J a p a n e s e    C u l t u r e

The latest masked rider symbolic transformation item from the 2016 series Masked Rider Ghost (仮面ライダーゴースト） is called an "icon" using the characters for eye and soul (目魂). That the transformation item is some sort of symbol is common to all the transformation items of super sentai (power rangers), ultraman, masked riders, Mirrorman, Mito Kōmon, real members of totemistic tribes such as the Aranda, as well as the symbol collecting Japanese Shinto practitioners. The Japanese traditionally believed they received their soul vectored by a symbol received from shines in the form of shinpu, ofuda，or omamori amulet. Mirrorman, the closest to the Shinto tradition, would transform to his super form thanks to a shrine amulet, while standing in front of a mirror.

That these iconic amulets vector something supernatural from the country of light (Ultraman) is also clear. With this particular symbolic transformation item it is becoming increasing clear that these icons vector an "eye" or perspective such that their wearer or consumer may be transformed into the heroic suit or mask, representing visual appearance. One could only identify with a visual appearance by also internalising another. In the case of masked rider Ghost, these others are heroes such as Isaac Newton, Miyamoto Musashi, and the protagonist's father. Internalising the icon of the father allows the protagonists to internalise the father's eye. The "icon" as "eye soul" pun is Tsuburaya genius.

Another commonality shared by many transformatory symbols, such as Masked Rider Orz Medals, Masked Rider Ghost's Icons, and the Tjurunga or "bull roarers" of the Aranda (I made one) is that they are symbols that make a noise, as if reading themselves. If there were ever a visual symbol that could read itself it would 'prove' that the symbol is not merely formal (arbitrary) but an ontological part of a real world, and perhaps that there is of necessity a third person viewer to read it. Intrinsic icons that combine sound and vision, introduce that gap or distance into the world required for self sight. Icons that can read themselves do indeed therefore contain (or would if such things existed) "eye souls," the eye of the soul, that allow those possessed to transform into the seen.

These symbolic catalysts have the same, but 'Nacalianly transformed,' function as the Lacanian mirror image which is or appears to be a image that sees itself. The Lacanian mirror image, Superman's suit and indeed our own faces, is something that misguides or conceals our whispered identity, but it is also the condition for linguistic self-hood. The catalyst or condition for the linguistic world is that two things are the same. That is the importance of Jackson's red, all the images that Western pilgrims go to see, or the wafer in mass. They prove identity. The catalyst or condition for the visual world is that there is something that is two things, a symbol that reads itself, that can intrinsically be read. The Japanese need to prove an intrinsic distance. Westerners need to prove an intrinsic identity.

Both world views are magical but which is best? Keeping ones symbols on the outside, on ones forehead, or in ones watch or belt, is imho a lot more healthy.

Labels: Bandai, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, kamenrider, Masked Riders, religion, self, Shinto, Super-Sentai, superhero, スパー戦隊, 日本文化

Many Western scholars (e.g. Dennet, 1992) claim that we identify with the voice of conscience, the words in our head. One guy (Lacan, 2007) points out, that we also need to identify with our images of our face and body, that give a centre, place, or covering (Baudrillard, 1995), for our thoughts. He also says that identifying with our body image alone is impossible because we'd need to carry a mirror all the time. Language, on the other hand, provides a view on the self from the point of view of another, the Other (Lacan, 2007), the super-ego (Freud, 1913), an impartial observer (Smith, 1812),  generalised other (Mead, 1967) or the super addressee (Bakhtin, 1986) of our thoughts. Lacan also claims that we can not identify with our self-images because we have many body images, an arm, our nose, our face in the mirror, a face from years ago. Our body images are a mishmash or human omlette (hommellette).

Recent research has shown however that humans have the ability to see themselves from an external perspective at a neuronal level (Blanke & Metzinger, 2009; Iacoboni, 2009; Metzinger, 2009). This ability to simulate seeing oneself without a mirror is found to be especially strong in East Asians (Heine, Takemoto, Moskalenko, Lasaleta, & Henrich, 2008; Wu & Keysar, 2007). The ability to see oneself is argued to be enhanced by performing fixed poses or kata (Zeami, 1984; Butler, 1993).

