The Mikagura Uta: The Bodily Performance for Attaining Self-healing and Self-empowerment in Contemporary Taiwan

• In Event: Ideals and Practices of Self-Cultivation in Contemporary East Asian Societies

Abstract

In Taiwan, the development of Tenrikyo (a Japanese new religious movement) is linked to religious expansion in the 1890s in the wake of the previous century’s political change such as the Japanese colonization. It was during that period (1895 onwards) that Taiwanese people began to accept Tenrikyo as a necessary form of religious activity, including the Mikagura Uta (sacred dance or ritual performance). One of the factors crucial to the successful application of Mikagura Uta to local religious life is that the Taiwanese tend to associate that the Mikagura Uta more with bodily performance that can bring practical benefits (healing effects) to them than with theological knowledge. In other words, for those Taiwanese followers, the Mikagura Uta is a bodily movement, rather than a doctrine, by which they can heal themselves. At a time of modernisation and globalisation such as Taiwan is facing today, it is found that the Mikagura Uta appears to be an enhancement of the power of Tenrikyo’s members. Of all of Tenrikyo’s concepts, it is the Mikagura Uta which most introduces the elements of self-confidence, self-healing and hope.
In this paper, I will show that the Mikagura Uta is Tenrikyo’s religious practice that transcends national, language and cultural boundaries and becomes fit into the local religious life among the Taiwanese. My information is based on the ethnographic materials collected during my field studies in two Tenrikyo local churches in Chiayi City and County in Taiwan from December 2011: Tenrikyo Chiayi Dong-Men Church and Tenrikyo Dong-Men Church.

Author

• Yueh-Po Huang, Academia Sinica