Japanese Journal of Ethnology
Online ISSN : 2424-0508
Volume 68, Issue 1
Displaying 1-29 of 29 articles from this issue
  • Article type: Cover
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages Cover1-
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (45K)
  • Article type: Cover
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages Cover2-
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (45K)
  • Article type: Appendix
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages App1-
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (70K)
  • Tatsuki KATAOKA
    Article type: Article
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 1-22
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    This paper examines the diabolization process of the local spirits among the Lahu Christians of Thailand in terms of the study of non-Western Christianity at a practical level. Recently it has been argued that the model to distinguish "foreign religion of Western origin" from "indigenous religious elements" is sometimes meaningless in understanding non-Western Christianity "from the natives' point of view." Instead, it has been stressed that converts themselves often view Christianity as "their own religion" and feel no contradiction between traditional elements and Christian doctrine. Hence, some scholars go on to say that such a combination of Christianity and traditional religious items observed at a practical level is not "incomplete conversion" but an "active reinterpretation of Christianity", and that Christianity in a non-Western world can also be considered "an indigenous religion." However, this model of "diversity of practical Christianity" tends to be so harmonious that it often ignores discrepancies between local church leaders and the "laity" in a Weberian sense. The purpose of this paper is to solve this problem by showing different interpretations of local spirits among the Lahu Baptists according to local pastors and the "laity", or ordinary villagers. For the Lahu Christians ne or local spirits are formally regarded as the agents of Satan. Described as the enemies of God, such malicious spirits are believed to tempt or "bite" human beings on behalf of Satan. The Lahu Christian villagers explain that Satan was originally created by God to assist with His work, but later he fell into a rivalry with God. After Jesus Christ was born in this world, He was tried by Satan in the forest where Jesus defeated him through argument. Satan then split into many small pieces and spread throughout the world. So they conclude, "That's why now we have various forms of malicious spirits in the world. We have to continue fighting against such Satanic beings until Jesus Christ comes again to defeat them once and for all." It is pivotal that the Lahu word heh pui hk'aw, or forest, is the place referred to where Jesus Christ was tried by Satan; for forest, in comparison with a village, which is the world of human beings, has been regarded as the domain of local spirits. Hence, it seems that the concept of forest bridges the Christian present and the non-Christian past so that the local spirits may survive after conversion without contradicting Christian doctrine. However, the survival of local spirits as agents of Satan under Christian doctrine gives rise to another question of so-called Theodicy. If God is all-powerful, why does He allow such malicious spirits to conduct Satanic work in the world? Such a question is conventionally answered in the following manner. "Activities of malicious spirits are allowed by God so that He can see whether we choose to go with Him or with Satan. Then He will know who is good and who is bad." (This supposes that human beings will never try to be good without the presence of the Devil as the enemy of righteousness.) These explanations are "official statements" mainly stressed by village pastors and church leaders, and seem to demonstrate that the local spirits are re-interpreted to enhance the ethical nature of Protestant Christianity. But these official statements as answers to the "Theodicy of demons" face limitations and contradictions when we ask "Under what conditions are we bitten by malicious spirits?" Clearly these spirits function as explanation for particular misfortunes. But it is also clear that the conditions under which people become victims of the spirits are by no means related to ethics and piety. No matter how good we are in everyday life, we can still be

    (View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

    Download PDF (2284K)
  • Takafumi YOSHIE
    Article type: Article
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 23-43
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This paper examines the influence of a human artifact named "document" on the customary land system of the indigenous society of the Bolivian highlands. The paper seeks to reconstruct, using the judicial records of the period, the Caciques-apoderados Movement that took place in the first half of the twentieth century. Our intention is to reconsider the complex interaction among people, land and document; and the relation between the center and the periphery that the modern world system produces and reproduces all over the earth. In the nineteenth century, in many parts of the world, a development policy was pursued and land reform was carried out on the impulse of modernization. In many cases this caused a proliferation of documents so as to facilitate the realization of land survey and population registration, and the distribution of land titles. Documents also intervened in the process on which a native land system was based and reformulated the norms and the beliefs according to the principle of commercialized exchange. In other words, the expansion of the modern world system often triggered a process in which different kinds of documents concerning land ownership came into existence, started to circulate inside a society and, as a result, a pattern of document cycles was institutionally established. This process played an important part as the native land system of a marginal society was transformed and subordinated to the necessities of the center. In