Strange Games and Enchanted Science: The Mystery of Kokkuri by Michael Dylan Foster

Strange Games and Enchanted
Science: The Mystery of Kokkuri

MICHAEL DYLAN FOSTER
In the late 1880s, a craze for a game called Kokkuri swept across Japan. The
setup was simple: Three bamboo rods were tied together to form a tripod, and a round
tray or the lid of a wooden rice container was balanced on top. Three people would
kneel around this tablelike structure, placing their hands lightly upon the lid. One
would chant:
“Kokkuri-sama, Kokkuri-sama, please descend, please descend. Come now, please
descend quickly.” After about ten minutes of this invocation, he says, “If you have
descended, please tilt towards so-and-so.” And with the lid balanced in place, the
apparatus tilts, the bamboo leg on the other side lifting up. . . . Now any of the three
people can ask questions. (Inoue 2000, 22)
Scenes similar to this were enacted throughout Japan as the game spread rapidly across
the country; Kokkuri was an explosively popular fashion, a mass culture phenomenon
that entered the homes of people throughout the nation. From the end of 1886 to
autumn of the following year, this divination game was so popular that, according to
journalist and scholar Miyatake Gaikotsu (1867–1955), it was played in “almost every
household” (Miyatake 1997, 53)1 (see figs. 1 and 2).
Michael Dylan Foster (mdfoster@ucr.edu) is Assistant Professor of Japanese and Compar-

ative Literature at the University of California, Riverside.
A much earlier version of this article was presented at a workshop entitled “Rethinking
the Restoration: New Approaches to the Bakumatsu-Meiji Transition” at Yale University in
2001, and I thank the participants for their valuable feedback. I would also like to express my
gratitude to the 2001–02 resident fellows at the Stanford Humanities Center and to my
colleagues in a 2004–05 Mellon workshop on divination at the University of California, Riv-
erside. The article has benefited immensely from discussions with scholars in a number of fields
in the U.S. and Japan; I would especially like to thank Ariga Takashi, JoAnne Brown, Lieba
Faier, Thomas Hare, Ichiyanagi Hirotaka, Komatsu Kazuhiko, Komma Tōru, Susan Matisoff,
James Reichert, Michael Saler, Ethan Segal, Michiko Suzuki, Robert Tierney, Jason Weems,
and Walt Woodward. Finally, I am grateful to the editors and anonymous readers at the Journal
of Asian Studies for their perceptive comments and suggestions for revision.
1
For the sake of concision I refer to the practice as Kokkuri, but it is also known as
Kokkuri-sama or Kokkuri-san. The word Kokkuri itself is ambiguous, variously signifying the
practice, the spirit(s) invoked, and the apparatus. Kokkuri is still played in Japan today and
was particularly popular among schoolchildren in the mid-1970s. More recently, the practice
was featured in a 1997 horror film directed by Takahisa Zeze and entitled simply Kokkuri-san.
Although the contemporary version of Kokkuri is clearly connected to the Meiji incarnation,
the playing method (most likely influenced by the Ouija board) and context are different; in
some cases the name has also been changed to Angel-san or Cupid-san. For more on later
versions of the game, see Imaizumi (1995), Nakata (1997), and Ichiyanagi (1999).
The Journal of Asian Studies 65, no. 2 (May 2006):251–275.
䉷 2006 by the Association for Asian Studies, Inc.
251
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911806000659
252 MICHAEL DYLAN FOSTER
Figure 1. Playing Kokkuri (Inoue 1999, 547).
Figure 2. Photograph of Kokkuri from a 1912 text on hypnotism

