Author: John D. (Page 114 of 202)

Circle of Life

March 15, 2014 / John D.

Circle of Life by Chief White Cloud Talatawi

Man has a poor understanding of life. He mistakes knowledge for wisdom. He tries to unveil the Holy secrets of our Father, the Great Spirit. He attempts to impose his laws and ways on Mother Earth. Even though he, himself, is a part of nature, he chooses to disregard and ignore it for the sake of his own immediate gain.

But the laws of nature are far stronger than those of mankind. Man must awake at last, and learn to understand how little time there remains before he will become the cause of his own downfall. And he has so much to learn. To learn to see with the heart. He must learn to respect Mother Earth – she who has given life to everything; to our brothers and sisters, the animals and plants, to the rivers, the lakes, the oceans and the winds.

He must realise that this planet does not belong to him; but that he has to care for and maintain the delicate balance of nature for the sake of the well-being of our children and of all future generations. It is the duty of man to preserve the Earth and the Creation of the Great Spirit. Mankind being but a grain of sand in the Holy circle which encloses all of life.

Your religious calling was written on plates of stone by the flaming finger of an angry God. Our religion was established by the traditions of our ancestors, the dreams of our elders that are given to us in the silent hours of the night the great spirit, and the premonitions of the learned beings. it is written in the hearts of our people, thus we do not require churches – which would only lead us to argue about god. We do not wish this. earthly things may be argued about with men, but we never argue over God. And the thought that men should rule over nature was never understood by us.

Our belief is that the Great Spirit has created all things, not just mankind, but all animals, all plants, all rocks … all on Earth and amongst the stars, with true soul. For us all life is sacred. But you do not understand our prayers when we address the sun, moon and winds.

You have judged us without understanding, only because our prayers are different. But we are able to live in harmony with all nature. All of nature is within us and we are part of all nature.

Tohoku ancestors

March 11, 2014 / John D.

On this, the third anniversary of the Tohoku disaster, I’d like to post this excerpt by Richard Lloyd Parry from a longer article he wrote for the London Review of Books. It draws attention to something that I’ve long felt from my own observations, that at root ancestor worship is the true religious impulse of the country and that this underlies both Shinto and Buddhism. (For the full article, click here.)

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When opinion polls put the question, ‘How religious are you?’, the Japanese rank among the most ungodly people in the world. It took a catastrophe for me to understand how misleading this self-assessment is. It is true that the organised religions, Buddhism and Shinto, have little influence on private or national life. But over the centuries both have been pressed into the service of the true faith of Japan: the cult of the ancestors.

I knew about the ‘household altars’, or butsudan, which are still seen in most homes and on which the memorial tablets of dead ancestors – the ihai – are displayed. The butsudan are black cabinets of lacquer and gilt, with openwork carvings of lions and birds; the ihai are upright tablets of black polished wood, vertically inscribed in gold. Offerings of flowers, incense, rice, fruit and drinks are placed before them; at the summer Festival of the Dead, families light candles and lanterns to welcome home the ancestral spirits.

I had assumed that these picturesque practices were matters of symbolism and custom, attended to in the same way that people in the West will participate in a Christian funeral without any literal belief in the words of the liturgy. But in Japan spiritual beliefs are regarded less as expressions of faith than as simple common sense, so lightly and casually worn that it is easy to miss them altogether. ‘The dead are not as dead there as they are in our own society,’ the religious scholar Herman Ooms writes. ‘It has always made perfect sense in Japan as far back as history goes to treat the dead as more alive than we do … even to the extent that death becomes a variant, not a negation of life.’

At the heart of ancestor worship is a contract. The food, drink, prayers and rituals offered by their descendants gratify the dead, who in turn bestow good fortune on the living. Families vary in how seriously they take these ceremonies, but even for the unobservant, the dead play a continuing part in domestic life. For much of the time, their status is something like that of beloved, deaf and slightly batty old folk who can’t expect to be at the centre of the family but who are made to feel included on important occasions. Young people who have passed important entrance examinations, got a job or made a good marriage kneel before the butsudan to report their success. Victory or defeat in an important legal case, for example, will be shared with the ancestors in the same way.

