ABSTRACT
In some ways, as will be seen below, this chapter might best be entitled ‘gender and ritual’ since my main argument is that we can understand little, in any society, if we focus only on male or female roles. Despite the emphasis on women, this chapter does refer to what men do as well. In fact, it could be said that this chapter is also about structures of power and knowledge, insiders and outsiders, rather than just age and gender. However, for our purposes, power and knowledge must be taken as constituting a given, which, in Japan, is linked to age and gender and to one's position along the continuum from outside to inside. Thus, in beginning with women, I am just exploring a different facet of established ritual and ceremony not, as might be assumed, because of a focus on women, phenomena such as spirit possession, witchcraft, etc. I am well aware that this approach, as with all anthropological descriptions and analyses, is subject to a variety of qualifications, the most important being that ‘things change’. Not only do things change for the actors, but the actors change, societies change, and so on. In order to understand the present, however, it is important to understand the past. Thus, the rites of a fishing village held to be more traditional than most of the rest of Japan can give us some insight into what modern rituals are about. 2
