From the Jongmyo Shrine to the Living Room

The grandest use of the tablet is at Jongmyo in Seoul, the shrine that holds the spirit tablets of the kings and queens of the Joseon dynasty in long low halls built to accommodate a dynasty as it accumulated. The royal ancestral rite performed there is still carried out annually, with its own orchestral music and its own choreographed dance, and it is one of the few court ceremonies anywhere that has run more or less continuously in a recognisable form. UNESCO proclaimed the rite and its music in 2001 and it was later inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, which places the state ceremony under the heading of heritage as well as of religion.

The household end of the same tradition has moved a great deal more. Jesa was for centuries a duty of the eldest son in the main line, tied to inheritance, land and the ordering of a lineage, and the number of generations to be commemorated was itself a matter of rank and dispute. Twentieth century urbanisation, smaller families and the movement of women into paid work all pressed on a rite that requires a great deal of cooking. Korean Christian families divide over whether the rite is worship or remembrance, with Catholic practice generally accommodating it and many Protestant churches not. The result is that a single object type now sits inside a state ceremony, a contested family obligation and, for some households, nothing at all.