When grief is raw the presence of the deceased is overwhelming. In households that lost children in the tsunami it became routine, after half an hour of tea and chat, to be asked if I would like to ‘meet’ the dead sons and daughters. I would be led to a shrine covered with framed photographs, toys, favourite drinks and snacks, letters, drawings and school exercise books. One mother had commissioned Photoshopped portraits of her children, showing them as they would have been had they lived: a boy who died in primary school smiling proudly in high school uniform, a teenage girl as she should have looked in a kimono at her coming of age ceremony. Here, every morning, she began the day by talking to her dead children, weeping love and apology, as unselfconsciously as if she were speaking over a long-distance telephone line.

Posthumous names of ancestors on touba sticks

The tsunami did appalling violence to the religion of the ancestors. Along with walls, roofs and people, the water carried away household altars, memorial tablets and family photographs. Cemetery vaults were ripped open and the bones of the dead scattered. Temples were destroyed, along with memorial books listing the names of ancestors over generations. ‘The memorial tablets – it’s difficult to exaggerate their importance,’ Yozo Taniyama, a priest and friend of Reverend Kaneda, told me. ‘When there’s a fire or an earthquake, the ihai are the first thing many people will save, before money or documents. People died in the tsunami because they went home for the ihai. It’s life – like saving your late father’s life.’

When people die violently or prematurely, in anger or anguish, they are at risk of becoming gaki, ‘hungry ghosts’, who wander between worlds, propagating curses and mischief. There are rituals for placating unhappy spirits, but in the aftermath of the disaster few families were in a position to perform them. And then there were those ancestors whose descendants were entirely wiped out by the wave. Their comfort in the afterlife depended entirely on the reverence of living families, which had been permanently and irrevocably cut off: their situation was as helpless as that of orphaned children.

Thousands of spirits had passed from life to death; countless others were cut loose from their moorings in the afterlife. How could they all be cared for? Who was to honour the compact between the living and the dead? In such circumstances, how could there fail to be a swarm of ghosts?

Australian remembrance

March 11, 2014 / John D.

Today is the third anniversary of the Tohoku triple disaster involving an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident, and in Japan a number of remembrance services are taking place. In Australia, Green Shinto follower, Graham Ranft, will be playing shakuhachi at a Memorial Service being held in Canberra-Nara Park on March 15.

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Memorial Service for
Earthquake and Tsunami Victims in Japan 2014

Scene from Mt Osore in northern Tohoku

Three years have passed since Japan was devastated by a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami that struck the Tohoku and northern Kanto regions. Its effects have dealt a massive psychological blow to Japan, as well imposing an enormous physical and human cost.

Each year concerned Canberrans, friends of Japan and members of the Japanese community gather in the Canberra-Nara Peace Park to remember the victims and to show their support for those who are recovering from the disaster. This year’s service will be held on 15 March.

Lighting a candle at the service will be an opportunity to send our prayers and thoughts to the victims and the displaced, and at this gathering, we will renew our pledge to support the survivors into the future.
Saturday, 15 March, 2014 – 4:30 pm
Canberra-Nara Park, Lennox Gardens, Flynn Drive Yarralumla Programme:

4:30    Gather at the Canberra-Nara Park; light candles (available at the venue)
4:46    One minute’s silence
(The time will be 2:46 pm in Japan, time the earthquake struck)
4:50    Shakuhachi Performance by Mr Graham Ranft
5:00    The address by His Exellency Mr Yoshitaka Akimoto, Japanese Ambassador to Australia
5:10    Speeches and reading by guests, paying tribute to the victims

Enquiry: Chikako Murata (村田智香子) info@canberrajapanclub.org.au (02) 6140-1427
info@canberrajapanclub.org.au
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http://www.canberrajapanclub.org.au http://ajsact.com.au

Inari in the UK

March 10, 2014 / John D.

Green Shinto is delighted to carry this interview with a Pagan-Shinto believer, Matt Jones, who is a fantasy artist and a follower of Inari. It illustrates the attractions of Inari worship for Western Pagan followers.

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1) How did you come to an interest in Shinto?

Illustration of a fox familiar by Matt Jones

Ever since I was 14, I have been fascinated with Japan. I found out about the culture and folklore through manga and anime, and researched it extensively. I did my A level art project on Japanese culture, and so found out about Shinto. I didn’t practice it at this time, I was just very interested in it. I had also read that it was impossible for a Westerner to practice Shinto and so this initially put me off.

However, Shinto continued to inspire and influence me and I found some friends online in America who had a kamidana (house altar) to Inari in their home, and so this re-kindled the flame, so to speak. At this time I was a Pagan, though unsure of my path.

