Holding On While Letting Go: Dealing With Death Th rough Kuyô Egaku In 19th Century Iwate.

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]