Tom Gill

Meiji Gakuin Course No. 3505

Minority and Marginal

Groups of

Contemporary Japan

Lecture #10

The Kegare

Category

Trying to account for social

discrimination in

contemporary Japan

PART1

Overview

１．Thesis: Doya-gai and

Kegare

2．Antithesis: Rejecting

Kegare theory

3．Synthesis (?): Exclusion of

the head, of the heart

Thesis

YADO 宿 An inn, a place to stay

DOYA ドヤ A cheap place to stay (Street slang: ‘yado’ reversed)

DOYA-GAI ドヤ街 District with many doya, a flophouse district, skid row

‘3 Great Doya-gai’

Kamagasaki釜ヶ崎

San’ya 山谷

Kotobuki寿町 日本の３大ドヤ街

A different society…

Individualists?

Social outcasts?

Lonely

Places?

Alternative communities?

Shame?

Pride?

Despair?

Resistance?

Doya-gai: ‘special preserves’

(a)Clearly marked boundaries;

(b)Inhabited by people differentiated

from those outside by class,

status, gender or ethnicity;

(c)Governed by rules of behaviour

different from those prevailing

outside – something like what

Lefebvre calls 'special preserves'

(1991:35).

Henri Lefebvre, 1991 [1974].

The Production of Space

[Production de l'espace].

Trans. Donald Nicholson-

Smith. Blackwell.

The mainstream view

* Many Japanese do not even

know that doya-gai exist.

* Those who do know about

doya-gai will avoid them.

* They are shocked to hear that

a foreigner would even

consider going into a doya-gai.

(In fact doya-gai are not

particularly dangerous

places… I never saw a

gun or a knife drawn in

anger in 2 years of

fieldwork.)

Special preserves 2

(a) Exaggerated

reputation for danger

(b) Association with death

and misfortune

(c) Detachment from

family system

While writing my

thesis, I came

across the work of

Namihira Emiko.

Her Japanese-

language book

Kegare came out

in 1985.

波平恵美子、

『ケガレ』

一九八五年東京堂出版

Though Namihira originally

wrote in English

• "Hare, Ke and Kegare: The

Structure of Japanese Folk Belief."

Doctoral dissertation, University of

Texas at Austin, 1977

• "Pollution in the Folk Belief

System." In Current Anthropology,

Vol.28, No.4, S65-74, 1987.

Buddhist

temples in

the foothills,

with

graveyards

behind: the

border

between

culture &

nature

Plains

between

mountains

and sea:

houses,

everyday

life

Shinto shrines

down by the shore,

facing the sea,

sacred source of

sustenance

KEGARE KE HARE

Spiritual geography

山に入ると仏教のお寺やお墓があり、死との関連＋文明と自然の境界線

瀬戸内 海の漁村では．．．

山と海の間は盆地。それは集落があり、人々が日常生活を行うところ。

漁村にとって海は聖なる場所。魚のおかげで生きていける。海岸に神道の神社を置く。神に感謝をする、吉兆の場。

ケガレ地帯 ケの地帯 ハレの地帯

The Red & the Black

Black kegare/fujo

Associated with death 黒不浄・死

Red kegare/fujo

Associated with blood (esp.

childbirth and menstruation, hence

also associated with women)

赤不浄・血、特に出産・月経の血→女

Who uses these words?

• Hare 晴れ – commonly used to mean

‘auspicious.’ Eg ‘good weather’, also hare-gi,

晴れ着, clothes for celebratory occasions

• Ke ケ Never heard it. Only scholars? But

maybe that’s not too surprising, as it’s a

residual category, signifying the absence of

the sacred. (「その他」、特殊じゃないカテゴリー)

• Kegare 穢れ – Rare… sometimes used by

schoolkids, like “cooties” (US), “the lurgy”

(UK). Sometimes also written 汚れ, which is

usually read yogore and simply means dirt.

(Note that the kega 穢 in kegare 穢れ

is the same character as the e 穢 in

eta 穢多, one of the ancient words

used to discriminate against what

are now sometimes called

Burakumin 被差別部落民）

Namihira’s

influences:

Japanese folklorists

like Sakurai

Tokutaro and

Harada Toshiaki…

behind them, the

figure of Yanagida

Kunio 柳田国男

桜井徳太郎（『日本民間

信仰論』１９６９年）

原田敏明（『日本古代思

想』１９７２年

… but also some

non-Japanese

influences:

Mary Douglas: Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, 1966

メアリ・ダグラス、９５年 『汚穢と禁忌』（塚本利明訳）思潮社

Emile

Durkheim

father of

sociology

1858-1917

エミール・デュルケーム ,

社会学の創設者

Durkheim’s influence on

Japanese social science is

enormous… a friend of mine

once said that even ordinary

Japanese people sound like

Durkheimians when they talk

about society. “We Japanese

are like this” is a Durkheimian

statement, because it implies

that the inividual is molded by

society.

