Japanese Journal of Cultural Anthropology
Online ISSN : 2424-0516
Print ISSN : 1349-0648
ISSN-L : 1349-0648
Volume 70, Issue 2
Displaying 1-29 of 29 articles from this issue
  • Article type: Cover
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages Cover1-
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • Article type: Cover
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages Cover2-
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages App1-
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages App2-
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2020
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages App3-
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • Masato KASEZAWA
    Article type: Article
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 157-176
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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    The aim of this article is to describe the contemporary dynamics of Ayurveda under the condition of globalization, based on case studies from Kerala State in India. Particular attention will be paid to cultural politics concerning the question of to whom Ayurveda belongs as a medical resource. Moreover, I aim to present an alternative argument regarding the appropriation of local medical culture, suggesting that the state does not necessarily encompass the culture unilaterally from above, and illustrating the point of view of the local people, who sometimes invite the protection of the government from below. Ayurveda, which was originally confined to the Indian subcontinent and its vicinity, is now becoming a global medical practice, spreading to different areas of the world and acquiring new meanings in theory and practice. The globalization of Ayurveda has also had a great impact on India. Many patients go there from abroad to receive treatment. In the state of Kerala, many residential institutions have sprung up for such patients, and Ayurveda is rapidly growing into a huge industry. It seems that the practice of Ayurveda in India is undergoing reconstruction through contact with the outside world. However, some of those involved in Ayurveda in India are worried about its dependency on industry and the fact that the process is led by economically developed countries. In order to protect the rights to the knowledge and practice of Ayurveda at the state level, and extend the possibility of Ayurveda as a form of medicine and industry led by India on a worldwide scale, a movement is accelerating to place those intellectual properties and technologies in the context of Indian "national resources." I would like to analyze the cultural politics over the belongingness" of Ayurveda, in which it is redefined as national intellectual property and becomes an object of state intervention. Today we can distinguish between two kinds of Ayurvedic practitioners in India: namely vaidya, who have learned therapeutic techniques through local apprenticeship, and "Ayurvedic doctors," who have graduated from Ayurvedic courses in colleges. That distinction reflects the modern history of the reformation of Ayurveda. There are many differences between those two kinds of practitioners. In Kerala state, many vaidya who practice in villages see marma as the basic principle of treatment. Marma is also part of the everyday recognition of the body familiar to the village people. So, the vaidya's treatment is trusted by villagers. On the other hand, Ayurvedic doctors use various instruments of contemporary medicine for diagnosis instead of marma practices. They do not share the same concept of the body as the village people, and tend to practice at some distance from village society. As a result, the patients of Ayurvedic doctors often visit India from abroad. That has especially been the case in recent years, with Ayurveda being promoted at the government level as a tourist attraction. There is a tendency for many Ayurvedic doctors to go abroad for new opportunities. But they face mainly two obstacles in practicing in advanced countries. First, Ayurveda is not officially recognized as formal medicine there. Second, Ayurveda is sometimes treated by those countries as a "spiritual" or "healing" technique, making it is difficult for Indian doctors to practice. However, there is not much those doctors can do, even if the therapeutic practices are changed or distorted in ways that are difficult for them to accept. People involved in Indian pharmaceutical companies face a similar situation. Today, the increase in worldwide interest in herbal medicines has led to an increase in herbal industries, but has also resulted in many cases of biopiracy and exploitation of local knowledge. People in developing countries have thus started to demand state action to

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  • Kazuyoshi SUGAWARA
    Article type: Article
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 177-181
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • Kazuyoshi SUGAWARA, Takanori FUJITA, Hiromichi HOSOMA
    Article type: Article
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 182-205
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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    This article intends to elucidate the transformation of the patrimonial institution governing a traditional folk dance, called the Nishiure Dengaku, practiced in Misakubo, Shizuoka Prefecture, in central Japan. Dengaku Iiterally means "rice-paddy music," denoting the traditional folk dance that had developed in Japanese peasant culture before modernization. Generally, the succession of folk dance/music can be understood easily in terms of the process of distributing body resources. From that perspective, we pay special attention to the interactive organization in the rehearsal scene that enables the older dancers to pass on their physical techniques to younger dancers. Nisiure Dengaku, selected by the Japanese government as an intangible folk-cultural asset in 1976, is assumed to have continued for more than 200 years. Its primary practice consists of a festival called Kannon-sama, which is annually held on January 18 of the lunar calendar. During this all-night festival, 33 dance numbers of the ji-noh (ground dance), and 11-12 of the hane-noh (leaping dance) are