ON MEANING AND FUNCTION OF "MAGIC" IN MODERN JAPANISE SOCIETY

本研究的目的是解释日本人认为自己不属于特定宗教的许多社会行为。到目前为止，人们一直在解释与传统宗教和习俗有关的行为，如在新年第七天拜访寺庙或撒焦豆（以驱除厄运）。本研究的特点在于，我们不把“神奇的思想或行动”看作是前现代的残余，而是把现代思想或科学的观点所忽视的问题看作是一种使问题可见的手段，例如“世俗化理论”或“消除魔法理论”。为了推进我们的研究，我们首先确认了魔法的实际情况，通过2004年对冲绳萨满的采访，了解现代日本社会的一些问题。在这个结果的基础上，第二年我们设计了一个新的概念，作为“一种魔法”，并研究了人们的内部或外部态度。在2006年，我们对社会调查的结果进行了分析，最后得出了以下初步结论：1。接受神奇思想和行动的人具有保守的性格，但同时他们又是如此积极，以至于利用一切知识和手段来获得自己的幸福和安全。一个年轻人，一个对自己的现状感到满意的人，一个女人，很容易接受奇迹。如果我们试图解释我们的研究结果，我们必须做出一个新的方案，超越以前的方案，解释现代人与科学，理性，非魔法元素的关系。

The aim of this study is to explain many social actions of Japanese who consider themselves not to belong to particular religions. Such a action as to pay a visit to a shine (or temple) on New Year7s Day or to scatter parched beans (to drive out bad luck), has been explained in relation to traditional religions and customs up to now. The characteristic of this study are found in the point that we don't regard 'magical thoughts or actions ' as remnants of the pre-modern but as a device to make problems visible which are having been missed by the views of modern thoughts or sciences, such as 'a theory of secularization' or ' the theory of elimination of magic'.To advance our study at first we confirmed the actual conditions of magic which remain in modern Japanese society through interview with the shamans in Okinawa in the year 2004. On the basis of this results the next year we devised a new concept as ' a kind of magic' and researched the internal or external attitude of people. In the year 2006, we analyzed the results of our social research.Finally we got the following tentative results1. People who accept magical ideas and actions have a conservative character, but at the same time they are so positive as to make use of all knowledge and means to gain their own happiness and safety.2. A young person, a person who is satisfied with one's own present situation and a woman is apt to accept the magical.3. If we try to explain the result of our research, we have to make a new scheme that surpasses the previous one that explains the modern people in relation to science, rationality, non-magical elements.