I theorise, therefore, that the Japanese identify with their body images, rather than their internal voice. Further, that just as Western body images provide a place for thoughts to take place, language or symbols even symbolic gestures - which are above all reiterable (Butler, 1993): repeatable, enduring in time - provides cohesion to the Japanese imago-self by giving a sort of temporal core that links the aforementioned scrap-book, or omelette, of body-images together. 

Now onto superheroes. I theories that they are myths for the development of the self.

The quintessential Western superhero, Superman is someone that spends a lot of his time thinking to himself. His words, as his true identify, fly. He has two fathers. He converses with the memory of his astral father that endowed him with super powers. Superman is a hard-boiled, self narrator. His super suit, the image he presents us, is merely a cover for this true identity.

Many Japanese heroes however transform in front of people with great aplomb. Not for them the telephone box, some of them even transform on stage (Shinkenja). The requirement that heroes transform is universal since they deal with the genesis of the self, but only in the West is transformation required to hide a secret identity. Japanese super heroes use super-symbols (an amulet from a Shrine in Mirror Man; a beta capsule in Ultraman, medals, cards, characters written in the air, or rings in Kamen Rider; a seal in Mitokoumon, and lots of kata or poses: see second video above) which allows them to transform into their super form. Japanese heroes have suits too, or rather and in many ways they are their suits, especially in Kamen Rider (and a more extreme degree in Gundam and Evangelion).

These two genres of superhero, Western and Japanese illustrate the genesis of the self formed of language and image. Superman is his thoughts. His suit or image is merely a covering that allows him to be his true identity. Kamen Rider's super heroism resides in his suit. His symbols are an externally derived catalyst that allows him to transform, and pull his suit together.

Finally this brings me to a further aspect of Japanese superheroes. After they transform (Henshin) They often combine (especially in the Power Rangers series), which illustrates I believe two things: the cohension of various self images or "hommelette", and the combination of various self views, the generalising of the visual other. Gattai.

Upon this analysis, Iron Man is a cross-over hero for Americans and Japanese.

Acknowledgement
Thanks to James Ewing, to whom his post is dedicated, for drawing my attention to Mirror Man, one of the first transforming Japanese superheroes, which provides the link between symbolic transformation, Lacan, and the Japanese Shinto religion. Shinto shrines are sacred mirrors or places that dispense signs (amulets/omamori), Christian churches are houses of sacred language that dispense "the body".

Bibliography
Baudrillard, J. (1995). Simulcra and Simulation. (S. F. Glaser, Trans.). Univ of Michigan Pr.
Blanke, O., & Metzinger, T. (2009). Full-body illusions and minimal phenomenal selfhood. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(1), 7–13. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2008.10.003
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex. Routledge.
Dennett, D. C. (1992). The self as a center of narrative gravity. Self and consciousness: Multiple perspectives.Freud, S. (1913). Totem and taboo. (A. A. Brill, Trans.). New York: Moffat, Yard and Company. Retrieved from http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Totem_and_Taboo
Heine, S. J., Takemoto, T., Moskalenko, S., Lasaleta, J., & Henrich, J. (2008). Mirrors in the head: Cultural variation in objective self-awareness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(7), 879–887. Retrieved from http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~heine/docs/2008Mirrors.pdf
Iacoboni, M. (2009). Mirroring people: the science of empathy and how we connect with others. New York, N.Y.: Picador.
Lacan, J. (2007). Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English. (B. Fink, Trans.) (1st ed.). W W Norton & Co Inc.
Mead, G. H. (1967). Mind, self, and society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist (Vol. 1). The University of Chicago Press.
Metzinger, T. (2009). The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self (1st ed.). Basic Books.
Smith, A. (1812). The theory of moral sentiments. Retrieved from http://books.google.co.jp/books?hl=en&lr=&id=d-UUAAAAQAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP18&dq=%22The+Theory+of+moral+sentiments%22&ots=mjeEAFSIge&sig=LNXhHkNjKAWc2r9r_KiRDFxn_Pg
Wu, S., & Keysar, B. (2007). The effect of culture on perspective taking. Psychological science, 18(7), 600–606. Retrieved from http://pss.sagepub.com/content/18/7/600.short
Zeami. (1984). On the art of the nō drama: the major treatises of Zeami ; translated by J. Thomas Rimer, Yamazaki Masakazu. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.

