Where Japan's Mediumship Intersected Western Occultism

Presenter:

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Abstract

Japan’s Interwar years were the period when the spiritualist “mind cure” movements reached its heyday. In spite of the continuity they had with pre-modern mediumship tradition of folk Buddhism and Shintoism, the movements were no doubt a modernized form of the indigenous healing method where psychic capability of each healer was highly appreciated and extensively trusted among mass population. These movements look indigenous and independent from the spiritualism then favored in Western world, but recent studies has revealed that a Japanese Theosophist was involved into them probably with the purpose of harmonizing them with the occult theory he had learned in a Theosophical circle. Arguably, this was the first attempt to coalesce local Japanese mediumship traditions with broader context of Western occultism and his duty here was to explain indigenous spiritual phenomena with modern occult theories and terms. This man, a painter called himself Tami Koumé, is worth studying in terms that he did similar coalescing a few years before when he made his friends Western poets in London understand Japanese traditional stage performance No in spiritualist context, and thus inspired W. B. Yeats to create his mystic play At the Hawk’s Well in 1916. Using the materials recently discovered, to trace his occult pilgrimage and find how this theoretical hybridization of Western and Japanese mediumship came into Koumé’s idea is the purpose of my paper.