(Murakami 1912, n.p.).
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STRANGE GAMES AND ENCHANTED SCIENCE 253
It goes without saying that the 1880s mark a time characterized by oppositions:
old and new, native and foreign, irrational and rational, supernatural and scientific.
Perhaps most striking about these various oppositions, however, is that they are so
rarely mutually exclusive. Seemingly incompatible modes of interpreting the world
exist simultaneously—distinct perhaps, but always in the process of overlapping,
intermingling, and coalescing. Indeed, this period of interaction with the West and
the advent of new ideas is characterized by an often paradoxical collusion of opposites
combining dynamically to create a unique whole. In a sense, the mystery that is the
Meiji period can be found in the remarkable ability of people to simultaneously
negotiate differing discourses and practices, happily embracing apparently contradic-
tory ways of understanding the world around them. Kokkuri—a modern practice
utilizing age-old spirits to forecast the future—serves as a mirror of this critical
moment in Japanese history, reflecting both changes and continuities and demon-
strating the negotiation of divergent worldviews as the nation embarked on a path
toward modernity.
Though Kokkuri might be characterized as nothing more than a game or a passing
fad, its emergence during Japan’s modernizing experience signifies its importance as
a cultural practice. To achieve popularity, a game must latch on to deeply held, or
deeply contested, values. Games always reveal something about the people who play
them, and although analyses of the Meiji period often focus on issues of economics,
politics, education, and literature, Kokkuri’s widespread popularity, touching all lev-
els of society, makes it a unique tool with which to gain access to this moment of
profound cultural flux. Furthermore, as a practice for contacting the otherworld, Kok-
kuri not only affords insight into how cultural change is manifest in the noninstitu-
tional and mostly undocumented everyday experiences of the Meiji populace but also
provides an intimate glimpse into personal attitudes regarding the spiritual and the
supernatural in everyday life.2
This space of the everyday serves as an arena in which the Meiji consumer exercises
creative agency, what Michel de Certeau refers to as tactics, in order to make the most
of available resources—discursive and practical—and “combine heterogeneous ele-
ments” (de Certeau 1984, xix). Kokkuri is one of these opportune combinations, a
hybrid construction embodying a variety of critical influences; it acts as a medium,
an object through which a number of the important conflicting discourses of the
1880s came to be channeled. Of these discourses, the opposition between the mystic
and the scientific provides a particularly useful heuristic for understanding the nuances
of the historical moment in which the practice thrived. Although Kokkuri may have
been a game, it could also be characterized as a divination practice, a scientific pro-
cedure, or something in-between. In playing Kokkuri, one was forced to contend with
the question of what made it move; the different answers to this question—the various
attempts to solve the mystery of Kokkuri—reveal how a range of people, from ordinary
folk to the intellectual elite, grappled with the unexplainable, calling alternately on
traditional mystic notions and newly developed scientific explanations. In the midst
of the social and political upheaval of the Meiji period, Kokkuri was an appropriately
ambiguous cultural sign, a site of blurring boundaries in which, as de Certeau would
put it, “heterogeneous elements” combined to create a spiritual and mechanical hy-
2
I use such terms as supernatural, mystic, and mystery fairly loosely throughout this article
to refer to the strange, the uncanny, the fushigi: phenomena and presences that defy explanation
by contemporaneous scientific discourse and are also often positioned on the margins of estab-
lished or institutional religious practices.
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brid. Through contending with the small mystery of Kokkuri, we gain insight into
the grander mystery of Meiji, the interaction of diverse cultures and worldviews that
would shape Japan as it entered the twentieth century.
Kokkuri
In 1886, novelist, translator, and literary critic Tsubouchi Shōyō (1859–1935)
was invited by Konishi Yoshitaka, the publisher of the Konnichi shimbun, to attend a
party in a banquet hall with geisha:
As it is the way of the demimonde to be first in feeling a fascination for such [new]
things, the three legs and round tray were brought into the banquet hall as part of
the entertainment. Though it goes without saying that the various geisha [were
excited], even our host, Konishi, made a fuss as they started the testing (shiken). It
was so accurate [in its answers] that even those who were half doubting (hanshin-
hangi) in the beginning found it eerie, and were duped to the extent that they were
reluctant to place their hands on the tray. (Tsubouchi 1927/1977, 472–73)
Shōyō’s brief description here highlights the position of Kokkuri in mid-Meiji Japan:
an exciting new form of recreation, introduced in the space of play (the geisha house),
and providing fascination and mystery to all those gathered in the banquet hall.
Not surprisingly, the excitement surrounding this enchanted apparatus came to
the critical attention of one of Shōyō’s contemporaries, Inoue Enryō (1858–1919),
who would dedicate his life to disenchanting traditional modes of supernatural belief
in Japan. An extremely prolific Buddhist philosopher, educator, and founder of what
would later become Tōyō University, Enryō developed the academic discipline of
yōkaigaku, or monsterology, a project dedicated to eradicating beliefs about yōkai
(translatable as “monster” or “spirit” but also more vaguely denoting any supernatural
or mysterious phenomenon). Enryō’s objective was to rationally explain away the
supernatural so that Japan could become a modern nation-state competitive with the
West. His aim, it should be noted, was not to suppress all mystery, but to sort out
the false mystery and superstition from what he defined as shinkai, or “true mystery.”
Emerging at the crux of Japan’s transition from Edo to Meiji, Enryō’s work is informed
by familiarity with Eastern and Western philosophies as well as a simultaneous en-
gagement with both the rational and the spiritual.3
As an extremely popular supernatural phenomenon, Kokkuri was the perfect first
subject for Enryō’s yōkaigaku project; his 1887 monograph, Yōkai gendan (Exegesis of
Yōkai), provides the most comprehensive surviving description of the practice.4
Though clearly biased by his rationalist objectives, Enryō’s work can also be charac-
terized as an early ethnographic effort, and in Yōkai gendan, he records descriptions
3
For an insightful discussion of Inoue Enryō, the development and complexities of yōkai-
gaku, and its place within modernity, see Figal (1999), who argues persuasively for the critical
role of the notion of the fushigi in the construction of modernity in Meiji Japan. “Monsterology”
is Figal’s translation. For a brief intellectual biography of Enryō, see Itakura (1983); for more
on Enryō’s life and work, see Hirano (1974), Ogura (1986), Niita (1988), Saitō (1988), and
Tanaka (2004, 69–76). I follow here the Japanese convention of referring to Inoue Enryō by
the name Enryō; Tsubouchi Shōyō is also referred to as Shōyō. All other individuals are cited
by their family names.
4
Itakura (1983, 19) notes that Yōkai gendan was Enryō’s first monograph dedicated to
yōkai. It serves as a seminal example of the methodology Enryō would subsequently apply to
more traditional phenomena such as ghosts, fox possession, poltergeist phenomena, haunted
houses, and so forth. Although Enryō’s data on Kokkuri is the most systematic of all the
contemporaneous records, a number of other sources and newspaper articles round out what
we know of the game and the way it was practiced.
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of the practice from data gathered by a network of informants living throughout the
country. Kokkuri, he explains, was a technique by which a spirit was called down to
inhabit a simply constructed piece of apparatus. Questions would then be posed to
the spirit, which would answer by tilting or lifting a leg of the apparatus:
It is asked, “Will there be a fire or similar disaster in so-and-so’s house?” The leg
does not lift up. Therefore they know there will be no disaster.
It is asked, “Will there be good fortune in so-and-so’s house? If there will be
good fortune, lift this leg.” The leg does not lift up. So they ask, “In that case, will
good fortune not come?” But again, the leg does not lift up. “In that case, is it
completely unclear at this time?” When they ask this, the leg lifts up. And so, they
can judge that fortune or misfortune is not yet known. . . .
Now, it is said, “If tomorrow will be a clear day, lift this leg.” The leg does not
lift. “In that case,” they ask again, “will tomorrow be a rainy day?” Again the leg
does not lift. They ask, “In that case, will it snow tomorrow?” Now the leg lifts up
just a little. And so they know that the next day will be snowy. (Inoue 2000, 27)
Though these examples give us some idea of how Kokkuri was practiced and what
sort of questions were asked, Enryō also notes that “according to the information I
have received from various people around the country, the method of Kokkuri is not
set, and varies from place to place” (Inoue 2000, 22). Such variety suggests the tech-
nique was practiced by people from a range of socioeconomic spheres, and Enryō
himself emphasizes the ubiquity of Kokkuri as a topic of conversation: “With no
distinction between city and country, high and low, people are talking about the
mysterious phenomenon of Kokkuri” (Inoue 2000, 15). Similarly, another contem-
porary commentator also notes that “Kokkuri-sama [has] in recent years been popular
throughout the city and the countryside, near and far” (Ryōkū 1887a, 7). Though
such hyperbolic comments must be taken with a degree of skepticism, their invocation
suggests that Kokkuri was at least acknowledged as having widespread popularity not
confined to a single group, class, or location. As we see with Shōyō’s experience, it
was often associated with the geisha houses, significant because such places not only
had clientele from different walks of life but were instrumental in the distribution of
fads and fashions.
Enryō makes a point of noting that people from all socioeconomic circumstances
were equally (though differently) deluded with regard to Kokkuri: “Those below the
middle class, not knowing what [Kokkuri] is, attribute it to the doings of [super-
natural] foxes and raccoon dogs, or to demons and deities [kijin]; those above the
middle class, not knowing the explanation, also classify it as one kind of yōkai or
mystery [fushigi]” (Inoue 2000, 15). His allusion here to “foxes and raccoon dogs”
reflects the intimate association of supernaturally endowed creatures with the Kokkuri
practice, an association that soon comes to be embedded in the name itself. The word
Kokkuri is written phonetically in katakana or hiragana, or with kanji characters. Enryō
and others make the same etymological argument: The name is derived from kokkuri,
an onomatopoeic expression referring to the action of tilting or nodding. It describes,
for example, the movement of a person nodding in agreement, or nodding off to sleep.
In the case of Kokkuri, this denotes the tilting of the tray perched atop the three
bamboo rods (Inoue 2000, 35; Ryōkū 1887a, 11).5 Having said this, however, the
5
This explanation is supported by Enryō’s data (Inoue 2000, 22) from the Nagoya and
Gifu regions, in which a variant name is noted as Okatabuki, an appellation constructed of an
honorific o prefixed to the nominal form of the verb katamuku, meaning “to tilt or lean.”
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kanji that soon came to be associated with the name also provide insight into how
the practice was understood at the time. Though presumably the graphs are phonetic
equivalents (ateji) for an existing pronunciation, the chosen characters affected the
practice and the meanings associated with it. By far the most common set of characters
affiliated with Kokkuri are those denoting fox ( kitsune ⳱ ko), dog ( inu ⳱ ku),
and raccoon dog ( tanuki ⳱ ri). These three characters became associated with the
practice very early on.6
Each graph refers to a specific animal known to have supernatural characteristics.
The fox, of course, has a long history in Japan (and China) as a mysterious, shape-
shifting creature associated with kitsune tsuki, or “fox possession.” Though not the
only form of possession found in Japan, fox possession is one of the oldest and most
commonly recorded (see Hiruta 2000, 267–90). The second character in the com-
pound denotes “dog.” Although dog deity/demon creatures known as inugami can be
associated with possession (Kagawa 2000, 239–40), the graph used in Kokkuri is
commonly linked with the tengu (literally, “heavenly dog”), one of the most notorious
of the traditional yōkai of Japan. This mountain goblin, sometimes depicted as crow-
like in appearance, sometimes depicted with a red face and elongated nose, has often
been associated with esoteric Buddhism (usually negatively) and the yamabushi tra-
dition. Tengu are also responsible for so-called kami-kakushi phenomena, in which they
abduct a person (usually a young child) for several days or weeks. Finally, there is the
tanuki, a real animal often translated as “badger” or more accurately as “raccoon dog.”
Though tanuki possession is not unheard of, the creature is most commonly associated
with shape-shifting mischief, including the ability to alter the landscape and cause
travelers to lose their way. Each of the three graphs that came to make up Kokkuri
alludes to a constellation of beliefs and legends that were no doubt evoked in the
popular imagination. By linking the name of the technique to traditional entities, the
experience of Kokkuri becomes animated by distinct, visualizable spirits; the odd
behavior of the apparatus is attributed to the machinations of well-known, identifiable
creatures.7
Regardless of the original derivation of the neologism Kokkuri, the association of
the kitsune, tengu, and tanuki came to be literally embedded in the practice. Enryō’s
informant from Miyagi, for example, explains how to construct the apparatus: “Into
the bamboo rods insert tags inscribed with the words kitsune, tengu, and tanuki; warm
the mouth of the bamboo with a flame, and place a heated lacquer tray on top, covering
it with a cloth” (Inoue 2000, 26). And from the Ibaraki area: “Trace the characters
on the underside of a tray with the tip of your finger, and cover with a cloth” (pp.
6
For example, the characters appear in June 1886 in Kojima (1886) and can also be found
in newspaper accounts as early as July 16, 1886 (Edamatsu, Sugiura, and Yagi 1986, 230).
For a discussion of the different graphs associated with Kokkuri, see Inoue (2000, 19; 1999,
546). Ryōkū (1887a, 11) asserts that the original set of characters applied to Kokkuri is .
(koku) is associated with the meaning “to tell” or “inform.” (ri) is associated with reason
and logic. The compound , therefore, can be interpreted as meaning “to tell or inform
the reason/workings of something,” which is what Kokkuri does with regard to the future.
7
Another relevant word here is kori , which literally denotes “foxes and raccoon dogs”
but refers in a general way to these creatures’ proclivities for shape-shifting and deception and
has also come to describe a trickster or deceptive person (Matsumura 1995, 949). Though not
mentioned in the contemporaneous literature, it is possible that the insertion of a reference to
another supernatural creature, ku , between ko and ri simultaneously references a word
(kokkuri) to describe the nodding motion of the apparatus and also draws on the existing
supernatural connotations of kori.
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24–25). Enryō also cites a practice in the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo in which the
characters for kitsune, tengu, and tanuki are separately written on slips of paper and
inserted into the apparatus (p. 27). A contemporaneous commentary reports that “in
some places [people] write the three characters with their fingers on the underside of
the tray”(Ryōkū 1887a, 25). The inscription of these three yōkai endows the otherwise
mundane structure with a supernatural quality. Operating through the principles of
sympathetic magic, the graphs serve as metonymic representations, their presence
presumably acting as a sort of lightning rod to call down the spirits they signify.
Once the ritualistic rendering of the name along with the oral incantations to
Kokkuri worked their magic and a spiritual presence came to inhabit the apparatus,
the first order of business was usually to establish just what sort of spirit it was: “‘If
you are a kitsune, lift this leg. . . .’ As the leg was not lifted, they knew it was not a
kitsune. And again, it was said, ‘If you are a tengu, lift this leg.’ As again the leg was
not lifted, they all knew that it was not a tengu.” This particular informant goes on
to assert that, although kitsune, tanuki, and even cats make an appearance in the game,
“Above all, it is the spirit called tengu that is the most factually accurate in making
predictions, and people place the most faith in it” (Inoue 2000, 28–30).
In short, despite the fact that the name may be derived from the movement of
the apparatus, the kanji associated with Kokkuri not only lent to it an air of ritualism
and mystery but also came to be an intrinsic part of the practice itself. Overdetermined
and layered with meanings, the name acted both descriptively as well as symbolically.
By conjuring up images of powerful figures firmly established in the popular imagi-
nation, Kokkuri calls on their supernatural authority. Their evocation particularly
during the rapid urbanization, modernization, and Westernization of the Meiji years
endowed Kokkuri with a spiritual clout derived from long-standing constellations of
folk beliefs.
Contact with the Otherworld
It would seem then that Kokkuri represents the persistence of firmly entrenched
Edo-period associations and systems of belief—traditions in stark contrast to new
modes of knowledge imported from abroad. Kokkuri confounds such simple dualisms,
however, acting rather as a hybrid, a site of dynamic contact between oppositions and
contrasts. Just as rationalistic theories and scientific procedures were being imported
from abroad, so too were “irrational” and “superstitious” methods for communicating
with the otherworld: “Without a doubt,” Enryō insists, “[Kokkuri] came from a
foreign country” (Inoue 2000, 33). As cultural historian Ichiyanagi Hirotaka puts it,
Kokkuri was “the trendiest of recreations [asobi] from America” (Ichiyanagi 1994,
27). One reason for Kokkuri’s popularity, therefore, was just the opposite of its tra-
ditional associations: its exotic, nonnative origins. Although the practice (content)
may have been grounded in the invocation of indigenous yōkai, the methodology
(form) for summoning them was associated with newly imported ideas. Not only does
Kokkuri represent a method of contacting the mystical otherworld of magical spirits,
but it also signifies a very real point of contact with the otherworld of the West.
Several theories account for Kokkuri’s introduction to Japan. One posits that it
was a discovery of a New York scientist that became popular among young men and
women in 1884. Arriving the following year in Yokohama, the practice made its way
to the entertainment districts in the Shinagawa area of Tokyo and was accorded the
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mysterious power (kairiki) of kitsune, tanuki, and the like by the geisha living there
(Kojima 1886). Another author suggests the practice was introduced by a Japanese
exchange student who had encountered Kokkuri while studying physics in the U.S.
(Ryōkū 1887a, 17).
Enryō’s hypothesis, however, has come to be the most widely retold by present-
day commentators. He, too, purports that Kokkuri came from abroad, specifically
from the U.S. Having first dismissed all other theories as “rumors on the street,”
however, he sets out to reckon the origins of Kokkuri by determining when the
practice began in different regions and tracing the game’s journey through Japan.
Concluding that it must have made landfall in the Izu region, he explains that “Last
year, I journeyed to Izu, and looked into the circumstances of [Kokkuri’s] popularity
in that region. I thus first came to know the truth of my hypothesis” (Inoue 2000,
34). His explanation of Kokkuri’s arrival on Japanese shores is compelling in part
because of the detail he provides and in part because it provides a lucid image of
cultural exchange at a local level:
Two years ago an American sailing ship came to the Shimoda area of Izu, and was
damaged. Because of the torn sail, some Americans spent a long time on land; they
passed on the method [of Kokkuri] to the people there. At that time the Americans
called it by a name in English, but because the residents of the area did not understand
English, the name was difficult for them to use, and it was given the name “Kokkuri.”
. . . So it is that this method came from the West, and it is clear that the vogue
began in Shimoda. The boatmen who were in Shimoda at this time saw this strange
thing all together with their own eyes. Afterwards they went to the many ports from
east to west and passed it along. (Inoue 2000, 34–35)
It is easy to imagine the scene: the American sailors playing their game sur-
rounded by a crowd of curious onlookers mystified by the strange Western magic.
The Americans explain how to play, and the Japanese mimic their words, their actions.
And then the Japanese try the game themselves. As they watch dumbfounded, the
tray tilts and nods in response to their questioning, and they comment on the move-
ment, kokkuri kokkuri, of this animated, yōkai-like, apparatus. Although there seem
to be no independent records—either Japanese or American—to verify Enryō’s ac-
count, his explanation has become an important part of the discourse on Kokkuri’s
origins. Moreover, his description adds depth to conventional historical images of the
transfer of knowledge between the West and Japan. In contrast to formal exchanges
with regard to education, government, technology, and the military arts, the inter-
action portrayed here concerns the spirits themselves, but at the same time reveals a
very human side of contact with foreign—otherworldly—mysteries.
But what exactly were these American sailors doing? “According to what I have
heard,” Enryō explains, “there is something in the West called table-turning. . . . This
method is not the slightest bit different from Kokkuri-sama” (Inoue 2000, 35). Enryō
is clearly familiar with the so-called Spiritualist movement in the West.8 For all
8
In Yōkai gendan, Enryō confines himself to this brief explanation and one example from
the Western context. In a later lecture on psychology (published in 1893–94), however, he
goes into much greater detail, discussing the Fox sisters and other spiritualists (Inoue 1999,
541–45). In North America and Europe, part of the broad appeal of Spiritualism may have
been its relatively egalitarian nature, representing a transition from common poltergeist and
haunted house phenomena, in which specific ghosts haunted specific locations, to a paradigm
in which “Any spirit could be summoned from any sitting room” (Pimple 1995, 80). Practices
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Figure 3. The practice of table-turning as illustrated in Table Moving

