Kotodama

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Kotodama ( Japanese 言 霊 , literally: word soul ) refers to words in the Japanese language that are assigned a magical effect. In ancient times, word magic evocations appear in Shinto practice, in the Norito , as well as in the Kotodama songs of the Japanese annals or the Man'yōshū .

overview

From a linguistic point of view, words according to Ferdinand de Saussure are chosen arbitrarily, that is, arbitrarily and without any recognizable reference to the designated object. One therefore distinguishes the signified (something, for example) from the signatory (the word). The kotodama concept highlights this dichotomy of signified and signifier on. From a philosophical point of view, when the words are uttered in incantations, the ontological content of the thing referred to is transferred to the word. This creates an Id entity that the speaker can dispose of. Colloquially, one could say that the soul of a concrete object passes over to the spoken word , which at the same time becomes an instrument of power, since it makes the thing available in the word. The Japanese language is particularly suitable for this because it has a large number of homophonic , identical words. As an example, the two words: 事 , thing, thing and 言 , word , whose reading is koto in both cases . If koto is pronounced, it cannot be decided what is meant - a thing or a word - word and thing thus coincide. Only when it is written down as Kanji is it clear.

However, this conjuring practice was already lost in the Heian period and was only rediscovered by the Kokugaku , the national philology of the Edo period . It is Kamo Mabuchi who in the essay Goikō Japan calls the land of the “blossoming word soul”.

The thought is then taken up in the modern age by the religious movement Ōmoto , which develops its own syllable magic of the 50-lute table under the somewhat modified term kototama . It was Ueshiba Morihei , the founder of Aikidō , who, as a follower of Onisaburō Deguchi, established this kototama concept in the martial arts he founded.

In the present there is also a separate form of medicine, the "Kotodama-Inochi-Medicine", which goes back to Kōji Ogasawara and was made known in America by Thomas Duckworth.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kojiki : Record of old incidents. Translated by Klaus Antoni . Verlag der Welteligionen im Insel-Suhrkamp-Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-458-70036-4 , p. 434
  2. ↑ Kojiki . Translated by Klaus Antoni, p. 433

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