Pilgrimage in Historical and Intercultural Perspective

The aim of the volume is a comparative study of non-European pilgrimages under different historical conditions and changing power relations. Historic transformations but also continuities in organization, bodily and spiritual experience, as well as individual and collective motives are discussed. Written by an interdisciplinary group of authors, their various disciplinary perspectives offer insight into the differences in methods, theoretical reflections and the use and meanings of objects in ritual performances. The construction of sacred spaces as landscapes of imagination reflects a wide range of meaning in regard of the growing complexity and social dynamism in times of postmodernity

Contemporary Pilgrims’ Understanding of the Shikoku Pilgrimage, with Particular Reference to the Role of Kobo Daishi

This thesis analyses how contemporary pilgrims understand the 88-temple-Shikoku pilgrimage, and in particular what role Kōbō Daishi plays in their outlook and practices. The particular issue that this research addresses is that while Kōbō Daishi figures large in many of the popular presentations of the pilgrimage (in guidebooks, TV programmes, and in temple pamphlets), there is a question of what role he actually plays in the outlook and practices of contemporary pilgrims. The thesis therefore highlights the ways in which ‘Kōbō Daishi’ figures in the views and behaviour of pilgrims and those who support them: the various roles ‘Kōbō Daishi’ plays, and how these relate together, and to other themes and aspects of the pilgrimage, as well as pointing out aspects of the pilgrimage that are not focussed on Kōbō Daishi. In other words, how contemporary pilgrims make meaning of the pilgrimage and, in particular, Kōbō Daishi’s place in this. Looking at the position of Kōbō Daishi and the legendary construction of the pilgrimage in the minds of the informants, it becomes clear that in their views, the ‘real history’ of the pilgrimage is not important compared to the legendary one centred on Kōbō Daishi, and this is seen in their adherence to legends and stories relating to him. Quantitative and qualitative research was conducted, including brief surveys and in-depth interactions with pilgrims, pilgrimage guides, those that give out alms, and temple officials to analyse contemporary pilgrims’ understanding of the ‘sacred’ foci of the pilgrimage: Kōbō Daishi and his possible role in the Shikoku pilgrimage and its origin, with related issues of meaning-making, such as the Daishi-faith, Kōbō Daishi-tales, the various deities whose images are enshrined in the temples, Shinto and Buddhism and related rituals and the role that Kōbō Daishi is seen to have in pilgrims’ thoughts about ‘religion’, pilgrimage items and related ritual behaviour, experiential aspects of the pilgrimage, people’s motives for doing the pilgrimage, their understanding of Kōbō Daishi’s role in healing, how he is seen as accompanying dead ancestors as well as the present pilgrims and aiding in communication of the living with the dead, etc. This research provides a useful window on how contemporary people relate to the pilgrimage, and a better general understanding of contemporary Japanese cultural practices and the world they live in, and how they seek to achieve well-being and happiness. Four appendixes and an extensive glossary round off this thesis

Tsugaru Shamisen and Modern Japanese Identity

The shamisen, a Japanese plucked lute dating back to the seventeenth century, began to be played by blind itinerant male performers known as bosama in the late nineteenth century in the Tsugaru region, part of present-day Aomori prefecture in northern Japan. By the early twentieth century it was used by sighted players to accompany local folk songs, and from the 1940s entirely instrumental versions of a few of the folk songs were being performed. In the late 1950s the term Tsugaru shamisen was coined and the genre began to get national attention. This culminated in a revival in the 1970s centred on Takahashi Chikuzan, who had made a living as a bosama in the prewar period. In the wake of the 70s boom a contest began to be held annually in Hirosaki, the cultural capital of the Tsugaru region. This contest nurtured a new generation of young players from all over Japan, eventually spawning other national contests in every corner of the country. Chikuzans death in 1998 was widely reported in the media, and Yoshida Ryichir and Yoshida Kenichi, brothers who had stood out at the contests, were cast as the new face of Tsugaru shamisen. From about 2000 a new Tsugaru shamisen revival was under way, and the music could be heard as background music on Television programs and commercials representing a modern Japan that had not lost its traditions. Through discourse analysis of primary materials, and informed by the authors twenty-five years of direct experience with the Tsugaru shamisen community, this dissertation examines how since the millennial revival the music has come to index a Japanese identity that is modern but still essentially Japanese. It explores ideas developed in the 1930s by thinkers like Watsuji Tetsur and Yanagita Kunio that continue to influence popular conceptions of modernity and tradition in Japan. It traces the one-hundred-year recording history of the music and the proliferation of national contests in recent decades and compares the revivals of the 1970s and the millennium to demonstrate how a genre that previously indexed rural, traditional Japan has come to represent the modern nation

