Paper short abstract:

This paper is based on fieldwork in Japanese kikō classes. It will discuss how qigong has been localized in Japan, focusing on the perspective of feeling, enskilment, and imagination. It will also take the researcher's bodily experiences into account and discuss their importance in ethnography.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses how Chinese "qigong" (healing through energy or qi), evolved into the Japanese "kikō" through specific practices. Most anthropological literature about qigong has focused on contemporary China, discussing the impact of political and economic conditions on bodily practices. Yet, the "embodiment" paradigm proposed by Csordas (1990), allows a description of the process of generation of qigong focused on the role of the body in shaping practice. Furthermore, through such a focus on experience, also an analysis of Japanese kikō practices and how they have been localized beyond their "Chinese" characteristics becomes possible.

In order to research bodily experiences, De Antoni and Dumouchel (2017) proposed the idea of "practices of feeling with the world." They integrate bodily sensory perception, emotion and affect into a broader "feeling" and rely on Ingold's (2000) notion of enskilment, as central to the comprehension of correspondences between feeling bodies and material environments. In order to have a detailed description of feelings, anthropologists also suggested the importance of taking the ethnographer's perceptions and experiences into account (De Antoni and Cook 2019; Yu 2008). Since ki (qi) is invisible, in this research I will argue that the emergence of its reality depends not only on the senses and bodily perceptions but also on memories and imagination. Therefore, in order to analyze the emergence of experiencing ki and specific bodily states of kikō, I will rely on the idea of "technologies of imagination" (Sneath, Holbraad, and Pedersen 2009),

While drawing on ethnographic data I gathered during classes in the largest kikō group in Kansai and on my own bodily perceptions and experiences as a researcher trained in qigong in China, I will provide an account of how I compared, thought about, and overcame qigong knowledge I embodied in China, becoming enskilled in kikō in Japan through "practices of feeling with the world" and imagination. Moreover, I will compare my own experiences with the feelings and imaginations of the instructor and other practitioners, in order to discuss how bodies in Japan construct such localized qigong practice, which is "kikō".