Paper Short Abstract:

This paper explains how Shishimai, a masked dance still very popular and spread all over Japan is what Eduardo Vivieros de Castro refers when talking about Indigenous ways of seeing the world, Perspectivism. Perspectivism is a form of knowledge that goes beyond Western concepts and encompasses the scope of non-Western "visibility.''

Paper Abstract:

Seeing is directly acquiring knowledge, and the wisdom of indigenous shamans is also cultivated through "seeing." and performance. As indigenous South American people say about myths, "This is a time when humans and animals were not distinguished from each other'' [Lévi-Strauss and Eribon 1988: 193] and the lion dance is a way to cross the border between humans and more than humans. However, it cannot be reduced to the conflict between nature and culture as in the West. The notion perspectivism is a powerful concept in understanding the Tsugaru masked dance and the idea of nature as seen by the people living here.