At the age of 20 I became involved in the Shinto faith, and bought my first pair of Inari fox statues and set up a shrine in my bedroom. Since then, my kamidana has grown, as has my passion for the Shinto faith.

2) Why did you form a particular attachment to Inari?

I have always been obsessed with foxes. I started drawing around the age of two, and it was then when I basically announced foxes as my favourite animal and drew as many of them as I could possibly draw! Paper, toilet paper, walls – foxes all over!

I remember meeting a red fox at a farm around the age of 10 – it was a wonderful experience to see such a gorgeous animal in the flesh – despite the fact it was in a cage. Later, at 14, I volunteered at a wildlife rescue and was able to have a hands-on experience with a fox – a fox who had been abandoned as a cub. I got to pet him, feed him and walk him like a dog. I felt immediately a strong connection to foxes once again.

Artwork logo by Matt

I then inevitably found the Japanese fox – kitsune – in anime and manga, and I became obsessed with them also. There was a strange kind of nostalgia about the whole thing – like a calling. But I couldn’t understand it. It felt like too big of a thing for me to even comprehend.

When I was 20, I had my own room in a student house and was able to express myself more as an individual. I read many internet articles about the kami Inari, and felt something stirring inside. I can’t explain it. It was almost like I was re-learning something.

When I finally got some fox statues from Japan, I set them up in my room, just the two statues and a tealight candle. I prayed to Inari for protection as it was a difficult time. It felt that a guardian had entered my room.

The few years that followed, I didn’t really involve myself that much in Shinto. I kept getting told that it was silly to worship a Japanese deity, that Shinto was not for Westerners and other such statements. No matter what other deity I tried to follow, I always fell back at Inari’s side. Her influence (and I generally see her as female or androgynous – though she has also appeared as an old man) grew over the years and she appeared in mediation, dreams and through signs in my life.

Long story short, Inari came back into my life with a bang in 2011. I was having a particularly hard time, and she comforted me and guided me into where I am now. I was so grateful to her I decided to become a devotee and do everything in my power to worship her the ‘proper’ way.

Foxes show themselves to me constantly as a reminder of her presence – even my business is named ‘Fox Trail’ as a nod to the torii path of Inariyama [the Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto]. Inari coming into my life and taking me under her wing is the best thing that ever happened to me – I feel this is my life purpose.

3) How do you carry out your practice?

The Inari kamidana kept by Matt Jones

I have a kamidana to Inari-sama in my living room where I pray and make offerings every day. Each morning upon waking, I shower and then wash my face, mouth and hands. I stand before the kamidana and perform a ritual – I do the usual bowing and clapping before reciting a norito (in Japanese, and then English – to imprint its meaning into my mind).

I then make an offering of rice, water, salt and any silver coins. Also Inari often receives fresh hot tea, alcohol, fruits and cakes when I present them to her. As I also follow the year’s sabbats, I make generous offerings to Inari on these and often feast in her name. I also follow the Japanese holidays – both those specifically for Inari and others; as well as the full moon.

Leftover meat offerings are taken to the fields nearby, where the local foxes take them. Usually the silver coins go towards things for the kamidana, but right now I am also donating to a charity in England that saves and rehabilitates urban foxes. Inari let me know that I should do this via a dream, and so that’s what’s happening right now.

4) What are the difficulties for a solitary practitioner?

Compared with Japan, Inari worship in the West can be a lonely affair

Personally, the main difficulty for me is the lack of a public shrine of sorts. I aim to make a pilgrimage to Fushimi Inari in a few years, but there is a bittersweet feeling about being in a country that does not have a single Shinto shrine, never mind one to Inari.

Another difficulty being a single practitioner is obtaining the correct types of items for the kamidana, the expenses of importing everything from Japan and also the lack of Japanese markets around – no inarizushi for Inari!

There’s also absolutely no community of followers of Shinto in my area, which makes being a follower pretty lonely. Happily, my fiancé recognizes Inari as our household’s protective kami, and is always interested in learning more about Shinto and Inari.

5) What do others think about your practice and belief?

Many people are very interested in my faith, and are in awe at my kamidana and love for Inari. My family do not understand any specific beliefs involved in Shinto, but they know that it has made me a stronger and better person – and so understand that it’s a very positive thing!

