Andrea Castiglioni | Nagoya City University (original) (raw)

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Papers by Andrea Castiglioni

Japanese Religions, 2024

This article examines the sensorial and theoretical interweaving between the mummified bodies of ... more This article examines the sensorial and theoretical interweaving between the mummified bodies of Mount Yudono (present-day Yamagata prefecture) ascetics and a variety of external observers such as explorers, devotees, and academic scholars from the second half of the eighteenth century until the 1960s. Focusing on hitherto understudied Edo-period travel narratives and twentieth-century ethnographies, this study shows the modalities through which Yudono ascetics practically organized the cult of their mummified corpses and, at the same time, how these full-body relics were criticized, worshipped, studied, and even materially reassembled according to a plurality of hermeneutic agendas. The aim of this research is to emphasize the unrestrainable sociality and porous ontology of the taxidermic bodies, which are associated with the cult of Yudono eminent ascetics, highlighting how such uncanny remains overcome the boundaries of life and death while continuing to exert a strong pull of fascination on premodern as well as modern society.

Journal of Religion in Japan, 2023

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Religions, 2022

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY

2020 年度国研究フォーラム— えざるものたちと日本人— 報告書國學院大學研究発推進機構日本文化研究所, 2022

Rituals of Initiation and Consecration in Premodern Japan. Edited by Fabio Rambelli and Or Porath, 2022

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021943977 Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsch... more Library of Congress Control Number: 2021943977 Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Natlonalblbliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibllothek lists this publication In the Deutsche Nationalbibllografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

Japanese Journal of Religious Studies , 2021

This article focuses on the cultural valence of the human-fish (ningyo), a hybrid aquatic creatur... more This article focuses on the cultural valence of the human-fish (ningyo), a hybrid aquatic creature with a human face and a fish body, in premodern Japan from the eighth to the nineteenth century. Located at the intersection of religious, political, and scientific discourses, the ningyo becomes an exclusive observation point for better understanding the mechanisms of interweaving and mutual fertilization between apparently unrelated semantic fields such as those concerning deities, humans, and animals. Although heteromorphic bodies, here symbolized by the uncanny physicality of the ningyo, are usually dismissed as marginal elements within the broad panorama of relevant intellectual productions, this study problematizes this assumption and argues that hegemonic stances are constantly validated, or invalidated, according to their relationships with those on the fringes. Being an interstitial entity, that is, something that lives in the pleats of discourse, the ningyo is characterized by a continuous inclusion within networks of meaning and, at the same time, is doomed to perennial exclusion. This article sheds light on the hermeneutical dynamics that generate the exceptionality of the ningyo, and its never-ending role as a haunting mediator of reality.

In The Bloomsbury Handbook of Japanese Religions. Erica Baffelli, Andrea Castiglioni, Fabio Rambelli, 2021

In Defining Shugendō: Critical Studies on Japanese Mountain Religion. Andrea Castiglioni, Fabio R... more In Defining Shugendō: Critical Studies on Japanese Mountain Religion. Andrea Castiglioni, Fabio Rambelli. Carina Roth, eds., 205–217. London: Bloomsbury, 2020.

Asian Ethnology, 2019

In contemporary Japan the fame of Mount Yudono (Yamagata prefecture) derives from the high concen... more In contemporary Japan the fame of Mount Yudono (Yamagata prefecture) derives from the high concentration of mummified bodies of ascetics, which are enshrined in various temples of this mountainous area. These taxidermic statues are often interpreted as the final result of a voluntary abandonment of the body in which the ascetic self-interred within a sepulchral underground cell before dying. However, the present article seeks to reconsider these mummies as ad hoc manipulations of the ascetics' corpses, which were executed by disciples and lay devotees after the natural death of the ascetics. Such a rethinking of the mummified bodies of Yudono does not diminish their religious value as cultic objects; rather, it adds complexity by highlighting a creative tension between the historical and meta-historical dimension of these full-body relics. The semantic variety of such mummified bodies results from a continual oscillation between narrative sources, which, on the one hand, depict Yudono ascetics within the ordinariness of their human existence (historical dimension) and, on the other, make them transcend space and time (meta-historical dimension). The article demonstrates that the ascetics of Yudono could extend their charisma beyond the normal lifespan thanks to their mummified corpses, which worked as sensorial supports of the ascetics' power upon which lay devotees could continuously rely. keywords: Mount Yudono-asceticism-vow-devotional practices-mummification-materiality 26 | Asian Ethnology Volume 78, Number 1 • 2019 "Flesh is the pivot of salvation." Tertullian, De resurrectione carnis

Spirits and Animism in Contemporary Japan: The Invisible Empire , 2019

Nihon bungaku no tenbo wo hiraku – Shukyo bungei no gensetsu to kankyo, 2017