Labels: Bandai, Bokenger, henshin, image, japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, Masked Riders, nihonbunka, スパー戦隊, 仮面ライダー

In this video my son Ray demonstrates the use of a Japanese toy called a "Mojibake" which means a transforming or morphing letter. The toy transforms from being a Sino-Japanese ideograph (kanji) meaning tiger into a little plastic model of a tiger.

Japanese toys and superheroes are always transforming by means of a symbol. Masked riders put symbols to their belts, inject USB drives into their blood stream, or are bitten by cosmic bats. Power ranges manipulate symbols, including Kanji (Shinkenja-) that also allow them to transform in to super beings.

This use of symbols to produce living entities is similar to the way in which people in totemistic societies (such as Native Americans) received totem badges containing ancestral spirit to become their own soul.

While there are some that claim that Kanji only mean things via phonemes - that they need to be pronounced in order to have meaning, Chad Hansen (1993) a scholar of Chinese philosophy claims that Kanji not only mean but that they mean things not ideas. The Western signification system is triparite: words mean ideas which mean things. The Chinese system is dual: characters mean things.

If this is the case, then from a radical social constructivist or Sapir-Warphian perspective, the existence of the character provides a symbolic tool for the cognition, and perhaps existence of the lion. In the far East, in the beginning was the kanji.

Since Ray was about three years old he has spent countless hours symbolically transforming things into other things. I think that he has managed to become Japanese without my help.

Hansen, C. (1993). Chinese Ideographs and Western Ideas. The Journal of Asian Studies, 52(02), 373–399. doi:10.2307/2059652

Labels: Bokenger, culture, Gao-Ranger, go-onger, henshin, japan, japanese culture, Masked Riders, totemism, 日本文化

Clark Kent changes into superman in front of the mirror. He was superman all along. Superman is inside him. Superman's suit, a super imago (Lacan, 2002), is no more than a covering, a mask, something that 'envelops' the real (Baudrillard, 1995, p.2). The suit is essential, but only as a stage, a means, to conceal his identity. What is that super identity? Could it be the hard-boiled narrative that Western super heroes are always mumbling to themselves and the readers? Thoughts can fly.

Eschewing telephone boxes and toilets, Japanese superheroes transform in front of everyone with great aplomb, sometimes on stage. They use symbols to transform. And they also have, and sometimes become, suits. Often what the Japanese Clark Kenta changes into is a super suit. Their super form that -- vectored by the symbol -- possess them is often a sort of exoskeleton. They have bug eyes, but no mouths. Speaking, even mumbling, is quite out of the question. Ultramen are pure body, pure light.

Both types of super hero use the image and the symbol but in different directions, with reversed means and ends. The Western suit is the *means* to conceal and continue the objective: the super identity that the hero always was. The Japanese transformatory symbol, and Kyari Pamyu Pamyu's choreographed "Kata," are a means to transforming into ones super suit, or assuming the visual three-eyed* identity that Kyari represents.

*Kyari has two eyes on her face and another, that looks at her sometimes a "riken no ken" (Zeami). Zeami emphasised too that the Kata, the ritualised symbolic movements, are a means. One learns the kata, one manipulates the symbols, to go beyond them. The Japanese stop narrating themselves almost as soon as they started, but hey are not zombies (Rudd, 2009).

Image top left: Superman frente al espejo by Greenog, bottom right HG 00 Gundam by Chag

Baudrillard, J. (1995). Simulcra and Simulation. (S. F. Glaser, Trans.). Univ of Michigan Pr.
Lacan, J. (2002). The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience. In B. Fink (Trans.), Ecrits (pp. 75–81). WW Norton & Company.
Rudd, A. (2009). In defence of narrative. European Journal of Philosophy, 17(1), 60–75. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0378.2007.00272.x/full

Labels: autoscopy, culture, eye, henshin, image, japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, lacan, logos, Masked Riders, morph, occularcentrism, reversal, specular, superhero, 仮面ライダー, 変形, 自己視

Via Flickr:
Bean-Bread-Man (Anpanman, e.g. Yanase, 1975) is, according to repeated surveys by myself and Bandai (see Nishikawa, 2010), the most popular Japanese hero, and has a detachable, replaceable, edible face. Both my children show an almost religious reverence for this flying, edible hero.