by Animal Magnetism Demonstrated (3rd ed., n.p., n.d.; reproduced in
Winter 1998, 286).
intents and purposes, modern Spiritualism got its start in 1848 with a series of strange
occurrences in the Hydesville, New York, house of the Fox sisters; spreading across
North America and into Europe, Spiritualism rapidly became a popular religious and
social movement. In both public and private forums, séances would be performed in
which professional mediums would make tables rap in response to questions posed
by the sitters.
Table-turning was a similar type of séance procedure in which a table responded
to questions by rotating and tilting (fig. 3). These movements were attributed to the
influence of the spirits, that is, to the ghosts of ancestors or others called upon to
provide information from beyond the grave. One reason for table-turning’s particular
appeal was that unlike many other séance techniques, it did not require a professional
medium but could be practiced by anyone, allowing equal access to the otherworld.
Frank Podmore, an early British scholar of Spiritualism and prominent member of
the Society for Psychical Research, records that when an “epidemic of table-turning”
made its way from the Continent to Britain in 1853:
It was found that not only would tables and hats rotate and execute movements of
various kinds without apparent volition or control of those taking part in the exper-
iments, but answers to questions—and even on occasion information not apparently
known to any of those present—could be obtained by this method, a tilt of the table
being substituted for the professional medium’s rap. (Podmore 1902, 7)
Given the general public’s familiarity with table-turning, it would not be at all
surprising if a group of American sailors grounded in Japan for a few months in 1885
chose to amuse themselves through a little experimental turning of the tables:
such as table-turning provided for exciting informal experimentation and research (see, e.g.,
Nicholls 186–, 1–8). For more on Spiritualism and issues of psychic research in nineteenth-
century Europe and the U.S., see, Carpenter (1895), Haynes (1982), Oppenheim (1985), and
Winter (1998). For a discussion of Spiritualism in Japan during the early twentieth century,
see Hardacre (1998).
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The Americans who came to Shimoda knew this method from when they were in
their home country in the past. In Shimoda they were unable to get hold of a proper
table and so provisionally they imagined they could substitute bamboo and a lid [of
a rice container]. And, although these Americans told [the Japanese] that the method
was called “table-turning,” the locals, unaccustomed to Western languages, substi-
tuted the word “Kokkuri.” For this reason, I believe Kokkuri and table-turning are
one and the same. (Inoue 2000, 36)
Enryō stresses here the way in which a Western technology for spiritual communi-
cation is reinvented through makeshift construction with available materials and in-
troduced to the local populace. The Japanese proceed to make the method their own:
translating the name to one with meaning in the vernacular and translating the spirits
themselves into mystical agents with native relevance. In Western versions of the
practice, participants tended to invoke spirits for whom there was a culturally accepted
folkloric precedence, namely, the ghosts of dead family members. Not surprisingly,
the Japanese version also entailed a reliance on traditional representatives of the oth-
erworld, especially kitsune, tengu, and tanuki. One can imagine the practice being passed
from place to place, accruing on its journey a richer and richer association with the
native spirits of Japan.
The exchange Enryō articulates might be described in terms of transculturation,
in which one group of people “select and invent from materials transmitted to them”
by another (see Pratt 1992, 6). Although such exchanges are characteristically shaped
by power politics, in this case, one cannot help but wonder which side, if either,
would have had dominance over the practice. As for table-turning in the U.S. and
Europe, there was in fact no agreement as to why the table rotated and moved. The
Spiritualists, of course, argued that the movement was a clear manifestation of the
spirit world. Others believed it was pure trickery. Scientists such as Michael Faraday
and William Carpenter explained the movements in terms of involuntary muscular
reactions triggered by unconscious anticipation. It is unlikely that the American sail-
ors who brought the practice to Japan would have been able to explain the phenom-
enon to the Japanese, even if they had been able to understand each other’s respective
languages. Again, we have a picture that complicates the usual trope of “advanced
nations” fascinating the “unenlightened” natives with the magic of technology. Al-
though the natives are fascinated with this new technology, the representatives of the
advanced nations are unable to enlighten them as to the process by which it works;
indeed, they themselves remain mystified by it. The advent of Kokkuri represents not
the transference of knowledge—as was happening in other circles with regard to
education, political systems, economics, and military institutions—but the transfer-
ence of mystery.
The Mystic Context