Singing in Life's Twilight: Serious Karaoke as Everyday Aging Practice in Urban Japan

Being an avid karaoke singer, I was intrigued to come across what are known in Japan as karaoke classrooms and kissas (a bar/café hybrid), during my periods of fieldwork in Tokyo and Osaka in 2013 and 2016. In my visits to these places, I watched (and participated in) how regulars at these karaoke venues, mostly working-class men and women between 60 to 80 years old, sang over the microphone, and chatted and laughed with each other over drinks. Their vivacity and enthusiasm were far removed from the doom and gloom that characterized many media and academic accounts of elderly life in Japan (Coulmas 2007). To these elderly karaoke participants, music and leisure serve as important cultural resources that allow them to build and maintain identities and lifestyles as they age (Bennett 2012; Koizumi 2013). In this thesis, I explore how and why regular participation in the spaces and activities of the karaoke classroom and kissa enable the elderly participants to attain sense of well-being and ikigai, the commitment and direction which makes life worth living (Mathews 1996). To capture the unique modes of engagement that influence the individual and social aspects of these participants’ karaoke participation, I mobilize the conceptual lenses of “musicking” as constructed by Small (1998) and “serious leisure” as elaborated by Stebbins (2015), in analyzing the data I obtained from the intensive ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in 2013 and 2016. By detailing the karaoke regulars’ attainment of senses of well-being and ikigai through “serious” musical engagement, I paint a livelier picture of elderly life in urban Japan, by not treating old age simply as a crisis to be solved, but rather a period of life that can be negotiated proactively

Nikolay Nevskiy’s Miyakoan dictionary: reconstruction from the manuscript and its ethnolinguistic analysis

Wydział Neofilologii: Katedra OrientalistykiDysertacja poświęcona jest rekonstrukcji oraz analizie rękopiśmiennych notatek leksykograficznych z lat dwudziestych XX wieku autorstwa rosyjskiego orientalisty Nikołaja Newskiego – niżej: „Materiały”. „Materiały” są nieukończonym, pozostawionym na roboczym etapie szkicem wielojęzycznego (miyako-japońsko-rosyjskiego) słownika języka miyako, poważnie zagrożonego języka z rodziny japonicznej, rodzimego dla wysp Miyako w subarchipelagu Sakishima archipelagu Ryukyu. Źródło to jest kluczowe dla dokumentacji i rewitalizacji języka miyako, a w szerszej perspektywie – dla badań nad całą rodziną japoniczną. Projekt autorki był pierwszym od czasu powstania „Materiałów” systematycznym i skutecznym wysiłkiem dążącym do akademickiej publikacji słownika Newskiego. Jedna część dysertacji, The reconstructed dictionary, stanowi zasadniczo wierne odtworzenie „Materiałów”, przy sporadycznych interwencjach redakcyjnych mających na celu poprawienie czytelności i spójności źródła. Druga część, Studies on the manuscript, składa się z trzech rozdziałów, czterech indeksów oraz pięciu dodatków. Rozdział pierwszy dotyczy tła powstania „Materiałów” oraz ich leksykograficznej zawartości. Rozdział drugi zawiera autorski opis języka miyako z lat dwudziestych oparty na materiale zrekonstruowanym ze słownika Newskiego. Rozdział trzeci ma za zadanie ustalić rangę „Materiałów” na tle riukiuanistycznego dorobku naukowego oraz wartość tkwiącą w ich rekonstrukcji, opracowywaniu i przyszłej publikacji. Dysertacja zawiera także stworzony w oparciu o „Materiały” mini-słownik miyako-angielski.The present dissertation is devoted to the reconstruction of handwritten lexicographic notes compiled in 1920s by a Russian orientalist Nikolay Nevskiy, henceforth the Materials. The Materials are an unfinished draft of a trilingual dictionary of Miyakoan, a seriously endangered minority language native to the Miyako islands in the Sakishima subarchipelago in the Ryukyus, Japan. This draft is a source of paramount importance to the documentation and revitalization of Miyakoan and, by extension, to the study of Japonic languages in general. This author’s Ph.D. project has been the first systematic and successful attempt at an academic publication of Nevskiy’s dictionary. One part of the dissertation, entitled The reconstructed dictionary, is essentially a faithful reconstruction of the Materials minimally edited for legibility, consistency and an overall user-friendliness. The other part, Studies on the manuscript, consists of three chapters, four indeces and five appendices. Chapter One discusses the background of the Materials and their lexicographic content. Chapter Two involves an original description of Miyakoan from the 1920s based on the data recovered from Nevskiy’s dictionary. Chapter Three aims at establishing the merit of the Materials against the background of other achievements in Ryukyuan linguistics, as well as the value of the reconstruction, editing and future publishing of the source. A Miyakoan-English wordlist based on the Materials has also been appended to the dissertation. In all likelihood, it is the first Miyakoan-English lexicographic source to have ever been published