While the creator claims that he chose name and composition of the titular character from his experience of dreaming of eating a sweat bean filled bun or bean-bread (anpan) while facing starvation during the Second World War, I propose a variety of alternative subconscious significance for his use of bean bread.

The combination of the traditional Japanese sweet bean filling and the Western "bread" face, suggests to me that he may be (in somewhat offensive race terminology, Urban Dictionary def. 3.) akin to an "egg," in being of mixed racial origin. Bean-Bread-Man is white, or rather made of a Western food on the outside, and yellow, or rather made of a traditional Japanese food, on the inside.

The use of bread to symbolise Westerners is perhaps evident from the character of Sliced-Bread-Man in the same series, who is idolised by Bean-Bread-Man's enemy's wife (Dokin-chan), and always looks a bit too gentlemanly for his own good. And the Rice-Ball-Man (Omusubi man, who has a series of his own) and Tempura-Bowl-Man (Tendon man) both animate Japanese foods, are given Japanese style clothing and arguably a Japanese style character.

Bean-Bread Man started as a cartoon in 1973 and was first broadcast as a TV series, in 1988 when the Westernisation of Japan had long been in full swing. Furthermore, Bean-Bread-Man shares certain characteristics with Jesus: he is extremely concerned with justice, while he has tree friends and a family he is a bit of an individualist (compared to the groups of Super Sentai/Power Rangers) and he is edible, being eaten by those in need of sustenance. Jesus sustains his followers by being eaten in body, or symbolically, in Christian places of worship.

Eating, and by eating internalising, deities is far from unique to Christianity; it is shared by Shinto. In the most important Shinto festival, that of the New Year, Japanese enshrine "mirror rice cakes" (see later) in the home and eat them early in the new year, thus symbolically imbuing the spirit of the rice, the mirror and the Sun Goddess. This yearly Shinto mass is considered to be a rebirth and the spirit therein imbibed to be constitutive of self. According to the Shinto Sect-Kurozumi-Kyo, the self of the Japanese is that part of the Sun Goddess mirror that they have taken inside them. Thus not only the purity of the mirror but also as pointed out by Ohnuki-Tierney in "Rice as Self" (1993, p8), the purity of the white rice itself is seen to symbolise the purity of the Japanese self. Having a mind made of food, like Bean-Bread-Man, is thus nothing new.

Bean-Bread-Man's face, consisting of three red circles, is in itself appealing to young infants. My daughter was attracted to Bean-Bread-Man on sight. It seems to me that Bean-Bread-Man also resembles as breast, in being edible, and in appearance, he looks like an attempt to focus two breasts as one.

Bean-Bread-Man's face is both central to his character and super-powers. In every episode his face gets dirty or wet causing him to loose his strength, when his adopted mother, Butter-girl, throws a new bean bread face, baked with by his adoptive father, containing magic from a star, onto his shoulders which spins and sets, and enables him to be strong again. His face is thus both external (something made for him) and the centre of his psyche, in line with Lacanian theories of self (Lacan, 2007), and perhaps Watsuji's theory of "persona.&quot (Wasuji, 2007);

Watsuji Testuro, one of the most famous Japanese thinkers, proposed that the Japanese self, or the Japanese version of what in Westerners is a self, is a "persona" which he describes using the metaphor of a noh mask. noh Masks, like Bean-Bread-Man's face, are central to their characters and are thought to be imbued with the power or spirit of that character. Noh actors (like Bean-Bread-Man immediately prior to receiving a new face) are nothing without their masks. The stare at them for a while in order that they become possessed by the character as contained in the spirit of the mask. Again, the character is invested and centred in the detachable, external face, just as Lacan's infant in the mirror stage misconceives himself to be his appearance in the mirror, which though external she takes to be (and in a sense becomes) the centre of her psyche.

In Japan there are a plethora of animate faces, faces which contain the character, the spirit of the individual. They are often oversized, and sometimes detachable. These include Noh, Kagura and Shishi masks, Sanrio and SanX characters such as "Hello Kitty," Masked Riders whose faces are sometimes bought and displayed in lieu of figurines, and the way that the faces of television personalities (tarento) are used to adorn Japanese products (for examples of all of these see slideshow).

