Tanggol, the lowest strata of Korean society, is traditionally composed of priests and priestesses who perform religious festivals. They perform the rituals as a group of about ten men and women. The unit is composed of kinship, economic, social and religious relationships. This article mainly attempts to analyze the underlying principle of these relationships. There are many words accepted already as terms of social anthropology, for example, kinset, action-set, action group, quasi-group, and kith-based action group. FREEMAN and GEERTS use the term "set of kin" as an ego-centered unit with a rule. It is a social network and social category that generate and support an action. The word is also ' called kin-set as defined by GULLIVER but it also has a reciprocal relationship which is not included in kin-set. Sometimes it is related with kin-set and includes kin-set, but it is not limited to kin group. Quasi-group, which is not a real group, is used by MAYER. First, it is a system of egocentered relationships pertaining to a certain person. Second, the relations of members is limited in an ego (leader) and the other members. Quasi-group has an emphasis on relationship in an unit. Kith-based action-group, the unit based on kindreds and affinities is used by BLEHR When he analyzes the crews of fishing boats in the Faroe Islands. The number of an unit is usually twenty-five, fifteen to twenty, or four to six men in accordance with the size of the fishing boat. In this article the writer uses the word action-group with the same meaning as kith-based action group by BLEHR. The kinship vested in action group of Tanggol society is a social network. The kinship network is centered on kindred and affinity. It is very similar to BLEHR'S diagram. The action-group of Tanggol is a temporary group, principally for performing a ritual at a village festival, which is disbanded after the ritual has been performed. Team work is necessary to harmoniously achieve the aim. The group usually consists of ten men or five couples. Family or conjugal participation is common. Occasionally, an action-set is solely composed of the family. Although limitation of the group's size is necessary, this is difficult to achieve because of competition in the society to perform the ritual. There are three criteria for selecting members of the performing group of the festivals. First, when a leader forms a group, he will select group members among his children or near kinsmen who have an ability to perform. This kinship area includes members of the family or very close kin, and does not include more distant kinsmen. This priority of kinship is fully recognized in the society. Second, the rule of reciprocity applies to a group which may be formed for a special occasion and then disbanded. Kinship is not an important factor here in the formation of the group, so there is often interaction between non-kinsmen. After a leader is elected by the villagers, he chooses group members. He is courteous to choose as a member the leader of the last group he performed with. Thereby the opportunity to participate in a group is exchanged through reciprocal action. Third, a high level of ability is a primary factor in choosing people to perform the rituals. According to the results of my analysis of ritual groups for village festivals, I have concluded that there are generally three types of groups. The first is a pyramid type which is vertically patterned patrilineally. It has a strong sense of group integrity and harmony. The second type is formed by leaders who have weaker kinship bonds in their patrilineal backgrounds. In this case the leader is usually trying to form a group for his own self-interests through a kinship network with a concubine or half-brother.

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A Votive tablet is a kind of folklore genre and at the same time it is a repository of our contempolary popular culture. For it is one of the traditional means of problem-solving and it also appears as an unorganized form of collective behavior in the whole society. The purpose of this paper is to show how an act of votive offering can relate a meaning-world within an individual to a collective meaning-world. The subject of a votive tablet is determined by two opposite forces. One force tends to restrict the field of selection for the subject, and the opposing force encourages variety in the expression of the subject. The study of the latter is concerned with understanding various symbols used in votive tablets in connection with popular cults, in which we find the very core of the iconographic study. However, at the first step towards this study it is mandatory to define the restrictive rules used in the selection of a sucject for votive tablets. The subjects of votive tablets devide into the following six categories : 1) Addressee (benefactor) : divinities, saints, their agents, or their symbolic belongings. 2) Addresser (or beneficiary) : all kinds of social categories. 3) Content of the statement (negative states): diseases, traffic accidents, flood, epidemic, etc. 4) Content of the statement (positive states) : good fortune or removal from misfortune. 5) Beings or occurences which cause the negative states. 6) Means of grace : religious rituals, pilgrimage, etc. These items are derived from my intepretation that an offering act is a kind of "illocutionary act" (concept elaborated by J. L. AUSTIN and J. R. SEARLE). The classification of subjects reflects this fact. For example, a prayer is not a mode of communication only for transmitting information, but it contains an element ("illocutinary force") which cause the addressee's reaction (m this case it is called "miracle") . An offering act of votive tablet can have different functions according to the time the offering is made(before or after the realization of desire) : magic, prayer, gratitude, report. For the same belief can be expressed in different types of illocutionary acts : prayer, magical formulae, inscription in picture, miraculous story, etc. This fact also gives an account of social efficiencies of votive tablets which take effect in the reproductive process of a religous belief. A miraculous story can be transmitted in many kinds of traditional and modern mass media : rumor, religious sermon, popular print, popular books, newspaper, radio, television, etc. For religious agents to skillfully utilize this kind of story is an important requisite for success ; for believers it reinforces their motives for religious practice. In other words an offering act of votive tablets, in the same way as other secular illocutionary acts, produces various kinds of social relationships and constructs a social world through them. Up to now sociological study of religious phenomenon neglects the a social character of a religious act itself. Socio-linguistic study of religious acts and research for the intertextuality of different kinds of religious and secular texts can clarify not only their internal structures but also their social functions in the social and cultural worlds.

