英文摘要 |
As medical treatment and technology have developed, the idea that a fetus is a life has gradually become more widespread in contemporary society, and such changes in concepts of life have engendered new religious beliefs and phenomenon. Yingling嬰靈 (infant spirits), a term that indicates miscarried, stillborn, or aborted fetuses and infants who die quite young, emerged in Taiwan in the 1980s, and people gradually became familiar with it. Much of the research focused on the subject of yingling related phenomenon indicates its origin in Japan's mizuko kuyō水子供養 (water children memorial rituals), but rarely does this research provide a comprehensive account of this. Like the concept of yingling, mizuko in Japan generally refers to the premature death of unborn fetuses and newborns, and the memorial rituals to mizuko are designated collectively as mizuko kuyō. The background to this emergence of yingling and mizuko in Taiwanese and Japanese society involves similar contemporary issues in both places; however, the questions of how this concept coalesced and how corresponding rituals emerged still require further investigation. In this article, I first aim to review prior research on this topic, and then explore methods related to premature death fetuses and infants that were utilized in earlier periods in Taiwanese and Japanese society. Thereafter, I offer a simple introduction of postwar mizuko kuyō. On the basis of these discussions, I then turn the focus to Taiwan to concentrate on the religious groups that have arisen in response to calls for yingling gongyang嬰靈供養 (infant spirit memorial rituals), and through this, review the rise of beliefs related to yingling and their manifestation in the 1980s. Then, I discuss in depth and compare the ritual practices of both Taiwan and Japan. This article is an attempt to reexamine the account of the Japanese origin of Taiwanese yingling beliefs, and to further point out the direction of these ritual practices in both Taiwan and Japan along with some related questions. |