I should also be noted that Japanese point to their face when they mean to point to themselves, and like Bean-Bread-Man, metaphorically at least, place a great deal of effort in an on going attempt to prevent (Hamamura & Heine, 2006) their face from being sullied, and "not to loose face," a phrase originating in Chinese (Heine & Lehman, 1999). "Face" in this sense (kao, mentsu) is not merely metaphorical, it is I believe related to the central, defining, focal aspect of the human form and the nexus of the visual representations of the person.

The centrality of mask and face to the Japanese persona, is I argue (Takemoto,2002; Takemoto, 2003) because the Japanese internalised generalised other (Mead, 1967) is, literally, a mirror (Amaterasu), a mirror with the ability to record the whole life of the person, (Enma Daiou) or an entity that watches from on high as do representations of the Buddha in Japanese Art (Low, 2004). Westerners can hear themselves from the point of view of a generalised other, from the point of view of language, from the point of view of a linguistic deity. Japanese can really see themselves, as if they have a mirror in their heads (Heine, Takemoto, Moskalenko, Lasaleta & Henrich, 2008), as if they are flying over their own heads (Masuda, Gonzalez, Kwan & Nisbett, 2008), from the point of view of a visual generalised other, 'the eyes of the world' (seken no me, Satou, 2001), from the point of view of, not a logo-centric, but a a visual, ocular, specular deity.

Bibliography thanks to Zotero!
Low, M. (2004). The Lens within the Heart: The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later Edo Japan (review). The Journal of Japanese Studies, 30(1), 163–166. doi:10.1353/jjs.2004.0023
Lacan, J. (2007). Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English (1st ed.). W W Norton & Co Inc.

Masuda, T., Gonzalez, R., Kwan, L., & Nisbett, R. E. (2008). Culture and aesthetic preference: comparing the attention to context of East Asians and Americans. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(9), 1260–1275.
Heine, S., Lehman, D., Markus, H., & Kitayama, S. (1999). Is there a universal need for positive self-regard?. Psychological review.
Heine, S. J., Takemoto, T., Moskalenko, S., Lasaleta, J., & Henrich, J. (2008). Mirrors in the head: Cultural variation in objective self-awareness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(7), 879–887. http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/Website/Papers/Mirrors-pspb4%5B1%5D.pdf
Mead, G. H. (1967). Mind, self, and society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist (Vol. 1). The University of Chicago Press.rel="nofollow">www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=egg
Nishikawa, H. 西川ひろ子. (2010). 乳幼児のキャラクター志向に関する研究. 安田女子大学紀要, 38, 147.
Ohnuki-Tierney, E. (1993). Rice as self: Japanese identities through time. Princeton Univ Pr.
Satou, N. 佐藤直樹. (2001). 「世間」の現象学. 青弓社.
Takemoto, T. (2002). 鏡の前の日本人. ニッポンは面白いか (講談社選書メチエ. 講談社.
Takemoto, T. (2003). 言語の文化心理学―心の中のことばと映像(The Cultural Psychology of Language: Language and Image in the Heart). あなたと私のことばと文化―共生する私たち―. 五絃舎.
Urban Dictionary.(n.d.). "egg." 3. Urban Dictionary. Retrieved March 7, 2012, from <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=egg"
Watsuji, T. 哲郎和辻. (2007). 偶像再興・面とペルソナ 和辻哲郎感想集. 講談社.
Yanase, T. たかしやなせ. (1975). それいけ!アンパンマン (フレーベルのえほん. フレーベル館.
Hamamura, T., & Heine, S. J. (2006). Self-Regulation Across Cultures: New Perspective on Culture and Cognition Research. International Conference of the Cognitive Science, Vancouver, BC.

Labels: Bandai, buddhism, eye, image, japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, lacan, logos, Masked Riders, mirror, nihobunka, nihonbunka, 日本文化

As predicted, the alter-egos of Japanese superheroes are more individualistic than their super human forms, in the extent to which they will not sacrifice themselves for their groups and the extent to which they go their own way. It is the superheroes in their super form who are more conformist, more respectful of the needs of others.

