Liminality Reimagined: Tales of Trespassers into Sacred Space and Tainted Sages

Abstract

The concept of borders or, more broadly, liminality, as it evolved within the world of Japanese culture and literature came to acquire a wide and complicated set of meanings. The challenge of participating, by way of experimental enquiry, in a comprehensive examination of the various stages along this multifaceted evolution is of special interest to scholars in the humanities. My own contribution to this ongoing project rests on a single presupposition, one which necessarily arises from a consideration of the very nature of liminality. It will be admitted that any given border is, in fact, an embodiment, that is, an effort to give a degree of visible reality to something that is otherwise intangible and invisible. That something is a complex of memories, both those memories associated with the initial conception of the border in question, as well as those memories latterly associated with the many disputes that arise throughout the history of that border. A border, then, is a symbol the function of which is to vividly bring to mind a complex of associated memories. Like memories, these borders, once established, are far from stable. Rather, borders are continually in flux, so much so that they are bound to be negated and ultimately nullified. This transformation, this appearance and disappearance of borders—a process we might refer to as the dynamism of liminality—deserves special attention. The essential nature of any border, I shall argue, lies not in any supposed stability, but rather in those aspects that are ever changing and unstable. This is the curious paradox of liminality: a border can only be properly grasped when considered as something whose delineations are not at all clear or fixed; liminality has no fixed borders. It is this paradox that I would like to examine here. Approaching the subject from a primarily anthropological perspective, I shall shift the focus from a simple discussion of borders to a more dynamic consideration of border crossings (ekkyō 越境), that is, movement between and across liminal spaces. Examples of border crossings are to be found most manifestly within the world of literary and performative texts. Medieval myths and folktales are especially rich Liminality Reimagined: Tales of Trespassers into Sacred Space and Tainted Sages