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In Japan, the spirits separated at death from the body are divided into two categories: benevolent spirits (nigitama) and malevolent spirits (aratama). It is the Japanese belief that neglecting to worship the ancestors' spirits can have evil consequences, while paying due respect to vengeful spirits can turn them into lucky gods. Historically, spirits as ghosts are first mentioned during the Heian period in works such as Nihon Ryöki or Konjaku Monogatari. Later, the word goryo was introduced to designate the spirits of powerful men who died bearing grudges or a desire for revenge and who became ghosts causing epidemics and destruction. The beginning of the Edo period marked the golden age of the kabuki theater, when ghost stories became popular. The development of the Japanese theater went hand in hand with the development of ukiyoe (woodblock prints), as the artists started to create more and more ghost images. This paper focuses on the development of particular ghost motifs and themes, as well as on the evolution of the ghost imagery along centuries in Japanese culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In all human societies, death and its associated rituals offer a primary channel for the study of local cultural values and beliefs about life. Since ancient times, Japanese have commonly utilized talismanic objects that represent their spiritual and religious worldviews to mediate their earthly existence with the divine and otherworldly realm. Among the most colorful and artistic of these ornamental symbols are ema (horse pictures), votive tablets still found abundantly at Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Typical ema consists of wooden picture boards of various sizes and shapes, brought to or created at a sacred site, through which the wishes and needs of supplicants are made known to whatever deities are enshrined there. Most Japan scholars agree that a majority of ema constitute a technique or mode of problem solving, crisis prevention, and/or thanksgiving related to issues that affect the earthly life of petitioners, rarely addressing their desires pertaining to the afterworld or death. Until the end of the 20th century, it was widely accepted that there were only a few minor exceptions to this general pattern. However, in 2001, a fourth variety of ema was identified in Iwate prefecture, northeastern Honshû, which seems to contradict this understanding. Dubbed kuyô egaku (literally, "mourning picture frames"), this type of ema connects the living votively to their loved ones, relatives and friends who are dead. This paper documents the discovery of kuyô egaku, highlights its prominent characteristics, and articulates the significance of this finding for understanding both ema and Japan's folk religious worldview in the nation's northeast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although "fairness" and "social responsibilities" form part of the business ethics agenda of Japanese corporations, the meaning of these terms must be understood in the context of the distinctive Japanese approach to ethics. In Japan, ethics is inextricably bound up with religious dimension (two normative environments) and social dimension (frame-work of concentric circles) The normative environments, influenced by Confucianism, Buddhism, and other traditional and modern Japanese religions, emphasize that not only individuals but also groups have their own spirit (numen) which is connected to the ultimate reality. The frame-work of concentric circles lets moral agents apply different ethical rules to the respective circles. The dynamics of these religious and social dimensions lead to a different view of both individuals and corporations from that dominant in the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This comparative study focuses on six aspects of local Thai and Japanese silk textiles - the patterns and designs, materials, local wisdom, cultural values, process of producing, and beliefs. The textiles studied are the Thai-Lao silk Matmii from Maha Sarakham Province in northeastern Thailand and the silk Tumugi Kasuri called Ushikubi Tumugi from Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan. The study explores the functions of these local traditional textiles and examines the cultural changes that influenced patterns, techniques, and use over the centuries. It is demonstrated that both textiles, as traditional crafts, reflect the identity, heritage, and dignity of local weavers and local people. The legacy represents a visible historical record of changes in society and that society's adjustment to new environments, Thai and Japanese local silk textiles express so many facets of local society that they are often referred to as symbols of that society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the conundrums of encounter and interpretation that animated the author's ethnographic research in an economically and demographically distressed region of rural Japan. The author's interest in local revitalization strategies led her to focus on a company spearheading a regional heritage foods initiative as a fertile research site. The company - a dynamic grassroots forum - ultimately failed to control deteriorating local circumstances by creating a new farm industry and reversing the town's sagging image. As the author became immersed in the optimistic visions of the region promoted by the company, she also grew entangled in local goals to further tourism and resettlement. This article shows that tensions between the author's support of grassroots renewal efforts and her skepticism about their potential to reverse local decline gave rise to ethical dilemmas