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Paper short abstract

Through comparative analysis, we examine the persistence of and revisited meanings of magical practice and sacred spaces in Tokyo and Hong Kong. We suggest that the use of magic to gain control over the precarity of modern life challenges the binaries of “rational” and “non-rational” thinking.

Paper long abstract

Walking through the urban landscapes of Tokyo or Hong Kong, one is struck by the widespread presence of sacred spaces, shrines, temples, religious monuments and forms of spatial ritualistic design throughout these “modernized” and “secularized” cities. One might call them sites of worship and magic whose ubiquity within seemingly “disenchanted” spaces of metropolitan life appears incongruous. This “magical infrastructure” belies the vibrant presence of “non-rational” practices and beliefs that have emerged alongside Japan’s and Hong Kong’s modernization. This stands out starkly in Tokyo, where vast swathes of the urban fabric are knitted together with Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, and their gardens, cemeteries, and ritual infrastructure. In Hong Kong as well, despite being a city dominated by post-industrial, post-modern and increasingly neoliberal economic logic, the Taoist gods of wealth and protection are literally carved into the streetcorners and shops as tiny alcoves housing statues and plied with daily offerings of incense and food. In both cities, new construction sites are literally built around homegrown shrines to Buddhist and mythological deities that are tended by local residents, and the invisible forces of feng shui literally shape the design of buildings and timing of their construction.

How can one explain this apparently paradoxical phenomena? Are these “backward” beliefs and practices of magical “superstition” merely survivals that persist due to an incomplete or defective process of modernization, rationalization, and secularization in Asian societies? We argue that these urban spaces and the magical practices of control that shape them and take place within them can be seen as both reasonable and pragmatic ways of making sense of and gaining control over the uncertainties of modern life. It also enables us to revisit classic anthropological conceptions of magic as a practice and way of life, rooted in a lifeworld, that helps transcend rigid modern binaries. Through comparative ethnographic fieldwork from anthropological and cultural sociological perspectives, this presentation suggests that the resilience of these sacred urban spaces are windows into a more broadly experienced resilience and adaptation of human attempts to make sense and control the world, despite—and because of—the rapid transformations of modern life.