Spirit Tree: Origins of Cosmology in ShintT Ritual at Hakozaki

by Leslie E. Williams

Overview

Despite what some scholarship has suggested, Shintô does exhibit a unifying cognitive integrity. Spirit Tree offers a unique social psychological interpretation of Shintô ritual at the Hakozaki Hachiman Shrine in Fukuoka, Japan and situates the cosmological organization of this practice within the larger context of ritual in East Asia. Employing a comparative approach, this study blends two theoretical orientations: cultural anthropology and Jungian psychology.

Hakozaki's rituals are a combination of a Yayoi period female medium tradition with a complex set of Chinese Yin-Yang Five Phase principles. Both systems are based on the feminine archetype, a fundamental conceptual foundation of Shintô ritual practice, which cognitively links woman and the earth. While the female shaman tradition is female-affirming in outlook, the later Chinese system is much less so. This monograph is a new acknowledgement of the conceptual continuity of Shintô ritual as an outgrowth of social cognition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761834168
Publisher:	University Press of America
Publication date:	03/06/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	246
Product dimensions:	6.06(w) x 9.05(h) x 0.72(d)

About the Author

E. Leslie Williams began his study of East Asia by working as an ecclesiastical representative in Taiwan for two years. He was then a Japanese Ministry of Education graduate research scholar at Ky—sh— University where he studied Edo period history for two years. He holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh and is Associate Professor of Japanese in the Department of Languages at Clemson University.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 List of Photos and Figures
Chapter 2 Preface
Part 3 I. A Paradigm Shift: Roots and Shoots
Part 4 II. Living Landscape
Part 5 III. Great Mother as Woman and Topocosm
Part 6 IV. Ommyôdô Cycles of Time
Part 7 V. Spirits High and Low
Part 8 VI. Hakozaki's Spirit Tree
Part 9 VII. Fruit of the Spirits
Chapter 10 Appendix A. Chronology of Japanese History
Chapter 11 Appendix B: Roster of Peripheral Shrine Spirits
Chapter 12 Glossary
Chapter 13 Bibliography
Chapter 14 Index