru) from above;” Kento witnesses this same fluttering descent

in Shichifukujin to o-shōgatsu, reporting that he “strained [his] eyes at the blue sky and saw the

white form of toshigamisama descending like smoke (See Appendix Illus. 5.11). The white-haired,

white-bearded toshigamisama was swaying slowly down from the sky.” 353 The sparkling

351
Kagami ni wa kamisama ga iru sō yo. Nagano Hideko, 10.
352
Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon, 13.
353
Me o korasu to, aoi sora ni, kemuri no yō ni shiroi sugata no toshigamisama ga mieta. Shiroi kami ni shiroi hage
no toshigamisama ga, yura-yura sora kara orite iku, Yamasue Yasue, Shichifukujin to Oshōgatsu, 25.

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whiteness of the kamisama’s hair and robes of course indicates ritual purity, and is consistent with

depictions of kami in Hitoribocchi as well as illustrated Kojiki myths.

The literature is as non-committal about what the toshigamisama is as about where it resides

when it is not in the home. “Toshigamisama is thought about in many ways—as the gosenzo-sama

(sorei-shin) [=the ancestors], the kami of the rice field, or the kami of the mountains,” equivocates

Tanoshimu. 354 In Nishimoto Keisuke’s O-shōgatsu san gozatta, toshigamisama is depicted as

descending into the world of men from a small shrine (yashiro) on the top of a mountain—although

the cover art portrays him perched on a cloud (See Appendix Illus. 5.12). Like the kami in

Hitoribocchi no kamisama, this deity interacts with the human world without ever being

apprehended as such by anyone but the reader. As is the case with many gyōji narratives, the story

is framed around a child’s impatience at the return of his father from work for the holiday. In this

case, the father is a taxi driver; the kami hails the cab and asks to be taken in the direction of the

driver’s family a considerable distance away, which causes the driver’s boss at the dispatch office

to dismiss his services for the remainder of the evening. The driver believes the kami to be an

eccentric old man—until, nearly home, he looks in his rear-view mirror to find that his passenger

has mysteriously vanished. When we see him take his son to the shrine for hatsumōde as promised,

we see toshigamisama hiding behind a stone lantern on the shrine grounds, suggesting that, as in

Shichifukujin to o-shōgatsu, he is not meant to be seen as the same deity as the one within the

shrine.

Other books explicitly commit to the idea of toshigamisama as ancestors. Although Shiba

wanko only hints at this possibility, saying “the toshigamisama...may also be go-senzo-sama,”

when the toshigamisama appears in the text, it does so as the titular character and his cat friend in

354
Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon, 13.

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disguise as kami (See Appendix Illus. 5.13). Looking down from a cloud, Shiba Wanko-cum-

toshigami remarks “My descendants are really working hard, aren’t they...” thus committing to the

interpretation. Likewise, in O-shōgatsu-san arigatō by Uchida Rintarō, the protagonist Aya-chan

sees her father put a kagami-mochi—not in the tokonoma alcove—but rather on her family’s

kamidana (See Appendix Illus. 5.14). He explains, “Tonight is New Year’s Eve. (I did this)

because Toshigamisama is coming.” “Toshigamisama?” she asks, to which he replies, “It’s our

family’s ancestors. They watch over (mimamotte-kudasaru) all of us.”355

Finally, it is worth mentioning that some books do not seek to anthropomorphize the

toshigami at all. Despite its treatment of the kamidana as a place of interaction with the toshigami,

O-shōgatsu-san arigatō represents the coming of the New Year god instead as a gust of wind.

When Aya-chan visits her ill grandfather in the room where he is on bed rest, he asks her to open

the window to the outside. “Soon a cold wind filled the room. But Grandpa, wrapped up on the

futon, filled his lungs with the cold air. ‘Ah! It’s o-shōgatsu-san! O-shōgatsu-san has come.’”356

Interestingly, the identification of toshigami with a natural phenomenon also appears in Kyō to

ashita no sakaime by Mogami Ippei, another in Kyōiku Gageki’s “Gyōji Origin Picture Books”

series. Minori-chan, like the unnamed child in O-shōgatsu san gozatta, spends much of the book

waiting for her father to return from his job in the city. When he returns, the family celebrates New

Year’s Eve together, part of which involves the offering of homemade mochi to all the deities of

355
It is worth remembering at this point that the God of Good Fortune, fukunokami/Daikoku, is said to arrive at the
home at setsubun and take up residence there just as the toshigami is said to arrive at New Year—and that another
word for setsubun is koshōgatsu, or the ‘little New Year,’ as it signals the new agricultural year by the old lunar
calendar rather than the solar. As such, the New Year/toshigami relationship is structurally similar to the
setsubun/fukunokami relationship. It is worth mentioning that Shiba Wanko, in his guise as toshigami, is pictured with
the mallet and bag of plenty usually associated with fukunokami (Appendix Img. 5.13). Additionally, in another work
by Uchida Rintarō, Fuku wa uchi, oni mo uchi, which I discussed in Chapter 4, fukunokami perches upon the kamidana
when he decides to take up residence in the home (Appendix Img. 4.10) much in the same way that he perches upon
the kagami-mochi in Shichifukujin to o-shōgatsu (Appendix Img. 5.8), and like the kagami-mochi, in turn, is placed
on the kamidana in Kyō to ashita no sakaime (Appendix Img. 5.14).
356
Uchida Rintarō, O-Shōgatsu-san arigatō (Tokyo: Iwasaki Shoten, 2010), 26–27.

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the house. “They made mochi. They gave mochi to the hotokesama and kamisama. They gave

them to Daikoku-sama, to the Kitchen kamisama, to the Hearth kamisama, and to the Toilet (benjo)

kamisama. They did omairi at each in turn, and then the whole family ate omochi together.”357

Nevertheless, the toshigami is not in any of these places: rather, when Minori is wakened from an

impromptu nap by the ringing of the New Year bell (joya-no-kane) at a nearby temple, she goes

with her father to look out the window. “From the direction of Mt. Nukui it looked to Minori like

a great big black hand of night was extending out. And from Mt. Hoho extended another great

black hand of night. The two hands met, she thought, as though in a handshake. ‘Ah! That must

be the sakaime! Yesterday’s and today’s hands are shaking!’” 358 Although this event is not

described as the toshigamisama, its similarity to the scene in O-shōgatsu-san arigatō is rather

striking. Minori’s observation, moreover, comes immediately after she slips her hand into her

father’s and feels its warmth, suggesting perhaps that the warmth of filial love should be projected

outward onto the celestial handshake, and in so doing, imbue it with the kind of loving concern

that the child is told that the kamisama have for them.

In sum, whereas the saijin of shrine and palanquin are permanent fixtures of the community

and can therefore be generally described as though they were effectively coterminous with the

structures in which they can reliably be found, more effort is undertaken to connect visiting

domestic gods with the concrete objects that they animate by depicting those deities—in particular,

toshigami—arriving from elsewhere in human form and taking up temporary residence within

those objects. This distinction is also made by the choice of verb to describe the kami’s mode of

being: the shrine kami exists in a continuous and active state (iru, itteru, irassharu), while the

toshigami arrives to dwell (yadoru) temporarily in a space sanctified to contain his presence.

357
Mogami Ippei, Kyō to Ashita No Sakaime, 16.
358
Mogami Ippei, 30.

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The Buddha is his Statue
It is tempting not to treat the Buddhas separately from the kami at all when speaking of the lived

experience of children. Indeed, when I asked kindergarteners and first graders to separate a set of

thirty illustrated cards into ‘kamisama’ and ‘not kamisama’, cards the children had previously

correctly identified by name as Jizō-sama and Hotoke-sama were invariably placed in the

kamisama category, suggesting that, on the whole, the term kamisama indicates religious beings

in general without regard to the finer divisions between Shinto and Buddhism.359 The children I

encountered were all familiar with Jizō (Ch. Dìzàng, Sk. Kṣitigarbha), but I could not determine

the extent to which they understood this character to be a type of hotoke, or Buddha, which term

is itself complicated because it is also used more commonly to indicate the ancestors (alternately

go-senzo-sama), who are often understood to have become reborn as Buddhas after death.360

Nevertheless, I believe the Buddhas warrant separate consideration for one very important

reason: that the Buddhist tradition in Japan fully embraces iconic representation of its deities.

Because the Buddhas receive figural representation, the task of personalizing them is somewhat

more direct. Nevertheless, it deserves some consideration. That Buddhism does not tend to stress

the first portion of Taniue-san’s statement—that the kamisama is here—is not terribly surprising.

One is tempted to say that it is technically a theologically correct statement, insofar as the historical

Buddha entered parinirvana at death and therefore is not present in any way to animate his images

or relics.361 Indeed, at least some of the Buddhist clerics I spoke to—the Rinzai Zen abbot of Reitō-

359
The complete results of this pile sorting exercise I will analyze more fully at a later point.
360
Smith, Ancestor Worship in Contemporary Japan. It is worth mentioning also that among families for whom
Buddhism is particularly important (such as the family of the scion of Kokuseki-ji, whose three year old son is
nonetheless enrolled at Komagata nursery) the term ‘Nono-sama’ tends to be used to indicate the Buddha and buddhas
interchangeably. The name perhaps derives, it was suggested to me, from a mispronunciation of namu which begins
many of the more familiar mantras, or perhaps the rendering thereof into a repetitive baby-talk according to a common
pattern: tete for ‘hand’, būbū for ‘car’, and so on (Hendry 1986, 103). As my access to Buddhist institutions and
materials was limited, a further investigation into Nono-sama must be postponed to a later date.
361
Gregory Schopen, Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and
Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997); Kevin Trainor, Relics, Ritual, and

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ji in Maesawa, in particular—is skeptical of the personhood of Buddhas at all, seeing these images

rather as hōben, or ‘expedient means’ to bring the unenlightened to truth through imagery. But this

explanation does not obtain except in informed theological discourse, and certainly not among

children. But more simply than this, Buddha statues are spoken of as though they were the Buddhas

themselves.

This is particularly true in children’s literature. The opening line of Shibarare jizō (“Bound-

up Jizō” 1981) reads, “Long, long ago in the center of a certain castle town there stood an o-Jizō-

sama.”362 Note that its representationality is nowhere mentioned: it is not a statue of Jizō but

simply Jizō himself, with full honorifics. This is almost always the case, even when the image is

created as part of the narrative. As examples from two different books: “father carved a hotoke-

sama out of wood” (Kibotoke, “The Wooden Buddha” 1987)363 and “Yosaku set about making a

new o-Jizō-san” (Karasu jizō, “Crow Jizō” 1996).364 When the symbol is referred to as its referent,

then certain other turns of phrase are more easily interpreted to support the theory, such as when

Yosaku is described as praying to Jizō while the illustration shows him praying before a statue of

Jizō: the image does not necessarily have to be the object of his prayer, but if the image is referred

to exclusively in the same terms as the image, then the child is in no way encouraged to make this

division in any meaningful way.

The anthropomorphism of these statues, however, is not limited to the fact that they are

referred to as the deities they represent. More importantly, the statues are further personified as

having other human attributes. The most striking example of this is found in the folktale Kasa Jizō,

Representation in Buddhism: Rematerializing the Sri Lankan Theravada Tradition (Cambridge University Press,
1997); John Strong, Relics of the Buddha (Motilal Banarsidass Publishe, 2007).
362
Koharu Hisaichirō, Shibarare Jizō, O-Hanashi Hikari-No-Kuni 11 (Osaka: Hikari no kuni, 1981), 1.
363
Yanagisawa Keiko, Kibotoke (Tokyo: Libro Port, 1987), 21–22.
364
Tajima Yukihiko, Karasu Jizō (Tokyo: Kumon Publishing, 1996), 27–28.

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in which a poor man, returning home from an unsuccessful day selling his handmade straw hats,

happens past one of the six-figure rows of Jizō statues common throughout Japan and, taking pity

on them, sacrifices his whole inventory in order to shelter them from the falling snow (See

Appendix Illus. 5.15). His compassion is rewarded on the following morning when the six statues

arrive at his house pulling all sorts of worldly riches to thank him for his generosity.

This folktale, which is well known among the children of Mizusawa,365 is the only example

I have encountered of Buddha statues exhibiting any form of locomotion. All the other examples

of Buddha statues in children’s literature I collected took a more realistic approach in their

depictions. In these, Buddha statues are endowed with the most essential human attributes of

thought and emotion, while nevertheless performing no acts that would violate our sensory

expectations of inert matter.

In Momochan tokoyasan (“Little Momo’s Barbershop” 1981), Momo is seized with a passion

for pretending to be a barber and tries to pull anyone she can into her game. But when her cat, Boo,

flees from an aggressive shampooing, a statue of Jizō appears, stating his eagerness to be part of

her game (See Appendix Illus. 5.16). The haircut proceeds successfully despite Jizō’s baldness

(she is only pretending, after all), and the dialogue shows him paying his imaginary fee even as

the illustrations show him to be entirely unmoving throughout the entire process. The fact that Jizō

speaks audibly to Momo would seem on its face to contradict my assertion that the Buddhas are

never said to do things that our senses could disconfirm. But it is clear from the text that, at least

to an adult reader, the dialogue emanating from both Jizō and Boo is being supplied by Momo

365
Kasa Jizō was the basis of one skit performed at Tokiwa Nursery’s annual recital and appeared in multiple versions
both in the Mizusawa public library and among cheaply-made folktale picture books that I encountered at most major
booksellers (Sasaki Noboru, Kasa Jizō, Nihon Mukashi Banashi Anime Ehon 13 (Nagaoka Shoten, 1999); Seta Teiji,
Kasa Jizō, Kodomo no Tomo Kessaku-shu (Tokyo: Fukuinkan Shoten, 1966).). Moreover, when shown an image of
a gray-colored Jizō wearing a straw hat as part of my pile sorting exercise, children between 5 and 7 routinely identified
the figure specifically as being kasa Jizō.

234
who, in the absence of human playmates, is playing both sides of the encounter. As Griswold

observes, the lack of movement from an anthropomorphized plaything is no evidence to the child

that his playmate isn’t real: of course the toy is alive, it just can't talk because it hasn’t got a moving

mouth.366 A child like Momo-chan, for Griswold, does not therefore see herself as the inventor of

a playmate, but simply as a translator. Even though the agency in this case is supplied entirely by

the protagonist, the child reader is nevertheless encouraged here to see a Buddha statue as a

possible object of creative play, a living person whose hidden human qualities can be unlocked

through the interaction of play.

Other books engage the half-belief-half-doubt (J: hanshin hangi) approach to iconic animacy

more subtly. In Karasu Jizō written and illustrated by Tajima Yukihiko, young father Yosaku helps

an apprentice shopkeeper replace his master’s lost pet crow by taking a baby crow out of its nest.367

The crows retaliate by stealing Yosaku’s baby son and pecking mercilessly at everyone who tries

to recover it. Yosaku and his wife, who had prayed to a statue of Jizō daily before their son was

born, returned to the statue at the base of the crows’ tree to beg him to help them recover their

baby (See Appendix Illus. 5.17). They cry themselves to sleep before the statue, and upon waking

find their son safely on the ground, bathed in morning sunlight. What had happened, the father

explains, is that in his compassion “o-Jizō-san has become the crows’ child,” and in thanks,

Yosaku carves a new statue of Jizō with the body of a crow. Apart from this act of substitution—

which happens while all witnesses are sleeping and which, because of Tajima’s signature

impressionistic style, is difficult to make out concretely—there is no indication that the statue is

alive in any way. After the young couple has cried themselves to sleep, Tajima writes that “as the

night advanced, Jizō’s eyes grew wet [and] droplets ran down his cheeks”—but does so

366
Griswold, Feeling like a Kid, 113.
367
Tajima Yukihiko, Karasu Jizō.

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immediately after describing the evening dew that settled thickly on that part of the forest, allowing

simultaneously for a miraculous and a mundane reading of the hierophany.

