I was able to make two final journeys that were both among the highlights of my Fulbright year. With Kamino Yoshiharu, a professor of anthropology, retired from Musashino University, who is an expert on Japanese doll and ritual traditions, and my former student Yasuda Tatsuo, I travelled to the north of Honshu and learned about the dosojin and oshirasama traditions. While elsewhere in Japan dosojin are generally rock formations representing ancestral deities, throughout Akita Prefecture, they are human-shaped figures made of wood and/or rice stalks, that come in pairs – one male and one female −− that villagers set at either end of their village’s main road [fig.9]. These figures are traditionally made anew or refurbished each year after the rice harvest and paraded through the streets where villagers feed them mochi and sake as they pass, before being placed at the spots where they will stand guard year-round protecting the people and their rice fields form pestilence. Today, with the dwinding and aging rural population of the area, figures may only be repainted or touched up each year. Each village has its own unique, intriguing style of dosojin, which Kamino, who forty years ago wrote an award winning book on the subject, can attest to staying consistent for decades, if not centuries. Many have red, white, and black painted faces, but some are entirely constructed from rice stalks; a few are giant, towering figures. Professor Kamino’s friend, Mr Komatsu, a local fan of his prefecture’s dosojin tradition, drove us to numerous villages throughout the area to see these astonishing figures. Aomori and Iwate prefectures are the home of the oshirasama tradition. Locals keep them in their homes, pairs of figures made from simple wooden sticks, one carved with the face of a woman and one with the head of a horse. They represent the characters of the oshirasama tale that offers a mythic story to the origins of silk production, and has its origins in China. The tale is about a young woman who falls in love with a horse, angering her father, who cuts off the horse’s head. The horse is then sent to heaven to be a god, sometimes accompanied by the daughter, sometimes she is wrapped in the dead horse’s hide, and the horse is reborn on the silk plant. The heads of silkworms are said to resemble horse’s heads. In the past, the Oshirasama deity was frightening to locals and many - 74 -
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