Regardless of its presumed importation from the U.S., however, we have also seen
that the name Kokkuri quickly came to have profound associations with existing Jap-
anese spirits. Indeed, though it entered the country laterally from abroad, the game
soon came to be thought of in terms of traditional mystic practices. In particular,
Kokkuri was understood as a form of spirit possession in which the apparatus receives
into itself a spirit that responds to questions posed by the participants. Of course,
spirit possession is a complex phenomenon manifest in many disparate forms; the
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literature on possession in Japan alone is vast. Kokkuri can be characterized, however,

as a form of what Komatsu Kazuhiko refers to as controlled possession, in which a medium
of some sort—a kuchi-yose, a miko, an itako—receives into herself the spirit of, for
example, a kitsune (Komatsu 2000, 436–37). Through employing a medium, a village
might forecast events of the coming year or ascertain the cause of a problem that had
been plaguing it. Mediums or shamans often passed through intense physical and
psychological trials and training in order to develop the special skills required for
their profession.9
The conflation of Kokkuri with mediumship pervaded the contemporary dis-
course. One author, for example, emphasizes the fact that Kokkuri very much resem-
bles traditional forms of Japanese shamanism known as kuchi-yose and ichiko (itako)
and suggests that Kokkuri might be called a “Western ichiko” (Ryōkū 1887a, 3). As
noted earlier, however, Kokkuri did not require professional mediums. Rather, all
you needed were a few people, some bamboo, some string, a tray or the circular lid
of a rice container, and “with no special connections or influence, you could easily
have a supernatural presence dispatched to your sitting room” (Ichiyanagi 1994, 27).
To be sure, other forms of fortune-telling in Japan could be performed informally by
nonprofessionals, and, in this sense, Kokkuri was not unique. As a method of divi-
nation relying on outside spirits to possess something, however, Kokkuri may represent
the first recorded instance in which possession, as such, became practicable in a private
household by untrained participants.
With the advent of Meiji, many Edo-period folk customs came to be viewed with
suspicion and classified under the pejorative rubric of superstition (meishin); indeed,
this reclassification of beliefs was one of the explicit objectives of Enryō’s monsterol-
ogy. Possession and the practice of shamanism did not escape the scientific gaze of
the bunmei kaika (civilization and enlightenment) ideologues. Through the introduc-
tion of Western-based medical and psychological practices, spirit possession gradually
came to be defined in terms of mental illness; fox possession and related phenomena
were increasingly diagnosed as nervous disorders or so-called diseases of the brain, and
those suffering from uncontrolled possession were no longer treated by religious or
folk practitioners but were confined to newly built psychiatric hospitals. Moreover,
the shamanic methods I have referred to as controlled possession came to be implicated
not as folk practice but as crime: By 1872, laws outlawing the practice of shamanism
began to be promulgated throughout the country. Invoking the rhetoric of enlight-
enment, these laws strictly forbade miko, kuchi-yose, oracular readings, and the like,
warning that they deceived the common people and led the masses astray (Kawamura
1993, 35–36).10
9
Komatsu’s distinction here is between uncontrolled (seigyo sarenai) possession, by which
he means possession that occurs without the will of the possessed, and controlled (seigyo sareta)
possession, in which “a religious practitioner we call a ‘shaman’ can cause, when she so desires,
her own body or somebody else’s body to be possessed by either a good or evil spirit” (Komatsu
2000, 436–37). Kawamura (1993, 123–51) documents in a modern context the rigorous
process by which several women have become professional shamans or miko. See also Blacker
(1986).
10
Strictly speaking, the Meiji period was not the first time possession phenomena had
been considered from an analytical perspective. During the Edo period, medical practitioner
Kagawa Shūtoku (1683–1755) suggested that most cases of so-called fox possession were not
caused by kitsune but by mental illness; ultimately, Kagawa did not deny the existence of
spirits, but he did describe fox possession as a common misnomer for an assortment of con-
ditions. Kawamura Kunimitsu points out, however, that Kagawa’s views were not standard
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To be sure, medical treatises and government edicts were not necessarily an effi-
cient method of altering long-standing traditions and village practices; the issuance
of edicts might merely be interpreted as an attempt by the new Meiji leaders to create
an image of modern governance for public and international consumption. Although
the extent to which these laws were enforced during the early-to mid-Meiji is unclear,
Kawamura Kunimitsu (1993, 36) cites at least one case from 1880 in which a shaman
was punished. Blacker also notes that until the Religious Bodies Law of 1945 granted
freedom of religious activities, many miko “practiced their calling only furtively and
in secret” (1986, 127–28). At the very least, then, the psychological and medical
concepts introduced to Japan during the bunmei kaika period officially altered the
discourse with regard to possession, turning it into a deviant practice fueled by out-
moded, superstitious beliefs. Though it is impossible to completely assess the pene-
tration of this intellectual Zeitgeist into the popular imaginary, it is fair to say that
the Meiji period—specifically the several years following the Restoration itself—rep-
resents a moment of disjuncture vis-à-vis attitudes toward spirit possession. After the
1870s, shamanism could no longer be considered an acceptable or appropriately mod-
ern practice. Rather, as Kawamura points out, “In modern Japanese society, the miko
becomes a symbolic presence of that which spreads ‘superstition’ and leads astray the
‘ignorant masses’ ” (Kawamura 1993, 38).
The Scientific Context

