- Convenors:
-
Raditya Nuradi
(National Museum of Japanese History)
Debra Occhi (Miyazaki International College)
Jacob Ritari (Kyushu University)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Barbara Greene
(Jissen Women’s University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Anthropology and Sociology
Short Abstract
This panel explores the various iterations of the "folkloresque" in contemporary Japan, with each presentation focusing on different motifs. Through the presentations, the panel considers how institutions and individuals construct ideas of folklore through popular culture.
Long Abstract
Michael Dylan Foster proposed the "folkloresque" as a tool to interrogate the blurring boundaries of popular culture and folklore. In the decade since the publication of "The Folkloresque: Reframing Folklore in a Popular Culture World," various practices, institutions, and people in Japan have engaged in constructing ideas of folklore through interactions with popular culture. This panel explores the various iterations of folkloresque in contemporary Japan to discuss how narratives, traditions, and beliefs coincide with popular culture. Each presentation in the panel will focus on different folklore motifs, including history, place, and characters, to explore how various practices and modes of production perform folklore while engaging with commercial practices that include the consumption and commodification of said folklore motifs. Presentations in the panel will include discussions on tokusatsu, yuru-kyara, bakumatsu heroes, and anime characters. While questions of authenticity and authority might emerge in the discussions, the purpose of the panel is not to group the practices and discourses into constructed categories; rather, it is to explore the layered meanings of these modes of production and the impact of folklore motifs in contemporary rural Japan. The panel will take a multidisciplinary approach with scholars engaging with ideas in anthropology, history, and religious studies.
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed) |
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
Various anime pilgrimage sites in rural Japan construct the idea of furusato by combining narratives from the anime with tourist imaginations. This paper explores how anime-inspired pilgrimages to sites in rural Japan not only invite pilgrims to visit, but also encourage them to return frequently.
Paper long abstract
Pilgrimages to sites featured in anime or other popular culture-inspired narratives, called seichi junrei, have received increasing attention from scholars and the media. While the focus of these discourses often lies in economic success, often linked to tourism and revitalization efforts, scant attention has been paid to how these pilgrimages are often recurring journeys. Similar to the rise of the nostalgia-driven furusato campaigns in the late 80s and 90s, local tourism associations have incorporated ideas of the furusato supplemented with narratives from the anime, to encourage fans and pilgrims to not only visit these pilgrimage sites, but to return to them. In this paper, I explore how seichi junrei is more than simply a passing trend, but another example of recurring pilgrimages often marginalized in the anthropological study of pilgrimages. At the same time, I will critically discuss how interested parties construct an image of the furusato, a home to return to, as a means of sustaining the pilgrimage. Through the case studies of pilgrimages to Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto Prefecture, and Yuwaku Onsen in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, I explore how the folkloresque is invoked in seichi junrei through a particular focus on the idea of the furusato.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines an obscure tradition that Bakumatsu activist Sakamoto Ryōma, when a young man, challenged and unmasked a fraud pretending to be a tengu.
Paper long abstract
The Bakumatsu activist Sakamoto Ryōma (1836–67) is one of Japan’s most popular and iconic heroes, and the 1883 narrative Kanketsu Senri no Koma is often credited as the first in a genre of Ryōmaden or somewhat larger-than-life stories of his adventures. It features an episode in which a young Ryōma travels to a nearby town and exposes a charlatan who was pretending to be a tengu in order to defraud superstitious villagers. There is little evidence that anything of the kind actually happened, and perhaps because the anecdote was judged to be of trifling importance, it was left out of subsequent Ryōma narratives such as Shiba Ryōtarō’s blockbuster 1960s serialized novel Ryōma ga yuku—until in the 1980s, it was powerfully re-imagined in the manga O~i! Ryōma authored by Takeda Testuya and illustrated by Koyama Yū. In their version, the “tengu” becomes a shipwrecked American sailor whom Ryōma rescues and befriends, and who returns years later to take him on a seabound adventure to Shanghai. This paper explores the layers of fact and fiction, of de-mystification and re-mystification surrounding this intriguing story; the ambivalent nature of the tengu and its relationship to folk heroes; and the stubborn presence of the folkloric even in the annals of a supposed exemplar of modernity.
Paper short abstract
The Japanese fire god Kagutsuchi is characterized as a villain in the 2023 local tokusatsu action hero film “Tenson Koorin Himukaizer The Movie: Kizuna”, and later as a hero. I analyze this folkloresque narrative located in Kagutsuchi's birthplace of Miyazaki, its contexts, and its contents tourism.
Paper long abstract
Kagutsuchi the fire god is a well-used motif in Japanese popular culture narratives. Originally, he burned and killed his mother Izanami in childbirth and was cut to bits by his father, according to the Kojiki. This paper focuses on his characterization in a local tokusatsu action hero franchise, Tenson Koorin Himukaizer, set in Miyazaki, Japan where Izanami gave birth. In the 2023 film “Tenson Koorin Himukaizer The Movie: Kizuna” Kagutsuchi is brought back to life by villains. He wreaks havoc as he seeks to destroy the boundary to the underworld to meet Izanami. Having failed in resolving his mother issues, Kagutsuchi is returned to heaven by the heroes at the film’s end. But in subsequent live performances, he reappears on the heroes' side fighting against the villains. These modifications of the original narrative are folkloresque. They reinterpret Kojiki legend in the frame of a local tokusatsu action hero series set in Miyazaki, the original Kagutsuchi narrative location, now all the more a contents tourism spot. In this paper, I employ Foster’s frameworks for folkloresque narrative development. I analyze elements of the contemporary narrative in contexts of its origin, the Himukaizer action hero franchise and the particular affordances of the tokusatsu genre, the means of production, and connections to the locations of both the original narrative and the filming. My analytic perspective derives from multiyear fieldwork on the franchise, English translation of this film and previous works for subtitles, and, in the aftermath of its release, localization for a live performance in Los Angeles at the Japan Film Festival, where it won the 2025 Best Hero Film award.