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In Japan the house is an internal space (culture) cut off from the outside world (nature). It is not only a dwelling place, but it also forms a microcosm composed of two categories front and back. The front part of a Japanese house is a light, clean, superior and formal (central) place in daily life, while the back part which is composed of a kitchen, toilet, bedrooms, store-rooms and stable is regarded as a dark, dirty, inferior and informal (peripheral) place. In the front rooms, usually called Dei (出居) or Omote (=front, 表), gods of famous local shrines and ancester-gods are worshipped by householders and regular priests. But, in the back rooms, on the other hand, Ebisu-Daikoku (=gods of good fortune, エビス・大黒), Ta-no-kami (=the field god, 田ノ神), Nando-gami (=god in Nando-room, 納戸神) and Kamado-gami(=the hearth deity, 竈神)are venerated by house-wives and wandering (inferior) priests. The both parts are sometimes further subdivided into two contrasting categories. For example, in the front side of the house, Shintoism (god) and Buddism (ancester) occupy opposing positions in ritual. The purpose of this paper is to consider symbolic functions and structures of private house deities (especially the hearth deity) worshipped in the back rooms, and to reconstruct part of the cosmology represented in folktales, legends and ritual around the hearth and its deity. The hearth is a symbol of the "family" itself and its deity plays an important role in guarding the family and life in general. In folktales and legends, the hearth deity is closely connected with sake (=wine) and gold. Sake is a sacred drink which facilitates communication with the other world (god) : however, this word also indicates a border or boundary. Gold signifies a complete rebirth as well as a precious metal as opposed to death and things dirty. Yet, the hearth deity can transform the negative (feces) into the positive (gold). This shows that it is a mediating bridge between two states (e. g. positive/negative, rich/poor, life and death.) Consequently, the hearth god resembles to a great degree a guardian god at the village boundary acting as a mediator between this world and the other. Generally speaking, house deities in the rear of the premises have negative characteristics darkness, ugliness, dificiency and imperfections (for instance, they are deaf, blind, bald, lame, one-legged or one-eyed) . Their negative aspect symbolizes a kind of "death" (otherness) and is an indispensable condition for a new and better world which is about to dawn for "negativized being" is entitled to occupy a whole place within the system. In folktales and various rites, the transition between life and death (opposite principles) is often made in the back section of the house, where the house quardian spirits live, appearing in the form of a dwarf, a little child or small animals (a snake. a mouse, or a fox etc) . The corn spirit (usually the paddy spirit) is also worshipped in the back side of the house which is also a special area for rebirth where the two principles of life/death, fire/water coexist, and they exchange places each other. The hearth deity as a mediator, for example, is characterized by the conflicting concepts of at once the fire god and the water god, the guardian god and the rough god (荒神), life and death. In this respect, it resemble the thunder god which is mediator between the sky and the earth. The thunder god rumbles when the seasons change, and at the time of birth and death. This god, which is thought to be a one-eyed god and smith-god, marks the crossing of boundaries between two different states.

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This article discusses symbolic meanings of the belief in which a drowned body becomes deified as Ebisu-gami. Japanese fishermen usually are under a prohibition or a taboo that they should not take pollution caused by death into the sea, because they belive the sea is a sacred place and pollution, especially concerning death, might cause dangers to them. Nevertheless, they pick up a drowned body whenever they find it on the sea and deify it as Ebisugami, a luck-bringing deity. In Japanese folk belief Ebisu-gami is worshipped as a luck-bringing deity by fishermen, farmers or merchant and is also a guardian deity of roads and voyages. A remarkable attribute of Ebisu is its deformity. The deity is believed to be one-eyed, deaf, lame or hermaphrodical. It is also believed to be very ugly. People sometimes say that it is too ugly to attend an annual meeting of all gods which is held in Izumo, Simane Prefecture. In Japanese symbolic system deformity and ugliness are classified Into Kegare (pollution) category as I have represented in my articles (NAMIHIRA, E. : 1974 ; 1976). Some manners in Ebisu rituals tell that Ebisu is a polluted or polluting deity, e. g., an offering to the deity is set in the manner like that of a funeral ceremony, and after a ritual the offering should not be eaten by promising young men. Cross-culturally deformity, ugliness or pollution is an indication of symbolic liminality'. In this sense. Ebisu has characteristics of liminality at several levels (1) between two kinds of spaces : A drowned body has been floating on the sea and will be brought to the land and then be deified there. In Japanese culture, the land is recognized 'this world' and the sea is 'the other world'. A drowned body comes to 'this world' from 'the other world'. (2) between one social group and another social group ; In the belief of Japanese fishermen only the drowned persons who had not belonged to their own social group, i. e., only dead strangers could be deified as Ebisu. The drowned person had belonged to one group but now belongs to another group and is worshipped by the members ; (3) between life and death : Japanese people do not perform a funeral ceremony unless they find a dead body. Therefore, a person who drowned and is floating on the sea is not dead in the full sense. That is, the person is between life and death. The liminality of Ebisu-gami is liable to relate to other deities whose attributes are also 'liminal'. Yama-no-kami (mountain deity) or Ta-no-kami (deity of rice fields) and Doso-shin(guardian deity of road) are sometimes regarded in connection with Ebisu. Japanese folk religion is a polytheistic and complex one. Then, it is significant to study such Ebisu-gami that are interrelational among gods and have high variety in different contexts in the Japanese belief system.

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