If the mystic context is one in which Kokkuri is understood as a form of spirit
possession, then the scientific context can be characterized as the elite, usually
Western-inspired, normative discourse bent on providing rational explanations in
order to debunk superstition and disenchant the mystic. In the preface to Yōkai gendan,
Enryō explicitly states his objective of enlightening the benighted folk of Japan: “For
the forward progress of civilization, I believe it is necessary to illuminate academically
the principles by which things work in order to make clear the way for those people
who are lost; and so I will explain here the causes and circumstances of Kokkuri”
(Inoue 2000, 15). The common folk are deluded, lost in a world in which people can
become possessed by foxes, and natural phenomena are attributed to the workings of
unseen spirits. Science can enlighten, driving away the darkness of mystery by re-
vealing, as Enryō puts it, “the principles by which things work” (Inoue 2000, 15).
For Enryō and like-minded thinkers, confidence in the explanatory powers of modern
science was set against a naive reliance on a premodern explanatory paradigm in which
yōkai and similar phenomena could affect the human world.
With regard to Kokkuri, Enryō’s attitude iterates the standard enlightenment
rhetoric in which science was lauded as the opposite of mystery. He asserts that
although “the common people [tsūjō no hito] believe [Kokkuri] to be the doings of
kitsune and tanuki or attribute it to the workings of demons and deities” (Inoue 2000,
37), there must be a rational cause other than spirit possession. His own explanation
is long and complex, including a detailed explication, complete with diagrams, of the
for his time (Kawamura 1997, 65–82). See also Burns (1997, 48–62). For more on the pro-
liferation of medical responses to possession during the Meiji period, see Kawamura (1997,
61–121), Burns (1997), and Figal (1999, 96–99). Burns (1997, 59) notes that the second and
third decades of Meiji witnessed the building of a number of psychiatric hospitals; by 1900
there were eight such facilities in Tokyo, three in Kyoto, two in Osaka, and one in Hakodate.
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workings of the human nervous system. Indeed, his treatise is remarkable for its detail
and physiological sophistication: He outlines the “structure of the nerves,” the role of
the brain and the spinal cord, and describes the synaptic connections created “between
the nerve cells.” Ultimately, he attributes the movement of Kokkuri to unconscious
muscular activities (fukaku kindō) caused by expectant attention (yoki ikō), which “occurs
when one believes in advance that something should be thus, and so all expectations
are focused in that one direction” (Inoue 2000, 44–50). The work of American scientist
William Carpenter, which explained table-turning and similar phenomena, was al-
most certainly a direct influence on Enryō’s analysis.11
By introducing unconscious muscular activities and expectant attention, Enryō conducts
the reader not only into the internal world of the human body but also into the human
psyche and farther from any association with the spirits of the external world. For
Enryō, the truth about the supernatural has a lot more to do with the natural impulses
running through nerve fibers than with shape-shifting animals. He transfers the
agency that animates Kokkuri from external yōkai to internal interpretations of external
phenomena.12
A Mystic Science: Human Electricity

While asserting pejoratively that the “uneducated” classes attribute the operations
of Kokkuri to possession, Enryō also notes that there is another theory circulating,
particularly among those with “a little bit of knowledge.” These people claim that
Kokkuri is caused neither by “kitsune or tengu, nor by deities or demons, but by the
operations of electricity.” Enryō quickly dismisses this conjecture, pointing out that
nothing in this regard has been made clear and that “recently, the public has overused
this word ‘electricity.’ Whenever there is something difficult to explain through the
physical sciences, everybody calls on electricity” (Inoue 2000, 37). In spite of Enryō’s
diatribe against it, the electrical paradigm would have broad popular appeal within
the cultural imaginary. The attribution of Kokkuri’s movements to the operations of
electricity reflects a burgeoning reliance on scientific explanation without a full com-
mitment to the difficult physiological and psychological paradigm Enryō was intro-
ducing. In a sense, electricity provided a middle ground—a new and foreign landscape
to be sure, but one still shrouded in a vale of ambiguity and allowing a magical
transcendence of common experience.
The invocation of electricity to explain away all sorts of mysteries was by no
means a distinctly Japanese inclination. In the U.S. and Europe, electricity occupied
a space in the cultural imaginary that was at once scientific, magic, entertaining, and
romantic, touted as a panacea for various diseases and as the secret behind numerous
inexplicable phenomena (see Asendorf 1993, 153–77). The discourse on electricity,
akin to the discourse on Spiritualism, dealt with profound philosophical questions in
which nothing less than the structure of the universe was at stake. John Bovee Dods,
11
Although in Yōkai gendan he does not cite Carpenter, in a later work, Enryō explicitly
refers to Carpenter’s Principles of Mental Physiology (which he calls Shinrisho) and quotes an
extended passage. See Inoue (1999, 569–70) and Carpenter (1883, 284–85). Enryō’s fukaku
kindō and yoki ikō can be interpreted as direct translations of Carpenter’s “unconscious muscular
activities” and “expectant attention” (Carpenter 1883, 32–38).
12
Enryō’s internalizing of the demons is reminiscent of the burgeoning of Western psy-
chological practices in which thoughts and ideas themselves came to be considered dangerous
phantasmagoria. See Castle (1995, 168–89).
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proponent of the “wonderful and mysterious science of Electrical Psychology” (Stone

