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

本研究的目的是解释那些认为自己不属于特定宗教的日本人的许多社会行为。在大年初一参拜庙堂或撒干豆（驱除厄运）等行为，至今都被解释为与传统宗教和习俗有关。本研究的特点在于，我们不把“魔法思想或行为”视为前现代的残余，而是将其视为一种手段，以使现代思想或科学的观点（如“世俗化理论”或“魔法消除理论”）所错过的问题变得可见。为了推进我们的研究，我们首先通过2004年对冲绳萨满的采访，确认了现代日本社会中仍然存在的魔法的实际情况。在这个结果的基础上，第二年我们设计了一个新的概念，称为“一种魔力”，并研究了人们的内部或外部态度。2006年，我们分析了社会研究的结果。最后，我们得到了以下初步结果。接受神奇的思想和行为的人具有保守的性格，但同时他们又非常积极，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，一个对自己现状满意的人，一个女人容易接受神奇的东西。如果我们试图解释我们的研究结果，我们必须制定一个新的方案，它超越了以前解释现代人与科学、理性、非魔法因素的关系的方案。

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.