Япония: цивилизация, культура, язык 2022

ЯПОНИЯ: цивилизация, культура, язык 2022 518 school trips for students, and help in all the activities (which are not always religious, as they include blood donation events, art exhibitions, or fund raisers for various charities) organized by Osaka Tenmangu, the Shinto shrine which is the center of Tenjin Matsuri. However, when various events have different organizational teams (not those associated with the matsuri), Ôtori Mikoshi members join as representatives of this group or as individuals, and it is only when they are within their own group that gender segregation occurs. The current kômoto has made efforts to be more inclusive, and women have been added to the team as kimono dressers (to help the members get dressed in formal attire on the day of the festival) or nurses (to offer first aid during the Land and River processions, when accidents are known to happen), but not everybody seems happy with the change. Although the women mentioned may not and do not, under any circumstances, touch the mikoshi on July 25, Tenjin Matsuri day, when the spirit of the deity is supposed to temporarily inhabit it, some of the permanent members are of the opinion that they should never touch such the divine dwelling. The days when the mikoshi is taken out of storage for the festival (usually July 20 or 21) and then taken back (July 26) are supposed to lack the sacrality of July 25, and in 2018 the kômoto invited a woman to climb the poles used to carry it— something men do to guide the carriers. Nobody said anything at that moment because hierarchical principles are rigidly respected, but after that two participants confessed that they had not felt comfortable having a woman there, as the mikoshi is too sacred an object. Their objections are based on the ancient concept of feminine impurity—or aka fujô , “red uncleanness.” According to Emiko Namihira, “the fact that the participation of women in Shinto rituals of major shrines and in rituals of shrines at the village level is restricted or forbidden entirely is explained in terms of the possibility that a woman may be “in a state of