Gods and Demons of Diseases: Japanese Traditional Views on Epidemics and the Ways of Resistance to Them

The article discusses the mechanisms of protection against infectious diseases that have been employed in Japan through ages, and the religious, social, and individual practices considered effective in the struggle with epidemics. Studying the cultural and ethnoreligious roots of Japanese attitude towards epidemics is particularly relevant these days. The coronavirus pandemic has reanimated the memory of old popular beliefs and actualized traditional, even archaic, rituals and superstitions. Alongside obvious hygienic measures going back to the Shinto rites of purifications, historically, the amplitude of responses (whether on state or local or family levels) oscillated from the ceremonies of appeasing the demons of diseases to the rituals for exorcising them.

Besides written historical sources, the main material analyzed in this article is visual: popular woodblock prints with mythological subjects, leaflets on vaccination, children’s toys representing protective characters, and apotropaic amulets. The main focus is on the materials against smallpox and cholera in the early modern period in Japan (the Edo epoch, mainly the 18th—19th centuries) and the mass reaction (not medical but resurrecting traditional superstitions) to the COVID-19 pandemic. Concerning the coronavirus, this is a new academic subject, and as for the analytical studies of visual sources on the magical reaction on epidemics during the Edo time, there are hardly any of them in Russian and quite few of them in other languages, including Japanese.

In conclusion, the author posits that along with certain real benefits (like the propaganda, albeit mythologized, for vaccination, or the practices of “self-purification” jishuku of the COVID times), the demonological approach played (and partly plays) the role of a humorous and entertaining instrument that alleviated the sense of menace and insecurity.

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