Shaman-Client Interchange in Okinawa: Performative Stages in Shamanic Therapy

Abstract

From the early years of this century, the leading Okinawan newspapers have denounced the persistence of Shamanism, placing the responsibility principally upon uneducated females over 40 years of age (Ryukyu Government 1969). Even earlier, during the last 150 years of the Okinawan Kingdom, when Confucian values dominated in official circles, there had been periodic, though presumably ineffective, efforts to proscribe the practice (Uezu 1977). With the exile of King Sho Tai and formal assumption of Japanese control in 1879, even more restrictive laws and measures came to apply, for among the progressive enactments of the new Restoration Government were laws not only abolishing shamanism, but banning spirit possession as well. Thus, until the conclusion of World War II the shaman practiced with caution, more or less sub rosa. With the advent of a more democratic climate in the postwar era, religious toleration obtained, allowing the shaman to surface and proliferate. In today’ s affluent society they are very much a part of the scene, despite the fact that universal education has been a reality for more than 65 years.