1852, 2), exemplifies this attitude when he asserts that, “Electricity actuates the whole
frame of nature, and produces all the phenomena that transpire throughout the realms
of unbounded space” (Stone 1852, 26–27). Given such hyperbolic claims, it is not
surprising that those more scientifically inclined than the Spiritualists would summon
the powers of electricity to elucidate the small mysteries of the séance.
Though electricity had been a curiosity in Japan before the Meiji period, it was
not until the 1880s, almost exactly coincident with the advent of Kokkuri, that this
mysterious form of energy began to excite the popular imagination and light up the
Japanese cityscape.13 In July 1882, incandescent lighting was used to illuminate the
graduation ceremony of Tokyo Imperial University. In November of the same year,
part of Ginza was lit up, marking the general public’s first exposure to electric light
(Shimokawa and Katei sōgō kenkyūkai 2000, 130–32; Ishii 1997, 192–96). In 1883,
the first electrical-generating company was established in Tokyo and began supplying
power publicly in 1887 (Kikkawa 1995, 28). Electricity also permeated popular con-
sumer culture with electricity, or denki, becoming a trendy word used to name and
market all that was innovative and special.14
Not surprisingly, when something new and mysterious such as Kokkuri appeared
in the land, the electrical paradigm was immediately invoked as an explanation. Just
as natural phenomena could be attributed to the invisible machinations of supernatural
entities, so the movements of Kokkuri were explained by the operations of this strange
invisible substance called electricity. Electricity became a substitute for those things
that rationality had disenchanted; the very substance that brought enlightenment
came to be emblematic of a new mystery. In the opposition of the mystic and the
scientific, electricity acts as a discursive bridge between the two, simultaneously de-
nying and confirming both. Accordingly, several surviving texts situate electricity at
the root of the Kokkuri phenomenon. Produced for popular consumption, these doc-
uments reflect a general attitude toward Kokkuri held by those members of the com-
munity who had no access to the high-level education of Enryō but were interested
in understanding and taking part in the Kokkuri fad. More than Enryō’s work, they
provide a sense of how Kokkuri might have been understood by the nonelite classes
of Meiji, feeling their way through a new terrain in which the old metaphors were
losing status but the new ones were not yet confirmed.
Seiyō kijutsu Kokkuri kaidan, roughly translated as “Western Magic, the Myster-
ious Story of Kokkuri,” is a forty-two-page monograph “edited” by Ryōkū Yajin. The
text was originally published in March 1887, several months before Enryō’s Yōkai
gendan; at least one later edition, released after Yōkai gendan, is in specific dialogue
with Enryō’s assertions.15 Immediately apparent in Ryōkū’s discussion is the emphasis
13
For the Edo-period fascination with the erekiteru or static electricity generator, see Ichi-
yanagi (1997a, 42) and Screech (2002, 44–47).
14
A famous example is the denki buran or “electric brandy” served at the Kamiya Bar in
the Asakusa district of Tokyo since 1882. The name lent the drink a certain cachet appropriate
to a Western-style bar; undoubtedly the high alcohol content (45 percent) also contributed to
the suitability of the moniker. See “Denki buran to wa” on the Kamiya Bar Web site http://
www.kamiya-bar.com/02.html (accessed March 27, 2006).
15
The actual authorship of this text is somewhat obscure. Though Ishiwata Kenhachirō is
recorded as the editor and publisher in the bibliographic information at the end of the mono-
graph, the name Ryōkū Yajin (perhaps a pseudonym for Ishiwata) is noted as editor within
the actual text (Ryōkū 1887a, 7). I follow Ichiyanagi’s lead in discussing the text as the work
of Ryōkū (Ichiyanagi 1994, 21). My analysis is based primarily on the first edition of the
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on Kokkuri as a Western (seiyō) import that, he asserts, “was brought from America
two or three years ago” (Ryōkū 1887a, 8). Like Enryō, Ryōkū also claims that the
imposition of the three graphs for kitsune, tengu, and tanuki establishes an overdeter-
mined association with traditional Japanese kuchi-yose and ichiko fortune-tellers and
serves to “move the hearts of the uneducated folk” (Ryōkū 1887a, 7–8). Ryōkū also
promotes the power of education and knowledge but concedes that even with learning,
mystery persists:
Along with advances in human knowledge, the facts about that which is called
mysterious [fushigi] or strange [kimyō] reach a higher altitude. As the mysterious and
uncanny [fukashigi kikai] of the unenlightened world is vulgar and inferior, accord-
ingly the mysterious and uncanny of the enlightened world is dignified and superior.
(Ryōkū 1887a, 2)
Having noted that advances in human understanding lead to a whole new level of
mystery, Ryōkū proceeds to remove Kokkuri from its common, mistaken association
with yōkai such as kitsune and tengu and position it under this rubric of so-called
superior mysterious phenomena. He points out that Kokkuri’s uncanniness “is not at
all like sorcery, witchcraft, and the like. Through the energies of academic thought,
the principle of its operations should become clear—its movement is caused by the
workings of electricity [denki] within the human body (Human-electricity)” (Ryōkū
1887a, 15)16 (see fig. 4).
Most of Ryōkū’s monograph consists of information about how Kokkuri is con-
structed and played, with incidental commentary on the effectiveness of certain pro-
cedures for encouraging better electrical flow (see figs. 5 and 6). He notes, for example,
that the tray must always be round because a square or angular tray is not conducive
to good electrical circulation. As for the color of the cloth placed on top of the tray,
Ryōkū asserts that white or gold is most desirable, but “if you cover it with a blue
cloth it won’t move at all. For some reason the color blue interferes and stops the flow
of electricity” (Ryōkū 1887a, 29–30). He goes on to explain that so-called animal
electricity and human electricity work on a positive/negative principle, like yin and
yang, in which there must be the correct amount of electricity in each person’s body
(Ryōkū 1887a, 38–39). “For instance,” he notes,
If a healthy three or four year old infant sleeps together with an old grandparent for
two or three years, in the end it is said [the infant] will die. This is because the
electricity from the infant’s body will supplement the lack in the old person, creating
a balance that the [infant’s] supply cannot sustain. (Ryōkū 1887a, 39–40)17
Thus, he concludes, the workings of electricity are based on this natural principle of
flow from bodies of abundance to bodies of lack.
Ultimately, however, Ryōkū fails to elucidate the mechanism by which electricity
operates in the practice of Kokkuri. We can only assume that the flow of electricity
from one person to another through the apparatus is the force that makes the structure
monograph (published in March 1887) in the possession of Waseda University. I have also
consulted a third edition (published in June 1887, after Yōkai gendan), archived at the National
Diet Library, which is slightly longer (46 pages) and contains some changes, particularly
concerning Kokkuri’s importation into Japan. Ichiyanagi’s discussion appears to rely primarily
on this later edition. Both editions are priced at 20 sen.
16
Human-electricity is written parenthetically in English with a katakana gloss.
17
A remarkably similar example is given in Suzuki (1885, 6–7), one of the first texts to
introduce the concepts of mesmerism into Japan.
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Figure 4. Westerners play table-turning against a background haunted

by fox spirits. The caption reads: “A picture of men and women
gathered to divine fortune and misfortune through the secret method of
Kokkuri” (Ryōkū 1887a, 4–5; reproduced in Yumoto 1998, 316).
move, but this is never explicitly outlined. Nor does he connect the operations of
electricity to Kokkuri’s ability to answer questions and foretell the future. At first
glance, such lacunae seem odd for a monograph that purports to enlighten the reader
as to the workings of Kokkuri. The insufficiency of Ryōkū’s discussion, however,
provides a clue to its position in the broader cultural context with regard to the mystic
and the scientific. The positivist Restoration rhetoric denies the traditional spirits,
embracing Western science in their place. Western science, however, ultimately does
not diminish the mystery; it only transfers it to a more “dignified and superior” (Ryōkū
1887a, 2) plain of inquiry represented by the electrical paradigm. By transferring the
focus from traditional yōkai to the modern yōkai of electricity, the superstitious mys-
teries of the unenlightened past are redefined as the scientific mysteries of an enlight-
ened future. Mystery is equated with progress.
Ryōkū concludes his argument by stating that his intention was merely to dem-
onstrate “only that Kokkuri is not a mysterious [fushigi] practice.” At the same time,
however, he proclaims that “the operational phenomena of human electricity are subtle
and uncanny [bimyō kii]” (Ryōkū 1887a, 42). In other words, he simultaneously en-
lightens (Kokkuri is not a mystery) and mystifies (electricity is uncanny). Although
Kokkuri can be explained by electricity, nobody can explain electricity, an intangible
phenomenon the operations of which can only be registered through the movements
of a machine. Ryōkū claims that electricity may be different from “sorcery or witch-
craft,” but ultimately it remains “something aptly labeled mysterious” (Ryōkū 1887a,
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Figure 5. The construction of the apparatus (Ryōkū 1887a, 31;

