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Repetition And The Symbolic In Contemporary Japanese Ancestor Memorial Ritual, Jason A. Danely

Jason Danely

Ancestor memorial rituals, including mortuary ceremonies for the dead, periodic grave visits, practices at home altars, and the like, constitute the most popular form of religious participation in contemporary Japan, encompassing an increasingly diverse number of ritual forms. This article examines a common theoretical framework used to describe this diversity by categorizing rituals in terms of continuity vs. change or tradition vs. invention. This article proposes an alternate framework for understanding processes leading to the transformation of rituals like ancestor memorial. This framework is centered around the process of repetition and its role in the production of the symbolic. Drawing …