From Miko to Spiritual Therapist Shamanistic Initiations in Contemporary Japan.

Studies of Japanese shamanism are on the decline while neo-shamanistic practitioners thrive in Japan's large cities. Based on this observation, the authors of this paper put forward two arguments. First, we claim that a rhetorical approach to the development of scholarly interest in Japanese shamanism reveals the existence of a rigid definitional framework that either ignores or undervalues new types of shamanistic practitioners. Nevertheless, certain theories stemming out of ethnographic work by Japanese researchers, such as the classifications of shamanistic initiations, could be adapted to the analysis of today's Japanese neo-shamanism. We demonstrate our first argument by dividing a sample of "spiritual therapists" according to the most commonly used Japanese scholarly typology of "hereditary" (seshūgata), "calling" (shōmelgata), and "quest (training)" (tankyū [shugyō] gata) types of shamanistic initiations, and by comparing their experiences with those of 'traditional' shamans. Our second argument concerns the basis for such comparison. In this respect, we join recent debates that put classic explanatory models of New Age individualized eclectism in doubt, and argue that, like 'traditional' shamans, contemporary Japanese spiritual therapists choose their profession and legitimize their role in constant interaction with, and often under the pressure of their environment We conclude that, despite differences in content, forms of older and newer practices of shamanism resemble to such a degree that a revival of the academic field of Japanese shamanism may be in order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]