Making a magatama

Posted on May 19, 2012 by John D.

The Yoshinogari magatama expert gives instructions

The Yoshinogari theme park in northern Kyushu offers the opportunity to visitors to make a magatama stone bead.  It turned out to be much easier than expected. Like much else in life, you just need good tools and preparation.  Then you rub and rub and rub.  It sure develops the arm muscles.

The basic process involves rubbing a soft stone against a harder one.  The first step is to select the type of stone, ranging from white soap stone to the more attractive darker type which I chose to work on. You then draw a magatama shape on the stone and start rubbing it against a harder stone block in order to wear away the areas outside the drawing.

 

Stages of magatama making

 

After wearing away the corners, you’re left with the difficult bit around the ‘belly’ of the magatama.  I couldn’t imagine how to approach this, but it turned out to be simplicity itself. You just use the edge of the square block to rub against.

Using the corner to get a rounded effect

After about forty minutes the magatama began to take shape.  There then follows polishing down the edges, which can go on for as long as you want if you’re a perfectionist.

The final stage involves more rubbing – this time in water with a wet carbon paper to take off the small scratch marks caused by the previous rubbing. it’s worth persisting with this final stage in order to get a fine finish.  Then you’re all ready to hang your magatama and wear it for good luck.

Two freshly made magatama. The Yayoi people had more time, patience and expertise!

 

 

I took the opportunity to ask the Yoshinogari magatama makers about their interpretation of the meaning.  There are several theories, ranging from half a yin-yang symbol to the human embryo and basic spiral building block of the universe.  The Yoshinogari consensus is rather different – they say it represents the tusk of a wild boar, a symbol of the animal’s power.

The answer might well have surprised me if I had not on the previous day visited Atago Shrine in Fukuoka. The shrine’s symbol looks like a pair of yin-yang elements, but when I asked a priest about it he told me they represented a wild boar’s tusks.

So there we have it.  Who ever knew that the plucky wild boar played such a part in Shinto?

Mark of Atago Shrine in Fukuoka

Wild boar at Goo Jinja in Kyoto. Notice the fangs....

Posted in Origins, Shrine items | Leave a comment

Aoi Festival (Kyoto)

Posted on May 16, 2012 by John D.

Setting off from Gosho

 

Aoi Festival took place today in glorious sunshine.  The festival is said to have originated in the sixth century when Emperor Kinmei ordered it in order to placate the kami that were causing a series of disasters.  It’s supposed to take place on May 15, but yesterday was pouring with rain and all those gorgeous costumes would have been ruined.  I thought the postponement would reduce the numbers watching, but the route from the Former Imperial Palace (Gosho) to Shimogamo Jinja and then on to Kamigamo Jinja was packed most of the way.

This year I caught the beginning of the parade at 10.30 in Gosho and the end of the parade at Kamigamo from 3.30.  Both are in open and verdant settings, fitting for an ancient festival.  The whole event centres around the procession of the imperial messenger to present offerings to the kami at Shimogamo and Kamigamo.  There are rituals involved, but as far as the public’s concerned it’s all about the parade. There are over 500 people, some 40 horses and 2 oxen involved, and everyone wears aoi/katsura leaves, thought in the past to be a preventative against disease.  (Aoi is a type of hollyhock.)

it’s a long colourful affair that takes an hour in all to pass by, with frequent stoppages.  The procession is divided into five main sections.  Guardsmen at the front and rear, officials in charge of the offerings, horsemen, and women and children, including the Saio (imperial princess-priestess).  It’s the women and children that get all the cameras snapping.

*******************************************************************************************************

For more about the significance of the Aoi Festival, see the pre-events Mikage Festival and Miare sai.  To read further details about the festival itself, try the Wikipedia pages or this page of small pictures with accompanying explanations.

All dressed up and somewhere to go...

A dapper looking horserider

Ox-cart proceeding without any horse power

A very dignified imperial messenger heading the procession

Playing the part of the former princess-princess Saio

Armed guards, past and present

 

Arriving at Kamigamo Shrine, end point for the festival

Posted in Festivals, Kyoto shrines | Leave a comment

Secret rite (Miare sai)

Posted on May 16, 2012 by John D.

The thunder kami
It takes place on May 12.  It’s held in secret.  And it’s one of Japan’s oldest continuous rites.  It’s the little known, and mysterious, Miare sai held by Kamigamo Shrine in Kyoto.