The same tendency was found among Western super heroes from a Japanese perspective. The most commonly chosen Western superhero was Spiderman, who is encouraged to realise that "with great power comes great responsibility." Perhaps Spiderman is rather Japanese.

It would be ne interesting to do the survey among Westerners who know more unharmonious Western superheroes such as the Hulk and the darker side of Batman. In spite of the data collected in Japan, I still predict that many Western Superheroes are individualistic to the point of being anti-heroic in the 'go against the grain' sense, while often their alter-egos are at least pretending to be conformists. I.e. that in the images beneath the graph above, the individualists are on the right.

Unfortunately I do not have access to Western data but I predict that Western superheros may seem more individualistic than their human alter-egos to Westerners.

This data taken together with a previous study, may support the notion that, while Japanese superheroes are more collectivist than Western ones (by all appraisals) this may represent the socially desired norm, rather than the social reality. Or, more strongly, Japanese admire collectivists because they aren't, and Westerners admire individualists because they 'wanna be'.

With thanks to Taku Shimonuri who suggested comparing the ind/col of superheroes and Yasuko Takemoto who pointed out that one needed to be an individualist to become a Japanese superhero.

Labels: Bokenger, collectivism, culture, Gao-Ranger, individualism, japan, japanese culture, Masked Riders, nihobunka, nihonbunka, 個人主義, 変身, 集団主義

I am in the process of doing an experiment to find out who is more individualistic, the Japanese Superman or the Japanese Clark Kent. In the West it seems that the post-transformational Super form of superheroes is more individualistic than their "alter ego." In Japan on the other hand, folks like Hino Eii, Philip and the Elvis Hairstyled high school student who transform into Masked Riders are individualistic to the point of being weird. Super sentai too, cooperate more in the heroic rather than pre-transitonal (hennshin mae ) form. To understand the situation in Japan, imagine if Clark Kent, Bruce Banner, were really eccentric and that Superman and the Hulk were really square..

But on the other hand, Japanese superheros tend to have a variety of forms or modes, such as the various super forms of "Kamen Rider Forze" as depicted above. In Japan they are all different, but they are all perhaps more upstandingly harmonious than their "yankee" alter-ego. Imagine if Bruce Banner could transform in any of a Green, Red, Yellow and White Hulk, and all these Hulks were square.

Labels: collectivism, individualism, Masked Riders, nihonbunka, Super-Sentai, superhero, スパー戦隊, 仮面ライダー, 個人主義, 日本文化, 欧米化, 集団主義

Top row: Shinto shrine amulets (omamori)
Bottom row: Kamen Rider OOO medals, Kamen Rider W Gaia Memories
Please see also an even longer history of totem badges from Australian bull roarers, through shrine amulets, seals (mitokoumon's inro) to the seal of the Shinkenja- Super sentai.

My son plays with various totem badges that are said to transmit the spirit of a supernatural entity to a person allowing them to transform into a superman of sorts. These "totem badges" seem to have much in common with the good luck amulets (omamori) available at shrines.

The seem to contain some information (written - omamori, in an RFID chip - OOO's medals, in a USB memory - gaiai memory), connected with a super-human spirit (in the case of the omamori a shinto spirit or kami, in the case of OOO's medals and gaiai memory a super animal or 'ancestral' kamen rider). This information acts as a vector between the super-being and the holder, endowing the latter with power to conquer foes, such as exams diseases and enraged aliens. They often make a noise. Rattles are popular totem badges in North America (Levi-Strauss has a page of rattles in one of his books on totemism). Bull-roarers or Churinga roar when waved around ones head. Omamori are often fitted with bells. OOO's medals, and various transformatory cards make a noise when read with a special purpose reader. Gaiai memory (and engine souls) make a noise when a button is pushed or when inserted into a sort of reader.

Do amulets change (henshin!) people? Surely not?

They all contain a message, information, or symbols, representing a supernatural entity as noted above. They are also the double of their owners. Masked Rider OOO is the double of Hino Seiji. Shoutaro Hidari uses two Gaiai memory to transform into Kamen Rider "W" (double), his double, in more ways than one. Omamori are said to work as a self-replacement (migawari), taking on the bad luck that might otherwise befall their owner.

