Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 1
·
May 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
65
community life typical to rural Japan until the end of the 19
th
century. Customs and ritual
observances were informed largely by a cosmology based on the transition of the human soul.
Later when folklore research undertook the work of studying the spiritual and material world
of the Japanese village, it placed the rituals into the interpretative framework defined by this
cosmology. Accordingly, rites of passage were explained as assuming the role of
safeguarding the human soul during the phases of its transition between the earth and the
spirit world of the afterlife. The transition periods between two stages, in particular those
divided by the death or birth line, were perceived as unsafe. In this perspective, early
childhood rites of passage were intended to symbolically strengthen the bonds of the child’s
soul to the human community during a period when these bonds were perceived as still
lacking stability and firmness (Onozawa 1999; Itabashi 2007). Another important role of
these rites was to establish a connection to the local tutelary deity (
ujigami
) by integrating the
child as a new member into the parishioner community (
Ō
t
ō
1983; Suzuki 1998).
While this cosmology might have continued to inform ritual practice until quite
recently, new meanings and functions started to appear in relation to Shichigosan in the urban
environment of Tokyo of the 18
th
century. Functions such as the integration into the local
community, both with regards to a social as well as spiritual dimension, began to gradually
diminish in the urban form of the ritual. The focus of the ritual shifted from the community to
the family, a trend that can be observed in the evolution of other traditional rituals, too.
12
In
the case of Shichigosan, the great variety of ritual patterns and names that characterized
single areas of Japan, have gradually undergone unification. The particular socio-economic
conditions and the politics adopted by the period’s political authority, the Tokugawa clan
(1603-1867) brought about an unprecedented urbanization in Japan (Kornhauser 1976;
Francks 2009). This development produced an urban culture which gave rise to numerous
customs still found in present-day Japan. Many of the characteristics that the ritual assumed
in this particular historical period remained salient features of its contemporary pattern:
emphasis on display of assets (among them one’s dress and accessories), aesthetic and
fashion awareness, and visiting a popular shrine. Generally, in the urban setting of the capital
Edo (old name of Tokyo), focus was placed on the display of economic status since it was
through economic means that social status came to be expressed by urban dwellers. The
political context of the period deprived a large group of urbanites, especially merchants, of
12
Similar changes affected the ritual culture in other industrialized societies. See for example the
historical account of North American festivities in Schmidt 1995 and Pleck 2000.