Priests at Kamigamo Jinja engaged in another ancient shamanistic rite: the Crow Festival every September

The rite is carried out in the dark by the priests of Kamigamo Jinja at the south-western base of their sacred mountain, Koyama.  it’s where their kami, the thunder-god Kamo no Wake-ikazuchi, descended in prehistoric times.  One theory holds that he descended in the form of lightning, which would make sense for a thunder deity!

The kami was born in remarkable manner to a shamaness known as Tamayori no hime (Spirit Summoning Princess).  While sitting by the river one day, she came across a red arrow floating downstream and took it home.  Miraculously, she became pregnant.

The young boy she gave birth to turned into a prodigy, and when he was just three years old, his grandfather asked him at a gathering to point out his father.  ‘I am the son of a Heavenly Deity,’ he replied, wherewith he ascended to the heavens. The Kamo clan, of whom the grandfather was leader, adopted the young boy’s spirit as their kami.

Ritual observance
The form of the rite was dictated by the kami himself, for Wake-ikazuchi appeared to his grandfather in a dream and gave him instruction about how he wished to be worshipped.

‘If you wish to see me, make some heavenly feather robes, light fires, set up spears, decorate running horses and with stout wood from the mountains set up ‘are‘ poles and from them hang down many coloured ornaments, make wigs of Aoi and Katsura and solemnly decorate yourself with them and wait for me to come.’

Feathers play a part in many shaman costumes

A heavenly feather robe, decorations, the drawing down of the spirit into  ornamented poles – there’s much of shamanism here. The present-day ceremony retains some of the original flavour by taking place with just a handful of people in the dark. ‘Mukae tamae mukae tamae,’ they chant (Come we beseech you).

During the rite the kami is invited to descend into yorishiro (vessel for the kami), consisting of five sakaki branches festooned with hei (strips of paper).  It’s thought there may have once been five priests who each held a branch to receive the spirit.  Afterwards the yorishiro are taken to the shrine so that the kami can be installed there.

Getting into the spirit of Aoi Festival
The idea of the ceremony is that the kami will arrive just before Aoi Matsuri, which is held three days later.  The name of the rite, Miare, can mean birth, resurrection, or renewal – apt enough for a festival that occurs in spring and celebrates the rebirth of the life-force and the overcoming of disease.

What’s interesting is that both the Miare rite of Kamigamo Shrine and the Mikage Festival of its sister shrine, Shimogamo, take place on May 12th.  One’s in the daytime and in public.  The other is in the dark, in the woods, and in secret.  Yet both events can be seen as important preparations for the Aoi Festival, bringing down their respective kami from a sacred mountain.

When the big day comes, on May 15, the kami will be ready for the entertainment and offerings. There’ll be 500 people in full processional gear, and a messenger from the emperor himself.  If the kami is pleased, it bodes well for the rest of the year and for avoiding the dreaded plague that once ravaged the community.

Here then is the message I derive from the rite.  From mountains we derive the vitality to sustain us against disease and negativity.  In climbing to the top of the hill, we grow closer to heaven and in so doing enhance our spiritual and physical well-being.

The celestial home of Kamo Wake-ikazuchi

*******************************************************************

Information is taken from John Nelson’s Enduring Identities and Gunther Nitschke’s From Shinto to Ando.

Posted in Festivals, Kyoto shrines, Shamanic connections | 1 Comment

Shinto scouts

Posted on May 13, 2012 by John D.

Scouts at prayer to the Shimogamo kami


Scouts are something one associates with Christianity.  That was certainly Baden-Powell’s intention when he founded the boy scout movement in 1907 in the UK.  But on an early morning visit to Shimogamo Jinja I came across a Shinto scout group attached to the shrine, and fell into conversation with their honorary chief leader, Toju Takabayashi, now 83 years old.

Toju Takabayashi, aged 83 and still a scout leader

Takabayashi san told me that the first Shinto scout group had been set up in Tokyo in 1950 and that there were now about 80 groups attached to shrines throughout Japan.  They belong to the wider Japanese scout movement, which meets nationally once a year, but they have their own Conference of Shrine-related Scouts who meet once every five years.  The last meeting was at Ise.

When I came across the group, they were at morning prayers.  This consisted of lining up before the haiden and reciting a prayer, then clapping and bowing in unison.  Afterwards they gathered in a circle in the Tadasu no mori woods where they had a talk about what they would do for the day. One of the first things they did was to raise the hinomaru flag.

