DIJ History & Humanities Study Group
Organizers: Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt, Susanne Klien

We would like to invite you to the next meeting of the DIJ History & Humanities Study Group Thursday (!!!) 12 May 2011, 18:30 at the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ), Tokyo
(http://www.dijtokyo.org)

This month's speaker will be
Christian Goehlert, LMU Munich
who will give a presentation on:

Ubugami - Gods of Childbirth in Japanese Folk Belief

Ubugami, the gods of childbirth used to play a pivotal role in Japanese folk belief. Birth, being both a time of great danger to the mother and her newborn child as well as the beginning of life seems to demand religious and ritual safeguards. Yet at the same time the blood spilt during birth carries the taint of the kegare, of ritual impurity. This impurity prevented most of the gods known to Japanese Folk belief from attending childbirth. Only a special handful of gods could overcome the kegare and act as ubugami. These ubugami are relevant to a wide variety of highly important questions that reach from the nature of the kegare and its connection to the discrimination of women to the concepts of divinity, the human soul and the afterlife.

This presentation aims to locate the ubugami within the complex series of rites and rituals related to pregnancy and childbirth in traditional Japanese folk belief, to describe the objects that represent them and the humans who interact with them, as well as to trace and explain the decline of ubugami belief and the modern practices that have replaced it.

Christian Goehlert is a PhD student at the LMU Munich's Japan Center. He is currently doing research for his doctoral thesis at Seijo University in Tok yo.

The presentation will be given in English.
The DIJ History & Humanities Study Group is intended as a forum for young scholars and Ph.D. candidates in pertaining disciplines.
Organisers: Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt, Susanne Klien Everybody is welcome to attend, but kindly asked to register with Susanne
Klien: klien@dijtokyo.org

German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) Jochi Kioizaka Bldg. 2F, 7-1 Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
102-0094
Phone: 03-3222-5077, Fax: 03-3222-5420,
www.dijtokyo.org