The examples above are all drawn from books on the secular market and as such are not

primarily concerned with religious instruction. In one book I found of definitive Buddhist

authorship, however, the identification of image with object and the attribution of human qualities

thereunto are made even more strongly. Nippon-ichi no kannon-sama (“The Kannon of Nippon-

ichi Village” 2007) begins “long, long ago [in] a town called Nippon-ichi. And in this town there

was a hall (o-dō), and in that hall was a Kannon-sama.”368 As with the above, there is no indication

that Kannon-sama is a statue except insofar as it is illustrated as having a uniformly stone-like

coloration (See Appendix Illus. 5.18). More tellingly, whereas Shibarare Jizō says simply “Jizō

was standing/erected” (ojizōsama ga tatteimashita), Nippon-ichi uses both the animate form of the

copula, ‘iru’ to describe the statue (kan’non sama ga hitori de imashita) as well as the explicitly

human counter ‘hitori’ (一人)—as opposed to the generic singular (hitotsu 一つ), the singular for

tall, cylindrical objects (ippon 一本), or even hitobashira (一柱) which is the technically-correct

counter for divinities.

Nippon-ichi does not have a plot, per se, but rather is composed of two sections, one

establishing the relationship between the community and the image, followed by a series of three

occasions on which thieves had tried to make off with the statue. Descriptions of Kannon’s actions

in the former section are worded such that a theologically correct interpretation is possible.

“Because Kannon-sama loved the children and all the surrounding people very much, [she] always

looked after them, through wind and rain and any weather at all. Kannon-sama loved the village

called Nippon-ichi;” 369 and later, “Kannon-sama, seeing everyone's smiling, happy faces, had

368
Sakai Shōji, Nippon-Ichi No Kannon-Sama, 1–2.
369
Sakai Shōji, 8–9.

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feelings of happiness.” 370 It is possible, of course, that the Kannon referred to here is the

Bodhisattva in the abstract rather than the statue—but since at no point in the text is the image at

all treated as referential of an external being, it is doubtful that a child would make this extra logical

leap. Indeed, with the exception of books taking place in gokuraku, a Buddhist heaven, I have

encountered only one book in which a Buddha appears separately from its sculptural representation.

This is the final page of Kibotoke, in which the narrator explains “Since long ago, in order to be

helped/saved, people have carved hotoke-sama out of wood and stone, and worshipped them

(matsuri) at the roadside. So now [the protagonist] prayed that this hotoke-sama would rescue the

people passing by.”371 The illustration shows a Buddha riding on a cloud in the night sky above

the trio of Buddha images carved over the course of the narrative (See Appendix Illus. 5.19). The

inclusion of Amida Buddha here is not to suggest that the three wooden Buddha statues are

referential placeholders to signify another Buddha residing elsewhere, but rather to imply that the

celestial Amida and the terrestrial images all share equally in Buddhahood: the one concrete and

localized, the other unseen and diffuse.

When Kannon interacts with her would-be thieves in the second section, however, her

materiality is stressed again. One thief succeeds in making off with the statue, but leaves a trail of

footprints in the snow as he flees. It is perhaps telling that the immediate suspicion of the crowd is

that Kannon has been stolen, and that there is never any suggestion that a miracle has happened or

that Kannon has left her shrine of her own accord. More compelling still is Kannon’s interaction

with the third thief: once the statue is in his hands, “Kannon-sama began to shine, and, looking

firmly into the robber’s eyes, took his hands, and spoke to him slowly. ‘It will not do to quietly

take other people’s things. I have been watching all the things you do in the night. Your good heart

370
Sakai Shōji, 14–15.
371
Yanagisawa Keiko, Kibotoke, 25–26.

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is saddened. I am always looking after you.’ And so Kannon-sama lectured to him.”372 As before,

the statue is attributed with the capacity for both communication and emotion. While the text

suggests that the statue changes posture (clasping the robber’s hands) the illustrations notably do

not, preserving instead the statue’s static pose, hands folded gently across her chest (See Appendix

Illus. 5.20). The emanation of light, while contravening our expectations of inert matter, is

nevertheless not as upsetting as more evident locomotion would be—perhaps because we have an

intuitive sense that most light in our environment is ultimately reflected from another source. It is

also worth noting that Kannon refers to herself explicitly as a thing (mono) that can be stolen.

As a counterexample to the above, it is worth mentioning a series of picture books intended

for older children that deals extensively with Buddha images without personifying them. The

Fūraibō series by Kawabata Makoto follows the wanderings of the titular itinerant Buddhist monk

during the fictionalized samurai-dominated past which is for the Japanese as the Old West has

often been imagined in America. Tortured by a past that is never explained, Fūraibō (whose name,

as with much of the text, is rendered in kanji with furigana glosses) wanders from village to village

solving problems with his famed woodcarving skills. In Kaette-kita no fūraibō (“Fūraibō Comes

Back” 1989), he saves a group of children wrongly accused of having burnt their feudal lord’s

statue of the kami of war by carving a hundred statues of Kannon to replace it in the span of only

three days—a feat which also reforms the character of the bellicose lord, who we are told never

waged war again. In Sakura-no-sato no fūraibō (“Fūraibō in Cherry Blossom Village” 1997), he

carves a Kannon in the image of a woman who is killed saving her daughter from being trampled

by heedless samurai, and presents it to her family to help assuage their grief. In Ohanashi bāsan

no fūraibō (“Furaibō and the Story-Telling Grandma” 2014), he uses his skill to carve a perfect

372
Sakai Shōji, Nippon-Ichi No Kannon-Sama, 26–27.

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likeness of the deceased husband of a famously cranky old woman, bringing her great joy and

allowing her to reintegrate into her erstwhile community.

While these books are all written from a position clearly favorable to Buddhism, portraying

the protagonist’s devotion to justice and compassion as the antidote to the selfishness and cruelty

exemplified by the samurai, the treatment of the Buddha images is entirely mundane. The images

he carves are all referred to explicitly as sculptures (zō) in the text; they perform no miracles and

have no feelings attributed to them. The miracle, instead, is Fūraibō’s preternatural skill in carving,

and while the statues are all instrumental in bringing about the story’s happy ending, they do so

only as tools in a gesture of the sculptor’s compassion. This seems to be entirely consistent with a

general modernist attitude among many adult Japanese that what is essential in Buddhism—apart

from its use as a funerary technology—is not its particular supernatural claims but rather its ethic,

the stress on compassion as the highest ideal and on the single-minded devotion of which ascetic

practice (shugyō) is a shining example. I am hesitant to generalize and suggest that this should be

taken as firm evidence that older children are expected to attain a more disenchanted understanding

of the agency and personhood of Buddha images as they age—every author has his or her own

approach—but it is nevertheless suggestive that a series aimed at older children should take such

a divergent approach to images compared to those intended for younger children.

Ritual Greeting and the Construction of Personhood

So far, I have been concerned primarily with the ways in which children’s literature helps to

impress upon the child that the kami and Buddhas are present within their communities as the

cultic objects that represent them, both in the selective deployment of anthropomorphic

representations, and in the animate, interpersonal terms used in text to refer to shrines and Buddha

images. This is necessary, but insufficient, in helping children to interpret shrines and Buddha

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images as social persons. What is also necessary is to help children to then make the logical leap

that if an inanimate object is taken to be the physical manifestation of a supernatural person that

that object is therefore due the same level of ritualized interpersonal interaction as any other person

in the child’s social circle. Conversely, by teaching children that these objects are due a type of

interaction normally reserved for humans, it makes the acceptance of these objects as persons all

the more easy to accept.

Ritual Pedagogy: Restricted and Key Ritual Gestures

For all aspects of a Japanese child’s habitus training—from toilet habits to dining etiquette,

dressing and undressing—the most essential strategy is consistent repetition in modeling correct

behavior. This is equally true of the many set phrases that make up polite social interaction. Of

these, Joy Hendry writes:

Mothers or other caretakers repeat over and over again the phrases they want
their children to learn, without making undue fuss if the child fails to copy.
Rather than telling the child what to say and waiting for him or her to say it,
they just say the phrase for them and many a time the child will join in quite
happily. In the case of movements, like bowing or removing shoes, or
activities such as washing or using chopsticks, the mother puts the child
through the motions regularly and at the appropriate time, until the child
gradually learns to do the things, by force of habit, for itself.373

This behavioral modeling also appears to be the primary form of instruction in the essential

ritual actions of Japanese worship. Over the course of my ethnographic fieldwork, wherever I saw

mixed groups of adults and children at worship together—in shrines (Fig. 5.4) and temples (Fig.

5.5) and at domestic altars and gravesites (Fig. 5.6)—the same principles were at play: the adults

would attempt with varying degrees of success to gain the child’s attention, then perform with

somewhat exaggerated crispness the necessary ritual gestures, allowing the child to follow or not

as his interest and ability permit. After countless occasions of this modeling, it stands to reason,

373
Hendry, Becoming Japanese, 102–3.

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the child becomes as fully socialized to the ritual protocols of shrine and temple as he is to bowing

or to leaving removed shoes pointed tidily toward the front door.

Although the primary method of habitus training is modeling, Hendry notes that explanatory

reinforcement of desired behaviors begins around the age of three. 374 These explanations are

usually oriented around social morality—justifying mandates and prohibitions in terms of the

ramifications of a child’s actions on others’ feelings—and are deployed so that the child feels him

or herself praised for having grown up to be an oniisan or oneesan who is capable of this deeper

level of understanding. Whenever over the course of my ethnographic fieldwork I have seen adult-

child pairs at worship, I have always noticed what appeared at a distance to be a similar explanatory

discourse—the supervising parent often crouching to a child’s level, directing the child’s attention

with a pointed finger, or speaking words that are not part of a ritual liturgy.375 Regrettably, because

this explanation occurs in hushed tones in an intimate discursive space, I have not been able to

overhear these explanations directly—explanations that, because ad hoc, cannot be reliably

reproduced by the actors subsequently. Whatever explanation accompanies ritual pedagogy,

therefore, will have to wait for a subsequent study to be discovered.376

Sections on shrine worship in gyōji manuals do not shed any light on this subject, as they

mirror the adult preoccupation with habitus over meaning and concern themselves with teaching

374
Hendry, 104.
375
That children younger than three receive explanations may be attributable to the relative infrequency of religious
rituals compared to the rituals of everyday life. No matter how formulaic the gestures of Japanese worship are, they
are nevertheless much less frequent than the domestic rituals of bath time and dining, coming and going. Although
they seem perfectly mundane from the perspective of a Japanese adult, it is worth considering that within the limited
lifetime of a young child an act of shrine or temple worship may be sufficiently novel as to warrant being considered
under Harvey Whitehouse’s scheme as “low-frequency, high arousal” rituals, even as from the adult perspective they
have receded to “high-frequency, low arousal.”
376
I have devised a protocol for attempting to access this dialogue through the use of a wearable microphone, but was
unable to secure the necessary human subjects research approvals before the conclusion of my fieldwork. I intend to
pursue this line of inquiry at a later date.

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the correct protocols for basic religious rituals.377 The correct protocol for shrine worship (sampai)

is as follows: one bow at the torii when entering the shrine; make ablutions at the shrine fountain,

where present; proceed along the edge of any paths to the area before the shrine’s main hall; toss

a coin into the offering box; take the suspended rope to ring the suzu bell; most importantly, as the

climax of the rite, bow twice, clap twice, then bow once again; depart and conduct whatever other

business (o-mamori, etc.) one has at the shrine. In the case of some smaller shrines, certain of these

actions (notably the ablutions) may be impossible or unnecessary; the 2-2-1 bowing and clapping

sequence, however, is essential for an action to have been considered a sampai.

It is necessary to mention that this gesture is only appropriate in settings where the object of

reverence is a kami rather than a Buddha. Or, since one often finds kami enshrined in Buddhist

places of worship and Buddha statues in shrines, and since both historically and in practice the

metaphysical distinctions between kami and Buddhas are not as rigid as a taxonomically-minded

Westerner would prefer, 378 it may be more accurate to suggest that the 2-2-1 sampai is only

appropriate when the recipient is kamisama rather than hotoke-sama—or, better still, in settings

that feel, based on architectural and aesthetic cues, more like ‘kamisama-places’ than ‘hotokesama-

places’.

Indeed, when one asks what makes shrines and temples different generally and in the

abstract, any Japanese adult (and most children) will explain—often with a finality of tone that

indicates that in doing so they believe they have answered your question exhaustively—that the

377
Interestingly, each of the manuals I collected treats sampai not as an independent action, but rather in context with
a more momentous occasion. In Wa no gyōji, the rules for sampai appear on the page devoted to the shrine visit portion
of shichigosan; in Tanoshimu and Shiba wanko it appears instead as one of the activities for New Year’s Day. Takano
Noriko, Wa no Gyōji Ehon - Aki to Fuyu no Kan, 2:24; Miura Yasuko, Wa No Gyōji O Tanoshimu Ehon, 18; Kawaura
Yoshie, Shiba Wanko No Wa No Kokoro, 1:22.
378
John M. Roberts, Saburo Morita, and L. Keith Brown, “Personal Categories for Japanese Sacred Places and
Gods: Views Elicited from a Conjugal Pair,” American Anthropologist, New Series 88, no. 4 (1986): 807–24.

242
difference is in the kind of ritual gesture expected there. 379 Shrines demand sampai (often

articulated as 二拝二拍手一拝, or shortened yet further to the onomatopoeic pon! pon! suru to

represent the clapping), whereas in temples the correct gesture is instead a gasshō: a pressing of

the hands together, lowering of the head, and closing of the eyes—which is more often articulated

as namunamu-suru, referring to the chanting of either the Nenbutsu (namu amida butsu) or Lotus

Sutra (namu myōhō renge kyō) mantras.

Yet for all the clarity with which pon pon goes with kami and gasshō/namunamu with the

Buddhas in the abstract, in practice it can be somewhat more ambiguous. Witness in this regard a

sign I saw posted at the Benten-dō on the island in the center of Tokyo’s Ueno Park. On the tatami

floor leaning up against the offering box, it reads, in large characters, “gasshō de,” surrounded by

an explanatory gloss, “This is a temple; please worship without clapping your hands” (koko wa o-

tera desu; te wa tatazuni o-mairi kudasai). Below this appears in curt English, “NO clap”,

suggesting that, while well-meaning foreign tourists are likely to misapply a gesture of

worship/respect they have but recently learned, the misjudgment of the Benten-dō as a ‘pon-pon

place’ rather than a ‘gasshō place’ is sufficiently frequent even among native Japanese speakers

as to warrant a sign to that effect.380

Granted, the metaphysical status of the deity Benten/Benzaiten is somewhat ambiguous:

originally the Hindu goddess Sarasvatī, she was appropriated like many other south Asian deities

and reimagined as a ‘guardian’ of the Buddha’s law. In addition to appearing in Buddhist settings

throughout East Asia—particularly on altars and mandalas belonging to the esoteric schools—she

is more commonly known as one of the Seven Gods of Good Fortune (shichifukujin), who in Japan

379
An observation also noted in Traphagan, The Practice of Concern, 104.
Kawano, Ritual Practice in Modern Japan, 24; Jane Cobbi, “Sonaemono: Ritual Gifts to the Deities,” in Ceremony
380

and Ritual in Japan, ed. Jan van Bremen and D.P. Martinez (London: Routledge, 1995), 207.

243
tend to be thought of as leaning more to the Shinto than the Buddhist end of the religious spectrum.

Even so, when a Japanese person has to make the decision to clap or not to clap, rather than try to

reason out whether Benten is a kami or a Buddha, he is judging in the moment based on the

architectural features of his immediate surroundings. Since the Benten-dō is not obviously, or

prototypically, either a shrine or a parish temple, but rather an octagonal structure of clearly

religious nature on an island in a public park—not to mention the fact that the act of worship is in

most cases incidental to the supplicant’s real object of a walk in the park—the chances of

accidentally defaulting to the pon pon style of worship are doubtlessly high, especially for those

standing outside the building where the sign is posted.