I have friends who want to learn more about Shinto, but find the seeming lack of UK presence for the faith a turn-off. I get lots of people asking about Shinto and Inari, and it would be wonderful if more people were interested!

6) How do you see things going in future – both for you and for the internationalisation of Shinto?

Fox water spout at Fushimi Inari - will the shrine's influence be flowing now into the West?

I am confident that the world needs Shinto right now. The same as it needs other faiths, especially New Age Paganism and Buddhism. I think that there is a lot of positivity in the fact there are various shrines in North America, as it shows that Shinto is NOT restricted to just Japan – and that the practices can be altered for Westerners.

The fact that Fushimi Inari were happy to present a white, American male with a wakemitama of Inari last year is fantastic [see here]. I feel that Shinto is becoming more known worldwide, and the Japanese are perhaps becoming more open to foreigners practicing their faith. As long as we shake off the negative associations with the old State Shinto, and focus on it as a nature religion, I feel that Shinto has a very positive future.

As for me, I aim to help bring Shinto to the West further – my goal in life is to help the establishment of a UK Shinto shrine, and certainly to bring a wakemitama of Inari over here. I feel Inari is guiding me on this journey, and I see nothing negative for Shinto in the future.

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Websites by Matt Jones:

http://thefoxdruid.wordpress.com/ – A Shinto/Pagan blog
http://www.inarishrine.com/ – Inari resource and information page, which is going to be an online shrine
http://www.foxmoon.co.uk/ – Artwork

Shrines 6) Early development

March 9, 2014 / John D.

This is part of an ongoing series about shrine structures and their history, extracted and abridged from Shinto Shrines by Joseph Cali and John Dougill, published by the University of Hawaii Press.

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Early shrines had no fixed structures but worshipped nature directly

It is impossible to say with certainty when buildings began to act as the home of the kami, but it is believed that the construction of Buddhist temples from around the sixth century ended the practice of building kofun and spurred the building of shrines as well. (Kofun were mounded graves, some quite large and surrounded by a moat, with an underground chamber where the body was laid to rest surrounded by tribute. They were erected for clan leaders or other important people but came to be replaced by clan temples.)

The zuijin guardian figure at Yaegaki Jinja in Izumo

Temple-building methods influenced the style of shrine construction, though shrines are generally built on a smaller and more modest scale. A typical temple contains a main hall where prayers are conducted and offerings made in front of an image of the principal Buddha. There are one or two pagodas where relics of the Buddha, valuable scrolls, and other objects are kept; these are from two to five stories tall. The pagoda contains a mammoth “heart pillar” under which the relics are buried.

By contrast, early shrines probably contained only a honden where the kami was enshrined. Prayers and offerings were made from the outside. Gradually, larger shrines built heiden in which to conduct prayers and offerings, stages for music and dance, and a haiden for worshippers. The two-story gates at some shrines are called romon.

Generally, shrines do not contain images of the deities. The only sculpture may be the zuijin guardian figures in the romon). There is some history of Shinto sculpture (shinzo) found primarily at Hachiman shrines. However, sculpted surfaces on buildings featuring flowers, animals, mythical creatures and allegorical scenes are often found, as are paintings on interior sliding panels and walls.

Common to every building type is wooden construction. Historically there are no temples or shrines of any note made of stone (though during the Edo period, the large number of fires in the sprawling cities encouraged the building of kura-style honden, with thick mud-walls, surfaced in plaster, and resembling fireproof warehouses called kura).

The two-storey 'romon' gate of Hakozaki Shrine in Hakata

Breen on Ise

March 9, 2014 / John D.

John Breen prior to his talk at Doshisha University for the Asian Studies Group

In a talk this week at Kyoto’s Doshisha University, leading Shinto scholar John Breen talked of postwar attitudes to the Shikinen Shingu rituals at Ise marking completion of the 20-year cycle of rebuilding. In particular, he focussed on the ‘the process of production’ in the 1953, 1973 and 1993 events.

Issues surrounding the event reflect on Shinto as a whole, the main one being whether the enormously expensive rebuilding programme should be funded by the state or through individual donations. The postwar constitution bans state support for religion, but there are those who argue it is more a national than religious institution. (13,000 trees are felled for each rebuilding, and hundreds of precious offerings handcrafted).