reproduced in Yumoto 1998, 317).
38). That is to say, Kokkuri, and the human electricity through which it works,
retains its magic, though it is no longer the magic of Edo-period superstition. Rather,
it is a scientific brand of magic, indicative not of a backward nation but of Western-
ization and progress, a rational, enlightened enchantment.
Ryōkū’s approach betrays a sense of the in-between, an acceptance of—indeed a
promulgation of—an ambiguous (and therefore appealing) solution to the Kokkuri
mystery. In the final analysis, his monograph does nothing to disenchant Kokkuri; it
only transfers the enchantment from the old to the new. If we recall Max Weber’s
famous comment that “The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and
intellectualization and, above all, the ‘disenchantment of the world’ ” (Weber 1958,
155), Ryōkū’s move is all the more intriguing. Far from quashing enchantment, he
is broadening its realm to include the whole of intellectual inquiry, positing a certain
irrationality within the sciences themselves: “If we are to judge by the use of the
single word ‘mysterious,’ then in all the phenomena of the universe, in everything
around us, there is nothing that is not mysterious. In astronomy, mathematics and
science, there are a great many circumstances that are mysterious” (Ryōkū 1887a, 36).
Seiyō kijutsu Kokkuri kaidan went through at least three printings, evidence of the
text’s popularity and its resonance with a curious public. Though we can never know
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Figure 6. The positioning of the hands (Ryōkū 1887a, 32; reproduced

in Yumoto 1998, 317).
the specific responses of the readership, we can assume that Ryōkū’s lack of conclu-
siveness with regard to the link between electricity and Kokkuri did not deter people
from purchasing his monograph. On the contrary, his transference of the mystery from
the rural spirits of the past to the modern spirit of electricity may have attracted
recently urbanized readers intent on sloughing off the pre-Meiji mysteries of their
own pasts but reluctant to abandon altogether the possibility of the unexplainable.
To be sure, the efforts of the bunmei kaika thinkers did meet with success in
changing the metaphors called upon to explain mystery; in the new metaphorical
landscape, kitsune, tengu, and tanuki were disbarred as explanations. But this did not
change an underlying reliance on the invocation of forces beyond the ken of everyday
experience to explain the mysterious, the invocation of, as Ryōkū would put it, su-
perior mysteries such as electricity. Seiyō kijutsu Kokkuri kaidan is emblematic of this
persistence of enchantment (or desire for enchantment) that would compete with the
rationalistic explanations of Enryō and other intellectuals of his ilk.
Another shorter document published in Osaka in 1886 similarly reflects this
reluctance to completely disenchant the unexplainable. Jinshin denki no zuga (Diagram
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of Human Electricity), by Kojima Hyakuzō, pithily embodies the collage of discourses

that surrounded Kokkuri, highlighting the same issues featured in Ryōkū’s work.18
The cover itself draws on the cultural capital of Kokkuri’s Western origins, catching
the reader’s eye with the mention of New York and the prominently featured English
words Human Electricity. Here was a document that dealt with the trendiest of fads,
filtered through the popular language of the West and of science. Indeed, as with
much of the discourse surrounding Kokkuri, this document exhibits a kind of popular
Occidentalism, through which Western knowledge is fetishized as exotic and desirable
and manipulated for local uses.
Essentially an instruction manual for the practice of Kokkuri, Jinshin denki no
zuga borrows the rhetoric of science but ultimately allow the enchantment to linger.
First, Kojima explains both Kokkuri’s association with the entertainment districts as
well as its misassociation with traditional yōkai: “Some geisha in the Shinagawa en-
tertainment district imagined [these movements to be caused by] the mysterious
powers of kitsune or tanuki, and unreasonably applied the name ‘Kokkuri-san’ ” (Kojima
1886). Kojima seems to explain away the whole issue in commonsensical, Enryō-like
fashion: “Each person puts a single hand on the three-legged platter. When the hand
of one of these people gets tired, the heaviness naturally causes the tray to tilt. . . .
[When this happens], people unreasonably believe that Kokkuri-san has arrived.”
As we read on, however, we discover that Kojima is not, in fact, debunking the
practice itself; rather, he is criticizing the form of play with one hand on the apparatus.
The correct way, he notes, is to place both hands on the tray so that the fingers of all
participants are in contact. This touching of fingers presumably completes an electrical
circuit that causes the apparatus to move (see figs. 7 and 8). Like Ryōkū, however,
Kojima is vague about the details. Though he professes, “The movements of this form
of play known as Kokkuri are completely based on the operations of Human Elec-
tricity,” he never actually outlines the dynamics of this relationship. In the end, he
succeeds only in reenchanting the practice and noting the persistence of mystery: “The
reasons why electricity works in this manner are yet to be discovered.”
Kojima’s equivocation, his in-betweeness with regard to a number of discourses,
speaks to a public willing to embrace manifold possibilities. A perfectly understand-
able explanation was not necessary to those playing Kokkuri; in effect, “good” expla-
nations diminished the excitement of ambiguity and the possibility of the undiscov-
ered. Kojima’s readers were looking for an explanation that, in the final analysis, would
explain nothing at all: an explanation that would encourage the persistence of mystery.
Such an explanation, it turns out, is not a debunking exegesis such as Enryō provides
but rather an explanation of how to make Kokkuri work more effectively, that is, of
how to play the game. Just like Ryōkū, Kojima ultimately situates Kokkuri not solely
as either a mystic or a scientific practice but as a little bit of both and mostly as a
form of recreation. His discussion gestures to the fact that Kokkuri serves as a site of
overlap and coalescence within the space of play, a space that inspires negotiation
between differing worldviews and allows for the quiet subversion of mystic as well as
scientific modes of discourse, treating them both as an opportunity for entertainment
and titillation.
The Progress of Enchantment

In the 1880s, while Meiji intellectuals and oligarchs were well on a course of
transforming Japan into a modern nation that was electrified and militarized and
18
This pamphletlike broadsheet has no pagination and was originally priced at 2 sen, 5 ri.
It is archived at the National Diet Library.
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Figure 7. The one-handed, “incorrect,” method of play according to

