Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Based on long-term fieldwork at a major Shinto shrine, I show that logics of purity are alive in contemporary Japan and serve to achieve specific social effects. Namely, by means of various restrictions, they are used to manipulate relations and to (re)produce social boundaries and hierarchies.

Paper long abstract

Cosmological categories such as purity and pollution may be experienced as ontologically given, yet they are inhabited rather than merely received: people live within them, manipulate them, and use them for diverse ends. This paper examines a contemporary Shinto puzzle: within one of Japan’s biggest Shinto shrines, one matsuri (religious festival) has recently accommodated the ritual participation of a priestess, while another continues to prohibit women’s participation altogether. I argue that this contrast cannot be explained by reference to traditional beliefs alone, but that it must be understood in relation to the social consequences and effects of specific rituals and ritual restrictions.

Although notions of pollution are disappearing from mainstream Japanese culture, logics of purity remain central to Shinto thought and practice. While the number of female priests is increasing and explicit mention of ‘kegare’ (pollution) is avoided for its sexist connotations, purity continues to be enacted through restrictions on access, labour, and ritual participation. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted in western Japan, I begin by outlining how purity and impurity are conceived, achieved, and avoided in contemporary Shinto. I then analyse two matsuri at one of Japan’s biggest shrines, as contrasting case studies, to show how Shinto idioms of purity are enacted as spatiotemporal and gendered forms of social ordering.

Tracing how ritual restrictions are justified, enforced, and contested, I show that matsuri have a “duplex existence” (Tambiah 1981): they function not only as communal techniques for averting misfortune and securing wellbeing, but also as mechanisms for (re)producing social separations and hierarchies. A close analysis of the second case study (Onisube Ritual) reveals that the exclusion of women enables local men to (1) claim an essential role in the preservation of the boundaries of society; (2) create gender separation and hierarchy; (3) lay claim to a special role in the “functional” (Nakane 1967; Lebra 1983) dimension of the home (ie 家)––traditionally, the domain of women, the basic unit of Japanese society, and a central symbol in Onisube. Ultimately, rather than mere relics of ‘tradition,’ contemporary Shinto practices of purity emerge as powerful social tools in modern Japan.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper examines how everyday cleaning practices in Japan have absorbed spatial, symbolic, and political functions once associated with kegare. Based on ethnographic research in Kyoto households, it argues that hyper-sanification now operates as a new moral hierarchy.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores how contemporary Japanese cleaning practices have come to absorb and reinterpret aspects of purity once associated with kegare, with particular attention to the domestic sphere. While kegare historically provided a framework for navigating impurity through cyclical temporality and communal rituals, its social and symbolic functions have increasingly faded from everyday life. What remains, however, are spatial and moral sensibilities that continue to shape how households understand order, propriety, and the management of the body within the home.

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted among households in Kyoto—including semi-structured interviews and a small survey—this study examines how families negotiate ideas of cleanliness in the organisation of domestic space. Rather than making a disciplinary claim, the ethnographic approach is used here to situate broader cultural questions within lived, material environments. The findings suggest that contemporary expectations of “proper” cleanliness often focus on eliminating sensory traces such as smells and sounds, producing an environment that aspires to visual and olfactory neutrality. Practices such as excessive washing, the avoidance of materials perceived as “unclean,” and the idealisation of minimalist interiors illustrate how domestic space becomes a stage upon which moral expectations are enacted.

These tendencies also reveal tensions between the imagined cleanliness of modern living environments and the practical realities of domestic life. Concerns such as “raccoon-washing” behaviour among children, or the reliance on synthetic building materials that are believed to be more hygienic despite potential health risks, highlight how the aesthetics of purity can conflict with everyday experience. At the same time, households express anxiety about visible or invisible “dirt,” contributing to new forms of social distinction based on perceived domestic orderliness.

By tracing how spatial arrangements, material choices, and daily routines convey moral meanings attached to cleanliness, this paper argues that the home plays a central role in sustaining a contemporary hierarchy of purity. Rather than replacing kegare outright, these emerging practices reorganise its sensibilities within the intimate environment of the household. The analysis contributes to broader discussions on domesticity, embodiment, and moral regulation in contemporary Japan.