Satsuki Kawano has argued that these ritual gestures to the kami and Buddhas be categorized

as ‘restricted rituals’—rituals that are appropriate only in certain contexts—as opposed to ‘key

rituals’, such as bowing, which are essential in all settings.381 Even so, she observes, both sampai

and gasshō are based on key ritual precedents drawn from ordinary interpersonal interaction. The

gasshō is still used toward people when making a request, while the clap—which is understood to

alert the kami to one’s presence at the shrine—is similarly used to attract attention in a crowded

room. Moreover, the clap was also once used as a greeting of respect to social superiors, which the

kami continue to be.382 Although these gestures tend to be made in religious settings, it is worth

considering that they differ from key rituals not in kind but rather in degree, and that their

dissimilarity from ordinary rituals of interpersonal interaction is reflective not of a separate

religious domain but rather of the nature of the relationship between the two parties to the ritual

exchange. In other words, the religious ritual gesture is part of the Japanese continuum of

formalized interaction more generally, with the differences in form attributable to both the extreme

381
Kawano, Ritual Practice in Modern Japan, 40.
382
Kawano, 49–52.

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status differential between the two parties and the supplicatory nature of the interaction. That this

is the case, I believe, is demonstrated by the fact that, when these ritual gestures are explained to

the child, they are not presented as though they belonged to the “restricted” category at all, but

instead are referred to consistently by the general term for ritual greeting, aisatsu.

The Importance of Ritual Greeting in Childhood Socialization

All but the most casual and intimate Japanese interpersonal interactions are governed by

formal rules, the mastery of which is an essential part of childhood socialization.383 Particularly

important is the greeting, or aisatsu. Lois Peak observes that “a polite greeting is more than a smile

of welcome or a friendly hello. A proper greeting must follow a ritual format,” one that

incorporates both the physical act of bowing and the correct phrases, which themselves are

dependent upon the relative social status of the actors and the formality or informality of the

situation.384 Infants are introduced to the protocol of bowing even before they can walk by having

their heads pushed down in imitation of a parent’s bow while still strapped to their back, and

likewise hearing the same set phrases in their parents’ mouths countless times per day.385

Once a child is old enough to attend preschool or kindergarten, he finds that his early training

in performing proper greetings is essential to succeeding in the school environment, where it is

seen as one of the most essential aspects of the school’s purpose. According to a set of guidelines

for preschool education published by the Ministry of Education (Monbushō) in 1989, it is advised

that “to make everyday greetings in a friendly way” should be one of the primary goals of language

learning. 386 In her 1991 study of a temple-affiliated preschool in Nagano, likewise, Lois Peak

reports that the preschool’s principal included “becoming a child who can greet others correctly”

383
Lebra, Japanese Patterns of Behavior, 120–31.
384
Peak, Learning to Go to School in Japan, 79.
385
Hendry, Becoming Japanese, 74, 103.
386
Monbushō, Yōchien kyōiku Yōryō (Tokyo, 1989), 6; Peak, Learning to Go to School in Japan, 79.

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(aisatsu no dekiru kodomo ni naru) among the educational goals of his institution.387 Komagata

hoikuen makes a point to add aisatsu as part of a child’s morning routine, 388 and on Taiyō

hoikuen’s it is mentioned specifically as a pedagogical goal: “In order to bestow on children a life

of future happiness, we bear in mind from the beginning the importance of good upbringing

(shitsuke), such as the mastery of daily habits like aisatsu.”389

At each of the preschool field days I attended, skits involving the school’s youngest children

(0-3 years) were all designed to demonstrate the child’s attentiveness to his or her name. Tokiwa

Kindergarten’s youngest class, for example, performed an adaptation of Kasa jizō, with adult

stagehands replacing the cardboard cutouts of stone Jizō with six bewildered-looking two-year-

old children at the climactic scene. The story was mostly performed by adult teachers, who played

the roles of the good farmer and his wife, with the children serving mainly as props; the ‘recital’

portion of the performance took place afterward when the children, still on stage, responded hai!—

with varying degrees of cajoling and assistance—when the emcee announced their names.

Alertness to his or her own name and the ability to respond ‘hai!’ (henji ga dekiru) is the first step

a preschool undertakes in developing in the child the ability to transition quickly from independent

action to attentive group-oriented action (kiritsu ga dekiru) that is so essential to a well-functioning

school environment, and which is itself considered an essential component of the adult ability to

adapt to changing social arrangements and environments (kejime ga wakaru).390

Ritualized greetings and partings also bookend the child’s school day. The guardian who

accompanies the child to preschool will lead her child in a formal greeting to the teacher (sensei,

ohayō gozaimasu) before departing, modeling the correct procedure that the child mimics with

387
Peak, Learning to Go to School in Japan, 79.
388
http://www.kosodate-web.com/komaho/jitugen-i.html, Accessed 1 Feb 2018.
389
http://taiyohoikuen.web.fc2.com/policy.html, Accessed 31 October 2017.
390
Hendry, Becoming Japanese, 73; Peak, Learning to Go to School in Japan, 79.

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increasing proficiency and attentiveness as she ages.391 Once all the pupils have arrived and free

play has concluded, students are led in their school’s ‘good morning’ song, and then deliver in

unison a greeting to their teacher and to their peers.392 A similar valedictory song and recitation

concludes the day.

Kami, Buddha, and Aisatsu

Whenever Taniue-san refers to the act of sampai in front of an audience of children, he

invariably refers to it using the word aisatsu. He uses this term in the explanation with which I

began the chapter: “it is essential to continue to aisatsu the kamisama so that we can be protected

by them.” Likewise, during a shichigosan rite I observed, for example, he makes clear that the

word is synonymous with sampai: “Ok, let’s all now go-aisatsu the kamisama together. First, we

bow our heads two times. Sei-no.393 Now we do it once again...” Again at the conclusion of the

rite, he congratulates the participating children, saying “You’ve really done a splendid go-asiatsu

to the kamisama today.” The equation of aisatsu and sampai is not unique to Taniue by any means;

recall from the beginning of the chapter that children playing Pokémon GO were not meant to

disturb these monsters at prayer, but rather to “first make sampai as well, and greet (aisatsu) the

kamisama.”

Taniue-san otherwise has little to say about the kamisama, either during shichigosan or at on

any other occasion when children are present, focusing instead on leading the children through the

physical actions they are meant to undertake, or else lecturing them on proper behavior consistent

with our expectations from elsewhere: “listen to your father and mother well, be friends with your

siblings, and do your best in play and study and getting along with your friends,” and so on. Less,

391
Peak, Learning to Go to School in Japan, 79–80.
392
Peak, 88. A similar procedure was followed in all the preschools, kindergartens, and elementary schools I observed
as well.
393
A nonsense interjection roughly equivalent to the English “Ready, and—”.

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it would seem, is more: it is enough to impress on the child that the kami are present in the shrine

and are therefore due the same ritual greeting as any other person they might encounter.

Interestingly, although Komagata kindergarten is run by the shrine, its morning rituals of

greeting do not reference the kami in any way. This is decidedly not the case, however, at Taiyō

hoikuen, a Buddhist kindergarten in neighboring Kanegasaki, one train stop and a short walk north

of downtown Mizusawa. The path that leads through the gate in the wire-fence separating Taiyō’s

playground from its parking lot leads one past a pair of religious structures (Fig. 5.7). To the left

is a thick upright section of tree trunk on a stone foundation, bark removed and weather-sealed, a

niche with a seated male deity carved at a child’s eye level and the legend “Plant Life Memorial

Tower” (草木供養塔) chiseled vertically above it in the Japanese equivalent of comic sans. Beside

this is an open timber-frame pavilion with an ornamental roof, sheltering both a small temple bell

and a statue of a particularly corpulent and kindly looking Jizō with a child on his shoulder,

rendered in a light gray stone and giving every indication of having been carved and erected fairly

recently. The ground beneath these two structures is covered in sand, which is kept in place by a

border of large, smooth river stones, which flares out towards the path beside in a silent invitation

to passers-by.

Just as children in Peak’s study were expected to greet their teacher upon arriving at the

school every morning, pupils of Taiyō Kindergarten are also expected to greet Jizō on their way

into the school—and to say farewell to him at the conclusion of the day. These greetings are

performed on an individual basis as the children arrive, being dropped off by their parents

throughout an initial period of free play.

The Buddha is greeted a second time indoors, this time as a group. Just off the main entrance

hall at the crux of the L-shaped building is the kindergarten’s main hall, which serves as both

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indoor play area and recital space (Fig. 5.8). At the front of this room is a small raised stage set

back into the wall, with a small upright piano and podium tucked into opposite corners. Center

stage, set into the back wall beneath the flags of Japan and of the kindergarten, is a small niche, no

more than a meter wide, in which sits a small woodcut Buddha image and an assortment of ritual

paraphernalia.394 Each morning, once the children have arrived and the organized portion of the

day is about to begin, teachers lead their classes in a morning greeting of the Buddha. The children

sit seiza, facing the stage, their teacher in their midst to prompt each action. She begins by giving

them the signal to begin the recitation of an unintelligible mantra—four sets of eleven syllables,

taking just under thirty seconds in total—which the children seem quite practiced in intoning. One

boy, arriving late to school, rushes in and takes his place in the group seamlessly in the middle of

this performance. She then leads them in three deep, seated bows, calling each of them (ikkai, nikai,

sankai) in turn. She then leads the children, line by line, through the “Five Hearts” (itsutsu no

kokoro) which form the backbone of Taiyō’s pedagogical mission statement, and which appear on

posters throughout the school facility. The children repeat after her in unison each of them in turn:

「はい」という素直な心 “Yes!” – The Heart of Obedience

「ありがとう」という感謝の心 “Thank you!” – The Heart of Gratitude
「すみません」という反省の心 “I’m sorry” – The Heart of Reflection
「私がします」という奉仕の心 “I will do it” – The Heart of Service
「お陰様で」という謙虚な心 “Thanks to you” – The Heart of Humility

At the end of the fifth of these, the children add the request yoroshiku onegaishimasu,

indicating that the Buddha to whom this recitation is addressed is at least partially responsible for

instilling in them the aforementioned virtues. The morning greeting concludes with a hearty ohayō

gozaimasu, first from the teacher, and then from the children.

394
A similar niche is set up in the main hall of Kobato kodomoen, but I was unable to secure an invitation to observe
the children’s interactions thereto.

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 Because my visit to Taiyō was scheduled for mid-day, I was unable to observe the children

greet the stone Jizō in the courtyard either as they arrived or as they departed in an unscripted and

natural way. However, an impromptu field trip was arranged for me as part of my tour so that I

could observe a class of children depart from preschool as they would normally, and then watch

them visit the affiliated temple (Taiyō-ji) on the other side of the parking lot. The teacher in charge

of this expedition led a group of twelve students—six from the middle class (hoshi or ‘star’) and

six from the eldest (tora or ‘tiger’)—in what I was told was a typical valediction. After explaining

to the children why they were performing their goodbye ritual mid-day (and promising them free-

play at the conclusion of the field trip), the teacher asks the group to press their hands together in

gasshō, which she models for them, and sends one boy up to ring the bell while she takes her place

behind the other children. When the gong is struck, the children bow and say ittekimasu in

unison—the general phrase for a short term departure, which means “I am going, and will be back

shortly.” One particularly energetic hoshi-san begins vibrating and babbling, but one of the boys

of the tora class reaches out to lay a steadying hand on his shoulder. The child who rang the bell

turns around dramatically, smiling, and the whole group erupts in giggles—hands still clasped—

several of them turning around to see if the tall foreigner is sharing in their mirth. My audio

recording is here obstructed by a particularly ill-timed gust of wind, but the teacher directs the

children’s attention to “Nono-sama” (another word for the Buddha)395 by pointing at the statue

clearly yet briefly before returning her hands to gasshō and delivering a formula she has evidently

given many times before. “Today is at an end; thank you for looking after us so far.”396 The speech

register is familiar, but polite. She bows deeply; only some of the children follow her bow, but

most if not all follow her message of thanks with a unison arigatō gozaimashita. One child blurts

395
See note 360 on Nono-sama, p232.
396
Kyō de owari desu. Ima made mamotte-kurete arigatō gozaimasu.

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out “hotoke-sama—” as his classmates begin, but he does not finish his thought. Then, addressing

herself first to the hoshi class, she prompts them by saying “please look after us from now on as

well” (kore kara mo yoroshiku onegaishimasu)—a phrase which is commonly used at the end of

both written and spoken interactions with social superiors, particularly those under whose

protection or patronage one feels oneself to be. The hoshi repeat after her. Then, for the tora class,

she models—and they repeat—“when we go to elementary school, we will still persevere!”

(shōgakko ni ittemo, ganbarimasu!). The valediction ends here, with the children erupting again

in giggles.

The children’s aisatsu training viz. Buddha sculptures is not limited to those found on school

premises. As they pass through the main gate of Taiyō-ji on their mini field-trip, several of the

children turn spontaneously and perfunctorily to the side and shout a hearty ohaiyō gozaimasu! to

the guardian deity statues sheltered within the gate on either side. Their teacher then stops before

a row of six red-bibbed standing Jizō statues to the left, prompting the children to line up before

them. She asks them to say good morning to these as well, and after a few individual false starts

the group complies in unison. Assuring them that this is the last time for today, the teacher models

these phrases again for the children, this time in a single unbroken string. “Say to Nono-sama,

‘thank you for everything so far; please keep looking after us” (Nono-sama ni, ‘ima made arigatō

gozaimashita; korekara mo mimamotte kudaisai’ tte?) The children’s reply to this is much less

precise and they are unable to say the whole thing in unison, suggesting that they are not in fact

accustomed to having to reproduce this formula all at once, despite being able to do so piecemeal

when prompted. Finally, the children are led to the main door of the temple and, finding it locked

and unable to attract the attention of anyone therein, the teacher leads them in a recitation of the

mantra with which they began their day, followed by three deep bows and another repetition of

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their thanksgiving formula (with the addition at the end of asobi ni kimasu, or “we have come to

play”), all addressed at the closed temple doors. After stopping briefly to explain to one child the

purpose of the stone censer at their backs, she has them intone ittekimasu to the temple before they

all depart, holding hands in pairs of two, more or less at leisure, bowing once more silently to the

row of Jizō statues as they go.

As was often the case at my field sites—particularly those where I was restricted to only one

or two visits—my interactions were highly orchestrated, the schools preferring to present

themselves in a rehearsed manner rather than let me peer behind the public face to the messy

authenticity beneath. While I do believe that the examples of aisatsu organized for my benefit were

not altered from their normal form, they nevertheless had an air of performativity to them that they

might not have had if my presence had not been such a novelty. That said, I was able to observe

by chance one entirely unscripted interaction between children and the Buddha as I was being

escorted off the premises at the end of my official meeting. As I was being conducted out to the

parking lot, I passed once again by the statue of Jizō that the children greet as they come and go.

The statue, I should mention, is life-size, but on a child’s scale, so that the adult Jizō shares the

pupils’ stature while the stone child carved climbing on his back is the size of a large doll. Much

in the same way that Momo-chan makes Jizō part of her barber shop game in Momochan tokoyasan,

three children—two boys and a girl—were playing with Jizō in the sand, one child hooking the

handle of a plastic bucket over the statue’s outstretched hand, with the others playing at his feet

(Fig. 5.9). As my movements were closely guarded, I was unable to stop to inquire further about

the children’s game. Nevertheless, it would appear that the children have come to look on that

statue—whom they are taught to greet as they would a teacher—not with awe or reverence as a

thing not to be handled except with respect, but as a playmate in their games.

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Conclusion: Habitus, Embodied Cognition, and the Construction of Personhood
To summarize, Taniue’s first and most essential point was that the immanence of the saijin or

enshrined deity is the most important thing for a young child to learn about the kamisama. Because

of a long tradition of sculptural representation, the loci of the Buddhas’ presence are more simply

their statues. The only occasions on which the kami (other than those from the Kojiki) are depicted

consistently in human form seems to be in the case of the toshigamisama, 397 when because the

ritual environment is the home rather than the shrine, and temporary rather than permanent, the

inclusion of an illustrated person seems to be necessary to impress upon the child that the home—

and in particular the kagamimochi—has become for the purposes of the New Year festivities the

body of the deity. Otherwise, in the case of primarily aniconic shrine kami, anthropomorphic

depiction is generally avoided in text in order to impress on children that the shrine and the mikoshi

should be treated as though they were the deities themselves.