Afro-Cubans, Incorporation, and Cubanidad in Miami, FL

The purpose of this research study is to investigate how Afro-Cubans as double diasporic subjects have been incorporated into the socio-cultural landscape of South Florida and the relationship between these methods of incorporation and the evolution of ethno-racial identification. The study examines the role of race and racism in shaping the socio-economic adjustment of Afro-Cubans in South Florida. Miami is the appropriate research site as home to half of all Cuban immigrants in the United States where cubanidad is most closely associated with whiteness. Miami also has a substantial population of other Afro-diasporic populations, including Afro-Caribbean immigrants as well as African-Americans. This ethnographic study employs a mixed-methods approach that used participatory research (semi-structured and in-depth interviews), and participant observation as principal methods. Self-ethnography, archival research, and the most recent census data are used to complement the principal research methods. This project engages in three overarching theoretical frameworks to elucidate the experiences of Afro-Cubans in South Florida: African Diaspora theory, Critical Race Theory, and theories grouped under migration studies. Intersectionality is the focal point which connects the theoretical paradigms. The study concludes that Afro-Cubans are indeed members of two diasporas, the Cuban diaspora and the African diaspora, which differentiates their experiences of incorporation from their white co-ethnics. Moreover, Afro-Cubans use their double diasporic, intersectional identity to create diasporic alliances with other communities, particularly afro-descendant ones, to ease social isolation and create economic opportunities. While race continues to be a significant factor in determining socio-economic outcomes for South Floridians, superdiversity theory was used to consider other areas of difference that intersect with race - including wave of migration, gender, phenotype - that impact incorporation. This research not only hopes to fill in a void in the study of Afro-Cubans in the United States, but also endeavors to make a significant contribution to the study of Afro-Latinos and other black immigrant populations in the United States

Human Rights and Professions Museums as Interlocutors of Buraku Identity in Japan

Members of the Buraku minority group in contemporary Japan are traditionally perceived as descendants of outcaste communities who performed work deemed impure according to Shinto and Buddhist taboos in Japan’s caste system during the Tokugawa Era (1603-1867). After receiving emancipation in 1871, they continued to experience severe discrimination. Following successful activism culminating in government-issued affirmative action “special measures” funding beginning in 1969, Buraku people have now approached social and economic parity with mainstream Japanese. Partially due to these successes, the Buraku Liberation League, the largest Buraku rights organization in the country, has now embraced a new globalized, UN-centric Buraku identity that situates the Buraku equality movement amongst those of other caste-based minorities. During the special measures programs of the 1990s, many Buraku communities established human rights and/or professions museums to educate the populace on Buraku discrimination while performing a reclaimed Buraku identity centering on pride in the role of Buraku professions in Japanese state-building. This project examines how Buraku identity is currently performed in those museums in light of the evolving globalized Buraku collective memory. A qualitative content analysis was performed on the websites, handouts, and publications of five different museums in various regions of Japan. Data were triangulated through fieldwork and interviews. Three main themes emerged from this analysis. First, all five museums were strongly rooted in their local communities but engaged with these communities using different mechanisms. Second, while two museums demonstrated evidence of embracing the global turn in the Buraku movement, three museums appeared to reject it. Finally, while all of the museums discuss discrimination as a salient aspect of Buraku identity, the museums in western Japan locate the root of the discrimination as stigmatized space while those in Tokyo identify pollution ideology associated with traditional Buraku professions as the source of the discrimination. This study assists in elucidating for museums some of the challenges inherent in constructing a cohesive narrative within a social minority group with an uncertain and contested master narrative. In addition, this dissertation adds to research methodology literature by synthesizing the qualitative content analysis literature and creating stepwise instructions for its use

