This study is based on my fieldwork in the YongNing region of NingLang Province, Yunnan, in August 2019. Its topic has emerged from my bewilderment when I was confronted with the Mosuo people’s marriage customs. The Mosuo are not registered as one of China’s ethnic groups. This situation may be related to their sese system, which goes against the Chinese marriage policy that is currently in force. Furthermore, the situation of not being registered may, in addition to the sese system, be the reason why they are excluded from being covered by the Chinese social welfare services. Recently, the Mosuo tend [increasingly] to abandon the sese system, which means that they prefer [to follow] the general Chinese marriage system in order to receive a fair share of the social welfare services.

  Both Akutoba stories of the Mosuo people in China and stories of the [divine] couple Dōsojin in Japan include the myth of a primordial sibling couple, but each tradition ends in a completely different manner: one as a comedy, the other as a tragedy. The difference does not only come from a difference of category, one being an “old tale” [a folk tale], the other one “a legend,” it also results from comic or tragic story elements in the respective myths.

  On the one hand, the Akutoba stories contain elements that can develop into comedies [already] in the myths of a primordial sibling couple that end as the comedy of a trickster. Dōsojin stories, on the other hand, are about a primordial sibling couple including many elements of a myth that were prone to develop into a tragic story. However, because the myth of the ancestral couple could not tell of incest between close relatives, the story that told of feelings of guilt [towards incest] developed into a tragic story.

  The turtleshell-shaped tombs are one of Okinawa’s [characteristic] tomb styles. In this essay I first introduce my personal perspective on various theories about this tomb style. Then, although there are many among these theories that use a geographical approach, I propose a point of view that focuses on measurements in Feng Shui texts, the Rohan shaku (Rohan measure), discovered on the Ishigaki Island. I introduce this type of measurement and its application.

  On the plan (diagram) of such tombs we find the Chinese character 吉 inscribed. The character means “luck”, and is to be formed by the tomb’s lengths. The Rohan measure is used in order to measure the [degree of] luckiness or unluckiness of a tomb’s lengths when it is built.

  First, I check at each tomb whether the Rohan shaku is used in its building process or not and study wishes implicit in the builders’ minds as they are expressed on the scales of the measure. Then, I introduce the actual measures of the Kume river Misato river tomb, of which a plan with its measurements inscribed survives, and compare this with measurements from the Kominato river tombs. Finally, I examine how the Okinawan people’s way of thinking finds expression in the measurements of each part of a tomb, and how [they] entrust their desire to return to the mother’s womb to the shell-shaped form of the tomb.

  In Fenghuang (鳳凰) of HuNan Province, China, we find four areas of Miao song culture: the center, the north of the center, the northeast, and the northernmost area of the Province. Although people of these areas seem to have communicated with one another, regional differences are quite significant. In this essay, focusing on the point of view of these regional differences, I ask: Are there many alternate songs between young women and young men at their meetings?; Are the words used in the lyrics close to those in everyday conversation? And how are metaphors used?

[As a result of the investigation it turned out that center and center north, northwest and northernmost center tend to communicate].

  The four areas show a common tendency to use two- or three-word lyrics in their songs. People in the central and northeast areas now use three-word lyrics though they used to use two-word lyrics until some decades ago in the same way as the other two regions. It is quite conceivable that professional singers have been competing using technically more sophisticated three-word lyrics.

Before an objective discussion of the Japanese Imperial System, its genealogy and its succession to the Imperial Throne is possible, it is necessary to examine the condition in the Jōmon and Yayoi periods and in the period of ancient daiō (great kings), when a national state system was not yet established. Since both of these periods were times of non-literate cultures, the only way to study them is to rely on model-theory assumptions based on data provided by cultural anthropology. As a result, Japanese ancient culture can only be studied, if that study is based on a basic [Asian] culture that had survived among minority peoples in the Yangtze valley.

  It is then important for [the purpose of] this study to distinguish what are the essential elements from what are but secondary elements in the emperor’s person. Furthermore it is necessary, in order to grasp what the Emperor System is, to [analyze and] separate its [political] power in the actual society from its spiritual power.