Keywords: domestic space; cleanliness; material culture; everyday practices; purity

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

I examine the possibility of a non‑nationalistic form of conservatism in modern Japan via the approaches of Mannheim, Ogino, and my own research. , I argue that Japan’s intellectual history contains alternative conservative orientations , particularly what I refer to as “life‑attuned conservatism.”

Paper long abstract

This paper explores the possibility of a non‑nationalistic form of conservatism in modern Japan by integrating three strands of scholarship: Karl Mannheim’s theory of conservatism as grounded in the ”Erlebnis” (pre‑reflexive lived experience), my own typology of postwar Japanese conservative thought, and Masahiro Ogino’s conceptualization of “ambivalent others” based on his reading of Yanagita Kunio. Although conservatism is frequently conflated with nationalism or reactionary attitudes, this study argues that Japan’s intellectual history contains alternative conservative orientations rooted in lived practices, sensory attunement, and flexible communal relations. I address this concept as “life‑attuned conservatism.”

My doctoral dissertation classified postwar Japanese conservatism into four types: (1) ethnonationalist conservatism, exemplified by Yasuda Yojūrō and Hayashi Fusao; (2) cultivation‑oriented conservatism, represented by the ”Kokoro group,” which emphasized the cultivation of cultural refinement among the populace; (3) life‑attuned conservatism, articulated by Fukuda Tsuneari, who emphasized the practical knowledge embedded in artisans’ and ordinary people’s lived practices; and (4) folk‑cultural conservatism, associated with Yanagita Kunio’s investigations of local lifeworlds. I use “life‑attuned conservatism” as a collective term for (3) and (4), and this paper focuses particularly on the fourth type.

While my dissertation placed Yanagita in this fourth category, my subsequent research suggests that his analyses of how ancestral‑spirit‑based communities accepted “ambivalent others” contain an underexplored dimension. I propose that the acceptance of such boundary figures depended not only on ritual or formal criteria but also on subtle, affective responses that arise in encounters with difference. Ambivalent others, by occupying liminal positions, relativize dominant norms and state‑centered ideologies, generating a productive unsettlement that opens possibilities for reorienting social life in new and generative directions.

By situating these insights within the sociology of knowledge, the paper argues that life‑attuned conservatism constitutes a distinct mode of social belonging—one that embraces heterogeneity, foregrounds everyday relationality, and offers conceptual tools for reimagining conservatism beyond exclusionary identity politics.

Keywords: life‑attuned conservatism, ambivalent others, sensory attunement,Yanagita Kunio, Japanese conservatism

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper examines Japanese jimu—mundane administrative work—as a cultural practice shaping trust and correctness. Focusing on future-dated bank transfers and insider observation, it uses Europe as a comparative device to contrast ex ante control with ex post explainability.

Paper long abstract

Administrative practices are often understood as neutral technical instruments designed to ensure efficiency and accuracy. In this paper, however, the term “administration” does not refer to public administration or state bureaucracy. Rather, it is used to translate the Japanese concept of jimu, which denotes mundane, repetitive, and often undervalued organizational work through which payments, records, and responsibilities are routinely processed in both public and private institutions.

Importantly, jimu has no direct equivalent in English. While it is commonly translated as “administration,” this translation obscures the fact that jimu refers not to governance or managerial decision-making, but to everyday practices that quietly sustain institutional order. This paper treats this difficulty of translation as an analytical entry point for examining how different societies conceptualize and value administrative work.

Challenging conventional assumptions, this study examines administration as a cultural practice through which societies actively design and sustain trust, correctness, and ethical order. Rather than asking which administrative system is more efficient, it asks what societies expect administration to do for them.

The analysis focuses on payment administration as an everyday yet highly institutionalized practice, with particular emphasis on future-dated bank transfers in Japan. By separating the acceptance of a transfer instruction from its execution in time, this practice makes visible layered checks, formal authorization, responsibility attribution, and risk management when funds cannot ultimately be recovered. Drawing on long-term participant observation and direct involvement in designing and operating payment workflows, the Japanese case is treated as an analytically concentrated site where the logic of administration appears in intensified form.

To theorize this case, the paper employs Europe as a comparative device. Drawing on institutional arrangements and documented administrative norms—particularly in Germany and France—it shows that administrative correctness in many European settings is defined less by advance confirmation than by ex post explainability, documentation, and justification.

By foregrounding mundane administrative work, this paper offers a new perspective within Japanese studies and contributes to anthropological and sociological debates on administration, trust, and institutional life.