摘要：Ema ｽ} is the generic Japanese word for “votive tablet.” This article
explores the challenge of interpreting ema created and offered during World
War Two, and argues that the meanings of an ema are multiple and layered.
Whether actualized or not, or only in part, the potential of votive tablets both
signifies the agency of popular consciousness and lies in transforming popular
consciousness. The legibility of a presented tablet is informed by a reader’s
symbolic literacy and structural relationship to the producer, subject, or ritual
context. The ambivalence and ambiguity of wartime ema resist impositions of
an official or true story, and their scarcity and ephemerality make moot interpretive
approaches premised on a large data base. Also addressed, therefore, is
the necessity of developing strategies for tapping the ethnographic, historical,
and cultural richness of ephemeral artifacts, such as votive tablets, that were
ubiquitous yesterday and scarce today.
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