A Study of the “Consumption” of Sacred Places and Rituals : A Contemporary Ethnographic Study of Religious Tourism with a Focus on Sēfā Utaki in Okinawa

application/pdf本論文は消費の民俗学的研究の観点から、沖縄県南部に位置する斎場御嶽の観光地化、「聖性」の商品化の動態を民族誌的に論じたものである。二〇〇〇（平成一二）年に世界遺産登録されたこの御嶽は、近年急激な訪問者の増加と域内の荒廃が指摘されており、入場制限や管理強化が進んでいるが、関係主体の増加によって御嶽への意味づけや関わり方もまた錯綜している。例えば現場管理者側は琉球王国に繋がる沖縄の信仰上の中心性をこの御嶽に象徴させようとする一方、訪問者は従来の門中や地域住民、民間宗教者に加え、国内外の観光客、修学旅行客、現場管理者の言うところの「スピリチュアルな人」など、極めて多様化しており、それぞれがそれぞれの仕方で「聖」を消費する多元的な状況になっている。メディアにおける聖地表象の影響を多分に受け、非伝統的な文脈で「聖」を体験しようとする「スピリチュアルな人」という、いわゆるポスト世俗化社会を象徴するような新たなカテゴリーの出現は、従来のように「観光か信仰か」という単純な二分法では解釈できない様々な状況を引き起こす。例えばある時期以来斎場御嶽に入るには二〇〇円を支払うことが必要となり、「拝みの人」は申請に基づいて半額にする策が採られたが、新たなカテゴリーの人々をどう識別するかは現場管理者の難題であるとともに、この二〇〇円という金額が何に対する対価なのかという問いを突きつける。 古典的な枠組みにおいて消費の民俗学的研究は、伝統社会における生活必需品の交易と日常での使い方に関してもっぱら議論されてきたため、情報と産業によって欲求を喚起されるような高度消費社会的な消費実践にはほとんど未対応の分野であったと言える。しかし斎場御嶽に明らかなように、信仰・儀礼を含む既存の民俗学的対象のあらゆる領域が「商品」という形式を介して人々に経験される時代において、伝統社会から「離床」した経済現象としてこれを扱うことは、現代民俗学の重要な課題となっている。This paper presents a folklore study of consumption, focusing on Sēfā Utaki located in southern Okinawa Prefecture. This is an ethnographic analysis of the development of the sacred site as a sightseeing spot and the commercialization of holiness. Inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2000, this Utaki has attracted an increasing number of tourists. As this has caused damage to the site, protective measures are being taken, such as imposing a limit on the number of visitors and strengthening maintenance management. This increase in the number of people concerned, however, has led to the diversification of interpretations and involvements. For example, while the field administration wants to make the Utaki the central symbol of the local religion originated from the Ryūkyū Kingdom, the Utaki itself attracts diverse people, ranging from conventional visitors, such as Munchū, local community residents, and folk devotees, to overseas and domestic tourists, study tour participants, and those the field administration call “spiritual people,” and each of them consume the holiness in their own ways, creating a multi-faceted situation. In particular, the emergence of a new category of people that symbolizes the so-called post-secular society (“spiritual people” who try to get a holy experience in an untraditional context affected by mass media's depiction of sacred places) has created a complicated situation where visitors cannot be simply classified as either sightseers or religious explorers. For example, when Sēfā Utaki started to charge visitors an admission fee of 200 yen, which will be reduced by half for visitors for prayer if they request it, the field administration encountered two difficult problems: (i) how to identify those classified into the new category; and (ii) what the fee of 200 yen is actually charged for. An ethnographic study of consumption in a classical framework has mainly focused on the trade of daily necessities and their use in daily lives in a traditional society, yet it has hardly covered the perspective of what consumption means in a high-level consumer society where consumers' desire is stirred up by information and other industries. As illustrated by the example of Sēfā Utaki, now that all the existing ethnographic subjects, including religions and rituals, are commercialized so that general people can experience them for themselves, contemporary folklorists are faced with a new important question of how to deal with these economic phenomena deviated from the traditional society.departmental bulletin pape