The Okinawan yuta medium in Meiji ethnographies

Record summary

Nineteenth-century accounts of Okinawan yuta describe mediums who diagnosed illness, communicated with ancestors or deities and entered ritualized states. The material matters for comparing mediumship, culturally shaped dissociation and healing with European spiritualist categories. Sources include Japanese administrative ethnographies and later studies drawing on oral traditions. Because the Ryukyu Kingdom was incorporated into Japan in 1879, descriptions also reflect colonial classification and efforts to regulate local religion. The practice is historically documented, while individual trance experiences require separate source criticism.