#carmen blacker

Ok, if you are at all curious about Japanese shamanistic practices, or just supernatural stuff in general, you should pick up this book. It's also quite a bit more readable than the Okinawan book I had been reading and blogged about. There's a wealth of knowledge here about various legends and folk beliefs; Munakata Kyoju is kind of an illustration or fictional embodiment of this kind of book (especially with the theories and such).

I find the first half of the book, which dedicates itself to a more general survey of the shamanistic landscape, to be more interesting

than the second part, which is more about the specific practices of contemporary mediums and ascetics. One thing about the book, written several decades ago, is that it has a different type of opinionatedness than more recent scholarly texts, and the author spent a great deal of time actually witnessing and interviewing the practitioners, and as she went back to update her work, she observed the decline of the old religious rituals. You should really read this book, as it goes more into the theories of the supernatural than any other book I've read so far in English. 

And now I turn to notes form: 

Blacker begins with a description of the exorcism scene in the No play Aoi no Ue, and ends with the lion dance scene in another No play, Shakkyo. No is clearly related to many of the mystical beliefs outlined in the book.

The definitions and systematicness (categorization) in the book are helpful and rather satisfying, although I wonder what the contemporary theories are. I like how the author lays out types of things such as spirit beings, differing systems of cosmologies, etc.

I find the analysis of the differing cosmologies, and their putative origins (derived from the Japanese originating from multiple groups of people) really interesting:  Yomi, Ne no Kuni, Toyoko, Ryuugu, etc.

Very interesting analysis of beliefs on "fox-owning families." (probably founded in resentment of nouveaux-riches. (This belief plays a role in Summer of the Ubume) Blacker goes into related mythologies in China, specifically ku poison (or gu, I think, in pinyin). In one book there's a story about a man plagued by a gu creature, which took the form of a yellow dog(s), which unfortunately I imagine as golden retrievers.

Again there is the emphasis on snakes in Japanese religion.

Theory of abstention quite interesting. We could say that the abstention from meat, abstention from salt, abstention from the Five Cereals, and abstention from cooked food exist today in contemporary Western culture. Though, we do not adopt low-carb diets on the theory that they starve the Three Worms.