That these representations are equivalent to their divine persons is also reinforced in the way

the rituals surrounding these objects are talked about. Children are taught the appropriate ritual

actions to perform toward these objects as they are taught most of their habitual actions: through

consistent repetition of correctly-performed models by their adult caretakers. The child grows up

watching socially competent adults and older children making correct ritual performances, and

emulates them in his or her own time.

397
I exclude the Shichifukujin from this, even though they are encountered primarily iconographically. Recall the
heretofore unremarked fact that in Yamasue Yasue’s Shichifukujin series the titular deities are always immanent—as
opposed to the translucent toshigami, seen only by Kento, and the saijin, seen by no one. That this should be so is due
perhaps to the fact that the child only ever encounters the shichifukujin through iconic representations of them kept in
the home as good luck charms (engimono); they are rarely, if ever, enshrined or worshipped aniconically, and as such
they are more familiar, immanent, and approachable. Moreover, the shichifukujin are responsible only for individual
genze riyaku, whereas more exalted year- and shrine kami are responsible for the fortunes of a whole year, a whole
family, a whole community. Importance correlates to obscurity.

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 Some of these habitual actions—from the removal of shoes in the genkan to the all-pervasive

bow—are presented and accepted as a matter of course, going and coming entirely without saying.

The gestures of sampai and gasshō, to an extent, are like this as well, with gyōji manuals taking

time to explain the how but not the why of these actions. And yet, whenever these actions are

spoken about, the adults doing the speaking invariably borrow the terminology of ordinary social

interaction to describe them. One does not ‘worship’ or ‘venerate’ the kami or the Buddhas—one

greets them. Even the word for ‘worship’, sampai, indicates not an emotional disposition as it does

in English but rather simply the physical action appropriate when the kami is its target: kami

receive two bows, two claps, and a bow, which is called sampai, whereas humans receive a single

bow, called ojigi. Both are aisatsu.

This is not entirely simple for the preschool child, who must be taught in stages that some

social relationships require more than unstructured informality. Learning to make a proper aisatsu

is an important part of the preschool curriculum, and most children remain too shy to make

spontaneous and correct aisatsu to human alters until they are old enough to have begun primary

school. 398

The aisatsu is an essential component of Japanese social interaction. Most situations demand

them, and in a sense, a person does not fully exist until their presence has been acknowledged by

a ritual greeting—which helps to explain, among other things, the apparent dissonance between

Japanese social etiquette on the one hand and the treatment of bodies and personal space among

strangers on crowded station platforms and subway cars on the other. The act of greeting creates

the recipient as a relevant social person with whom interaction is possible, bringing them out of

the undifferentiated mass of unknown others and into social, relational reality. By referring to

398
Peak, Learning to Go to School in Japan, 80.

254
sampai as a kind of greeting, it follows that the action renders the kami present for the duration of

the interaction, regardless of where they may have been previously.

Moreover, the sampai is not the only ritual greeting in a child’s life to not depend on the

presence of a human alter. The Japanese are taught from an early age that it is correct manners to

announce their departure from the home (itte-kimasu) as well as their return (tadaima). These

phrases are learned in the home, but they inhere as well in school, and continue to be used in the

adult world of the workplace. Those who remain behind have their own scripted responses—itte-

irasshai and o-kairi-nasai, respectively. But, as Lois Peak has observed, children are often

instructed to make these ritual declarations of coming and going even when there is no one around

to hear them.399 This is, of course, on one level, merely effective habitus training; if character,

proverbially, is what one does when no one is watching, then it is important for a child to learn to

practice good manners even in solitude, making these declarations more of a habitual ‘ritual of

entry and exit’ than acts of information exchange. Nevertheless, by being raised to say these

formulas of parting and returning regardless of whether anyone is around to receive them, the child

is being invited to supply an imagined, hypothetical alter to this exchange. The common expression

“walls have ears, shōji have eyes” (kabe ni mimi ari, shōji ni me ari) gestures to this sense among

adult Japanese, who use it to describe the fact that there is very little guarantee of true solitude in

a Japanese home. The other party of an exchange need not be visible to be present, and the presence

of the community in all situations is implied. As we shall see in the concluding chapter, many

aspects of the home, in fact, are personified for the child in ways that make this reflexive greeting

entirely sensical.

399
Hendry, Becoming Japanese, 74.

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 If the production of ema implied the existence of the kami as members of the child’s

community tacitly, the construal of worship as greeting does so explicitly. It also helps to explain

why ritual perfection on the child’s part is not exceptionally important. The most essential actions

of Japanese worship are neither sui generis, as in axial traditions, nor do they demand exacting

ritual precision in order to be efficacious, as is often the case in sacrificial or magical systems.

They are, above all, social and communicative, following the same rules as interpersonal

interactions but with a supernatural alter. Because children are still learning etiquette (reigi) in all

its forms, any failures on their part to mimic models of correct worship are met with the same

indulgence as failures in other realms of politesse. Making sampai at the shrine or gasshō to the

Buddha is like talking to one’s grandmother on the telephone: it is most important first that the

child go through the motions and become habituated to the necessity of maintaining social relations

before substantive spontaneous conversation can develop. The development of justifying feelings

can—and do—come later, partially as a consequence of this habitual training. Just as people

preserve these forms instinctively even when the recipient is not present—such as using gestures

during a telephone conversation, or even a newscaster on television bowing to her audience—the

conscious deployment of these forms even to inanimate objects helps to bring these objects into

the human community as social persons. There remains, then, in my concluding chapter, to

demonstrate how children are encouraged to think of this animating presence as not being

restricted to shrines and Buddha images, but instead permeating most of their physical

environment.

256
 Fig. 5. 1 – Characters from the popular multimedia franchise Yōkai-watch affixed to the back wall of the
temporary shrine office on the grounds of Komagata shrine, Mizusawa, 2015. The caption welcomes the viewer
to perform o-mairi, i.e. sampai—the greeting of the kami.

Fig. 5.2 – Children and adult helpers carrying cardboard mikoshi at the summer
matsuri at Komagata shrine, 2012.

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Fig. 5.3 – Elementary-school children carry a mikoshi through the streets of Isawa district,
Ōshū, for Chinjufu Hachiman-gu’s autumn matsuri, 2015.

Fig. 5.4 – Grandmother modeling ringing the bells to summon

the kami in front of a small shrine.

258
 Fig. 5.5 – Father and daughter performing gasshō.

Fig. 5.6 – A family of four makes offerings at the family grave during o-bon.

259
 Fig. 5.7 – Plant Life Memorial Tower and statue to Jizō just inside the grounds of
Taiyō Hoikuen, Kanegasaki, Iwate.

Fig. 5.8 – Children practicing their mantra and morning Buddha greeting for my benefit at Taiyō Hoikuen.

260
Fig. 5.9 – Child trying to get Jizō to hold a sand bucket
in order to incorporate him into their play.

261
Conclusion: The Localization of Concern
Yamete! Piano-no-kamisama ga okoru yo!
—Mother to her son (4 y.o.)

To this point, I have been concerned primarily with manifestations of the kami, Buddhas, and other

supernatural beings as they appear in the more public arenas of the child’s environment: shrines,

temples, and on occasion explicitly religious elements of the preschool environment, such as the

various Buddha statues at Taiyō hoikuen, or the shrine on whose grounds Komagata hoikuen sits.

But as anyone with even a passing familiarity with Japanese domestic life will know, the home is

itself pregnant with loci of religious significance. The religious significance of the home, moreover,

is not limited either to the domestic shrine (kamidana) or the ancestral cabinet (butsudan)—neither

of which is a universal feature of the modern Japanese dwelling—nor to only those occasions of

the year, like setsubun, o-shōgatsu, or o-bon when supernatural beings are welcomed temporarily

into the home.

One evening after dinner, when the grown daughter of the family with whom I was staying

and three of the family’s five grandchildren were visiting, her middle child (4)—perhaps jealous

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at the attention his older sister (6) had just received for a performance at the family piano—began

banging haphazardly and with great gusto on the keys. His recital was promptly cut off with a

sharp bark from his mother. Yamete! Piano-no-kamisama ga okoru yo!—Cut it out! The kamisama

of the piano is going to be angry! In the moment, this seemed to me to be entirely continuous with

the disciplinary spirit of setsubun but with the kami simply interchanged with the oni: the mother

marshalling the threat of supernatural punishment as a disguise for her own directives.

But as I have worked through all this material since returning from the field, I have come to

believe that, rather than being at the punitive periphery of a more benign core, this single incident

points instead at the nature and meaning of kami as the concept is communicated to young children.

As I have demonstrated in the chapters preceding, instruction about supernatural beings is almost

entirely tacit, and children learn about who and what these beings are only as a secondary

extrapolation from the ritualized ways they are taught that they must interact with them. Most of

what a child learns about the kami is focused on treating certain key physical objects—shrines,

statues, and temporary dwelling places—in an interpersonal rather than materialistic mode, which

encourages the child to think of them, to all practical purposes, as persons rather than things. In

this concluding chapter, I will make the case that the kami and Buddhas are recipients of a process

that I call the localization of concern.

In invoking the term concern, I am intending to be in dialogue with John Traphagan’s

adaptation for the Japanese case of the term ‘ultimate concern’ coined by theologian Paul Tillich

to define ‘religion’ as being the concern for “that which determines our being or not-being.”400 For

Tillich, this concern often but not exclusively refers to our existence, both before and after death.401

Traphagan, however, argues that in Japan, ‘ultimate concern’ as Tillich construes it is in fact

400
Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Volume One (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 14.
401
Traphagan, The Practice of Concern, 16–19.

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“expressed in terms of immediate concern with the well-being of those with whom one interacts

on a daily basis, with one’s community, and in some cases even with the entire nation.”402

The argument that the practice and expression of concern is “at the center of Japanese ritual

activity,”403 moreover, Traphagan sets against an interpretation of ‘religion’ common in North

America as being based on the belief in or worship of culturally postulated supernatural entities—

or, in particular, ‘God’.404 Rather, he argues, “Japanese religious activity, rather than being viewed

as a means to engage the deities, should be viewed as a means of enacting concern (emotional,

obligational, or otherwise) through ritual performance.”405

As I have demonstrated to this point, the rhetoric surrounding the religious activities that

preschool children engage in in Mizusawa is such that these activities are in line with the broader

preschool project of social education and in particular developing the ability to form strong

interpersonal bonds. Children do not appear to be told that the rituals they engage in have literal

magical effects—a stance which Traphagan confirms is held by adults as well406—but rather that

engaging in ritual gyōji like ema and setsubun will have positive internal effects on their character

development as I have outlined elsewhere.

Where I would seek to add to Traphagan’s analysis, however, is in modifying his implication

that, because ritual in Japan is primarily about the expression of concern for members of one’s

community, the deities to whom one’s actions are addressed are incidental to the ritualized

communication of concern. In fact, I argue, they are essential. While I agree with Traphagan that

the performance of ritual acts of care for others—through omairi, ema, omamori, and so on—is a

402
Traphagan, 81.
403
Traphagan, 81.
404
Traphagan, 12–20, 83–84.
405
Traphagan, 125.
406
Traphagan, 121–22.

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way of circumventing a pervasive avoidance of expressing feelings directly and verbally, 407 the

expression of concern for people is made possible by the fact that this concern is outwardly directed

toward the kami, who serve as placeholders for the real targets of these feelings. In this way, I

argue, the kami and Buddhas represent transactional nexuses where expressions of concern are

localized and redistributed. The loving care of the child’s community is construed as coming in

part from the kami, and in turn the child’s reciprocal sense of gratitude is directed to his human

benefactors in large part through ritual activities nominally directed toward his supernatural

caretakers. By positing the existence of kami and Buddhas within the community, the child learns

to treat these figures as the points of exchange where complex feelings of care and indebtedness

toward the community can be expressed, and through which relationships of reciprocal care can

be transacted.

In order to tackle this final issue of materiality, anthropomorphism, and the kami in the

child’s intimate environment, I must begin with a brief explanation of a set of interrelated ethical

terms of critical importance to the child’s early social training in order to show the role that the

child’s physical environment is made to play in these acts of indirect communication. Although

the kami and Buddhas often serve these purposes, moreover, I shall show that they are by no means

the only inanimate objects that the Japanese personify in order to facilitate indirect communication

of concern and gratitude. Having demonstrated that the kami are one of many such transactional

nexuses for the localization of concern, I will then close by offering some broader conclusions on

the importance of this study for understanding the configuration and propagation of supernatural

beliefs in a pre-Axial tradition.

407
Traphagan, 126.

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Watching, Wasting, Grateful Tasting
Mimamoru
Combining the verbs ‘to look’ and ‘to protect,’ the word mimamoru carries a connotation of

benevolent, omniscient oversight—with ‘to look after’ being the closest English equivalent.

Within the world of secular childcare more specifically, however, the term mimamoru is used to

describe the Japanese preschool teacher’s philosophy of non-interventionist conflict resolution. As

Tobin observes, the mimamoru strategy allows preschool teachers

to monitor and subtly scaffold [their students’] interaction without breaking

the flow or making either lose confidence in himself or the other. These
Japanese teachers are able to resist the temptation to intervene preemptively,
as they balance the risk that a situation might deteriorate without their
intervention with their appreciation of the value of the social experiences that
would be lost if they were to act before it becomes absolutely necessary.408
Though appearing passive and even uninterested in conflicts between children, this non-

intervening watchful care is in fact incredibly active, requiring much unseen participation on the

part of the teacher who must monitor the interactions of her charges simultaneously. The child

grows accustomed to this hands-off strategy and understands it as the way that his sources of

sustenance, protection, and nurturance provide their support. Consequently, he also grows

accustomed to the security of feeling that he is being looked after (mimamorareru) even when

there is not necessarily immediate experiential evidence therefor. His caretakers are omnipresent,

but intervene only when absolutely necessary and when all of his own efforts have come to naught.

This reliance on an unseen higher authority as a last resort is the same as that expressed in

the proverb kurushii toki ni kamidanomi (‘turning to the kami in times of distress’), and it should

therefore come as no great surprise either that the verb mimamoru should also be the one used

when speaking to children to describe the actions of the kami, the Buddhas, and the ancestors, nor

that the way in which these beings show their care should be seen in precisely the same light as is

408
Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa, Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited, 111.

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the care provided by the rest of the child’s social network. Remember in this regard what Taniue-

san described as the most essential things for a child to understand about the kami that structured

the previous chapter: because the kamisama had been protecting (mimamotte-kureru) their

forebears since time immemorial, it was essential to continue to greet (aisatsu) the kamisama in

order to be protected by them and have our hearts/minds (kokoro) strengthened by them in turn.

Children’s literature about kami and Buddhas likewise refers to these beings’ primary action

toward humanity as being mimamoru. The Kannon of Nippon-ichi, for example, “loved the

children and all the surrounding people very much, always looked after them (mimamoru), through

wind and rain and any weather at all.”409 Explaining to his daughter why offerings are made on the

kamidana on New Year’s Eve, the father of Kyō to ashita no sakaime says, “Toshigamisama...[is]

the family’s ancestors. They watch over (mimamotte-kudasaru) all of us.”410 Volume one of Nihon

no kamisama ezukan likewise says of the toshigami that he “engenders that year’s harvest and

protects (mimamoru) the happiness of a house’s prosperity and family.”411

By hearing the same word used of both social actors—humans and kami—the child comes

to understand that the kami, like parents and teachers, express their love and care in ways that are

not always immediately apparent and that the bulk of their active care takes the form of continuous

observation which leaves the child the freedom to make his own mistakes. The good child must

develop a sense of gratitude for the things he receives, even though the ultimate sources of those

boons are often obscured from view and may not be physically present to receive his expression

of gratitude in a transactional way.

409
Sakai Shōji, Nippon-Ichi No Kannon-Sama, 8–9.
410
Mogami Ippei, Kyō to Ashita No Sakaime, 16.
411
Matsuo Kōichi, Negai Wo Kanaeru Kamisama, 8.

