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Chicken-beheading rituals are a quasi-judicial ritual in Taiwanese culture that have acted as a dispute resolution mechanism for complicated and emotionally charged disputes that have not been settled in traditional courts or through private mediation. Chicken-beheading rituals have come to be associated with personal honesty in Taiwanese society and become more of a symbol of integrity than an actuality in contemporary Taiwan. == History == Chicken-beheading rituals have historical roots in the legal traditions of China’s Fujian Province, where over 70% of Taiwanese citizens can trace their lineage. In feudal Fujianese society, individuals who were suspected of theft were taken before images of judges and forced to proclaim an oath of innocence. Someone hiding behind the judge image would then point at the defendant who would supposedly break down and confess if they were guilty.〔 Legal trials were also often conducted in the presence of images of deities as a way of forcing individuals to be honest. Temple managers even sometimes acted as judges themselves. These Fujianese trials have been embedded into Taiwanese culture and many other aspects of Fujianese tradition have also been transferred into Taiwanese chicken-beheading rituals, notably the use of oaths of innocence (赌咒, duzhou “oath－making”- literally meaning to gamble on an oath) and use of local deities to encourage people to fear breaking their oaths. In a broader sense, the history of chicken-beheading rituals represents the important role that religion plays in Taiwanese society; Taiwanese citizens turn to their local city deity to arbitrate when the Taiwanese legal system is insufficient. The exact dates of the first instances of chicken-beheading rituals in Taiwan are unknown, yet the rituals were frequently practiced throughout the 19th Century and were still common during the Japanese rule of Taiwan in the first half of the 20th Century. However, the rate of chicken-beheading rituals declined as Taiwan rapidly modernised in the later half of the 20th Century. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Taiwanese chicken-beheading rituals」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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