Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: This article explores the meaning and use in Japan of the hara obi (belly band), first attested in the eighth-century chronicle Kojiki, tracing its changing medical, religious, ritual, and literary significance up to the present day. While some Tokugawa-era doctors disparaged the hara obi’s medical value, it continued to play a role in prenatal care which continues today, a role enhanced by its function as a religious talisman and an object of folk tradition. This complex of effective and affective meanings has contributed to the hara obi’s survival alongside modern birth technology, a survival chronicled and reflected upon by contemporary Japanese women’s writing on pregnancy and childbirth.
Source: Asian Medicine
Author: Amanda C. Seaman
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2013709210