The Auspiciousness of the Performative Body – Ritual Dancing in Folk-Religious Festivals in Japan

The Hanamatsuri and Shimotsukimatsuri of the Southern Japanese Alps are investigated in regard to the diversity of resonances emerging from the performance of these rituals. While the declared aim of these dance rituals is the continuity and renewal of fertility and well-being of nature and humans, it emerges during repeated comparative research in over half of the still extant festivals that the final aim is the re-establishing of communal solidarity. While the much contested objective of these revived dance rituals is the “divine possession”, the underlying notion of well-being or auspiciousness fits very well into other Japanese religious practices to contribute to the maintenance of peaceful social relations. Nevertheless, the contingency of the emergence of divine possession seems to be dependent on lay personnel being in charge of the liturgy as much as on the synesthetic performance’s resonance to generate an affective bodily engagement among all participants. It is argued that even the often criticized increasing influx of city tourists may lead to a new orientation in the self-understanding of the performances as inducing a body imagery which stresses interpersonal “gut-relations” (hara) as a form to escape the daily conventionality of behavioral codes of conduct.