performed: they are assumed to be devoted to the gods, who are syncretic of Buddhist and Shinto deities. The former numbers used to be assigned to 24 particular families of the village, who constituted an exclusive group called the noh-shu (dance-people). In each family, only the eldest son inherited from his father one of the numbers, or a set of numbers, of ji-noh. Since the late 1960s, however, that patrimonial institution was forced to be modified under the menace of depopulation: the ji-noh repertoires were redistributed among the remaining 14 families until the mid-1990s. Especially, a number of ji-noh parts that had once been assigned to families that died out became played instead by several skillful members of other families. It is assumed that the physical techniques were developed by the new dancers trough the voluntary contest of hane-noh, whose assignment is not prescribed by the patrimony. Our research, carried out from 2000 to 2005, revealed that all the performers of hane-noh were father-son pairs who were simultaneously participating in the festival. It is evident that in these families there is a rapid and successful succession of physical techniques from the older to the younger generation. A microanalysis of video records of the rehearsal scene illuminates a number of peculiar characteristics of interactive organization, in which instruction and learning consistently coordinate with each other. One of the noh-shu, endowed with an excellent talent for dancing, stated that the essence of mastering was to "watch and learn." However, there is a difficult dilemma to overcome between "watching" and "learning." If the novice wants to learn how to dance, he has to move his own body himself, imitating the instructor's body movement. However, the acting of most dancing includes a distinctive rotary motion of the whole body from 90 to 270 degrees, which often makes it impossible for the novice to keep watching his "model." In that respect, the bodily arrangement among the participants has critical importance: which of the side-by-side,backward, or face-to-face positions of the novice toward the instructor is most effective for his watching and learning? Also deserving of special attention is how the physical resources embedded in the rehearsal setting are exploited. The most important resource for the rehearsal is the drumming sounds, with parallel simulations of two or more different numbers sharing the same beat. The four sides of the room-sliding shutter, closet, entrance to the cooking room, and the front area in which the drum is set-represent the four directions of the two different stages: the indoor stage in the Chinju-sama eve, and the open air stage in the Kannon-sama festival. The most difficult task for novices is to successively turn their

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  • Akira KURASHIMA
    Article type: Article
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 206-225
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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    In the process of learning new body techniques, we often experience a change in our recognition of them. In many cases, we discover misconceptions we may have entertained about the techniques to which we aspire, and consequently rest our goals. The purpose of this paper is to provide an epistemological foundation from which such experiences can be adequately described. In the opening part of the paper, I will spell out the difficulties inherent in capturing those experiences. First of all, the subjectivity of neither the learner nor the instructor of the technique will provide an adequate standpoint for an objective description. That is because both learner and instructor have experienced repeated changes in the recognition of the technique that the former is about to acquire, with the implication that neither of them have a "final" recognition. Nor is it possible to resort to objective indices-as may be set by physiology, psychology or sociology-since none could possibly register the entire range of changes in the recognition of techniques that the learner might experience. Next, I will turn to Marcel Mauss' 'Les Techniques du Corps' to clarify the epistemological basis that enabled him to describe various body techniques. When he compares an old swimming style to a modern one, he describes the difference of the two techniques in three different ways; physiologically, psychologically and sociologically. However, that does not make the depicted techniques appear arbitrary in any way, owing to the fact that despite the logical independence of the three differences-each being neither derivable from nor reducible to the others-they nevertheless share a common reference: namely, the same two techniques. That intersection of three logically unrelated differences is only possible by experiential reference to real objects. Thus, insofar as they are objects of experiential reference, the experiential reality of the two techniques is unquestionable. I shall propose that the experiential reality, thus negatively attributable to the techniques, is what provides the foundation for Mauss' experiential description, and also what he refers to as the "efficacy" of technique. Such an understanding of the concept of efficacy necessitates a reconsideration of the well-known concept of "prestigious imitation." That is because Mauss stipulates that a necessary condition for the commencement of prestigious imitation is for the learner to acknowledge the efficacy of the instructor's technique. In order to investigate how that might occur in practice, I will consider the 'S' school of martial art in Kyoto, a target of fieldwork of mine from 1999 to 2005 (and still ongoing at time of writing). By way of drawing upon the experiential reality of the techniques, I have described in three different weys-physiologically, psychologically and sociologically-the difference between the techniques I have acquired in the course of training and that of the instructor. As a result, I have discovered that the recognition of the experiential reality of the instructor's techniques-hence their efficacy-occurs not only at the onset of prestigious imitation, but repeatedly during its process, thus continuously transforming their efficacy under their nominal identity.
