An Island Listening to the Voices of Ancestral Spirits - Learning from the Yuta of Ishigaki Island (1980s)

An Island Listening to the Voices of Ancestral Spirits - Learning from the Yuta of Ishigaki Island (1980s)

On Ishigaki Island in the 1980s, while waves of modernization and tourism development were sweeping the island, the ancient spiritual culture of "yuta" was deeply rooted in the local community. Yuta were mediums who communicated with ancestral spirits and deities to attend to people's concerns, offering healing and guidance that differed from modern medicine. They supported the internal balance of the community by verbalizing individual anxieties, such as illness, family problems, and job insecurity, and returning them to society as the will of the ancestral spirits. The role of Utah was not mere witchcraft, but also a system of knowledge that made possible a "dialogue with the invisible other," which is being mourned in the face of increasing urbanization. The interviews carefully trace how these women's practices functioned within the community, and question the possibility of "spiritual care" that modern society has forgotten. Beliefs are often dismissed as superstition, b
ut the stories of these mediums, rooted in their communities, provide clues to the truth of people living between modernity and tradition, between the rational and irrational.