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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