THE CATALRA BOW, Dr Carmen Blacker's magnum opus the definitive study of shamanistic practices in Japan, begins with a vivid account of a staking scene in the Noh play Am no Ue. There the Pnncess Aoi is dying, possessed by the avenging spmt of the Lady Rokujō. A medium is trying to speak to the evil spmt by beating on a drum, twanging her catalpa bow and reciting the spell summoning the spmt. To banish the appantion an ascetic, a hermit from a cave in the nearby mountain, is called m. The ‘bridge’ or passageway on the Noh stage, over which the appantion comes and goes, intervenes between this and the other world. Complementing one another's role, both the medium and the ascetic have the uncommon power to transcend the barrier between the two worlds.

This power, according to Dr Blacker in The Catalpa Bow, bears ‘no relation to physical strength or mental agility’ but is ‘acquired by means, which often weaken a man's bodily health and strength, and which appears from time to time in boys who are virtual halfwits’. She uses the word ‘shaman’ ‘to indicate those people, who have acquired this power; who in a state of dissociated trance are capable of communicating directly with spiritual beings’ (Ibid.). They are exemplified, as in the Noh play Aoi no Ue, by the medium as a transmitter or a vessel for communication with the other world and by the ascetic as a healer.

To acquire this uncommon transcending power the ascetic is required to undergo austerities for his initiation and to ‘accomplish a severe regime of ascetic practice’ such as fasting and ‘a journey to the other world’ (Ibid.). As the medium summons the spiritual beings from the otherworld, so the ascetic leaves this world to make an outward journey to the other world. He may make his journey in ‘ecstatic, visionary form’ (Ibid.) ‘in a state of suspended animation’ (Ibid.) or only in soul in an ‘out of the body’ trance. Alternatively, in both body and soul he may make his mimetic journey to the other world projected symbolically into the geography of this world.