| Abstract |

Notions of purity and pollution occupy a central place in Shinto thought and ritual practice. However, far from being immutable, these categories provide versatile symbolic resources that can be mobilised for diverse ends. Through them, boundaries are drawn, misfortunes explained and managed, and social distinctions articulated. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in western Japan, this lecture examines how ideas of purity and pollution are alive and entangled with gender, social hierarchies, and ritual authority at one of Japan’s major Shinto shrines and its community.

To shed light on these issues, I begin by outlining how purity and impurity are conceived and managed in contemporary Shinto. I then analyse two matsuri (religious festivals) from the same shrine, as contrasting case studies, to show how Shinto notions of purity are enacted as spatiotemporal and gendered forms of social ordering. These two case studies pose a puzzle: at one of Japan’s most important Shinto shrines, one matsuri has recently accommodated the ritual participation of a female priest, while another continues to strictly enforce the prohibition on women’s participation. Interlocutors commonly explain this exclusion through two related idioms: the physical dangers of the festival and the potential for ritual defilement associated particularly with menstrual blood. Rather than treating these explanations simply as survivals of traditional pollution beliefs, I ask what women’s ritual exclusion actually accomplishes within the social context to which the ritual belongs.

Tracing how ritual restrictions are justified and enforced in a Japanese community, I show how matsuri function not only as forms of worship and communal techniques for managing misfortune, but also as powerful social statements and instruments. In particular, I argue that pollution and ritual exclusion are used to articulate and (re)produce social distinctions and hierarchies while allowing local men to lay claim to special social roles and to a privileged relationship with the home. I therefore approach ideas of purity and pollution not merely as remnants of the past or a system of religious classification, but as live symbolic and practical resources through which gendered authority, hierarchy, and social relationships are enacted, publicly asserted, and reproduced.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s13e02
Thursday 2026-10-15, 18:00~19:30 (CET, UTC +1h)

| Place | 

| Platform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s13/#e02.

| Abstract |

Immigration (gaikokujin-ukeire) was a de-politicized issue in Japanese elections for a long time. This changed after the 2024 general election, when Sanseito, an anti-immigrant right-wing party, mobilized voters through nativist appeals and subsequently expanded its electoral support in the 2025 and 2026 elections. This development raises two related questions: To what extent did Sanseito itself drive the politicization of immigration, and how did the established parties’ response contribute to this process? More broadly, how has interparty competition over the politicization of immigration evolved in Japan?

Existing studies of immigration politics in Western Europe often identify anti-immigrant parties as issue entrepreneurs that can activate immigration as an electoral issue. Other studies suggest that established right-wing parties play a pivotal role in activating or amplifying politicization. The Japanese case provides an opportunity to examine whether patterns identified in Western Europe also emerge in a markedly different political and social context, where immigration had long remained weakly politicized.

Japan's immigrant population remains relatively small compared to many established democracies, and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the country's dominant center-right party, has long maintained that Japan has never formally adopted an immigration policy. At the same time, the LDP gradually expanded admission of foreign workers under the Abe government after 2012 despite its conservative stance on immigration.

Using party manifestos and candidate surveys, I examine changes in the salience of and positions on immigration issues, focusing on the LDP. My preliminary analysis suggests two findings. First, Sanseito's electoral success led the LDP to slightly increase references to immigration in its 2026 manifesto. Second, LDP candidates took more restrictive positions on the issue in the 2026 election. In other words, the LDP responded to Sanseito's politicization challenge through a limited accommodative strategy. The implications for Japanese politics and the politics of immigration will be discussed.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s13e01
Thursday 2026-10-08, 18:00~19:30 (CET, UTC +1h)

| Place | 

| Platform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s13/#e01.