Bolivia, during the first half of the twentieth century, a land reform was carried out under a modernization policy and had a great impact on the customary land system of the indigenous society. Our research shows that this land reform was closely connected with the formation of document cycles. Originally, in the Aymara-speaking communities of the Bolivian highlands, land ownership was legitimated on the grounds of the knowledge and the memories that had been fostered through daily life experiences rather than through written records. However, under the influence of an agrarian reform from the end of the nineteenth century and the resulting expansion of the modern judicial domain, documents such as land titles began to affect the customary land ownership of the indigenous society. It was under these conditions that the Caciques-apoderados Movement developed from the 1910s as a judicial struggle against land appropriations. This movement sought to defend customary land ownership by appealing with the colonial land titles given to their remote ancestors by the Spanish Crown. At first glance, the movement seems to suggest that its participants were wholeheartedly embracing the newly formed document-based social relationship. But closer scrutiny of historical records shows that this is not the case. Nor is it entirely correct to say that the purpose of the movement was to reject documents and go back to memory. In our opinion, the participants of the movement were looking for a way to reconcile documents with memory. While resisting being swallowed by the rising tide of proliferating documents, they tried to reformulate the function and meaning of documents in terms compatible with their customary way of legitimating land ownership. Let us conclude that the process in which a marginal society is incorporated into the modern world system by means of documents is not linear or unilateral as a famous formula "from memory to written record" would suggest. Instead it is a complex and specific process in which document cycles are formed through an interaction between people and artifacts within a social and cultural context.
    Download PDF (2179K)
  • Shimpei OTA
    Article type: Article
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 44-64
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    Rhetoric, as this paper suggests by analyzing the words in the discourse and narratives of the Minjung Movements, impinges on political culture in contemporary Korea. Such rhetorical words should not always be analyzed as symbols or metaphors, nor as representations of an integrated mentality of the movements. Anthropological works on discourse analysis, referring to certain words that contain value in relation to society, have shown that rhetoric can be connected with the natives' political views. It would never make sense to question why certain words have value among the native peoples; instead it just must be accepted that this is so. In comtemporary Korea, for example, the words minjung (people), tong'il (unification), and minjujuui (democracy) all express one idea to the people- virtue. As this paper shows, other words express hate. The two words ppalkaeng'i (communist) and IMF (international Monetary Fund), exemplify how the rhetorical process affects politics. The word IMF, for instance, deviated from the lexical meaning that stood for International Monetary Fund, and turned to symbolize Korea's economic depression that started in 1997. In some cases IMF was even used as a metaphor representing their government that was weak at economic measures. Then, through usage, the symbolic and metaphoric meanings broadened and deviated so that IMF not only means the depression or government, it also stands for just a vague evil, an object to be blamed, or even something objectionable. I call words like IMF, whose usage commonly extends far beyond their original meanings, evil keywords. It is these keywords that transform the image of the discourse in the accounts of the Minjung Movements. However various the purposes of each movement are, many organizations write accounts of the Minjung Movements that include some episodes that are duplicated in accounts of other organizations. These common stories are so similar that these organizations and people seem as if they had been integrated. They also share a common discourse system and its typical elements, the evil keywords and their exended meanings as stated above. It's not clear who first invented each multi-deviated word. People at the grassroots level may deserve the credit for originally adding these words to the discourse system of the movements that surround them. Yet, the rhetoric that these words adopt for their usage in technical terms for political society is delicately but distinctly different from that in the discourse system of the movements. The ordinary person need not recognize the lexical meanings or the rhetorical flowcharts of these words even if they use multi-deviated words. They have only to know that IMF stands for something they should hate in order for them to use the word in many situations, which are not necessarily situations reflecting politics. Sometimes they use such words freely in their speech. If the gap should widen between discourse patterns and vocabulary used by those of the grassroots level and activists, the activists will gradually try to adopt the discourse of the people. This is because the activists must have their ideas accepted by people on the most basic level of society in order to have the most effect. Therefore, the discourse system of the movements has an interaction giving the accounts of events recorded by the grassroots movement the same ring as those written by the activists. But this interaction between the discourse system of the activists' movements and the people at the grassroots level is not an absolute construction, socially. It means the interaction is shakable. The average person does not accept the words of the movements blindly, and sometimes even doubts the rhetoric activists' use. The informants who came forword for this paper declared that they could not trust some discourse of the movements in which the word IMF is used.