Makkoto umai zeyo, this is truly delicious : the social construction of taste in the region of Kōchi, Japan

La cuisine de Kōchi est bien plus qu’un moyen de subvenir à des besoins alimentaires, car c’est à la fois une manière de diviser le monde social et un atout économique. Basée sur un terrain ethnographique dans cette région rurale du Japon, cette recherche examine comment l’incorporation de croyances et les considérations pragmatiques participent à la construction sociale du goût dans la région de Kōchi. D’une part, cette recherche révèle comment l’incorporation d’éléments culturels qui sont appris, physiquement internalisés et transmis structure le monde culinaire dans cette région. L’habitus, la culture et l’identité sont quelques-uns des outils conceptuels disponibles pour analyser comment les standards gustatifs sont incorporés dans la vie quotidienne des individus. Nous goûtons littéralement le monde social au travers de nos préférences alimentaires. D’autre part, cette recherche étudie comment des considérations pragmatiques qui découlent de préoccupations matérielles immédiates contribuent à façonner la culture culinaire. Considérant que Kōchi et l’une des préfectures les plus pauvres du Japon, le besoin urgent de revitalisation incite les habitants à transformer leur cuisine en une ressource marchande. Les opportunités économiques, la planification stratégique du gouvernement et les forces du capitalisme contribuent à la création de nouveaux plats de même qu’à la promotion de saveurs traditionnelles. Ainsi, les représentations donnant un sens à l’alimentaire et les régimes de valeur attribuant un capital monétaire à l’alimentaire façonnent le palais des résidents de Kōchi. Enfin, une telle analyse doit reconnaitre que les préférences de goût (les choix que nous faisons) et la perception du goût (notre expérience sensorielle) sont fortement liées. La construction sociale du goût fait partie d’un système qui influence à la fois les choix culinaires et les sens. Un modèle analytique combinant ces deux dimensions du goût peut contribuer à une meilleure compréhension de la nature contextuelle de ce qui est jugé délicieux.The food of Kōchi is more than mere sustenance to the inhabitants of the region as it is both a way to divide the social world and an economic asset. Based on fieldwork in this region of rural Japan, this research examines how incorporated beliefs and pragmatic considerations participate in the social construction of taste for emblematic foods in Kōchi. On one hand, this research seeks to uncover how incorporated beliefs, values that are learnt, embodied, performed and transmitted, structure taste in the region. Habitus, culture and identity are some of the tools at our disposal to analyze how standards of taste are incorporated into people’s daily lives. Literally speaking, we taste the social world through the food we eat. On the other hand, this research investigates how pragmatic considerations and immediate concerns brought on by material conditions help fashion taste in Kōchi. In one of the poorest prefectures of Japan, the urgent need for revitalization makes the cuisine of the region a valuable resource for the residents of the region. Economic opportunities, government strategic planning and the forces of capitalism fuel the creation of new dishes and the promotion of traditional flavors. Thus, embedded representations that give meaning to food and regimes of values that ascribe worth to food shape residents palates. Finally, such an analysis needs to recognize that both taste preferences (i.e. the choices we make) and taste perceptions (i.e. how we experience flavor) are closely bound together. The social construction of taste is part of an integrated system that frames culinary choices as well as the sense of taste. A comprehensive model that combines complementary facets of what constitutes taste can further contribute to a better understanding of the contextual nature of deliciousness