Shintoists believed that getting a totem badge from their shrine, the sacred space of their religion, gave them a life or self or spirit. The spirit was themselves and also it was the spirit of the shrine. About 70 years after they die, the spirit merged with the spirit of the shrine, or now Buddhist temple since the cycle of spirit has been broken.

Christians have "Christian names." My name is "Timothy", which is a name from the Bible. It is primarily a phoneme. I get it from the sacred space of my ancestor's religion, and I apply it to myself, thereby perhaps taking on board bit of the God, maybe. Does having a name change me? Does it give me anything, such as a self or life (no way, surely?).

The symbols, in all cases, come from the supernatural to give something special to their recipients.

One of the first Japanese superheroes that appeared on TV, was Mirror Man (Mira-man, 1971). Appearing at the same time as the original Ultraman, he shared many of the typical characteristics of Japanese superheroes, and with Shinto. He used a Transormatory item (henshin aitem) to transformed (henshin). Mirror man use a Shinto shrine amulet (omamori). He could only transform when in front of a reflective surface, usually a mirror. He was possessed, as it were, not by a giant from outer space, but his super-human father who lives in the world of two dimensions. (Thank you James)

Image top row far left: 貝で作られたお守り :) by kozika and far right: ハローキティのお守り :) by kozika

Labels: henshin, Masked Riders, nihobunka, nihonbunka, Shinto, superhero, totemism, トテミズム, 仮面ライダー, 変身, 日本文化, 神道

I noted in a previous post that the history of transofmatory items (変身アイテム) such as used by Ultraman (pens and glasses), Super Sentai (Power Rangers), Sailor Moon, Himitsu no Akko-chan, and Kamen Riders (Masked Riders), has a history in the transformatory symbols of Mitokoumon, Touyama no Kin and Samurai Momotarou. Japanese superheroes are always flashing a special symbol and transforming by means of its use.

The history is much older. I ague that Shinto is a geographical totemism, like that of the Arunda/Arunta/Arenda of Australia. In totemic religions the faithful recieve totemic badges which represent their owners and the ancestral spirits of their ancestors. The Arunda of the central Australia destert are one of many such groups found worldwide. Unlike most totemic religions, but in common with the Japanese, these "most primitive" (Freud, Durkheim) of totemists believed that the totem was associated with a place.

That the japanese recieve totemic badges from Shinto shrines almost goes un-noticed. More visible are the symbolic, soul containing badges that are given to the dead (mitama, Ihai). However, as Yanagita Kunio points out, once upon a time, there were "ikimitama" symbols given to the living. These were originally leaves branches of sacred trees and rocks from sacred mountains. They were believed to give their bearer life and were recieved from the time of first shrine visiting.

However in my view, and as Yanagita hints, the symbols were gradually replaced by kanji ideograms and piece of paper.

Yanagita writes, "in this reigion also the Nusa (gohei, zigzag strips of Shinto paper) were originally I think to be distributed among participants. This is similar to the leaves and branches of Japanese cedar and nagi (a evergreen tree/shrub) that were given to the faifthful from sacred trees on Mount Inari and Mount Ise" (Yanagita Kunio Collection No. 14 p 51, my translation.)

「この地方でも小さい幣を関係者に頒（わか）つのが本当の趣旨であったろうと思う。もししかりとすれば、後に言わんとする稲荷山の杉・伊豆山の梛（なぎ）のごとく、信者が神木の木の枝を追って行く風習と、著しく類似する点があるのである」柳田國夫全集１４p51

These days Japanese still recieve omamori or amulets from shrines that are said to represent a stand-in or self-replacement and protect the bearer from bad luck and impurity.

And as shrines become less significant, Mitokoumon, Ultramen, Masked Riders, Super Sentai (Power rangers) brandish their sacred symbols and transforms with them.

Before we call the Japanese primitive bricoleurs, let us not forget that "in the beginning was the word," and that I have a "Christian name."Am I transformed by it?

Labels: henshin, Masked Riders, morph, nihobunka, religion, Shinto, specular, Super-Sentai, totemism, ultraman, アニミズム, スパー戦隊, トテミズム, 仮面ライダー, 変身, 宗教, 神道