Out of this world experiences. Understanding the role of oracles in Japanese society

To meet specialists of the oracles in Japan leads to question how and why, in that society, nowadays, events that violate the laws of ordinary physics and psychology can articulate themselves to a well established social recognition based not only on belief but also on knowledge, that those specialists say they acquire through experience, intimate and personal. And yet, to question experience as a regime of proof and socio-religious legitimization, also implies rethinking how notions such as experience and nature fit into the local context, especially the latter one, which did not circulate widely until the end of the XIXth century. After showing why supernatural is not a relevant concept in this setting but nonetheless a useful instrument to think the diversity of categories of experience, the author proposes the expression subtle experience to point out those key experiences and analyses two types of initiatory rites which ground the function of oracle specialist. These rites clarify the way in which other or subtle experiences are shaped, interpreted and used by those who are subject to them and by society at large. They enable the author to address the key question of access to data from the fieldwork as well as of its restitution, as well as that of the periodical redefinition of those experiences by society and by authorities in the contemporary era, redefinition on which depend both the position of these specialists and the way there are considered. Adapted from the source document.