    (View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

    Download PDF (2129K)
  • Mizuho MATSUO
    Article type: Article
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 65-84
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    Traditional Birth Attendant (TEA) training, which guides "traditional" birth attendants to modern midwifery, started at the beginning of the British colonial period in India. This paper aims to examine new values which have been constructed and introduced by TEA training in the process of modernizing child delivery, and the social position of traditional birth attendants by focusing on a case from Pune district, Maharashtra state, India. Modern midwifery was first introduced in India by various British voluntary organizations (such as the Lady Dufferin Foundation) and Christian missionaries in the nineteenth century. Although the main purpose of the earliest Maternal and Child Health (MCH) policies were to improve delivery conditions for women from westernized Indian families in urban areas, these policies also greatly influenced the emergence of medical delivery practices, and the marginalization of traditional birth attendants. The Indian Government continued those characteristics of MCH policies after independence. TBA training, which aims to improve the infant mortality rate and the mother mortality rate, was integrated into the Family Planning policies after the 1970s and still remains one of the main strategies in MCH programmes. The analysis of TBA training deployed by KEM, a hospital based NGO, in the M taluka of Pune district, makes it clear that the training especially emphasizes "cleanliness" and "safety" in child delivery and regulates the roles of traditional birth attendants in home delivery. The training also tries to control practices of TBAs by placing them within the administrative health care system. The training agency views the TBA training with ambivalence. Although the program provides them with TBAs who can efficiently convey new notions of delivery and sexual behavior because they are well accepted by village women, the traininng is also the main cause of harmful deliveries since the TBAs lack modern medical knowledge. Traditional birth attendants, who usually belong to relatively lower caste groups, engage in this occupation by hereditary, and learned midwifery by practice. Since those birth attendants are called dāī in Hindi language, the main language spoken in northern India and closely related to the central government, TBA training is called Dāī training all over India. There is no difference between the name of the training and the social category of participants (dāī) in Hindi speaking and neighboring areas. Marathi language, which is spoken in Maharashtra state, however, uses the word sūin for local birth attendants. Therefore, dāī as a new social category was created as a result of Dāī training. Village people think of suin as a village birth attendant and dāī as a hospital birth attendant. That means there are no untrained dāīs in villages, because the word dai itself indicates a modern, trained birth attendant in Maharashtra state. This situation obviously differs from that of the Hindi speaking central area. Participants of the training recognize themselves as dāī, modern trained birth attendants who are somehow superior than any other birth attendants. Since they now know the appropriate delivery and "scientific" midwifery methods, they have gained confidence and prestige. The TEA participants, however, never totally accept all that this instrument of development represents. Though they have trained they maintain the Hindu notions of child birth (i.e. impurity) so that cleanliness and impurity co-exist within them. Then how do trained dāī differ from untrained sūin To consider this, I interviewed 20 birth attendants (12 dāīs and 8 sūins) and compared their answers. There are several differences between the two. First is whether the woman started midwifery by choice or through a familial responsibility. Most of the dāīs

    (View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

    Download PDF (2054K)
  • Jun YONAHA
    Article type: Article
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 85-97
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Talking about anthropological knowledge in modern Japan, the most notable fact is that ethnology was imported earlier in the Meiji period than anthropology. For example, Hyakka Zensyo, a translation of the fourth edition of Chambers's Information for the People, included the chapter not named "Anthropology" but "Physical History of Man-Ethnology". As a result, whereas ethnology was widely regarded as an established science Jinsyu-gaku, anthropology was still so unfamiliar that it was translated as Jinrui-ron, just one branch of Hakubutsu-gaku (natural history.) However, in those days, the meaning of the Japanese word Jinshu was not equal to that of English "race" like today. Jinshu was used to mean not only race but also nation, ethnic group, class or inhabitant. In other words, despite the high interest in Jinshu, like Social Darwinism (for example, Kato Hiroyuki adapted the paradigm