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Itadakimasu and Mottainai
Whereas mimamoru describes the action of a caretaker for someone in her charge, the word

itadakimasu is used to express a feeling of grateful indebtedness for care received—in the specific

case of dining. One of the most essential aspects of early childhood socialization is the etiquette

surrounding mealtime, and this is especially evident in the preschool environment. The

promotional materials for each of the schools I studied placed great emphasis on inculcating a

proper dining ethos, and during each of my formal visits to a new preschool the greatest fanfare

accompanied my observation of the mid-day meal.

Japanese school lunches, or kyūshoku—in pre- and primary schools alike—are administered

in the classroom by the children themselves. Daily leaders are selected on a rotating basis who

direct the reorganization of tables into a configuration for communal dining, who oversee the

dispensing of food from communal serving vessels to each child in turn, and who supervise the

tidy return of dishes to the kitchen and the orderly disposal of waste. This process is considered to

be of central importance to the aims of Japanese preschool and early elementary school pedagogy,

and as such has been described in greater detail in other studies of Japanese preschool life. 412 As

the schools I observed in Mizusawa do not differ from these in any substantive way, I shall refrain

from describing them in any greater detail here.

Of the ritual that surrounds this astoundingly efficient activity, the blessing receives the

greatest emphasis both in the classroom and in the home. Although usage, in my experience, does

tend to fall off somewhat among adults, among children and within the context of family meals it

remains unquestionably essential to preface the act of dining by pressing the hands together and

announcing itadakimasu, or, “I humbly receive this.”

412
Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa, Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited, 102–3, 124; Peak, Learning to Go to School
in Japan, 90–94; Hendry, Becoming Japanese, 76–78.

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 Precisely who is being thanked by this utterance, of course, is not grammatically specified.

The most common answer I received from my informants stressed that it was the most immediate

purveyor of food who was being singled out for thanks for having provided it: the mother, in the

case of the home, or the cook for the school. Because learning to say itadakimasu at mealtime is

such an essential part of early social ethics, however, it has inspired a sizable amount of children’s

literature—literature that goes significantly further along the chain of production than do my

informants in explaining who is being thanked at every meal.

The most touching of these books, Inochi o itadaku (“To Receive Life” 2013) by Uchida

Michiko and illustrated by Uoto Osamu, I included in the largely unenlightening yomikikase

exercise I conducted which I mentioned in Chapter 2. Of the books I provided from which my

volunteers were able to select, this was the only one to have no explicitly kami or Buddha related

content. The vast majority of participating families included this book among the ones they chose

to read aloud to their children, and it more than once (to my awkward regret) drove the mother to

tears.

The book, grimly subtitled Mii-chan ga niku ni naru hi (“The day that Little Mii became

meat”), follows two interweaving narratives. The first of these involves one Mr. Sakamoto, a

slaughterhouse worker, and his son, a third-grade boy named Shinobu, each of whom has

ambivalent feelings about the father’s occupation: Mr. Sakamoto dislikes his job, but does it

nevertheless because, as the narrator explains “if there were no one to slaughter the cow, then no

one would be able to eat beef.” 413 Shinobu, for his part, expresses a certain amount of

embarrassment when he must discuss his father’s occupation at his school’s career day but is

413
For ‘slaughter’ the Japanese has toku (解く) which means to loosen or to untie, elsewhere in the book paired with
the object inochi, or ‘life’, and which here is used euphemistically. Uchida Michiko, Inochi O Itadaku: Mei-Chan Ga
Niku Ni Naru Hi (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2013), 2.

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reassured somewhat when his teacher reminds him that all the significant people in his life eat

meat and that his father’s is therefore an essential profession. Shinobu’s peace of mind is upset,

however, when one day his father returns from work to tell him of a little girl who came to the

meat processing center to say a tearful goodbye to the family cow, Mii-chan. Shinobu begs his

father to skip work the next day, but is unsuccessful, and leaves for school in an angry huff.

Wearing a head to toe white surgical suit and a grim expression, Mr. Sakamoto leads a stoic—but

remarkably weeping—Mii-chan to slaughter (See Appendix Illus. 6.1). On hearing that Mii is no

more, the little girl refuses to partake; from out of frame, her grandfather encourages her: “Thanks

to Mii-chan, everybody is able to live. Have a taste. If you don’t say thank you to Mii-chan and

eat her, don’t you think she will be sad?”414 She tearfully assents, and having done so, pronounces

Mii-chan delicious with an outpouring of itadakimasu and arigatō.

Complicated feelings around the farming and consumption of meat are, of course, in no way

unique to Japan, but the way in which the Japanese frame the issue is heavily inflected by their

values of reciprocal obligation. Inochi o itadaku frames it as a necessary evil—an act to which all

participants are presumed to be emotionally opposed, but which all accept or come to accept as

inescapably necessary for the maintenance of human life. As a way of working through these

negative feelings, Inochi o itadaku offers as a palliative measure the feeling and expression of

gratitude encapsulated in the itadakimasu formula as a way of repaying this debt and clearing the

conscience.

Other books make it even more explicit that the word itadakimasu covers the entire chain of

production, and not just the life that was sacrificed for human consumption. One aimed at much

younger children, Itadakimasu! by Ninomiya Yukiko and illus. Arai Yōji (2003), starts by asking

414
Uchida Michiko, 39.

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the child how willing he or she would be to eat a meal if each portion reverted to its ‘cute’ living

state, showing a plate full of cows, chickens, and farmers (See Appendix Illus. 6.2).415 The book

then illustrates in cheerful, impressionistic style each step of the various stages of food production,

from the cook to the farmer to the industrial meat packer. Every living thing eats something, it

argues—chickens eat bugs, cows and bugs eat grass, and grass eats microscopic beings (eiyo) in

the earth—and if we did not eat, we would die.416 Therefore, the book reasons over the span of

several pages, “to the people who make food work hard every single day, to the people who sell

food, and to the people who cook it too, we say: itadakimasu!"417

A third example, Shinde kureta (“It Died for Me” 2014), by acclaimed poet Tanikawa

Shuntarō and illustrated for children by Tsukamoto Yasushi, returns to the moral quandary of

carnivory in Inochi o itadaku but frames it in terms of the child’s own mortality. After naming all

the various food animals that die in order to feed humans (shinde kureru), the third stanza muses

that, “when I die, nobody is going to eat me. First mother will cry, and father, grandma and little

sister too,”418 and so, because his own death would be mourned, he consumes other lives with a

spirit of gratitude. In a prose note incorporated into the supplementary dust jacket (somewhat

uncharacteristically preserved by the staff at Mizusawa Library by pasting it inside the book’s back

cover), the author gives as his reason for writing the idea that because humans can only live through

the sacrifice of other lives, “life glitters in the role of the sacrifice of life” (inochi wa inochi o

ikenie toshite hikarikagayaku).

Closely tied to the idea of itadaku is the related concept and term mottainai, a word used to

decry wastefulness. I touched on this cultural code word briefly in Chapter 2 in my discussion of

415
Ninomiya Yukiko and Illus. Arai Youji, Itadakimasu! (Tokyo: Kaihou shuppansha, 2003), 4–5.
416
Ninomiya Yukiko and Illus. Arai Youji, 14–23.
417
Ninomiya Yukiko and Illus. Arai Youji, 26–31.
418
Tanikawa Shuntarou and Illus. Tsukamoto Yasushi, Shinde kureta (Tokyo: Kosei sha, 2014), 20–29.

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Mottainai bāchan no tengoku to jigoku no o-hanashi (“Granny Waste-Not’s Tale of Heaven and

Hell”). Where itadakimasu is a ritual statement to express gratitude for care and sacrifice,

mottainai is a spontaneous corrective offered when wastefulness or obstinacy is disrespecting that

sacrifice. One book in the Granny Waste-not series, Mottainai bāchan to itadakimasu, lays out this

philosophy clearly. The book follows a repetitive formula: a little girl in a high chair declares that

she hates representative examples of a whole genre of foodstuffs (vegetables, flesh, starches, and

a catch-all group including mushrooms and various seaweeds); Granny Waste-not then declares

this to be an unconscionable waste (Mottainai!) and explains the specific healthful properties of

each (See Appendix Illus. 6.3). The only food the little girl will eat without reservation is fruit,419

and while Granny Waste-not praises her for being properly appreciative, she declares the girl’s

refusal to eat anything but fruit to be similarly wasteful. Several iterations of this cycle being

completed, Granny sums up her message. Answering the girl’s question as to why one shouldn’t

leave any food behind on one’s plate, Granny explains that “food is a thing that is raised with great

care for everyone’s benefit. The things that we receive to eat are stuffed with good feelings.

Therefore, let’s eat with gratitude and not waste anything.”420 In the same way, then, that a child

is consuming life (inochi) in order to preserve his own, he is also ‘consuming’—albeit

metaphorically—the good wishes of the people who made this meal possible.

The idea that it is the good feelings of the community—and not just the brute biological life

force—that is the object of consumption also features prominently in a picture book for older

children, Inochi wa dōshite taisetsu na no?, or “Why is Life Important?”421 The first twenty-seven

419
The Japanese, despite having no lack of mass-market confectionery, have somehow managed to preserve the idea
that fresh fruit is as desirable a treat for the young as candy, and the children of my acquaintance are entirely complicit
in this. American parents take note.
420
Shinju Mariko, Mottainai baachan no itadakimasu (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2009), 28–30.
421
This book is part of a series called Kokoro ‘E?’-hon—a title which puns on the ‘picture’ part of the word for picture
book (ehon) with the rhetorical interrogative ‘e?’, which functions in Japanese much in the same way as in standard
Canadian English.

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pages recapitulate the argument of the books above: that the consumption of life begets life and is

facilitated by a network of human cooperation. It portrays itadakimasu as a magic word (lit. mahō

kotoba), saying: “With a single word, you can remember the whole process of receiving life so

that you can live. Itadakimasu. It’s a word that people use every day very ordinarily. However, it

is in fact a magic word. It is a word for giving thanks to the lives that allowed you to grow up.”422

The volume, however, expands this sense of received life to incorporate other aspects of

investment from the social network. Where the inochi we receive from foodstuffs contributes to

the construction of the body, the inochi we receive from other humans enters into and becomes

part of our kokoro (heart/mind/soul). This bestowal begins with familial investment but eventually

grows to include the entirety of the person’s growing network of social relations (See Appendix

Illus. 6.4). “And as this web of connections grows, you will let these people’s inochi into

yourself..... This is kokoro. Kokoro is what is made when human life enters into your body.

Friendliness (yasashisa), cleverness (kashikosa), strength (tsuyosa). These powers of the kokoro

are all kinds of inochi that live in the kokoro that have been bestowed on us. The body is made by

inochi; the kokoro is made by inochi. This is the structure of man.”423

As itadakimasu is the ‘magic word’ to acknowledge the alimentary receipt of life, arigatō is

the magic word by which one is meant to acknowledge the receipt of ‘life’ through the receipt of

life-sustaining and character-building care. 424 The text presents them as structurally equivalent

rituals of thanksgiving, each to be performed on receipt of a favor, depending on the content of

that favor and the proximity of the person being thanked.

422
Uchida Michiko, Inochi O Itadaku, 27.
423
Oono Masato and Illus. Hara Atsushi, Inochi wa doushite taisetsu na no?, ed. Deguchi Yasayuki, Kokoro “E?”-
Hon (Tokyo: Chōbunsha, 2015), 36–41.
424
Oono Masato and Illus. Hara Atsushi, 42–43.

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 And yet, for all that a distinction is being made between the presence or absence,

concreteness or abstraction of the alter in these expressions of gratitude, the emphasis in the text

is not on the transactional nature of this verbal act, but rather on its internal effects on the ego. In

describing the two magic words, Ōno emphasizes that the act of saying itadakimasu or arigatō

allows the speaker—in the event that he has allowed himself to forget it—to “feel once again” the

fact that the body and the heart are made of life. 425 Toward the end of the book, Ōno develops an

extended metaphor of unchecked sadness and bitterness (tsurai koto) creating a closed box with

mirrors on the inside (kokoro no hako), in which the sufferer loses sight of anything but his own

suffering. The only escape from this self-imposed prison, Ōno argues, is grateful relations with

other people; but notably, it is not through the active participation of one’s social network that one

comes to be saved, but rather in the deliberate expression of gratitude to them even in their absence

(See Appendix Illus. 6.5). In time of difficulty,

the whole inside of the box becomes dark, and you feel you are all alone.
There is no one there to say ‘thank you’ to. Therefore, when you make
yourself be alone, you cease to feel the feeling of gratitude. But painful things
happen to everyone, and the light of day is eventually bound to break into the
box of the kokoro. But there are only so many people outside the box waiting
for you as the number of times you have said thank you so far. So when you
are trapped in a box like this, remember this fact and turn toward those people
again.426
On the one hand, this metaphor of the kokoro no hako is closely related to the idea, explored

in Chapter 3, that young Japanese children are made to believe that life is better when it is shared

with others and that the highest good is to function in good faith as a member of a group (shūdan

seikatsu). But, importantly, the rhetorical emphasis is being placed not on the alter in the exchange,

but on the ego: what is essential is to develop in oneself authentic (makoto) feelings of gratitude

for the care and investment received from others and to express those feelings openly. The receipt

425
Oono Masato and Illus. Hara Atsushi, 27, 42–43.
426
Oono Masato and Illus. Hara Atsushi, 52–55.

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of this expression by the alter and the consequent reciprocal acknowledgment of the thanks is

conspicuously absent. Rather than a direct, dyadic interaction between human actors, the recitation

of the cultural code word itadakimasu represents a transactional node through which an emotional

currency is exchanged. The combined care and concern felt by all people who contribute to the

creation of nourishment from farm to table is not expressed directly, but rather through the

interlocution of the meal itself. In turn, the recipient’s ritualized gesture of thanks is likewise

directed toward the food itself, but only as a placeholder for the entire network of labor and care

that brought that food before the diner.

In sum, in order to express an appropriate feeling of gratitude, the child is being taught

repeatedly to think of the food on his plate—at least for the moment of the intonation of

itadakimasu—not as inert matter, but as a living being with whom he enters, albeit briefly, into an

interpersonal rather than instrumental relationship. And, moreover, the child is learning that this

being he invokes as an alter to his expression of thanks is not necessarily singular (i.e. the

individual whose body he is consuming) but rather is a symbolic representation of the collective

efforts and sacrifice of all the beings whose life, labor, and emotional energy went into the end

product. It is not enough simply to thank the chain of production while addressing the food, but

rather the child is exhorted to keep in mind the aliveness of the food as a way of conceptualizing

the fact that it is a conduit for the care expressed by a broader, unseen community.

In Inochi o itadaku, it is important to note, although the little girl’s intonation of itadakimasu

upon eating her beloved Mii-chan does not reach Mr. Sakamoto’s ears directly, his son’s teacher’s

earlier reassurance that all Japanese people say itadakimasu before eating serves to pull the butcher

into this great chain of thanks indirectly. As the book has it, it is enough for Mr. Sakamoto to know

that he is being thanked for his grisly work at every table he helped to fill, whether or not anyone

275
thanks him to his face. Likewise, it is sufficient for the child consuming the meal to engage

consistently in this ritual of thanksgiving, even knowing that her expression of thanks will never

be perceived directly by its object.

It may on the surface appear to be entirely commonsensical to suggest that children are taught

to be aware of and therefore grateful to those people from whose unseen efforts they benefit, but

it is nevertheless of critical importance to our understanding of the role of kami as nodes in a social

network to whom ritualized social interactions are due. In the same way that itadakimasu is a

ritualized acknowledgment of the life-sustaining but often invisible process of industrial food

production through the proximate transactional nexus of the food itself, I contend, so too are

children taught to view the kamisama as the transactional nexus to whom must be addressed the

ritualized acknowledgment of even broader networks of invisible community care. The invisibility

of the farmer whose labor made possible the food on the child’s plate is no different, operatively,

from that of the kamisama, who sources stress are also invisible to the eye (me no mienai).

