Япония: цивилизация, культура, язык 2022

«ISSUES OF JAPANOLOGY, vol. 9» St-Petersburg State Univ 2022 523 goddess), and Ame-no-Uzume (goddess and shamaness who managed to bring back the sun through her dancing), are female, women are forbidden to enter a world temporarily populated by divine beings. In recent research and even in casual conversations (I was often asked by colleagues how I deal with working in this male group) the most used keywords related to this context are discrimination , 男尊女卑 dansonjohi (respecting men, putting down women), exclusion , and pollution . In contrast, the concepts the participants themselves use are tradition , community , and (gender) roles . They see themselves as keepers of tradition and pillars of a community where roles are clearly defined: men work for the gods during the torrid days of summer, carrying a portable shrine that weighs approximately two tons—a job deemed too taxing for women who, even if one does not consider them physically weaker, might be less able to do the same job due to physiological phenomena such as pregnancy or breastfeeding. The matsuri otoko (festival men) strive to achieve ideals of what Frühstück & Walthall call a “village type” of masculinity, where “rural social mechanisms were hierarchically structured to produce men whose superior masculinity was based on their maturity 10 .” They also emphasize that these mechanisms assigned women roles of “wives, mothers, and objects of sexual desire” (2011: 8-9), precisely the situation encountered at and during Tenjin Matsuri, where many of the wives of the permanent members of Ôtori Mikoshi have never taken part in the River Procession because they have to tend to their homes, children, and sometimes relatives and friends who come from other parts of Japan to attend and enjoy the festival. 10 Sabine Frühstück & Anne Walthall. 2011. Recreating Japanese Men . University of California Press