Arne Røkkum is Professor Emeritus and former curator of the East Asia collections at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway. He has been a Visiting Professor at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan, and the National University of the Philippines, Quezon City. His previous book with Routledge is Nature, Ritual, and Society in Japan’s Ryukyu Islands.

• Introduction: Animism as Mimetic Play 1. A Life Cycle on the Swiddens: The Dry and the Wet 2. Soul of Rice, Soul of the Dead 3. Making it Grow: The Shaman’s Seeding 4. Before the Harvest: The Shaman’s Probe 5. After the Harvest: The Shaman’s Prologue 6. After the Harvest: The Shaman’s Praise 7. A Shamanic Feast for the Spirits 8. Trapping the Shafts of the Sun 9. The Weight of Sacrifice 10. Devising a Swap Conclusion: An Animacy of Beings and Things Appendix 1: Ritual Cult Group Appendix 2: Glossary. Index