There are about fifty members in all, Takabayashi san said, much fewer than in the past. They did various activities like singing, dancing, tying knots, and helping with maintenance of the woods.  it was important for children to develop their own character, he stressed, not to learn ideas from above.  One should listen to the kami in one’s heart, he went on, not the one being marketed by the shrine.  Hoping for genze riyaku (worldly benefits) is not good; human to human communication and world peace was what mattered.

It was hardly the orthodox Shinto message that I had expected.  Shimogamo after all is a bastion of the emperor system, and in two days’ time will be accepting gifts from an imperial messenger at the Aoi Festival.  But how heartening to find someone with an independent mind in such surroundings, open to listening to the voice of nature.  It turned my morning walk into a journey of joy.

Scout's honour

 

Sacred grove in the early morning light. 'Let nature be your teacher,' said Wordsworth.

Posted in Kyoto shrines, Shrine visits, Social values | Leave a comment

Mikage Festival pt. 2

Posted on May 12, 2012 by John D.

Arrival of the horse-borne aramitama (rough spirit of the kami)


 
In the morning the festival procession had left Shimogamo Shrine for Mikage Shrine at Yase, where participants collected the aramitama of the kami (and had lunch).  In the afternoon the procession returned to Shimogamo, where the kami was welcomed with offerings and entertainment, before being formally installed in the honden.

The proceedings took place in Tadasu no mori, Shimogamo’s primeval wood that forms an important part of its World Heritage designation.  Commentary by a master of ceremonies stressed the festival’s celebration of new growth and the importance of the sakaki and katsura (Judas tree) branches as symbols of the emergent lifeforce.  The sacred branch would subsequently become a yorishiro (conductor) for a new aramitama to be installed at Mikage Shrine.  Renewal was thus very much the theme of the festival.

White horse, bearing a kami, watches the proceedings with interest

As in the morning, the journey from Mikage Jinja was made by vehicle, and once everyone had arrived, the kami was placed on the back of a white horse. Carefully hidden from view under a protective covering, the kami was then led up the Shimogamo sando (approach way) to a canvas awning into which the horse was led. Rather surreally, the horse’s head protruded from this to survey the proceedings, as if acting as the eyes of the kami.

Under the watchful gaze of the horse, offerings were made, gagaku musicians lined up to play, and there was a performance of azuma asobi (an ancient dance originating in eastern Japan).  The idea was to soothe the kami on its move to its new quarters (though to a modern ear the chanting seemed anything but soothing, sounding at times much like out-of-tune karaoke!).

Following the performance, the procession with the horse-borne kami at its heart continued on to the shrine, where it passed through the outer courtyard.  As it moved into the inner compound, the gates were swung shut.  A few minutes later the white horse emerged, without the kami covering.  Meanwhile, on the inside of the gates the priestly cohort conducted rituals to install the aramitama in its new home.

Azuma dance offering to the kami

Gagaku musicians with the plaintive 'sho' in the lead

The ceremonial drum takes a leading part

Procession of the halberbs, preceded by a sakaki branch

Entering the inner compound of Shimogamo, following which the gates were shut on the outside world

Posted in Festivals, Kyoto shrines | Leave a comment

Mikage Festival (Shimogamo) pt. 1

Posted on May 12, 2012 by John D.

About half an hour ago, a large procession set off from Shimogamo Shrine here in Kyoto to head for Mikage Shrine, up in the hills near Yase.  It’s one of several pre-events for the Aoi Matsuri, Kyoto’s oldest festival.

The Aoi Festival takes its name from the aoi leaf (a kind of hollyhock), which decorates the heads of those in the procession.  Remarkably, the event is thought to date back to the sixth century, when disastrous rains ruined crops and led to the appeasement of the kami with processions and horse events.  Participants decorated themselves with the aoi leaves, which were thought to protect against disease.

In the Mikage Festival, held three days before the main Aoi Festival, a procession sets off from Shimogamo Shrine to collect the kami’s aramitama (rough spirit).  The aramitama is the aspect of the kami which causes destruction or natural disasters.  The nigimitama on the other hand is the peaceful or calming condition of the kami. (Spirits which appear as a aramitama can be tranformed into a nigimitama by pacificatiion and worship.)

In Shimogamo’s case the nigimitama resides in the main shrine, and the aramitama at Mikage Shrine on the outskirts of Kyoto.  Once a year the two aspects are brought together in the run-up to the Aoi Festival.  The coming together creates a power surge, in preparation for the main event on the 15th.  One way of seeing this is in the bringing of the ‘rough aspect’ down from the wilds and into the secular world.  Another way is in the merging of two elemental forces, as in the joining of yin and yang principles.

