Paantu: Visiting Deities, Heritage, and Ritual in Shimajiri, Miyako Island, Japan

Abstract

Legal instruments like national heritage designations frequently utilize a one-size-fits-all approach, but understanding the questions about how heritage is affected, conceptualized, and constructed requires local engagement. The local protective rite of Paantu Punaha, located in the town of Shimajiri on Miyako Island in southern Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, was designated as national Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 1993. This event exists at the center of a nexus of longstanding folkloristic interest in Okinawan ritual as well as the growing popularity of the ritual’s central figures, the mud-covered visiting deities known as paantu. This research explores the economic and social realities that affect the ongoing practice of Paantu Punaha, while also looking at the influence of the system of intangible cultural heritage designation and its effect on the town of Shimajiri. This research investigates how local conceptions of ritual meaning and practice exist as ritual, but also as cultural heritage. Residents’ interpretation of ritual meanings intersect with contemporary concerns about social change, while their ritual understandings of Paantu Punaha come into conflict with visitors’ understandings, viewed through both action and discussion. As a national Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property, it is possible to see the processes by which the paantu became designated heritage, and how it intersects with the experiences of people within Shimajiri. Through the ways that Shimajiri people identify problems and solutions that their community faces, it becomes possible to see how heritage is conceptualized and utilized locally.