Emile Durkheim

The

Sacred

The

Profane The

Pure

The

Impure

The Elementary Forms of the

Religious Life, 1915

Harada Toshiaki 1972

The Sacred

Sei no sekai

聖の世界

The

Profane

Zoku

俗

The

Pure

Jo

浄

The

Impure

Fujo

不浄

Namihira Emiko 1974

The

Sacred

and

impure

Kegare

ケガレ穢れ

Everyday

Seijo /

Nichijo-

teki / Ke

正常・日常的

ケ

The

Sacred

and pure

Hare

ハレ 晴れ

Special Ordinary Special

Theory also applies to time…

Hare time – new year, summer

solstice 夏至点, Taian 大安 in 6-day

lunar calendar

Kegare time – day of funeral,

deceased person’s death day

(nenki 年忌), all commemorative

days for the dead (hōji 法事)

Ke – regular day to go shopping etc

… and also, perhaps, to people

Some scholars argue that

discrimination against certain

minorities, such as Burakumin,

handicapped people, Hansen’s

disease sufferers, Hibakusha

etc., may be an expression of

kegare thinking.

Suppose Namihira is right…

(… and many think she is not.

Is it really OK to generalize

to the whole of Japanese

traditional society from just

three fishing villages?)

March 11 2011 challenge

After the terrible tsunami, it

turned out that many coastal

Buddhist temples had been

swept away while Shinto

shrines had survived, being

further inland.

That shows one of the problems

when people try to construct grand

theory based on local fieldwork –

one part of Japan may be totally

different from another… of course.

But suppose Namihira is

right…

… what happens to that conceptual

division of space when people

leave the countryside?

… at least about some parts of

rural Japan… 波平は仮に日本の田舎の一部に当たっているとすれば

Urbanization 都市化

• Postwar Japan’s massive, rapid rural urban population shift.

• What happens to categories of thought / instinct when population moves to the big city?

• 人口が大都市に移ったら、「空気の概念的な境目」はどうなる？残る？消える？

Urbanization 都市化の推移

Country 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

UK 84 86 88 89 89 90

US 64 70 74 74 75 77

Canada 61 69 76 77 77 79

France 56 62 71 73 74 76

Japan 50 63 71 76 77 79

S. Korea 21 28 41 57 74 82

China 13 16 17 20 27 32

Source: United Nations Population Bureau

http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/POP/variables/448.htm

BIG CITY LIFE

As of 2009, 49% of Japanese people

live in cities of 1 million people +

South Korea 48%, US 45%

UK 26%, France 23%

China 17%, Germany 9%

Hong Kong 100%

Source: World Bank http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.URB.MCTY.TL.ZS

The rural past is much closer to the

present for most people in Japan

than in, say, Britain.

Do the old patterns of thought

persist?

Does kegare still affect the way

people think in modern, urban

Japan?

Maybe doya-gai

are kegare

zones in

modern cities?

Other kegare zones

• Akasen 赤線 Red-light districts

• Buraku / Dowa chiku 部落・同和地区 Areas of social outcasts

• Ethnic ghettoes ゲットー Especially Korean districts

• Cemetries 墓地 … Buddhist temples?

(Real estate prices are lower near cemeteries)

And there

are many

examples of

ritual

pollution

avoidance

in everyday

urban life

Purifying salt

Tokyo

restaurant

Tom Gill 1996: Big city kegare

Sacred &

impure

Everyday Sacred &

pure

Kegare Ke Hare

Doya-gai

Ghettoes

Akasen

Buraku

Cemetries

Homes,

offices,

factories

Shrines

Imperial

palace

The Reasoning (1) Social detachment in life (single

men) and death (Muen Botoke無縁仏)

(2) Avoidance by mainstream citizenry

(3) Physical dirt

(4) Bloody wounds (red kegare??）

(5) Association with ill fortune

(6) Association with death (mean age at

death, about 60-62… black kegare?)

(7) Adjacent to other polluted zones

(Are they higher near Shinto shrines,

lower near Buddhist temples? Alas, I

don’t know.)