ABSTRACT
It is important, when discussing ritual and ceremony, to look not only at formal ritual performances which have set and ordained (often both in terms of the ritual and in terms of prior initiation processes) participants, ritual implementa and formulae, but also at actions that, whilst not overtly designated as rituals, appear to express and contain many of the implicit themes, messages and meanings of formal rituals. Our understanding of ritual as a whole can only be enhanced by paying attention to the processes and nature of ritualization itself and to the ways in which this may occur, and by looking at how actions which appear, at least on the surface, to be ordinary and everyday ones, may assume the status of rituals endowed with inner symbolic meanings. Certainly in Japan, at least, the widespread structuralization of the modes of everyday behaviour, in which such matters as sending greetings cards and bowing may be placed, by the presiding rules of social etiquette, in a formal and ritualized framework, provides ample scope for such examinations. 2 It is my intention here to pursue such an examination by looking at one activity that, on the surface, appears to be functional, practical and everyday in nature, but which often assumes a ritualized format that endows it with meanings other than the apparently practical.
