Japanese Rainmaking and other Folk Practices

by Geoffrey Bownas, Pauline Brown

The ritual of rainmaking is one of half a dozen Japanese folk practices and festivals described in this book. The story of rainmaking ceremonies begins with personal experience and then draws on the work of Japanese folklorists to record significant local variations and to construct a general account of the history and purpose of the ceremony.
Field research was conducted during study visits to Kyoto, to Tenri in Nara Prefecture and to Shiga Prefecture.
The chapter order follows the year cycle, from New Year via early summer purificatory festivals and rainmaking ceremonial to the feast of Bon, which with New Year ceremonies divides the year. Alongside these community or public rites are described private or family rituals concerned with birth, marriage and death.
The introductory chapter relates aspects of Japanese culture, myth and language to the constant features of folk practice recorded or extant in 1950s Japan.
Originally published in 1963.

Genres: Nonfiction

178 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Trunatrschild · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is old, and when I got over the racist factor, this book was rather good. I've read other Folklore books written around the 50's that were the same thing "documenting quaint primitive peoples" I guess that was the prevailing idea at the time.
Once I got past that, the book was very good. The author must have cared about the subject as he seems to generally understand his subjects, and if he hadn't had shown respect, he probably would have gotten nowhere in Japan. He understood the sense of community that the Japanese have and the desire for cleanliness and order that is a big part of their culture. I think that regardless of his style of writing, it's a good book because I have a feeling that many of the rituals/rites and beliefs that were written down in the book are mostly forgotten. Bon is still celebrated of course, but some of the month long purification rituals probably are not, due to modern time constraints. For example a woman probably can't take a month off from work to make sure she's purified from having a baby.
My one gripe about the book is that he mainly touched on major folk practices... there must have been thousands that he didn't even touch on, and it's those thousands that are probably lost now, while the major ones are well documented in other sources, I suppose they weren't considered important to the Average American reader of the time. Our loss.