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

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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.