RITUAL AS AN INSTRUMENT OF POLITICAL RESISTANCE IN RURAL JAPAN

Ritual has been acknowledged as an important form of social practice, especially as it is employed by subordinated peoples to demonstrate th eir opposition toward a dominant ideology. So far, however, the recogn ized effects of such ritual activities have been limited to simple con sciousness-raising. The following analysis assigns a more instrumental role to the performance of ritual itself: It adopts a historical pers pective in examining how an innocuous drum ritual, which originally ma rked the beginning of a local Shinto shrine festival, emerged as a med ium of political resistance during Japan's modernization. More specifi cally, it interprets the ritual as an institutionalized opportunity fo r negotiating power relationships and redressing perceived social inju stices. These assertions are supported by the symbolic structure of th e ritual, continual efforts by the authorities to suppress its develop ment, and several instances in which the ritual performance escalated into genuine acts of politically motivated violence.