ABSTRACT
In this chapter I would like to take up the analysis of several apparently mundane aspects of Japanese domestic life and examine their value from a ritual point of view. In the process, I hope to bring together into a single conceptual framework a number of practices which I have for some time observed and pondered upon, with the aim of demonstrating an internal logic joining them into a unity which I have often intuitively felt that they ought to have. The research on which the paper is based has been carried out over a number of years: in Tokyo, in an agricultural village in Kyūshū, in a fishing community in Chiba prefecture, and, probably the most useful period was in 1987 amongst a group of housewives in the provincial town of Tateyama, Chiba prefecture, some two hours from Tokyo.