  To summarize, in genealogies of the early periods both, male and female at the time of the origins we can say that both, male line and female line descent were coexistent in the Japanese Archipelago. Their usage depended on which one was judged to be appropriate at the [particular] time. Sometimes there might even be combinations. Looking at societies of minority peoples, we find examples, where the [personal] name (名) is inherited in part from the mother’s name, while the clan’s name comes from that of the father’s clan (姓). In the story of Sahobiko and Sabohime Emperor Suitoku is to have said: “The mother should by all means name the baby first.” These words suggest that Japanese ancient society used to accommodate both, the patrilineal [agnatic] and matrilineal [uterine] systems of succession.

A mythical flood is a motif in many of the world’s origin myths. The content of these myths tells of a few chosen humans who survive a disastrous flood and start a new human history.

Most of these stories share a similar theme, namely that a first creation by a deity (or deities) was a failure and only a second one after a flood succeeded. Thus, the second [group of] humans is a reset of the first creation. We may, therefore, name this type of myth “resetting myth.” This kind of resetting-myth story is often used as a motif in near-futuristic SF fantasies.

  The essay takes up “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind,” a manga story drawn by Miyazaki Hayao and “Evangelion” by Anno Hideaki and focuses on these stories as they refute a resetting myth. But, on the other hand, there are also stories of resistance against a deity/deities in origin myths (including flood myths) among the Miao and Yi populations in the valleys of southeast China.

  The study aims to deepen the aspects mentioned above by focusing on the “resetting myths” authored by Miyazaki Hayao and Anno Hideaki.

Many Okinawan shamans, the yuta, take Amaterasu as their guardian deity or guide. According to the Japanese myth of origin, Amaterasu was present at both the Ise Shrines and the Imperial Court. In the middle of the Heian Period Amaterasu was also worshiped as a deity of folk religion, inside as well as outside of Kyoto. This means that the spirit of Amaterasu, when possessing various religious leaders and shamans, became at the same time a symbol of their origin. However, the yutas’ worship of Amaterasu may cause a conflict by opposing the Japanese nation and, therewith, become a political problem.

  When the author met with a yuta during his fieldwork in Okinawa, she scolded him sharply saying: “Your [Japanese] Amaterasu was wrong to have made the Okinawan people suffer the bitter experience of a terrible war.”

  By diversifying and multi-channeling Amaterasu as origin from semantic and historical viewpoints, this study examines the topic “shaman and the myth of origin” in present society.

‘Returns’ (term [borrowed] from James Clifford), [which refers to a return] to premodern, ethnic societies, is not only invoked for an existence with the natural environment but also to justify empires. Needless to say, myths are its typical instruments. They explain the world that surrounds humans and structure the relations that humans have’ with ‘the other.’

  Myths that exclude ‘the other’ appear at first glance to be lacking growth and [therefore] to be stable, while myths welcoming other elements seem to harbor vacillation and limitless development.

  Pangolins, discovered to be the host of the SARS-CoV2 virus that caused the present pandemic, are recognized in many ethnic myths as marginal creatures. In such myths they are described in mythemes as creatures that exclude other elements, [‘the other’].

  In China, some [body] parts of pangolins are used as ingredients for Chinese medicines to such a degree that the species was driven to near extinction. At the same time, the Chinese people take pangolins to be a kind of goblin so that they are afraid of them. Some believe that [these animals] are the cause of locust plagues. When humans first encountered pangolins, they were shocked by the animal’s looks. Therefore, pangolins became categorized as creatures that agitate humans. This sort of categorizing was adopted also in the old Chinese texts, the ‘Collections of Medical Herbs.’ However, when the harvesting and consumption of pangolins became widespread, their ‘otherness’ decreased while their utility increased so much that pangolins were no longer considered to be an alien [‘other’] matter.

  When COVID-19 attacked the ways society [used] to face the environment [the ‘other’], this drove many items, humans included, to become instruments for certain purposes.

  If ‘return’ is not simply a historical conception of a lost paradise but signifies also the appearance of a contact promising to bring forth a new myth as a beneficial choice to survive in a new era, the Anthropocene.