of Jinshu for the explanation of world history), the concept of Jinshu was still confusing and not clearly supported by anthropological knowledge. Thus Tsuboi Shogoro, "the father of Japanese anthropology", at first regarded Jinshu as a scientifically meaningless concept because of its ambiguity. Tsuboi, who chose not ethnology but anthropology, wanted to deal with human society as a whole and paid little attention to sub-categories of humans (races, nations, etc.). Against Tsuboi's vision, however, the popularity of the Social Darwinistic Jinshu paradigm became greater and greater during Japanese imperialism. Under the infuence of that paradigm, the international relationships in conflict, especially between Japan and Russia, were considered Jinshu-Senso - a war between races. Through the works of Asianists (Tarui Tokichi and Konoe Atsumaro, for example), the word Jinshu spread and influenced Japanese intellectuals more than ever. Besides this, the continued progress of Japanese colonialism meant that the conflicts between the varied groups of humans came to be part of everyday news. These new types of social problems were also called Jinshu-Mondai or racial problems. After the Sino-Japanese War, Tsuboi began to use the word that he had once regarded as meaningless and started to consider how to divide humans into categories. This change in his behavior, however, never meant that Tsuboi had given way to the fashion of the times. He now proposed that Jinshu should be used strictly as the translation of "race" - this meant that what Tsuboi really wanted was not a justification of racial divisions, but to eliminate the multiple meanings of the word Jinshu. Through this "racialization of Jinshu" process, he tried to show that race was nothing but a problem of consanguinity. Far from the Social Darwinism thoughts that attached great importance to race, Tsuboi regarded the differences between races as just small gaps among one human family tree. Thus even after he started to use the word, Tsuboi never recognized Jinshu as an essential or absolute concept. He repeatedly claimed that the differences between the races were merely relative problems, and that they should not be exaggerated. He never applied his anthropological knowledge to the paradigm of Social Darwinism or racism.
    Download PDF (1349K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 98-101
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (509K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 101-105
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (619K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 105-108
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (547K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 108-112
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (608K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 112-115
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (521K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 115-120
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (766K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 120-123
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (465K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 124-125
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (297K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 125-126
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (301K)
  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 126-127
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (263K)
  • Article type: Appendix
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 128-132
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (383K)
  • Article type: Appendix
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 136-137
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (186K)
  • Article type: Appendix
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 138-
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (64K)
  • Article type: Appendix
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 139-
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (29K)
  • Article type: Appendix
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 140-
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (86K)
  • Article type: Appendix
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 141-
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (131K)
  • Article type: Appendix
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages 142-143
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (129K)
  • Article type: Appendix
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages App2-
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (26K)
  • Article type: Appendix
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages App3-
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (26K)
  • Article type: Cover
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages Cover3-
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (36K)
  • Article type: Cover
    2003Volume 68Issue 1 Pages Cover4-
    Published: June 30, 2003
    Released on J-STAGE: March 22, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (36K)
feedback
Top