Before heading off to Mikage Festival, participants undergo ritual purification.  In years past they would have walked for a couple of hours to get to Mikage Shrine, but these days it is all done by coach and truck.  Even the kami hitches a ride down from the hills.

Sacred truck for a sacred ride

Purification of participating priests: notice the priest in red nearest the camera who is scattering what appeared to be confettil but must have been some kind of purifying substance (not rice or salt)

Interesting sartorial differences for male priest and female

Aoi leaves on the processional participants

Heading away to Mikage Shrine with a variety of purification tools - behind the brushes are long metal sticks used in the past to stave off evil spirits, now dragged along the gravel

Posted in Festivals, Kyoto shrines | 5 Comments

Foxes

Posted on May 11, 2012 by John D.

In a recent article in the Daily Yomiuri, naturalist and anthropologist Kevin Short has written of the role of the fox in Japanese folklore.  For Shinto, the fox looms large in the cult of Inari, and in The Fox and the Jewel (1999) Karen Smyers has written at length of the peculiar appeal of this liminal animal.

*******************************************************************************************************************************************

Foxes are among the great perennial stars of Japanese folklore. To begin with, they are considered to be familiar spirits serving the immensely popular rice deity Inari. A set of two stone foxes stand watch in front of every Inari shrine. Some folklorists believe that foxes became associated with rice farming because of their role in controlling mice, hares and other agricultural pests. In the past farmers would even leave out food to attract foxes to their rice paddies. Foxes are thought to be especially fond of abura-age, thin slices of deep-fried tofu soy bean paste. Pockets of abura-age stuffed with rice are known as Inari-zushi.

In contrast to this favorable agricultural image, foxes have also been traditionally imagined as clever tricksters and shape-shifters. These yo-gitsune can be encountered in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Like cats and many other Japanese fairy animals, their magical powers grow stronger with age. After living for a century or two, yo-gitsune become able to possess people, causing illness or insanity, and also to temporarily shape-shift into incredibly glamorous women. Stories abound of men falling hopelessly in love with and marrying these “foxy ladies.”

In one famous story, a 10th-century nobleman saves a fox from a mob bent on killing it for its liver. A few days later, a beautiful woman mysteriously appears at his door. They fall madly in love, get married and have a son. Three years later, the woman suddenly disappears, leaving a note explaining to her husband that she was really just the fox whose life he had saved. Their son grows up to be Abe no Seimei, the famous Onmyoji Yin-Yang wizard who protects the imperial court and the capital city from all sorts of wicked spells and disasters.

After living for a full millennium, fairy foxes may attain a formidable style with nine tails. Nine-tail foxes, or Kyubi no Kitsune, are of Chinese origin, but have also been active in Japan as well. During the Edo period (1603-1867), motifs depicting heroes ridding the land of these often ill-tempered nine-tail foxes were widely adopted into traditional theater, literature and art.

Until quite recently, mental illnesses and emotional instability were frequently attributed to possession by fox spirits, especially in isolated rural villages. Even more frightening, there are families, called tsukimono-mochi, which are rumored to keep tiny fox spirits in vases or bamboo tubes. These spirits can be sent out on various missions, such as searching for gold or treasure, stealing, spying on people, or just causing all sorts of trouble and misfortune. The secrets of caring for and controlling these fox spirits, or in some cases similar dog or weasel spirits, are passed down from generation to generation among women of the household. Families which are rumored to possess fox spirits are feared and shunned.

Another peculiarity of fairy foxes is that they tend to emit strange lights at night. One very famous spot for kitsune-bi fox-fire is the Inari shrine at Oji in Kita Ward, Tokyo. Every New Year’s Eve foxes from all over the Kanto region are believed to assemble here under an ancient hackberry tree. The local farmers predict the yields of the coming season’s crops by the number of glowing lights they count.

Posted in Folklore | 2 Comments

Ubusuna (birthplace) Shrines

Posted on May 11, 2012 by John D.

In an article for the Daily Yomiuri, naturalist and anthropologist Kevin Short has written of the tutelary shrines in the Chiba countryside where he lives.  These are based on attachment to place, and in ancient times they contrasted with the ujigami shrines which were based on clan and blood ties.  (Ubu- means birth, so Ubusuna Shrines have to do with one’s birthplace.)