Kojima (Kojima 1886; reproduced in Yumoto 1998, 315).
competitive in a world market, profound transitions were also taking place in the
lives of the populace. Unlike political and ideological shifts, however, processes of
cultural change, transitions on the level of mentalité, necessarily came gradually and
inconsistently, full of stops and starts, clashes and overlappings, and hybridizations.
As an example of the way in which cultural transformation worked within everyday
practices, Kokkuri was not, as it were, the only game in town. Similar hybrid trends—
imported from abroad but taking on native resonance and meanings—included, for
example, a passion for playing cards (torampu asobi) that began in the late 1880s and
peaked in the 1890s (Yumoto 1998, 190–93). Guidebooks such as Seiyō yūgi karuta
shiyōhō (Western Recreation: Directions for Playing Cards, 1885) introduced the game
to players eager for a new form of recreation that would bring a little of the aura of
the foreign into the indigenous space of the everyday. Within this context, however,
Kokkuri is particularly significant because it not only provides us with an example
of a recreation practice adapted from abroad but also raises profound questions re-
garding belief and the ways in which humans understand both the visible and the
invisible worlds around them.
In the experience related by Tsubouchi Shōyō at the outset of this article, we saw
how the strange movements of the Kokkuri apparatus mystified all those who touched
it. As Shōyō continues the vignette, however, he notes that he himself remained
unimpressed by the new amusement. “Most likely,” he explains, “the knowledge of
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911806000659
Figure 8. The “correct” method, with both hands on the apparatus and
fingers contacting each other (Kojima 1886; reproduced in Yumoto
1998, 315).
mental physiology [shinri seirigaku] came from abroad first to the medical and liter-
ature departments of Tokyo University.” Having studied there himself and having
read (like Enryō) Carpenter’s Principles of Mental Physiology, Shōyō is already familiar
with the workings of clairvoyance, mesmerism, Spiritualism, table-turning, and the
like. “According to Carpenter’s interpretation,” Shōyō continues soberly, “the move-
ment of the table is [caused by] the operations of ‘expectant attention.’ And because
I believed this, no matter how hard everybody at the gathering tried to get the tray
to tilt with me [playing], it ended in failure” (Tsubouchi 1927/1977, 472–73).
Shōyō implies that you must believe in one or the other: the scientific or the
mystic. Because he believes Carpenter’s explanations, the process is demystified; his
scientific interpretation disenchants the apparatus. In fact, the evidence he cites to
prove the validity of his own interpretation is that Kokkuri refuses to respond when
he plays; the power of scientific reason stymies the power of the mystic. Both Shōyō
and Enryō insist on this opposition of the mystic and the scientific, promoting the
dominance of the latter as part of Japan’s progress along a modern trajectory. One of
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911806000659
the critical points demonstrated by the discourse and practice of Kokkuri, however,
is that mystery and enchantment are not banished by rationalism. This is not to say
that there is no shift in the terrain in which mystery is lodged; indeed, the antisu-
perstition rhetoric of Enryō certainly caused the metaphorical guise in which mystery
was shrouded to become indelibly altered. Ultimately, however, the plurality of new
explanations for Kokkuri’s movements helped usher in fresh modes of enchantment,
allowing mystery to be transferred to the realm of the nerves and expectant attention
and particularly to the popular notion of human electricity. Indeed, while Enryō and
others may have been intent on implementing a rational regimen for the nation, the
playfulness of Kokkuri represents the tactics of the Meiji consumer, whose persistent
desire for enchantment translates the discoveries of science into a whole new world of
mystery.
Both the mysterious practice of table-turning/Kokkuri as well as the scientific
knowledge that professed to demystify it came to Japan from the West. Significantly,
however, they entered through very different conduits: the sailors in Shimoda as
opposed to English-language texts and the professors of Tokyo University. Despite
the debunking efforts of Enryō and Shōyō, Kokkuri proliferated on the level of com-
mon practice, persisting as an exciting link to the otherworld. The discourses that
emerged to explain and promote it position the practice itself as a hybrid, situated
ambivalently among a variety of competing claims of agency: mystic, scientific, or the
mystical science of human electricity. By inspiring a plurality of explanations, Kok-
kuri offered a subtle form of resistance not against Western knowledge itself but
against the co-optation of such knowledge for a regime of disenchantment that threat-
ened to infiltrate everyday life. Channeling the ghosts of spirit possession, Kokkuri
refused complicity with new Meiji modes of ideological production that would banish
the supernatural from the lives of the people.
This is not to say that Kokkuri presented a real threat to what historian Gerald
Figal has described as, “a network of national power that was being constructed
through new knowledges manipulated and institutionalized by an elite caste who
were formally and informally associated with the Meiji government” (Figal 1999,
199). As a form of homemade entertainment, Kokkuri seems to have flourished pri-
marily in a space immune to official censure. Only when the commercial potential of
the practice inspired its commodification did the authorities find a strategy for en-
forcement: According to an 1886 newspaper account, seven individuals were being
investigated by the local police in connection with the advent of a “Kokkuri teaching
center” in a Kyoto neighborhood and the appearance of “numerous” outlets selling
Kokkuri apparatus (Edamatsu, Sugiura, and Yagi 1986, 230).19 To be sure, the results
of this investigation are unclear, and Kokkuri does not seem to have been a major
focus of police inquiry after this point, but its early configuration here as a crime
attests to the implicit resistance represented by its practice and proliferation.
Although public interest in Kokkuri seems to have peaked in the 1880s, the
game never completely disappeared from the popular arena. Its absorption into the
cultural imaginary of Japan had become so complete that in 1903 when the Yomiuri
shimbun reported on the use of a planchette as a divination procedure in England, the
article was entitled “Seiyō no Kokkuri-san,” or “A Western Kokkuri” (Yomiuri shim-
bun, 1903). Ironically, if unintentionally, the title of the article inverts Ryōkū’s in-
19
The article, entitled “Kami oroshi to Kokkuri ryūkō,” [Descent of the Deities and the
Kokkuri Fad.], appeared in the Asahi shinbun of July 16, 1886 (see Edamatsu, Sugiura, and
Yagi 1986, 230).
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911806000659
vocation of Kokkuri as a form of “Western magic,” as if the Japanese version of

Kokkuri had now become the standard reference when alluding to techniques for
communicating with the spirits. More importantly, the Kokkuri boom of the late
1880s was the harbinger of an interest in hypnotism that would sweep the nation in
the 1890s (Ichiyanagi 1997a). Like Kokkuri, hypnotism would occupy an appealingly
ambiguous position in the cultural imaginary, representing simultaneously a form of
mysticism, a mode of entertainment, and the cutting edge of science.
If one emblem of modernity is the machine, then certainly we can think of Kok-
kuri as a sort of mechanical embodiment of both the mystic and the scientific: a
speaking machine, like a phonograph, through which otherworldly voices could be
channeled. As such, Kokkuri is the perfect icon of a burgeoning modernity: an easily
constructed machine available to almost anybody and serving the purpose of producing
mystery and of generating the thrill of contact with the unknown in the space of the
everyday. Eventually, of course, the mystery-making machine of Kokkuri would make
way for more lasting and practical modern spirits, as the cities of Meiji Japan became
haunted by streetlights, telegraphs, trains—mechanical contraptions animated by in-
visible forces. For the few years it flourished as a popular practice, however, Kokkuri
was a powerful medium, simultaneously a vestige of the ghosts that possessed the past
and a portent of the spirits that would possess the future.
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Strange Games and Enchanted Science: The Mystery of Kokkuri by Michael Dylan Foster

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Strange Games and Enchanted

Science: The Mystery of Kokkuri

Michael Dylan Foster (mdfoster@ucr.edu) is Assistant Professor of Japanese and Compar-

Figure 1. Playing Kokkuri (Inoue 1999, 547).

Figure 2. Photograph of Kokkuri from a 1912 text on hypnotism

Contact with the Otherworld

Figure 3. The practice of table-turning as illustrated in Table Moving

The Mystic Context

literature on possession in Japan alone is vast. Kokkuri can be characterized, however,

The Scientific Context

A Mystic Science: Human Electricity

proponent of the “wonderful and mysterious science of Electrical Psychology” (Stone

Figure 4. Westerners play table-turning against a background haunted

Figure 5. The construction of the apparatus (Ryōkū 1887a, 31;

Figure 6. The positioning of the hands (Ryōkū 1887a, 32; reproduced

of Human Electricity), by Kojima Hyakuzō, pithily embodies the collage of discourses

The Progress of Enchantment

Figure 7. The one-handed, “incorrect,” method of play according to

vocation of Kokkuri as a form of “Western magic,” as if the Japanese version of

H IRANO I MAO . 1974. Den Enryō [Biography of Enryō]. Tokyo: Sōfūsha.

M URAKAMI T ATSUGORŌ . 1912. Saishinshiki saiminjutsu [The Most Recent Forms of

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