Anthropomorphism and the Gods of Ordinary Things

The ‘aliveness’ of food is stressed, then, in order to impress upon the child that the food is also a

symbol for a living network of care that cooperates to ensure the child’s health and well-being. In

the cases above the person conjured by this rhetoric has tended to be the spirit of the being that

gave its life for the child’s consumption, but this is not necessarily always the case. Indeed, the

person to whom ritualized expressions of gratitude directed at inanimate objects is often

represented to the child as being none other than a kami.

The most compelling example comes from a boxed set comprising three short (20pp)

paperback books, a DVD, and an explanatory booklet for parents published by Shichida Press, the

full title of which is Nihon no kokoro wo kodomotachi ni tsutaeru ishokujū no kamisama shirīzu

276
(2015), or, in less elegant English, “the series for transmitting the heart of Japan through the

kamisama of the stuff of life”—this latter phrase (ishokujū) being a translation of the characters

for ‘clothing,’ ‘food,’ and ‘dwelling’ (See Appendix Illus. 6.6)

The first volume in this trilogy, Gohan no kamisama (“The Kami of Rice”), largely

recapitulates the lessons of the itadakimasu books above—explaining that all food contains not

only vitamins and proteins but also life energy (inochi no enerugī), which is filtered through the

living beings that humans consume.427 But before any of this familiar exposition, when second-

grader Hī-chan asks her mother why we say itadakimasu before eating, the mother answers

explicitly that “it’s because there’s a kamisama in it (kamisama ga irassharun kara nanoyo).”428

She goes on, then, to say that it is through the actions of the kamisama of the sun, the earth, and

the waters that this life force enters the chain of transmission in the first place, and that the

aliveness of all things has been a feature of Japanese thought since ancient times.429 Not only are

the kamisama of nature the ultimate sources of this energy, however, they remain palpably in the

food as well: in the final pages of the booklet, the mother asks her daughter whether she can see

anyone in her rice bowl, whereupon the latter notices a white-robed figure sitting cross-legged on

the rice, emanating from it like steam (See Appendix Illus. 6.7).

It is worth noting here that this three book series does not appear to be evangelical, to the

extent that the word is appropriate in a Japanese context at all, by which I mean it does not attempt

to promote an explicitly or exclusively shrine-centered Shinto ideology over and against the diffuse

kami beliefs of the popular tradition. Author Mori Hiyori is a graduate of the main branch of

Ogasawara-ryu Etiquette Institute (ogasawara-ryū reihō sōke honbu), and the founder in 2011 of

427
Mori Hiyori, Gohan no Kamisama, Nihon no Kokoro wo Kodomo-tachi ni Tsutaeru Ishokujū no Kamisama Shirīzu
(Tokyo: Shichida Books, 2015), 7–10.
428
Mori Hiyori, 5–6.
429
Mori Hiyori, 9–10.

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an independent school for the teaching of traditional Japanese manners (wa sahō).430 Thus, while

one could safely suggest that Mori is culturally conservative or traditional—her professional

photographs all show her in traditional dress—her conservatism nevertheless does not seem to

have an overtly Shinto nationalist dimension.

In her foreword to the short monochrome instructional booklet for parents included in the

boxed set, she explains that she was inspired to write these volumes by the number of mothers who

approached her from a desire to communicate Japanese cultural values to their children but who

found themselves somewhat lacking in knowledge about the subject themselves. Much like gyōji

manuals, then, this boxed set should be read as directed as much to the mothers as to the children

to whom they are ostensibly addressed. If Mori’s self-presentation can be used as an accurate

indication of her motivation, the ultimate purpose of these volumes is not to promulgate the idea

that there are kami in these culturally significant objects, but rather to use the image of the

kamisama as way of justifying several more arbitrary and idiosyncratically Japanese points of

etiquette. In this, they do not differ substantially from the gyōji literature that has come before.

Each of the three books in this series follows the same general pattern: a young girl is told

by her mother that there is a kami living within an object that is not only essential to life (clothing,

food, shelter) but one which is distinctly Japanese and which demands specialized etiquette

(kimono, rice, tatami). The child is then given what can only be a folk etiology for certain finer

points of etiquette with reference to the kami: we give and receive bowls of rice with both hands,431

move slowly and quietly while wearing kimono,432 and shuffle our feet and avoid stepping on the

430
https://mori-hiyori.jimdo.com/プロファイル/
431
Mori Hiyori, Gohan no Kamisama, 17–18.
432
Mori Hiyori, Kimono no Kamisama, Nihon no Kokoro wo Kodomo-tachi ni Tsutaeru Ishokujū no Kamisama
Shirīzu (Tokyo: Shichida Books, 2015), 11–12.

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seams in a tatami floor433 all to show respect and prevent causing distress to the kamisama that

dwell within those objects.

As we saw in the case of itadakimasu, the object (food) is given a temporary personhood for

the duration of the ritual utterance in order that it might provide a proximate personal face toward

which to direct feelings of gratitude toward an unseen multitude, and that, in Gohan no kamisama

at least, this temporary personhood is described explicitly as a kami. The other two of Mori’s works

likewise portray the kamisama of other culturally significant objects as proxies for care that the

child receives.

For example, the mother in Kimono no kamisama explains that one shouldn’t run in a kimono

because its indwelling kami balances on the obi sash, and running will jostle her and cause her

eyes to spin (See Appendix Illus. 6.8).434 But although the mother in the story chooses to articulate

her injunction against running by justifying it in terms of the kami, the text nevertheless also makes

clear that this behavior will cause the kimono to become untidy, thereby undoing all of the

mother’s patient care in arranging it neatly for her daughter—which is the point that any mother

reading this book to her own daughter would more likely intend to communicate, and the end she

ultimately wishes to achieve. That is to say, the book seeks to justify to the child the rituals of

showing respect for the care that goes into a culturally significant object (in this case, kimono) by

personifying that act of care as a kami who dwells within the object. Honoring the kami of the

kimono is, in effect, a way honoring the work a child’s mother took in putting her into it, and

demonstrates a willingness to respect the feminine ideals of grace and beauty that the child’s

mother holds for her.

433
Mori Hiyori, Tatami no Kamisama, Nihon no Kokoro wo Kodomo-tachi ni Tsutaeru Ishokujū no Kamisama Shirīzu
(Tokyo: Shichida Books, 2015), 17–18.
434
Mori Hiyori, Kimono no Kamisama, 11–12.

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 Likewise, and even more so, this is the case in the volume on tatami—the woven-straw

flooring in traditional Japanese rooms. A grandmother instructs her two granddaughters—Rī-chan

and Nī-chan—about proper etiquette concerning tatami rooms: one must avoid rough play, loud

clapping, and stepping on seams.435 She personifies the tatami flooring, saying that a kami resides

therein, 436 and in doing so establishes this deity as a transactional nexus for concern to be

communicated: when the child avoids playing roughly on the tatami out of deference to the

kamisama supposedly dwelling inside, she is doing so also out of concern that she might

inadvertently damage her grandmother’s delicate property. When the grandmother tells the child

that the kami is a compulsive worrier and that he is concerned that the child might trip and fall on

a seam in the floor, the grandmother is speaking of her own concern for the child’s safety as much

as she is concerned that the child conform to a social norm. In each of these cases, the protective

feelings of the caretaker are being put instead in the mouth of the kami, and the child is taught to

direct her outward display of feelings of gratitude and deference toward those human caretakers

toward the kami instead.

Although this booklet purports to be about the kami of the tatami, it opens and closes with

the sisters making ritual greetings (aisatsu) to the kami dwelling in the two domestic altars

(butsudan and kamidana).437 Although the two sisters know that this is the first thing they are

supposed to do upon arriving at their grandmother’s house,438 they confess that they have always

wondered why they do so “even though there is nobody inside” (daremo inai no ni).439 Their

435
Mori Hiyori, Tatami no Kamisama, 11–18. As the diminutive –chan often replaces the terminal syllable –ko in
female names, it is likely that these sisters’ names are puns on cleverness (rikō) and smiling (niko).
436
Mori Hiyori, 11–12.
437
Interestingly, the girls’ are shown to say a conversational “hello” (konnichiwa) to these two altars, kneeling before
the butsudan and standing before the kamidana, eyes closed and hands pressed together before each. As these greetings
are generally silent in practice, I must presume that the use of the standard interpersonal greeting is intended to
underscore for the child reader the personhood of these objects.
438
Mori Hiyori, Tatami no Kamisama, 5–6.
439
Mori Hiyori, 7–8.

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grandmother explains that “even though you can’t see them, the ancestors (senzosama) are in the

butsudan, and there are kamisama in the kamidana... And because you said hello to them, both the

ancestors and the kami are very happy.” 440 The book concludes with an image of the girls

concluding their visit to their grandmother’s house by bowing to all three domestic kami—tatami,

kamidana, and butsudan—in thanks for their hard work looking after them (mimamotte-

kudasatteiru).441 Each of these kami is rendered in gold, and is shown peeking out from behind the

altar thought to contain them (See Appendix Illus. 6.9).

The kami living within the household, moreover, are not limited solely to these domestic

shrines, nor to the other objects of traditional material culture that Mori’s works single out. Toire

no kamisama (“The Toilet Kami,” 2010) is an adaptation into a children’s book of an

autobiographical song by pop artist Uemura Kana which makes a similar argument about a much

more mundane domestic feature. The song and book describe the relationship between the artist

and her grandmother, with whom she was once very close. Uemura, the narrator, loved doing

everything with her grandmother—everything except cleaning the toilet, which she hated. To help

the narrator overcome her revulsion, the grandmother had this to say: “There is a beautiful female

kami (kirei-na megami) in the toilet. Therefore, if you clean it every day, you will become a

beautiful woman (bippin) just like the kami.”442 But as the narrator aged she became increasingly

rebellious, falling out of touch with her grandmother when she left home to pursue her musical

career. When the grandmother fell ill and died, the narrator was distraught at having been such a

poor grandchild to the woman who had spent such care in raising her. 443 Her grandmother’s

injunction suddenly returns to her, however, and she realizes that “the words her grandmother had

440
Mori Hiyori, 9–10.
441
Mori Hiyori, 19–20.
442
Uemura Kana and Mari Torigoe, Toire no kamisama (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2010), 6–7.
443
Uemura Kana and Mari Torigoe, 26–27.

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spoken had surely transformed her heart into that of a beautiful woman,” and thereafter she

resolves once again to make her toilet shine daily in order that she might become a “wife of good

disposition” (kidate no yoi oyome-san).444 The book ends with a word of thanks for the departed

grandmother, and an illustration of the titular kamisama hovering serenely over a sparkling clean

toilet (See Appendix Illus. 6.10).445

Although this book is rendered with only a few kanji with reading glosses, like Mori’s trilogy,

the cautionary theme of teenage rebellion leads me to believe that its target audience is somewhat

older, which also accounts for the greater nuance in the treatment of kami. That the act of cleaning

the toilet is intended to please the kami is merely implied, whereas what is made explicit is the

idea that the act of cleaning will be instrumental in bringing about an interior transformation. Toire

no kamisama nevertheless shares with Mori’s works the idea that social actions taken toward the

tangible representation of a supernatural being (in this case, the cleaning of the deity’s dwelling)

are equivalent substitutes for gestures of thanks to absent human actors (the grandmother to whom

the author is indebted). By making a child reader sensitive to the divinity of the things in her

material environment, books like these help make the child sensitive to the idea that the way she

treats these objects is also an act of communication toward her broader social sphere, through the

intermediary of the deity of the object. The reciprocal concern of grandmother and grandchild is

transacted—not simply through the brute object of the toilet—but through the toilet’s

personification as a divine person to whom feelings can be expressed more freely.

444
Uemura Kana and Mari Torigoe, 28–29. It is important for me to acknowledge here, although it is not relevant to
my analytical purposes, the book’s surprisingly regressive stance on the appropriateness of contemporary young
women pursuing non-traditional careers.
445
There is another book of this title which I did not encounter (Kurose Sumie and Illus. Inemoto Mieko, Toire no
kamisama (Tokyo: Obunsha Co., Ltd., 1985).)

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 Several more works seek to impress on the child how wide an array of familiar things can be

thought of as possessing kami that arise out of the localization of concern. A pair of country cousins

in Ie no naka no kamisama by Motoshita Izumi (“The Kami Inside the House,” 2014) introduce

city-dwelling Tomoki to the idea that the Japanese home is alive with a multitude of kami. In a

curious moment of naïve monotheism, Tomoki asks them whether there is more than a single

kamisama, to which his cousins respond that there are, in fact, many—employing the common

phrase yaoyorozu no kamisama, literally ‘the eight-million gods’ but euphemistically indicating a

multitude without number.446 This leads them to explain the concept of the tsukumogami, or the

kami of manmade things: “When an object has grown old it becomes a kamisama, or a soul dwells

in it (tamashii ga yadoru)...Don’t they say that in Tokyo?”447 Tomoki then has an opportunity to

encounter these kami firsthand when he falls into a chest emanating a soft gold light and finds

himself transported to a place where all the kami of the house gather to meet him. One kami wears

a roll of toilet paper on his head, and another a miniature roof (See Appendix Illus. 6.11). When

Tomoki finally returns home at the end of the book, he discovers that there are kami there as well,

and not only out in the countryside: a giant golden face wearing a roof as a cap peeks out over his

house to greet him, and we see that his backpack, also gold, has zippers and pockets that mimic a

human face.

The second volume in the Nihon no kamisama ezukan series, likewise, in addition to entries

on the kamidana, butsudan, and tokonoma alcove, has an entry on the tsukumogami as well (See

Appendix Illus. 6.12). In an inset with various anthropomorphized household objects—a rotary

telephone, a computer, a teddy bear, a hot water heater, and so on—it explains: “There are even

various kamisama in the rooms where we live our everyday lives. In Japan, since ancient times, it

446
Motoshita Izumi, Ie no Naka no Kamisama, 8.
447
Motoshita Izumi, 10.

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was believed that kamisama and tamashii dwelt (yadoru) in things that have become old.

Occasionally, objects that humans have held in importance for a long time become tsukumogami

and perform ongaeshi [i.e. the grateful repayment of favors]. Conversely, it is also said that if these

objects are treated shabbily, they will become yōkai in order to retaliate.”448

Of course Japan is not unique in encouraging children to think of their possessions in

interpersonal rather than material terms, or to address inanimate objects playfully or even

ritualistically. Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd’s classic Goodnight Moon 1947 is a

perfect example of playful but ritualized valediction to inanimate objects from a non-Japanese

setting. 449 In the Japanese examples I have found, however, there seems to be more emphasis

placed on the role of these objects in ensuring the child’s welfare. Thus, the book Shikibuton-san,

kakebuton-san, makura-san (marketed in English as “Sweet Dreams” but whose original title

translates to ‘Mr. Futon, Mr. Blanket, Mr. Pillow’ 2010) shows a little boy performing his

nighttime ritual of politely asking his bedding to protect him: for his futon to protect him from

wetting himself, for his blanket to keep him warm and caress his skinned knees, and for his pillow

to ward off any nightmares (See Appendix Illus. 6.13). 450 Although this volume does not

specifically designate these three items of bedding as kami, their care for the little boy and his

reciprocal gratitude suggest that they are very much within the tsukumogami tradition. Thus, what

seems to be different in Japan is the presence of a broader cultural complex whereby objects whose

significance derives from the network of care of which they are metonymic representations are

448
Matsuo Kōichi, Midikai Ni Iru Kamisama, Mitai! Shiritai! Shirabetai! Nihon No Kamisama Ezukan 2 (Tokyo:
Minerva Shobō, 2012), 12. For one scholarly approach to tsukumogami, see: Noriko T. Reider, “Animating Objects:
Tsukumogami Ki and the Medieval Illustration of Shingon Truth,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 36, no. 2
(2009): 231–57.
449
Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd, Goodnight Moon (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947).
450
Takano Fumiko, Shikibuton-san, kakebuton-san, makura-san (Tokyo: Fukuinkan Shoten, 2010).

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treated not only as persons rather than as things, but also as persons belonging to the exalted social

category of kami.

