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  • When Tengu Talk: Hirata Atsutane's Ethnography of the Other World
  • Anne Walthall
When Tengu Talk: Hirata Atsutane's Ethnography of the Other World. By Wilburn Hansen. University of Hawai'i Press, 2008. 268 pages. Hardcover $52.00.

Was Hirata Atsutane an ethnographer avant la lettre? Wilburn Hansen would have us think so, for that justifies his analysis of Atsutane's Senkyō ibun (Strange Tidings from the Realm of the Immortals) along the lines employed by James Clifford in his critique of twentieth-century ethnography as practiced by Franz Boaz, Margaret Mead, and others.1 It is obvious that Atsutane manipulated informant Torakichi's testimony to reveal the conclusions he desired, just as Mead found in Samoa what she had expected. Nonetheless, to call Senkyō ibun "an example of bad, or at least immature, scientific method" (p. 207) employs standards irrelevant to Atsutane's purpose. To judge an early nineteenth-century Nativist by the same criteria as a twentieth-century social scientist does a disservice to them both. It denies the possibility of social scientific research into human behavior while obfuscating Atsutane's goal—to strengthen the basis for belief in other realms.

The book's gist consists of its detailed, in-depth presentation of Senkyō ibun and its context. Hansen thoroughly encapsulates the arguments made by major Japanese scholars who have studied Atsutane, especially Kamata Tōji, who provides a psychological [End Page 180] interpretation for Atsutane's spirituality, and Koyasu Nobukuni, who delimits Atsutane's worldview. Hansen also notes the impact Atsutane had on the early twentieth-century ethnographers Orikuchi Shinobu and Yanagita Kunio. He provides brief biographies of Atsutane's chief associates, including the bibliophile Yashiro Hirokata, the blind scholar Hanawa Hokiichi, and the historian and philologist Ban Nobutomo. He discourses knowledgeably on other texts by Atsutane (many heretofore ignored in the English-speaking world) that shed additional light on Atsutane's search for information about the other world. His goal of deconstructing the craftsmanship Atsutane employed in creating Senkyō ibun and other writings of a similar ilk is indeed laudable.

Atsutane encountered Torakichi after attempting to descry the contours of the other world through a freewheeling interpretation of written texts. This culminated in one of his most important works, Tama no mihashira (August Pillar of the Soul). Before meeting Atsutane, Torakichi had made a name for himself in Edo society by saying he had spent time under the tutelage of a tengu or sanjin master in the mountains. Torakichi claimed to have received the rites of initiation into tengu society; later, under Atsutane's leading questions, he made some effort to distinguish between sanjin and tengu. Not as numinous as kami nor as human as yamabushi, sanjin had remarkable powers. Like kami they lived in a universe parallel to the one inhabited by humans. They held assemblies, they danced, they ate, they flew, and they abhorred women. They wanted to help human beings by warning them to desist from evil practices that angered the gods, they transmitted information on forgotten Japanese inventions that preceded technological developments in China and the West, and they knew both past and future. Being native to Japan, they were superior to Daoist immortals, bodhisattvas, and Christian saints. Hansen provides extensive quotations from Senkyō ibun and other texts by Atsutane that give insight into Atsutane's interview techniques, the ways he tried to shape Torakichi's testimony, and the times when Torakichi resisted entering the box into which Atsutane tried to force him.

Atsutane used what he heard from Torakichi to disparage Chinese learning, Buddhism, and Western science while appropriating and blending elements from each to suit his purposes. He supported Hattori Nakatsune's heliocentric theory, without acknowledging its possible Chinese roots, because it validated Japan's position at the center of the world. The sanjin model shared obvious similarities with Daoist immortals, including knowledge of pharmacology, but Atsutane claimed that sanjin were superior to the immortals. I recommend the translations of Torakichi's cures for various ailments, including behavior modification to overcome fear of thunder (pp. 120–28). Buddhism unexpectedly opened up the largest gap between Atsutane and his informant, for in passages dealing with the sanjin's adherence...

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