There were consequently two important types of kami: the ubusugami who presided over one’s brithplace, and the ujigami to whom one was attached by clan loyalties.  With the passage of centuries such differences tended to fade away, and few nowadays make any distinction.

**************************************************************************************************************

The basic settlement pattern in these agricultural districts [in Chiba] is small, concentrated villages, usually called mura or shuraku. Typical mura consist of several dozen farmhouses clustered tightly together, sometimes in a thin line running along the edge of a narrow valley, and sometimes in a wider settlement on top of the high ground.

Each mura is a tight-knit social and cultural unit. A village association, or chonai-kai, is responsible for disseminating information throughout the households, and also for representing the opinion of the villagers when dealing with outside forces such as the municipal government.

Despite the intrusion of the immense residential complex into the area, the surrounding villages have for the most part managed to preserve their unity. As farmers, the villagers are held together by a core of shared interests and cultural values, which differ significantly from those of the people in the housing complex.

Another powerful force holding the community together is the spiritual element. Each individual mura is guarded by its own special Shinto shrine, called an ubusuna jinja, which houses a tutelary kami deity that watches over the interests of the villagers. As might be expected, the countryside landscape is packed with these small shrines.

Ubusuna shrines do not have a full-time priest or caretaker. Cleaning and maintenance is performed by villagers on a rotating basis, and priests are invited in to serve during festivals. The shrine buildings themselves are locked, but the grounds are not fenced or gated. Anyone can visit anytime day or night. At most times the shrine precincts are quiet and deserted, perfect for relaxing, thinking, practicing yoga, or doing whatever people do to calm and energize their spirits.

Ubusuna precincts often contain an assortment of smaller shrines and memorials dedicated to various local spirits…  As an added bonus, almost all these shrines are surrounded by substantial sacred groves. These groves tend to be dominated by native evergreen broad-leaved species such as chinquapins and live oaks. One shrine in my area, however, features several immense Japanese torreya trees.

Torreya, sometimes called nutmeg-yew in English, are conifers usually classified in the Taxaceae or Yew Family (Ichii-ka in Japanese). There are a half dozen species known worldwide, including four in Asia and two in North America. The Japanese species, kaya (T. nucifera), grows from southern Tohoku through Shikoku and Kyushu. The favored habitat of these trees is mountain slopes, and they do not usually grow wild in the lowlands of the southern Kanto. When planted, however, they can easily reach 20 meters in height and two meters in diameter.

Posted in Shrine types | Leave a comment

Jizo rocks !

Posted on May 9, 2012 by John D.

A Jizo rock in a small riverside Buddhist shrine

 

Walking down the Kamogawa river the other day in Kyoto, I passed a wayside Jizo shrine (see above). Nothing very unusual – you see them all over the place.  Jizo has to be the most popular deity in Japan, for his statues easily outnumber all others.  Not only is he a guardian of travellers, which is why he’s often found at roadsides and crossroads, but he helps guide dead souls on the tricky passage into the next world, children in particular.

Jizo in his guise as a monk

Mark Schumacher’s excellent page about Jizo describes the deity’s Indian origins and the first recorded appearance in Japan in the Nara period.  Jizo rose to prominence in the Heian period, when fears about the end of Buddhist Law (Mappo) were rife. Later in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when Pure Land preachers frightened audiences with the horrifying hell awaiting lost souls, Jizo was championed as a saviour.  It was around this time apparently that he became represented by the rock figures that are so numerous throughout Japan.

As a boddhisattva, Jizo is understood to have vowed to stay on in this world after death to help save fellow mortals.  He’s often pictured as a simple wandering monk, with staff in hand, which made poor villagers feel an affinity for him.  He was accessible, approachable and all too human.  No doubt the image helped spread his cult, as did the notion that he could be represented by a mere rock rather than a sumptuous gilded statue.  As such he would have fitted in with the dosojin rock figures which acted as border guardians in rural areas.

Though essentially Buddhist in origin, Jizo has been incorporated into the syncretic world of Japanese deities.  He had already taken on Taoist qualities in China, and to my friends in Japan he’s ‘the kami of children’.  It’s because of his role as a protector of children that he often gets a red bonnet and bib (red drives away illness, caps and bibs because of his role in saving children).