Anthropomorphism and Feelings in Preschool Pedagogy

To return, then, in closing, to my opening vignette: by telling her son to respect the feelings

of the family piano, my host sister employed a classic schoolyard disciplinary redirection tactic of

encouraging the child to think of the ramifications of his actions on the feelings of others—even

when that other is inanimate. Thomas Rohlen observed thirty years ago that Japanese mothers

“will often speak to the child in the guise of the injured third person or thing, as in saying ‘The

table says “ouch”’ when the child pounds the table.”451 More recently, Tobin et al. report likewise

that preschool teachers continue to “[discuss] with children the feelings not only of people, but

also of animals and even of inanimate objects.”452 The particular feeling most often expressed in

this way, they continue, is the sadness that comes from loneliness (sabishii): an origami fish is

sabishii because it has no eyes to see its friends, a paper is sabishii because nothing is drawn on it,

and a carrot is sabishii because he has been left unwanted even though his friend Mr. Hamburger

has already been eaten.453 In not serving their intended purposes, the paper and carrots are being

wasted—i.e. mottainai—and this waste is being construed for the children in social terms as

loneliness in order to compel them to wish to avoid causing this sad fate.

For Tobin, the reason that toddlers are encouraged to consider the feelings of inanimate

objects is part of the broader project of training these children to have omoiyari: ‘empathy,’ or

more precisely “the ability and willingness to understand and respond to the feelings and needs of

others,”454 which in turn is an essential component of learning to function as a cohesive social

451
Rohlen, “Order in Japanese Society,” 20.
452
Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa, Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited, 137.
453
Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa, 100, 126, 137.
454
Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa, 114.

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group (shūdan seikatsu). Babies and toddlers are similar to inanimate objects, he argues, in that

members of neither category are capable of putting their feelings into words, and so all are used as

object lessons in the importance of trying to intuit feelings.455

What I would wish to add to this equation is the possibility that in encouraging a child to

consider the feelings of an inanimate object, a mother or preschool teacher is not merely attempting

to teach an object lesson in empathy, but also to consider the broader network of feelings for which

the child’s treatment of the object in question has significant ramifications. By this logic, when my

host sister scolded her middle child for using the piano roughly, saying that it would be angry, she

was teaching her child that his actions had emotional consequences—not only for the object of his

rough play, nor even for other, analogous objects he might encounter in the future and wish to treat

with equivalent disregard, but also for those around him who were affected by his actions. The

piano, like all objects in the home, is provided for the good of the family for a specific purpose,

and to disrespect that intention through misuse is mottainai. Disrespecting the piano is to disrespect

the grandparents’ act of having provided it for the purpose of learning how to make music. That

my host sister referred to it not simply as piano but rather piano no kamisama is in many ways

immaterial: in either case, the personified instrument is simultaneously both itself and the network

of care which it represents. The piano, anthropomorphized as kamisama, becomes in that moment

the dominant symbol for an entire network of interpersonal care.

Therefore, as I suggested in the beginning of this chapter, the kami are not construed

necessarily as a separate order of being that serves as a source of loving care, but rather as the

abstract face given to the entire network of care that the child receives in all avenues of his life.

455
Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa, 139. Following an argument by Takie Lebra, Tobin goes on to suggest that the
emphasis placed in preschool on reading the thoughts and feelings of others (yomitoru) leads in adulthood to an
underdeveloped ability to express one’s own feelings, on which action is placed little cultural value, leading many to
feel chronically misunderstood despite the ongoing efforts of others to intuit one’s unexpressed feelings.

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The concern of the wider community for the child’s wellbeing is localized in the person of the

kami, to whom in turn the child is expected to show the gratitude and indebtedness he feels toward

that community, in culturally-sanctioned ritual ways. In the same way that the child says

itadakimasu to the chain of production that brings him food, the reverence he pays to the kami and

the Buddhas is an outward sign of gratitude toward the often-unseen forces in his environment that

care for and sustain him. The divinity of the object is rooted in the fact that it is the nexus whereby

the practice of concern is exchanged. Parental love is shown in toilet kept clean for the child’s

benefit, a well tied kimono, and a hot meal. Although gratitude to parents can be shown directly,

it can also be shown in treating the objects provided for his betterment with care and

consideration—by performing correct deference to the kami that infuse the object through which

parental care has been filtered. The tag of divinity is, in essence, a way of concretizing for the child

behind a mask of personhood the entire network of mutual reciprocity and care. Although the word

for this is kami, what the child is worshipping is his society.

Anthropomorphism in Adult Experience

My recent assertion that children are led to see kami as an anthropomorphic mask to apply

to abstract networks of loving care, and as nodes of interactivity where gratitude for a diffuse

process can be expressed publicly, is something that is not at all unique to childhood. As this

subject could easily be a second study unto itself, one brief example shall suffice.

Marie Kondo’s recent self-help manual The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (2014) has

quickly become an international sensation due to its cheerful promises to help the chronically

cluttered to being order and simplicity to their lives. Although the method can be—and frequently

is—distilled to the simple formula “discard anything that does not bring you joy,” this formula

obscures the fact that Kondo anthropomorphizes a person’s possessions constantly throughout the

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book, such that to excerpt all examples relevant to the topic at hand would be to reprint the entire

manuscript. Consider, then, this one passage as representative of her entire philosophy:

I know some people find it hard to believe that inanimate objects respond to
human emotion... Still, we often hear about athletes who take loving care of
their sports gear, treating it almost as if it were sacred. I think the athletes
instinctively sense the power of these objects. If we treated all things we use
in our daily life, whether it is our computer, our handbag, our pens and pencils,
with the same care that athletes give to their equipment, we could greatly
increase the number of dependable “supporters” in our lives. The act of
possessing is a very natural part of our daily life, not something reserved for
some special match or contest.
Even if we remain unaware of it, our belongings really work hard for us,
carrying out their respective roles each day to support our lives. Just as we
like to come home and relax after a day’s work, our things breathe a sigh of
relief when they return to where they belong. Have you ever thought about
what it would be like to have no fixed address? Our lives would be very
uncertain. It is precisely because we have a home to return to that we can go
out to work, to shop, to interact with others. The same is true of our belongings.
It is important for them to have that same reassurance that there is a place for
them to return to. You can tell the difference. Possessions that have a place
where they belong and to which they are returned each day for a rest are more
vibrant.
Once my clients have learned to treat their clothes with respect, they
always tell me, “My clothes last longer. My sweaters don’t pill as easily, and
I don’t spill things on them as much either.” This suggests that caring for your
possessions is the best way to motivate them to support you, their owner.
When you treat your belongings well, they will always respond in kind. For
this reason, I take time to ask myself occasionally whether the storage space
I’ve set aside for them will make them happy. Storage, after all, is the sacred
act of choosing a home for my belongings.456
In the light of the above analysis, Kondo’s method should appear to be entirely in keeping

with childhood training in the importance of treating significant objects in social rather than

material modes. One is exhorted to express gratitude to the objects that sustain one’s everyday

life—and in so doing, anthropomorphize them—as a means of respecting the labor that went into

producing them and acknowledging one’s indebtedness to that sustaining network of unseen care.

American readers of this book undoubtedly see in this philosophy what they take to be a kind of

Japaneseness that strikes them as charmingly jejune. This derives in large part, as scholar of

Marie Kondō, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, trans.
456

Cathy Hirano, First American edition (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2014), 168–71.

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children’s literature Jerome Griswold writes, from the tendency of adults in the West to make more

and firmer distinctions between animate and inanimate things than do children:

The eventual drawing of boundaries where they were absent and the
acceptance of a consensual and dualistic point of view—where the sentient
are divided from the insentient and humans from animals—are useful in a
pragmatic way. When consciousness is seen to reside exclusively in us and
the world apart from us is regarded as full of neutral and disinterested objects,
the way is cleared for a less fettered pursuit of personal happiness.457
The Japanese approach the division of the world into animate and inanimate categories in a way

that may strike the contemporary American reader as ‘childlike’, but only insofar as the term

implies an inclination to embrace and support the treatment of mere things in an interpersonal

rather than material mode that an American reader would consider, for good or ill, to be exclusively

a feature of childhood imagination.

The Japanese, of course, do make an unambiguous distinction between animate (iru) and

inanimate (aru) forms of the verb ‘to be’. Nevertheless, what appears to be the case when the

animate form is applied to inert matter is that the extension of interpersonal modes of address is

intended as a means of indicating respect. To recognize the ‘thou-ness’ of an object—often, but

not exclusively, by phrasing one’s recognition as addressing oneself to the kamisama of that

object—is a way of acknowledging that that object is simultaneously both itself and a symbol for

the entire network of industry and care that cooperated to bring that object into existence. Its

kamisama is a being who is conjured in order to create a social face to which the recipient of that

care can address his gratitude in a public performative context.

It is also worth mentioning that not all animate objects in Japan are necessarily afforded

uniform deference in all situations. The importance of aisatsu in transforming a mere human being

into a full social person is on full display on any Japanese train platform at rush hour, where I have

457
Griswold, Feeling like a Kid, 123.

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observed that harried commuters treat their fellow passengers with what—from an American

perspective—seems to be unconscionably callous disregard. Without a proper introduction or

greeting, a human being on the subway is not due any particular deference simply for being human

and can be shoved and jostled with as much impunity as if he were a piece of furniture. But only

bring that person into social relationship through the application of a ritualized greeting, and the

rules once again apply. As is the case in most Japanese interpersonal relations, the rules that inhere

between two individuals are not static, but situational,458 and the same is true of the relationship

between a person and an object. An object can be treated as animate if its importance to the actor

commands that he acknowledge the network of care which it represents. Likewise, another person

can be treated more or less as an object, within certain bounds, in the event that no circumstance

of mutual social recognition or other moral obligation inheres at the moment of interaction.

Kondo’s exhortation to make companions of one’s belongings is of course not the only

instance of such anthropomorphic thinking among contemporary adult Japanese. Organizations of

all kinds—prefectures, cities, clubs, and teams—tend overwhelmingly to have their own mascots

(yuru-kyara or “soft/gentle character”); and although these personified representations are

nominally intended for commerce and consumption, they also partake of the religious tendency of

organizations to have their own representative kami.459 Signage throughout Japan regularly—more

often than I have noticed in America, at any rate—cautions people against certain behaviors by

casting the objects of those behaviors in an interpersonal light (Fig. 6.1). Although these examples

do not overlap with institutionalized religion, there are others that do. Much has been written about

the Buddhist practice of performing funerals for the souls of objects of great importance and/or

458
Lebra, Japanese Patterns of Behavior, 111.
459
Debra J. Occhi, “Wobbly Aesthetics, Performance, and Message: Comparing Japanese Kyara with Their
Anthropomorphic Forebears,” Asian Ethnology 71, no. 1 (2012): 109–32.

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long use: needles, brassieres, stuffed animals, and so on are all eligible for kuyō, a funerary rite

otherwise reserved for humans.460 Similarly, at the sacred bonfire held by Shinto shrines that is

usually reserved for the respectful burning of old New Year’s decorations and other religiously

significant paraphernalia (dontō-sai/dontō-yaki), other objects to which significant personal

sentiment has been attached by former owners are often immolated as well (Fig. 6.2).

In each of these cases, the actor chooses to step out of a purely instrumental mode to treat an

object or institution of deep personal significance, instead, in an interpersonal mode. They apply a

human-like face to the object in question in order to express feelings of gratitude, fellowship, and

respect. This expression of feeling, in turn, stands a chance of being observed by those people in

the actor’s community who are also implicated in the relationship between actor and object: a giver

of the gift, a manufacturer of the commodity, or a member of the sodality being thereby addressed.

In this way, the feelings communicated by the actor to the object reach the other interested parties

through the transactional nexus that is the person—the kami—of the object.

Conclusion
Because the scholarly study of religion in the Euro-American world first emerged from

within a cultural paradigm that posits ‘religion’ to be a distinct category of human activity, it has

tended to preserve in the way it defines its area of study many presuppositions about what ‘religion’

is and does that are idiosyncratic to those religions with which it is most intimately familiar—

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These ‘religions’ share among them many key features which

happen to be entirely absent in normative Japanese religious experience: the assertion of the

existence of a singular, omnipotent, all-seeing, and morally concerned deity; the exclusivist nature

460
Toshiaki Nagasawa, “Hari kuyo no Datsueba,” Seikō minzoku 124 (1988): 9–21; Angelika Kretschmer, “Mortuary
Rites for Inanimate Objects: The Case of Hari Kuyō,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 27, no. 3/4 (2000): 379–
404.

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of sectarian affiliation; the centrality of text; the imperative to proselytization; the stressing of

belief over practice, and so on. These attributes are all features, as a small but growing number of

scholars have shown, of what Karl Jaspers originally termed the religions of the “Axial Age”.461

One consequence of the preoccupation with axial traditions among scholars of religion has

been the ever-expanding set of criteria by which institutions and activities are judged to belong to

the category of ‘religion’. As the numbers of those professing to have no religion has continued to

rise in the West,462 there has been a corresponding interest in scholars of religion—particularly in

the Americas—to expand the definition of ‘religion’ to encompass seemingly secular activities. Of

particular note in this regard is David Chidester’s assertion of the existence of a “Church of

Baseball” in the United States, a claim which he makes on the grounds that the sport fulfills the

prerequisites of an essentially Durkheimian definition of religion: that it present continuity in the

face of social change; that it encourage uniformity and social belonging; that it promote a

veneration of the familiar and domestic; and that it be conducted with ritual and ceremony.463

But the fact that this argument can be taken seriously is due in large part to the fact that Euro-

American scholars of ‘religion’ continue to think of the object of their study in terms of exclusively

axial traditions. As cognitive scientist of religion Ara Norenzayan has lately suggested, the

precipitous decline of religious affiliation in some western European countries is due in large part

to the fact that the social functions once performed by axial religious traditions—such as the just

461
Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1953); Robert N. Bellah, Religion in
Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 2011); Robert N. Bellah and Hans Joas, eds., The Axial Age and Its Consequences (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 2012); Norenzayan, Big Gods.
462
Gregory A. Smith, “A Growing Share of Americans Say It’s Not Necessary to Believe in God to Be Moral,” Pew
Research Center (blog), October 16, 2017, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/16/a-growing-share-of-
americans-say-its-not-necessary-to-believe-in-god-to-be-moral/.
463
David Chidester, “The Church of Baseball, the Fetish of Coca-Cola, and the Potlatch of Rock ‘N’ Roll: Theoretical
Models for the Study of Religion in American Popular Culture,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64, no.
4 (1996): 745–46.

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enforcement of laws, the provision of comfort in times of difficulty, and a strong sense of identity

and community—are now being performed (with exceptional success) by a robust, secular welfare

state.464 If we elect to take ‘religion’ to mean only religion in an axial mode, then it is not in the

United States where one should look for a truly “civil religion” as Robert Bellah suggested,465 but

rather in Denmark, Sweden, or France. But in defining religion exclusively in axial terms, we risk

leaving outside our sphere of inquiry those forms of religion—like those found in Japan—that do

not conform to our axial-age preoccupations.

My earlier suggestion that in addressing themselves to the kami Japanese children are in fact

being taught to worship their society is an undeniably Durkheimian one, as it recapitulates the

central thesis of his classic Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Nevertheless, as I have just argued,

in going too far down the Durkheimian path, one risks arriving at the Church of Baseball. More

succinctly than Martin Luther, I have only one thesis to nail to the door of said church: ‘religion’

must have something to do with culturally postulated supernatural entities. It must have gods.

This is not to say, however, that I am in total agreement with E.B. Tylor’s succinct and

deceptively self-evident definition of religion as ‘belief in supernatural beings’—particularly with

respect to Japan, where as I and countless others have demonstrated ‘belief’ as a category is in no

way applicable to ‘religion’ as it is practiced. But the issue that scholars have had with Tylor’s use

of the word ‘belief’ has often led, in axial fervor, to dismiss the importance of gods to religion as

well. The issue is in some respects a semantic one: having dismissed ‘belief’ as a prerequisite to

religion, one cannot then simply turn around and assert that ‘religion is supernatural beings.’ But

rather than relegate Tylor to the dustbin of intellectual history entirely, it would be more productive

464
Norenzayan, Big Gods, 174.
465
Robert N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” Daedalus 134, no. 4 (2005): 40–55.

