What do tarot cards, Taoist paper talismans, and ancient curved beads called magatama, have in common? They all serve as touchstones to the kind of spiritual enchantment that operates on the edges of mainstream religions.

Dr. Laura Miller, Ei’ichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Endowed Professor of Japanese Studies and professor of history at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, explores these phenomena in her new book, Occult Hunting and Supernatural Play in Japan (University of Hawai’i Press, 2024).

The result of nearly twenty years of intermittent fieldwork in Tokyo, the Kansai region, Ise, and Shimane, Japan, this work stands as a model of interdisciplinarity interlacing history, art, literature, religion, media studies, and anthropology.

Significantly, the study also gives voice to women and girls as the primary drivers of this religious re-enchantment. Miller argues that they have exerted pressure on shrines, temples, and the media industries to accommodate their interests and tastes in “occult hunting.” Although their importance to the religious life in Japan is often neglected or minimized, Miller notes that they are the ones who have had a major impact on how religious sites, texts, and objects are fashioned and marketed. Her book thus investigates the ebullient way these overlooked participants contribute to the playfulness of religious practice in contemporary Japan.

It’s a treat to have my friend and collaborator, Dr. Laura Miller, with me today to talk about her latest book.

Rebecca Copeland: Thanks for taking time to sit down with me today, Laura. It’s great to have you back on this blog!

You’ve heard me describe your book briefly just now. Please tell us more about it. What is the goal of your study and its chief aims?

Laura Miller: One primary issue I wanted to address was the erasure of women and girls in many studies of Japanese history and religion. I wanted the book to document the gendered nature of occult-religious activities. One form of evidence of the core role that gender plays is that culture producers and religious sites have redesigned objects and media to make them appealing to women and girls.

I also wanted to stress that these pursuits are mainly about practice and ritual and are not about belief.

Many studies of religion continue to focus on “what people believe,” as well as what happens within codified institutional settings. By using different methodologies and theoretical perspectives, I wanted to move the discussion away from the fixation on “belief.” The arenas of spiritual seeking that I describe often fall outside mainstream or institutional spaces and categories. This includes things such as Taoist paper talisman, tarot cards, and magatama beads. I found that for most people the question of “belief” just wasn’t part of their enjoyment and consumption of the occult.

RC: Before we go further, do you want to take a moment to describe what you mean by “occult”?

LM: I use occult as a deliberately expansive cover term that includes things not only recognized as “religion,” but also activities and artifacts that are often excluded or pushed aside as “superstition” or “folk beliefs.” I realized that if I began with the concept of religion, my scope and analyses would carry a lot of cultural baggage and could also exclude some critical data.

RC: I know that you’ve been working on this book for many years, what was the inspiration for it? How did you come up with the concept?

LM: I was always encountering the problem of what people consider an acceptable topic for “serious” academic research. While working on some prior research projects, such as studies of elevator girls, print club photos, or the beauty industry, I received criticism for bringing attention to things people viewed as trivial, which they are not.

In this book I tell the story about the visiting business professors from Tokyo who asked me what research I was doing. When I answered that I was looking at the divination industry, they laughed. They wondered why anyone would bother to study something so silly. It was that dismissive attitude, also reflected in academic and journalistic writing, that motivated me to provide evidence for why the topics in the book are worthy of study.

RC: You were trained as a linguistic anthropologist, and over time realigned your focus with the contextual analyses of cultural history. Although you have never lost sight of the rigor and technical specificity of your initial methodologies, you’ve also engaged with complex textual histories (tracing ancient jewels and Taoist talismans, for example). What were the challenges you faced in working across disciplinary lines?

LM: One challenge was that because of my obsession with detail, I often underplayed the big picture. The type of linguistic anthropology I was doing early in my career focused on transcription and analysis of recorded conversations. That meant looking at very small elements, such as listening tokens, pauses, hesitations, and so on.

For Occult Hunting, I had collected hundreds of examples for each of the different chapters. I loved all my little artifacts and images! I was attached to them and wanted to describe them in great detial. But that meant the reader could become overwhelmed with examples, which swamped the larger points I wanted to make. I needed to force myself to trim and cut.

I also faced a body of writing that portrayed my topics as part of “weird Japan.” I wanted to provide history, meanings, and functions that would de-weird the thinking about these occult domains.

RC: Was there a moment in preparing this book that particularly surprised you? Something you discovered that was completely unexpected?

LM: Well, you were there with me for one of the moments! It was our trip to Tamatsukuri Onsen when I was in pursuit of the magatama bead. My original but incorrect assumption had been that it had become largely symbolic, that it merely referred to things such as ancient Japan, the supernatural, or female power. I was surprised to discover the deep spiritual and meaningful connections people had to the magatama.

Various magatama

RC: I remember that trip! I remember the way the magatama craftsmen were so delighted that you had chosen to focus on their artform. The priest of the local shrine even invited you into a museum of ancient artifacts largely off-limits to the public. For a rare moment, I had an opportunity to experience the kind of fieldwork you do. It was magical.

LM: For me it was a revelation to talk with people with intimate connections to magatama, and to experience firsthand the care and appreciation they had for these beautiful artifacts.

RC: What aspect of researching/preparing this book was particularly challenging?

LM: I struggled with discussion of the boundaries between the “religious” and the “secular.” Getting feedback from readers helped me set aside my either-or perspective and allowed me to stress that the boundaries are often blurred and are usually irrelevant for consumers and users themselves. I had been trying to impose my own categories, such as “real” (religious) or “fake” (secular), on my examples and observations. I had been ignoring that for many people those categories are not significant.

I had to deal with the academic models of religion that erased or sidelined activities such as divination and use of magical goods. From an anthropological perspective, everything that relates to the supernatural realm is religion.

Because of my interdisciplinary effort, I needed to explain and justify my logic for using the term “occult” as one that encompasses religious activities and thinking. I expect that many traditional scholars of religion will reject my doing this, but it allowed me to analyze shared themes, meanings, and imagery across categories.

RC: I’ve described this work as the culmination of your career, but perhaps I am foreclosing any future work. Do you have another monograph waiting in the wings?

LM: The new research project I’ve been working on for the last few years is on the explosion of popular interest in kofun—ancient tombs that date from the 3rd century to the early 7th century CE. Fans devote time and economic resources to travel, tours, festivals, and media on kofun. There is also a huge market for cute and novel kofun-themed goods and food.

Initially I envisioned this as a journal article and maybe a research report, but I already have collected massive data and will be doing more fieldwork this fall. There’s so much, and I love all of it. It might be another book after all!

RC: I can’t wait. And if you need a sidekick for another trip, count me in!

About the Author:

Laura Miller. Photo provided by the author.

[Laura Miller. Photo provided by the author.]

Laura Miller is the Ei’ichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Endowed Professor of Japanese Studies and a professor of history at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. In addition to Occult Hunting and Supernatural Play in Japan (University of Hawai’i Press, 2024) she is the author of Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics (University of California Press, 2006), and co-editor of four other books.