The Stranger as God: The Place of the Outsider in Japanese Folk Religion

Abstract

The object of this paper is to examine the meaning of in the traditional context inJapan. While the Japanese are reputably hospitable to foreigners, at the same time Japanese society is also said to be essentially closed to foreigners, strangers, or outsiders. The ambiguity in the Japanese attitude toward foreigners and strangers implied by these contradictory observations is related to symbolic aspects of the notion of found in the past and in contemporary rural Japan. Special attention is also given to the association of animal spirit possession and strangers in Japanese villages, the mystical powers and evil qualities attributed to newcomers in the villages, the belief that a stranger unexpectedly appearing in a village in fact may be a god in human guise, and the oppositional structures inherent in the symbol system pertaining to strangers in Japan.