293
to find another, more accurate way to articulate the relationship between humans and the

supernatural beings they invent than the axially-inflected ‘belief.’

In Japan, concern with things supernatural tends in many cases to be the purview of the

elderly, who develop a greater interest in both religious esoterica and active participation in

religious ritual as they age. 466 This tendency, by extension, implies a corresponding lack of

religious performance among the young and the middle aged, a laxity which I have argued is part

of the Japanese normative concept of mushūkyō, and which I would here venture to suggest is a

feature of non-axial religious participation in general. Part of having a religion be something that

does not demand sectarian commitment or creedal affirmation, but rather a set of assumptions that

“come without saying” (selon Bourdieu) as part of the worldview of an ethnic and cultural identity

is that these assumptions about the world are altogether tacit. The gods only become important

when human activity requires their participation—not only in times of duress (kurushii toki ni

kamidanomi) but also in times of regularly-scheduled ritual activity. As I have shown periodically

throughout this study, the texts from which the Japanese learn the most about the content of their

religion are not the holy texts of the institutional religions, but rather picture books from the secular

market which are intended as much as refreshers for knowledge the parents absorbed in their own

childhood as they are for introducing the current generation of children to this material for the first

time. Until the attainment of advanced age or the development of an idiosyncratic interest in

religious esoterica causes them to develop a greater understanding of their religious culture, this

appears to be the level of religious understanding that most Japanese possess for the majority of

their life span.

466
Traphagan, The Practice of Concern.

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 Moreover, the fact that Japanese religion—as an example of pre-axial religion—is altogether

tacit means that deities are rarely singled out as objects of special pedagogical concern. Rather

ideas and attitudes about the kami and Buddhas are communicated to the child predominantly as

part of learning the cultural apparatus (gyōji) of which these beings are a constituent part. Thus, in

ascertaining the methods and strategies whereby religious knowledge is communicated to

preschool and early elementary school children, I have been obliged not to use the term ‘religion’

(shūkyō) at all, but rather to refer to the ideas and processes in which I was chiefly interested, as

they themselves do, as ‘traditional culture’ or dentō bunka.

Only while they are learning that being normatively-socialized Japanese means participating

in a calendar of ritual performances (gyōji) do children come to realize that some of these

performances are addressed to beings called kami, hotoke, and oni. When they do, they find that

the words used to talk about these beings are similar to the ones used for people. They are taught

to greet these beings (aisatsu) with key ritual gestures that resemble in form those interpersonal

rituals that they direct at other humans. They are taught that these beings exist (iru) or dwell

(yadoru) within the community in houses similar to humans’ (shrines, temples), and that

sometimes they have human-like bodies (Buddha images, toshigami). In their early cultural

training, children come to hear the term mimamoru used to describe simultaneously the kind of

aloof but loving care they receive at the hands of their primary caregivers, whose cultural script

dictates that they intervene discreetly and only when absolutely necessary, as well as from the

unseen but loving care the kamisama and Buddhas all around them are said to exercise over them,

their families, and their community. The way that the kami are spoken of in the collaborative

inscription of ema tablets suggest to the child that the kami are reflections of the community’s

concern for their wellbeing—silent guarantors of the child’s vows of self-improvement who watch

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on from the shrine and care for the child’s growth and development in much the same way as

parents and teachers do. Likewise, the oni of setsubun are portrayed as tools by which children can

work through the impulses that keep them from full integration with the community, and their

ultimate reality or unreality is left purposefully as an open question.

Through learning words like itadakimasu, children come to realize that there are networks

of care that sustain them even when they are not aware of these networks’ actions. The fact that

children are being trained throughout their preschool education to intuit unspoken feelings of the

people around them means they also come to be attuned to the aliveness even of inanimate

objects—in part because inanimate objects are not merely themselves, but also are places where

sustaining networks of care have been localized. Showing ritualized social deference to a

significant object—be it a Buddha statue or a family piano—is functionally equivalent to showing

deference to the entire social network that that object represents. The kami, then, is the symbolic

spokesperson for this collective: the human-like face applied to a null operator through which

feelings of concern are transacted.

In this way, the ultimate reality of the kami and Buddhas never comes into question, nor is it

ever asserted directly. Rather, the apparatus whereby children receive their knowledge of the

culturally-postulated residents of the supernatural realm comprises what anthropologist Dan

Sperber has called semi-propositional representations: statements that are not factual propositions

in their own right (“such-and-so is true”), but rather true reports that other propositions have been

made (“our forefathers said that such-and-so is true”).467 Children’s literature on gyōji does not

assert the existential reality of the kami, nor did my ethnographic sources do so even when pressed

to commit to a firm stance on the issue. But both make clear assertions about the ways with which

467
Sperber, “Apparently Irrational Beliefs,” 169–75.

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the kami are routinely interacted. In this way, the child accepts as a matter of course the existence

of kami as social actors within their environment without their existence ever being asserted in so

many words.

Because direct explanatory statements about the kami and Buddhas tend to be avoided, the

child comes to make assumptions about these beings based on the ways they are taught to interact

with them. Through this process, the kami come to be understood simultaneously as both members

of the community and symbolic representations of the community—and in particular, the

community in its role as a network dedicated to the collective nurturance of the child and

performing concern for his wellbeing. The concern of the community for the child and the gratitude

of the child for the community are both directed—not to their ultimate recipients—but toward

inanimate objects that serve as loci for the transaction of these feelings. Until these objects are

transformed into social persons by calling them kami or Buddhas and treating them in an

interpersonal rather than instrumental mode, they remain gods without faces.

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Fig. 6.1 – Examples of anthropomorphic signage in Mizusawa. An anthropomorphized water droplet named ‘agua’ (left) advises
children to protect the purity of the water on a sign erected by a large drainage canal next to Mizusawa Public Library; a sign
depicting a weeping bicycle (right) begging its owner not to treat him like garbage, erected in the bicycle parking lot at
Mizusawa station.

Fig. 6.2 – A cellophane bag full of stuffed animals awaits immolation on the purifying
New Year bonfire (dontōsai) at a large shrine in Morioka.

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Appendix: Children’s Book Illustrations

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Chapter 2: Words and Pictures

Illus. 2.1 – Supplemental dust jacket overleaf. (Oya Tsugio and Nishikawa Ryūhan 2011)

Illus. 2.2 – Mizuki Shōnen is horrified by scenes of hell (Mizuki Shigeru 2013, 16–17).

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 Illus. 2.3 – Sōbē trapped in the belly of an oni in hell (Tajima Yukihiko 1978, 29).

Illus. 2.4 – Granny Waste-Not looks on as residents of hell fight over a cauldron of stew (Shinju Mariko 2014, 10–11).

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Chapter 4: Demons and Danger

Illus. 4.1 – The oni family debates what is to become of the intruder, Lolo, who
has been apprehended at their midnight dance (Masamichi Kahoru 2002, 24–25).

Illus. 4.2 – An aged Momotarō looks on as the mixed human and oni residents
of Onigashima listen to a kamishibai performer tell of the hero’s exploits
(Kawasaki Hiroshi and Kunimitsu Erika 2004, 32).

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 Illus. 4.3 – Mayu comforts the badly-scalded oni (Tomiyasu Yōko 2004, 26).

Illus. 4.4 – Grandfather and grandson help the oni pair to bathe (Hasegawa Yoshifumi 2006, 8–9).

Illus. 4.5 – The oni turns over his magic mallet and cloak of invisibility in hopes of
winning a bride (Motoshita Idzumi 2009, 24–25).

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Illus. 4.6 – The lonely kamisama appears to the brother and sister in the guise of their grandfather in Hokkaido,
as the frustrated oni look on in consternation (Takezaki Yūhi 1980, 26–27).

Illus. 4.7 – The children chase the ‘oni’ out of the house in a hail of roasted soybeans; the oni,
tripping, reveals himself to have been their father all along (Sakurai Nobuo 2000, 28).

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 Illus. 4.8 – As the father describes the various misdeeds of oni, the reader imagines
the scene along with the children he is speaking to. An oni snickers through the fourth wall
as an anxious mother tends to her sick children behind him (Sakurai Nobuo 2000, 9).

Illus. 4.9 – A trio of fearsome but sympathetic oni who have nowhere else to go are welcomed into
the house by a drunken father on setsubun night (Uchida Rintarō and Illus. Yamamoto Takashi 2004, 6–7).

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Illus. 4.10 – The God of Good Luck, pleased by the raucous oni party on setsubun night, takes up residence
in the family’s kamidana. The God of Good Luck, the God of the New Year, and the family’s ancestors are
all functionally interchangeable (Uchida Rintarō and Illus. Yamamoto Takashi 2004, 30–31).

Illus. 4.11 – Daikoku / Fuku-no-kami confronts the kami of poverty, despite the latter’s
having been treated as a welcome guest (Ookawa Essei 1980, 18).

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 Illus. 4.12 – Good luck beans, thrown during a public mamemaki, agree that the man dressed
in an oni costume is simply playing a part, and is innocent of any real wrongdoing (Mori Eto 2012, 12–13).

Illus. 4.13 – Aodon, the blue/green oni, cries so loudly that the purple bakeinu believes a much larger monster to be nearby.
Akadon and Kiidon cover their ears (Miyajima Tomomi 2002, 12–13).

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 Illus. 4.14 – Cover of “There’s an Oni in your Tummy,” showing the red oni of
anger inside a child’s silhouette (Ozawa Tsutomu and Illus. Nishimura Tatsuma 1982).

Illus. 4.15 – Tsuyoshi throws his beans angrily, not knowing that he is being possessed by
the black-skinned oni, Rinrinbō. Kitchi, the red oni, and a transformed Takashi, the green
oni, rush in to try to separate them (Masuda Yuuko 2012, 14).

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 Illus. 4.16 – All of Yū’s mushi (bad qualities depicted as insects) pour out of his belly-button as
the adult oni scoops them into his sack to take away (Kowase Tamami 2000, 20–21).

Chapter 5: Being, Dwelling, and Greeting

Illus. 5.1 – Tomoki ‘s first encounter with the ‘kami of the house’ is not with a kami, but rather an oni,
with sympathetic, rounded edges and a warm golden color (Motoshita Idzumi 2014, 4–5).

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Illus. 5.2 – Kanta sings to himself in the shrine grove, oblivious to the significance
of his surroundings (Hasegawa Setsuko 1985, 2–3).

Illus. 5.3 – The family discovers a dragon perched on the shrine building
in their shichigosan portrait (Uchida Rintarō 2008, 26–27).

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 Img 5.4 – The titular lonely kamisama sets out from his tiny shrine and
out into a changed urban landscape (Takezaki Yūhi 1980, 2–3).

Img 5.5 – Emi-chan’s brother and his friends carrying the o-mikoshi (Yamasue Yasue 2002, 8).

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 Img 5.6 – Cover of The Ten Little Frogs’ Autumn Festival, showing the mikoshi and golden
finial which is taken by the characters to be ‘kaeru-sama’ or ‘Lord Frog’ (Madokoro Hisako 2010).

Illus. 5.7 – Toshigamisama, or the New Year God, in Nihon no

Kamisama Ezukan, Vol. 1 (Matsuo Kōichi 2012b, 4).

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 Illus. 5.8 – Toshigamisama sits, unobserved, atop the kagami-mochi
as the family celebrates the New Year (Yamasue Yasue 2000, 28)

Illus. 5.9 – Toshigamisama arrives in non-anthropic form as a cadre of smiling kagami-mochi (Nagano Hideko 2011, 8–9).

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 Illus. 5-10 – An anthropomorphized kagami-mochi contemplates his predicament
on the cover of “The Mochi’s Feelings” (Kagakui Hiroshi 2005).

Illus. 5.11 – Toshigamisama flutters down from the sky wearing a

white robe and leaving a dotted line (Yamasue Yasue 2000, 25).

Img 5.12 – Toshigamisama / o-Shōgatsu-sama arrives on a cloud (Nishimoto Keisuke 1993).

314
Illus. 5.13 – Shiba Wanko and Miké Nyanko, dressed as the New Year Kami, look down with pride from the clouds,
referring to the book’s protagonists as their descendants. Miké Nyanko bears the wish-granting mallet and sack of
plenty associated with Daikoku / Fuku-no-kamisama (Kawaura Yoshie 2002, 1:14).

Illus. 5.14 – Aya’s father explains that the New Year Kami is the family’s ancestors,
and that they can be accessed on the family kamidana (Uchida Rintarō 2010, 16–17).

Illus. 5.15 – The kindly old man, feeling compassion for six roadside Jizō statues,
covers them with the straw hats he failed to sell at market (Sasaki Noboru 1999, 18).

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Illus. 5.16 – Momo-chan gives a haircut to a statue of Jizō (Matsutani Miyoko 1981, 16–17).

Illus. 5.17 – Yosaku prays to a statue of Jizō as his mother emerges from the house,
bearing his newborn son (Tajima Yukihiko 1996, 5).

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Illus. 5.18 – The villagers of Nippon-ichi celebrate their Kannon statue (Sakai Shōji 2007, 9).

Illus. 5.19 – Amida Buddha observes the three Buddha images carved by
the woodsman and left by the roadside (Yanagisawa Keiko 1987, 27).

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 Illus. 5.20 – The Kannon of Nippon-ichi lectures the third thief. Although the text claims the statue
clasps the thief’s hands, the illustration renders the statue static (Sakai Shōji 2007, 26–27).

Conclusion: Anthropomorphism, Animism, and the Localization of Concern

Illus. 6.3 – Mii-chan, the cow, weeps openly, knowing that her
time to be slaughtered has arrived (Uchida Michiko 2013, 34–35).

318
 Illus. 6.4 – A boy and girl pair look on as the food on their plate is transformed into the
animals and cook who contributed to making it (Ninomiya Yukiko and Illus. Arai Youji 2003, 6–7).

Illus. 6.5 – Granny Waste-not, peering censoriously over the table, declares the little girl’s
dislike of meat and fish to be an intolerable waste (Shinju Mariko 2009, 8–9).

319
 Illus. 6.6 – The protagonist of “Why is Life Important?” holds up a map of his kokoro. Just as all the food he has
ingested incorporates life (inochi) into his body, the investment of other people in his wellbeing incorporates life
into his kokoro (Oono Masato and Illus. Hara Atsushi 2015, 38–39).

Illus. 6.7 – Expressing feelings of gratitude to others—even when those others are nowhere to be found—is the only escape from
self-imposed feelings of helplessness and despair. Despite the importance of thinking of oneself in relation to others, the actions
prescribed are cast as being self-fulfilling and non-transactional (Oono Masato and Illus. Hara Atsushi 2015, 54–55).

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 Illus. 6.8 – Cover to the boxed set of Mori Hiyori’s Kamisama of the Necessities of Life
series, showing the covers of each constituent volume (Mori Hiyori 2015c).

Illus. 6.9 – The kami of gohan emanates like steam from a small bowl of freshly cooked rice (Mori Hiyori 2015a, 17–18).

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 Illus. 6.10 – The kamisama of the kimono is dizzied and the kimono itself made askew after Sawa-chan
runs to show her father (left), but remains seated upright when she walks softly (right) (Mori Hiyori 2015b, 11–12).

Illus. 6.11 – The kami of the tatami appears not only on the woven rush floor, but on the two domestic
altars (kamidana, butsudan) as well, suggesting that he is to be taken as a metonym for all the kami of the
house and home (Mori Hiyori 2015d, 19–20).

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 Illus. 6.12 – The deity of the commode hovers serenely over a freshly-cleaned
domestic convenience (Uemura Kana and Mari Torigoe 2010, 31).

Illus. 6.13 – Tomoki finds himself drawn into the presence of the kamisama of the house.
One, presumably toire no kamisama, wears a roll of toilet paper; another wears a miniature
roof. (Motoshita Idzumi 2014, 14–15).

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 Illus. 6.14 – Tsukumogami—everyday objects that are said to have kami
within them (Matsuo Kōichi 2012a, 12).

Illus. 6.15 – A blanket (kakebuton) is beseeched to protect the child while sleeping,
and to soothe his skinned knees (Takano Fumiko 2010, 15).

324
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