Geoffrey Bownas - Japanese Rainmaking and other Folk Practices

JAPANESE RAINMAKING

ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY

WITCHCRAFT, FOLKLORE AND MYTHOLOGY
In 6 Volumes

JAPANESE RAINMAKING

And Other Folk Practices

GEOFFREY BOWNAS

First published in 1963

Reprinted in 2004 by
Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2009

1963 George Allen & Unwin Ltd

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Japanese Rainmaking
ISBN: 0-415-32556-0 (set)
ISBN: 0-415-33069-6

Miniset: Witchcraft, Folore and Mythology

Series: Routlege Library Editions Anthropology and Ethnography

JAPANESE
RAINMAKING

GEOFFREY BOWNAS

London
GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD

RUSKIN HOUSE MUSEUM STREET

FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1963

George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1963

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITIAN
in 13 pt Perpetua type
BY SIMSON SHAND LTD
LONDON, HERTFORD AND HARLOW

YANAGIDA KUNIO
18751962

Anyone who reads Japanese will soon be aware of the immense debt I owe in this study of aspects of Japanese folk practices to Yanagida Kunio, the Institute he founded and the work he inspired. He was ever ready to discuss and to assist both in broad outline and fine detail: he had a truly remarkable knowledge of the bibliography of and the specialists in his subject and he would introduce you to both with an infectious eagerness. While fully acknowledging its unworthiness and inadequacies, I dedicate this work to Professor Yanagida's memory in token of this debt.

I must thank the Leverhulme Trust, the Spalding Trust and Tenri University for generous assistance which made possible the two periods of study in Japan during which material was gathered. I was able to see the rainmaking practices at Iwashimizu and the Bon dance at Shinj thanks to the vigilant help of teachers at Tenri and the local press. Although too many Japanese scholars gave unstintingly of their time and knowledge for me to be able to name them one by one, it would be ungracious not to mention Suzuki Osamu of the Tenri Library, Hashimoto Tetsuo and Miyahata Mineo of Shiga University. The material for Chapter Nine, The Village Year, was gathered in the course of a sociological survey of three communities in Shiga Prefecture. I am indebted to the BBC for permission to reproduce parts of this material from a Third Programme feature.

There are many indications that the Japanese are a racial amalgam, the major constituents arriving both from the west, over the northern mainland of Asia, and from the south, by way either of the Pacific islands or the southeastern fringes of China. The Japanese language itself affords a good example of this diversity of origin. It has certain structural affinities with Korean and with other members of the Ural-Altaic group. One influence of such links is to be found in the phenomenon of vowel harmonythe appearance of only one of the vowels within a given word, even to the point of variation in a suffix vowel to retain symmetry with that of the word to which it is attached. Another pointer to the Ural-Altaic kinship of Japanese lies in the nature of its number words; the root of the word for five, as in Mongolian and Manchurian, is related to that for to close, the roots of the word for ten and of open are identicaland as he counts on the fingers of one hand, the Japanese closes down from one to five, so that the fist is clenched on five, then he opens up one finger each for six to ten, ending with an open and extended palm.

Yet, although these and other structural parallels occur, there has been little vocabulary borrowing from this linguistic group. On the other hand, the peoples of the Pacific, the second main component of the Japanese racial make-up, while they have worked little or no influence on the structural features of the language, have yet given it many of their words. Vocabulary identities exist between Japanese and, among others, Formosan, Annamese, Tagalog, Malay and the language of Munda. These, of themselves and unsupported by structural or grammatical parallels, prove little more than that the Japanese have long been good borrowers; it was an old-established trait that led them in the sixteenth century to adopt from the Portuguese pan and kasuteira for bread and castellaa kind of sponge-cakeand in the twentieth, to incorporate a host of words from all over Europe and the Americas. Nor does the Japanese word-hunter simply borrow; he distortsto suit his physical and vocal limitations, a weak lower lip for examplehe abbreviates and cross-breeds with his loan-words to father linguistic mongrels of the kind of