Personal Categories for Japanese Sacred Places and Gods: Views Elicited from a Conjugal Pair

Abstract

Polytheism is not likely to be understood fully until it has been investigated at individual and small group levels. In this study of Japanese religious belief, hierarchical clustering and multidimensional scaling, and interviewing, have been used to analyze pile sorts of the names of sacred places that a male informant could easily recall. The same procedures were then followed with the informant's gods, and by his wife for her sacred places and her gods. Particular attention was given to those sacred places and gods designated by the respondents as being especially meaningful or significant. The results are primarily person-centered, but when matched and combined they reveal an aspect of the conjugal pair's small group culture. The names given to the idiosyncratic clusters and dimensions, too, appear to have some ethnographic generality.