Reproducing elder male power through ritual performance in Japan

Most research by gerontologists into the relationship between religion and aging has focused upon the potential health benefits of religious participation among Americans who follow Judeo-Christian oriented forms of worship and belief. This research has shown that both as a social institution and source of existential meaning, religion provides an important resource for older people in terms of fellowship and as a means of coping and adapting to social change and personal loss. Other religious traditions and other aspects of salience of religious participation for older people have been less thoroughly considered. This article investigates a religious ritual in Japan, that, rather than being a source of consolation, is an expression of symbolic capital associated with elder status and, thus, gerontocratic power. The ritual contributes to representing and reproducing the power of older residents in a rural Japanese community, partly due to its being administratively situated within an age-grade system that is a part of neighborhood political organization. Through its performance, the ritual visually reproduces and represents stratified social structures that concentrate power in the hands of male members of the senior age grade.