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  • Takako YAMADA
    Article type: Article
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 226-246
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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    Shamanism, which premises a particular cosmology and etiology that make shaman's performances relevant within a socio-cultural context, cannot escape from radical transformation in the process of ideological and technological modernization or globalization. If shamanism can be characterized as religious practice in which a variety of "body resources" are manipulated and integrated to embody the world view of a culture, then radical changes in shamanism through globalization can also influence the bodily performance in religious practices. In this paper, the practices of shamanism among the Ladakhi and the Sakha people in contemporary circumstances are examined in terms of the transmission of "bodily performance" in the process of modernization or globalization. The former has undergone rapid modernization in their daily lives amid the promotion of local development and tourism. While the latter has experienced drastic changes in ideological, economic, and political systems and the revitalization of shamanism after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Among the Ladakhi, shamans' performances have changed relatively little; however, their glossolalia has begun to be understood in a more generalized and "de-cultural" context. Ladakhi shamans have come to play a role in healing not only local people, but also "global" people. In contrast, the Sakha have revived shamanism in quite a new form: as an emobodiment of the philosophy of symbiosis with nature. A shaman's ability to travel or fly to the underworld, in particular, is no longer embodied, even though shamans have, to a certain extent, maintained their traditional worldview. These two examples show the ways in which the body in the practices of shamanism is adjusted to be able to represent a new, modernized culture.
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  • Keiichi OMURA
    Article type: Article
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 247-270
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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    In the Canadian Arctic today, Inuit 'traditional ecological knowledge' (TEK) attracts considerable public attention. There is a growing recognition that Inuit TEK provides precise insights into natural phenomena, and has the potential to contribute to environmental management, even though it is based on a different paradigm from that of modem science. In that case, what kind of system is Inuit TEK based on? How does it function as a resource in the subsistence activity of Inuit hunters? In this paper, based on my own research in Kugaaruk (Pelly Bay), Nunavut, Canada, I investigate the mechanism of Inuit TEK, focusing on the role played by memory. In the first section, I shall introduce my topic with a paradoxical Inuit phrase, which an elder often used in interviews on climate change: "There has been no change in weather patterns because weather patterns change every year." Upon examining the meaning of this paradoxical phrase in the socio-cultural context of Inuit society, hypothesized that Inuit TEK is epistemologically based on the notion that everything is repeated differently (I call this idea 'repetition of difference'). This stands in opposition to the notion that everything is repeated identically (I call this idea 'repetition of identity'), which is the epistemological basis of modern science. In the second section, based on the above working hypothersis, I shall analyze two aspects of Inuit TEK, in order to consider the mechanism of memory, which Inuit hunters utilize as a resource in presenting knowledge and in practicing subsistence activity:(1) discourse (especially hunting stories) of Inuit elders and skillful hunters and (2) their foraging activity practices. Then, based on the results of my analysis, I propose a hypothetical model concerning the mechanism of memory on which Inuit TEK is based, to demonstrate the importance of memory to Inuit TEK. Finally, based on that premise, propound the hypothesis that the innumerable fragmentary episodes accumulated in the memory of each hunter are the most important resource in Inuit subsistence activity, and that memory incorporated with the body is the field where the past is transformed into a resource for present and future activity.
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 271-276
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 276-279
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 279-281
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 281-285
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 285-289
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 290-291
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 291-292
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 292-293
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 293-294
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 295-303
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 304-306
    Published: September 30, 2005
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 306-
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages 307-308
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages App4-
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages App5-
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages App6-
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • Article type: Cover
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages Cover3-
    Published: September 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: September 25, 2017
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  • Article type: Cover
    2005Volume 70Issue 2 Pages Cover4-
    Published: September 30, 2005
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