396 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1947 



Religion 



The native animistic religion has survived in little-modified form 

 in the Central and South Kyukyus. Owing to long-time Japanese 

 domination, it was less strong in the Northern islands. Its strength, 

 however, from Okinawa south is indicated by the absurdly small num- 

 ber of adherents to foreign religions in that area. For 1937 less than 

 4 percent of the people were Buddhists, less than 2 percent Shintoists, 

 and only 0.2 percent Christians. This means that 94 percent of the 

 people practiced their old-time religion, although a few may have 

 had no religious feelings at all. 



The essence of this folk religion was the endowment of natural 

 phenomena with supernatural forces. Thus fire, mountain peaks, the 

 sea, and groves of trees made up a pantheon of spirits, to which the 

 people paid homage. Locally sacred areas were marked by fetishes. 

 Temples came as a later, probably foreign-influenced, development. 



The worship of these vague naturalistic spirits is an old and very 

 widespread form of religion. Particularly striking in Ryukyu 

 religion was the veneration of the hearth, which was sacred to the 

 fire god. Also noteworthy was the cult of sacrosanct priestesses, or 

 "noros," for whom celibacy was once a requirement of office. These 

 "noros" were almost the sole religious practitioners of the native reli- 

 gion, although lesser female assistants took minor roles. The office of 

 "noro" was largely confined to certain families and was passed on from 

 generation to generation with the paraphernalia of sacred objects — a 

 vesture, tablets inscribed with names of ancestral priestesses, a string 

 of crystal beads with jewels or stones in between, and a fire-god fetish. 



Almost every village had a "noro" who sometimes wielded gi-eat 

 enough power to reverse the will of the people. A "noro" figured 

 prominently in the village-square festivals and was consulted at other 

 times for prayers and advice. Less benevolent practitioners were the 

 fortune-tellers, or "yuta," who in addition to clairvoyance, would pro- 

 pitiate evil spirits and ghosts. The Japanese administrators felt the 

 "yuta" abused their influence and in recent times outlawed their 

 operations. 



The Lite Cycle 



There is little information on childbirth practices in the Ryukyus 

 immediately prior to the war. In 1939 the ratio of physicians was 

 about 3.5 per 10,000 population, and the number of registered mid- 

 wives not much higher. The 1945 questionnaire administered to 471 

 Okinawan mothers indicated that 58 percent of the women were 

 attended by midwives for the last child, with the remainder almost 

 wholly unattended professionally. 



Formerly, both mother and child were kept close to the sacred 

 family hearth for a week, while friends and relatives made loud music 



