ABSTRACT
We will not attempt to follow the history of the shamanic medium in Japan during the centuries between the late prehistoric period and today. It is clear that on the humble level of the folk religion she continued to put her powers at the service of the community in most parts of the country. Until the time of the Meiji Restoration in 1868 there were bands of miko to be met with virtually all over Japan. Many of these women were loosely affiliated to large shrines, and lived in enclaves known as miko-mura, miko villages. From these bases they would set out at stated seasons of the year on long peripatetic journeys, like strolling minstrels, delivering prophesies and messages from the dead in the villages through which they passed. The women known as Kumano-bikuni, for example, whose base was the Jippōin temple at Nachi and whom Kaempfer encountered in the course of his journey with the Dutch merchants from Nagasaki to Edo in 1692, were venerated as oracles all over the country. In the Edo district the women called ichiko were reported to travel great distances to make their seasonal calls, and near Osaka the women called Shinano-miko, with their base villages as far away as Nagano prefecture, were recalled as continuing their visits until the beginning of the Meiji period.1
