Sympathetic Magic of the Ainu - The Native People of Japan (Folklore History Series)

By John Batchelor

An insightful look into the culture, religion, and magic of the native people of Japan: the Ainu.

John Batchelor gives a first-hand account of the Ainu people who are indigenous to the Northern Japanese island Hokkaido. Having been sent as a Christian missionary to the community, Batchelor details the Ainu religion and culture. He describes their animistic rituals and their belief that all things, including nature, animals, and objects, possess a godly spirit. First published in 1901.

This volume features the following chapters:

- The Nature of Witchcraft

- The Use of the Fox and Bird’s Skulls

- External Methods of Bewitching

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Jun 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781446549544

Book preview

Sympathetic Magic.

General remarks—Objection to being photographed—Ichashkara, ‘enclosing a person within a fence’—Trees used in magic—Rain-making—Producing bad weather—Producing fine weather.

SYMPATHETIC magic is one of the most extraordinary cults there is, and can be far more easily illustrated by example than explained by exact definition. It is so closely connected with disease, fetichism, and totemism, in many respects, that it appears to me that any person who makes a study of the subject must find it really very difficult to tell with anything like precision where one ends and the other begins. Lubbock, in his Origin of Civilisation, says, ‘The king of the Koussa Kaffirs having broken off a piece of a stranded anchor died soon after, upon which all the Kaffirs looked upon the anchor as alive, and saluted it respectfully whenever they passed near it.’ The Tusu guru, that is, Ainu wizards, men and women, of three widely-separated villages, told the people that the late great floods in Yezo (1898) were owing to the presence of myself as a teacher of Christianity, and were sent as a punishment to the Ainu for some of them having adopted the Christian religion. Epidemic diseases

Objection to being Photographed.

too have been set down to a like cause. All these are forms of sympathetic magic, and the illustrations are given in order to show the kind of thing this and the next chapter are intended to explain.

One of the most exaggerated expressions of thought connected with this cult is, perhaps, to be found in the matter of the photograph or sketch, though, in so far as the Ainu are concerned, this is not so much the case now as formerly. On this matter I wrote in the Journal of the American Folk-Lore Society as follows:—

‘AINU OBJECTION TO BEING PHOTOGRAPHED.

‘It was an old belief among the Ainu—a belief which has now almost entirely died out in Yezo—that by being sketched or photographed, especially when in naked condition, their natural life is thereby shortened in some mysterious way or other. The term the people use with reference to this is, Ainu katu ehange, the man draws nigh to his form; and that is like saying, death is at hand, or the man is becoming a ghost. Even so late as the year 1890 a gentleman travelling in Yezo had his sketch-block