In the aftermath of the war, Ise was championed for the 1953 renewal as a cultural heritage in an attempt to distance itself from the legacy of State Shinto. The idea of a ‘people’s Ise’ was not favoured by the shrine establishment however, which emphasised Ise’s imperial rites.

The 1973 renewal saw expression of a move to restore the shrine’s prewar status, and a pamphlet by the fundraising committee said that its ceremonies ‘have inherited, without change, the traditions of prewar Japan’. The ideology was one of Japaneseness, with the shrine said to embody ‘an ethnic creed, a national will, that has always – moreover, naturally and deeply – flowed in the depths of the Japanese heart.‘

Ornamental sword, one of tne hundreds of re-created offerings for the 20 year completion rites

For the first time in recorded history, the number of visitors to the Naiku (housing Amaterasu) outranked those to the Geku (housing the food deity, Toyouke). This may have been due to changing perceptions, but Breen ascribed it at least partly to innovations in the Ise road design, thanks to which access to Naiku became physically much easier.

For the 1993 event another striking development took place, as the emperor not only personally initiated proceedings by asking the chief priest to start the rebuilding programme, but made the first donation to the costs involved. Amaeterasu’s role as imperial ancestress was seen as concomitant with that of protector of the nation as a whole. The official slogan was a haiku which in Breen’s translation reads as, ‘The resurrection/ of the Japanese heart:/ The rite of progress.’

Worshippers climb the steps leading up to the main Naiku building

With the 2013 renewal, the restoration of Ise’s prewar status was further solidified by the attendance of the prime minister and his cabinet – the first time since the 1920s. With the emperor represented by a personal envoy, the message was clear: here was an event not just of significance to the imperial line, but to the Japanese as a whole. Under the nationalist regime of prime minister Abe, Shinto is very much an affair of State.

What is one to make of all this? The best way to contextualise developments would be through a comparison with the past. Is Ise reverting to a time-honoured position, or simply to a post-Meiji situation?

Details of Ise’s historical role will come in a book that Teeuwen and Breen are currently preparing. It promises to be an exciting affair, revealing much that has never been published in English before – nor indeed, I believe, in Japanese.

By the time of the next Shikinen Sengu, we should be much better informed about what exactly is at stake in ‘the process of production’.

The procession of priests for the shkinen sengu ceremony, as shown on television

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For a firsthand account of the ‘shikinen sengu’ rites, see the report by Green Shinto reader Peter Grilli here.

Women priests

March 8, 2014 / John D.

Though male priests still dominate, women priests are becoming a more common sight

Women’s entry into Shinto priesthood is on the rise
BY TAKESHI NISHIDE KYODO MAR 6, 2014

Women are entering another traditional, male-dominated field in Japan — the Shinto priesthood — at a slow but steadily increasing pace. Nobuyo Otagaki, 43, is one pioneering female Shinto priest, making an unusual career shift from flight attendant. Otagaki was born into a Shinto shrine, Amagasaki Ebisu Shrine, in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, where her father was the chief priest. She later regretted her poor knowledge of Shinto when asked about it in a job interview.

Nobuyo Otagaki gives a talk about the significance of food and drink at Japanese festivals to high school students in New York (pic Japan Society)

After working as a flight attendant for six years, Otagaki studied Shintoism and obtained a qualification to serve as a Shinto priest. In 2012, she succeeded her father as the chief priest of the Amagasaki shrine. As the chief priest of a Shinto shrine in an urban area, “I would like to help increase the number of people who love the gods and festivals,” she said.

While more women are becoming Shinto priests, the number of chief priests at shrines is still limited. According to Jinja Honcho, the umbrella organ of Shinto shrines, there were 667 female chief priests at the end of 2012, or about 7 percent of all chief priests.

Mihoko Ishii, 58, is another female chief priest, serving at the Suwa Shrine in Nambu, Aomori Prefecture. She became a certified priest at the request of the people around her, after her chief-priest husband died. “As I was a full-time housewife, I knew little about the shrine and so asked them ‘Why me?’ ” Ishii recalled.

When Ishii wonders if she can live up to expectations, she remembers the advice given to her by the late Izu Kudo, former head of Jinja Honcho: “All you have to do is to face the gods as you are, and you don’t have to feel timid because you are a woman.”

Chief priest, Rica Saitoh, one of the first priestesses from a non-Shinto household

A female priest at Kyoto*s Shimogamo Shrine wearing aoi leaves during a pre-event for the Aoi Matsuri