that confound Institutional Review Board conceptions of field sites as places of controlled encounter. Exploring the author's attempts to navigate local agendas while pursuing her own research objectives, this article assesses dilemmas of ethnographic engagement in a politicized fieldsite where academic inquiries confront sensitive questions of community survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open and public discussion of death, particularly among children, remains one of the greatest Japanese societal taboos; therefore, little is known about Japanese children's perceptions of death. To explore Japanese children's notions of life and death, 16 healthy children (7 girls and 9 boys, mean age 8.9) were each interviewed 3 times and asked to draw and describe pictures of what “to live” and “to die” meant to them. Transcribed interviews were interpreted based on thematic analysis, incorporating paradigm cases and exemplars within the hermeneutical tradition. The children perceived life as an evolving process that leads to death, and regarded death as a transitional point to an afterlife. Some children perceived this process, or flow, as linear; others as circular. Their notions of death and the afterlife incorporated three main religious traditions in Japan (Shintoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism) as well as Christianity, as illustrated by 3 case examples and children's drawings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hosoki Kazuko, a popular fortune-teller, in one of the most prominent figures in the Japanese media, including television, books, and magazines. She is a prodigious author whose enormous sales of divination books (uranari hon) are the basis of her success. In some of these books, Hosoki discusses ancestor worship and associated rituals in connection with her form of divination, rokusei senjutsu (six-star astrology). Despite the widespread belief that such rituals have some connection to religion. Hosoki explicitly states that ancestor worship is "non-religious." I argue that Hosoki's representations draw on shared meanings about ancestor worship in combination with other Confucian-based notions in order to present her form of divination as common sense that should come naturally to all Japanese. Hosoki's statements can be viewed in the context of historical factors behind the idea many Japanese hold that they lack religious belief (mushûkyô) in addition to the deteriorating image of religion in general in the post-Aum era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the use of superstitious behavior by major league baseball players in the United States and Japan. The majority of professional players in both countries reported using superstitious behaviors but expressed little confidence that the behavior actually affected outcomes. Consistent with the uncertainty hypothesis, the more players believed luck affected outcomes during the game, the more they engaged in superstitious behavior. American players tended to be more superstitious than Japanese players. American players were more likely than the Japanese players to believe their superstitions aided their individual performance, whereas Japanese players were more likely than Americans to believe their superstitions helped the team performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employs a perspective of religious behavior based largely on classic deprivation theory and on the Stark and Bainbridge theory of religion. It is proposed that religions provide services, such as eschatological explenations, and hope and comfort, and that individual religiosity will increase as desire for these services increases. Survey data on religious beliefs and behavior collected by the Institute of Statistical Mathematics in Tokyo were used. Results lend partial support for the theoretical perspective. Some measures of an increased desire for these services were correlated with an increased likelihood of exhibiting related religious beliefs and behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many folk religions are deeply ingrained in Japanese daily life. Believers in such religions often rely on observances such as fortune-telling, prayer recitation, and incantation to protect them from accident and misfortune. The purposes of this research were: 1) to determine the dimensionality of religious beliefs in Japanese folk religion; 2) to clarify the relationship between religious beliefs and folk observances; and finally, 3) to compare religious behaviors of believers in folk religion with those of adherents of Jödo Shinshu,† which is regarded as one of the most intrinsically-oriented sects of Japanese Buddhism. A questionnaire was administered to 129 worshippers at the Ishikiri Shinto Shrine in Osaka. A principal axis factor analysis of the data, with varimax rotation, identified five dimensions of religiosity: Pro-religiousness, Belief in Soul, Belief in Guardianship, Ancestor Worship, and Modern Rationalism. Partial correlational analysis revealed that two of these dimensions, Belief in Guardianship and Ancestor Worship, both essential components of Japanese folk religiosity, were closely correlated. These two beliefs were also moderately correlated with Pro-religiousness. Among these five factors, Belief in Soul had a strong relationship to folk observances. Results confirmed that the religious behaviors of these worshippers were substantially more extrinsic than were those of Jödo Shinshu members. These findings suggest that Japanese folk religious beliefs are quite multi-dimensional and therefore cannot be interpreted solely by the Allportian intrinsic vs. extrinsic dichotomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]