Rock, pure and plain

So here’s what I wondered as I wandered along the River Kamo. Why on earth is Jizo depicted as a rock? Usually a human face is drawn on it, but not always. Often Jizo appears as just a rock, plain and simple.  Pure rock.  No other Buddhist deity gets treated in this way, not surprisingly since they are considered to have been human at some stage.  So to paraphrase Groucho Marx, why a rock?

There’s only one explanation that I can think of: Jizo has been absorbed into Japan’s shamanic folk heritage. In East Asian shamanism, rocks are associated with the spirits of the dead.  Dust to dust runs the Christian refrain, and in death we return to the earth (which is after all a great big rock hurtling around in space). Corpses were left in ancient times on mountain sides to rot or were buried in tombs, and the spirits of the dead were thought to seep into the adjacent rock.  In this way they became part of the durable, permanent, everlasting world after death. It stood in contrast to this transient life of perishable matter.

On his website Mark Schumacher points out that Jizo translates as ‘Earth Womb’. Ha-ha! Here then is the vital key to understanding the phenomenon.  Jizo’s association with death and rebirth in the Pure Land means that he represents the womb-tomb to which we all return. Death is our inevitable fate, and Jizo is a rock on which we can all depend.

Rock solid.  Rock hard.  Rock for ever…  Jizo rocks on as a syncretic, shamanic reminder of Japan’s deepest spiritual impulses.

Jizo guarding the neighbourhood in which I live

One of Jizo's roles is saving the souls of aborted and miscarried babies, hence he is often surrounded by baby goods

Jizo at Mt Osore, symbolically guiding the souls of the dead across the Sai no Kawara (dry river bed) that separates this world from the next

Wayside Jizo, in his guise as guardian of travellers

Posted in Rocks, Shamanic connections, Syncretism | 6 Comments

Princess priestess at Ise

Posted on May 8, 2012 by John D.

Nonomiya Shrine at festival time

The Japan Times today carried an article about the appointment of an Ise special priestess (see below), which relates to the old custom of ‘saigu‘ (unmarried royal princess}.  The practice probably started in the late seventh century, around the time of Emperor Tenmu (r. 673-86), and finished in the early fourteenth century.  The princess was chosen by divination, and had to undergo a period of abstinence, avoiding taboos, impurities and – interestingly – Buddhist rites.  One of the places she stayed in Kyoto before heading off to Ise was at the shrine of Nonomiya, and in The Tale of Genji (c. 1006) there’s a dramatic episode there involving Genji and Rokujo.   

The procession of the saigu to Ise was a grand affair involving several hundred people, and her palace was served by a Bureau staffed by hundreds of officials and female attendants. (The site of the palace near Ise can be visited, with a museum all about the saigu institution.) She only entered Ise Shrine three times a year, and the rest of the time was holed up in her palace doing rites and austerities much like the ancient shaman-queen Himiko.  (The ‘virgin priestess’ was no doubt a carry-over of the female shaman tradition of ancient times.)  She served in office until the accession of a new emperor, though death of relatives or poor health could also precipitate retirement.  The practice came to an end during the reign of Emperor Godaigo (1318-39).  The present appointment can thus be seen as part of the imperial nostalgia fostered by Jinja Honcho and the Ise hierarchy.

***********************************************************************************

Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Emperor’s daughter becomes special priestess 

Sayako Kuroda, ex-princess and special priestess

(Kyodo) TSU, Mie Pref. — Ise Shrine said Monday that Sayako Kuroda, 43, the daughter of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, has assumed the post of special sacred priestess it established for a notable event next year.

Kuroda, who was known as Princess Nori before she married commoner Yoshiki Kuroda, took the post on April 26 in order to assist 81-year-old Atsuko Ikeda, the Emperor’s older sister and the most sacred priestess at the Mie Prefecture shrine, which honors the ancestral gods of the Imperial family, in presiding over rituals.

Kuroda will serve until the October 2014 end of a series of festivities for the Shikinen Sengu event, in which symbols of the gods are transferred to a new shrine building that is reconstructed every 20 years. Ikeda took up her post in 1988. The new post was created to help her due to her advanced age.

Kuroda, who was also formerly known as Princess Sayako, left the Imperial family when she got married.

The most sacred priest or priestess serves the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu Omikami, on behalf of the Emperor and leads Shinto priests at the shrine. The post has been held by current or former Imperial family members.

Recreation of the saigu procession from Nonomiya to Ise at the annual festival in October (photo courtesy of Kyotovisitors.blogspot)

 

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
Posted in Emperor (imperial family), Ise, Shamanic connections | Leave a comment