“This book presents a provocative discussion that critiques the idea of the revival of witchcraft in the neo-liberalised contemporary world, as represented by the ‘modernity model of witchcraft’, and attempts to formulate a ‘spiderweb model’ that connects witchcraft to contemporary society in a more complex manner. The book is a unique ethnography of the collective memory of indigenous knowledge and local historicity. The foundation of this book is the comprehensive and precise fieldwork that has long been a hallmark of cultural anthropology in Japan. It is not unusual for Japanese cultural anthropologists to spend their whole life in a single field. The materials and written records that the author, a Japanese anthropologist, has compiled over decades of work will serve well as regional archives.”
