Okage Mairi and Ejanaika
Reinhard Zoellner, Duesseldorf University

From summer 1867 to summer 1868, while the Meiji restoration was in full swing, commoners of many parts of Japan participated in activities including the worship of amulets allegedly descended from heaven, dancing festivals, and pilgrimages. After a popular song, this is called "Ejanaika." Until the 1930s mostly denounced as "nonsense" or premodern "superstitions," Ejanaika has since come to be regarded as an expression of popular opinion and attitudes on the eve of modernization. Its several components were not new in themselves, but put together, they formed a new ensemble of popular culture. It is the relationship between these components which is at issue.

Some scholars have claimed Ejanaika to be much the same as the former Okage mairi ("Thanksgiving pilgrimages"). E. H. Norman classified them as "similar instances of mass hysteria" (1975). Winston Davis disagreed since Ejanaika "consisted largely of ecstatic dancing in situ" (1983). George Wilson also wrote, "okagemairi . . . were carefully orchestrated manifestations . . . Ee ja nai ka was spontaneous orgiastic and sometimes destructive behavior" (1992).