An Inquiry into Mysteries

When kokkuri spread across Japan, its moving trays and bamboo legs seemed to announce hidden facts and future fortunes. Inoue Enryō set out to investigate both the phenomenon and the belief surrounding it.

Drawing on letters from many provinces and experiments of his own, he records the changing rituals, the questions people asked, and the social harm that followed unquestioning trust.

His explanation connects the apparatus’s construction with attention, habit, association, and unconscious muscular movement. The result is a distinctive encounter between Japanese popular belief and nineteenth-century psychological inquiry.