Author: John D. (Page 162 of 202)

Shimogamo festival (insho kigan)

September 23, 2012 / John D. / 1 Comment

Priests leaving the inner compound where the religious ritual took place

My local shrine in Kyoto, Shimogamo Jinja, happens to be one of the city’s 17 World Heritage ‘properties’. Today it held a festival for used hanko seals at which there was a ritual of some thirty minutes for priests and parishioners followed by a demonstration of how to put on the traditional Junihitoe (12 layered kimono). The elaborate costume was only worn by court ladies, and in this case the wearer was dressed up by two attendants in front of an audience of about 100 people.

The whole session lasted some twenty minutes, and the wearer stood so still with her painted white face that a group of Japanese behind me thought she was a doll and gasped in amazement when she moved.

On goes the first layer...

The arrangement started with thin layers and faint colours, gradually adding thicker and more striking colours. The woman at the front doing the arrangement remained on her knees the whole time, because it would be disrespectful to the aristocrat to stand up before her.

In former ages the number of layers was a signifier of status, and the more one could afford the higher the prestige. At one time the number rose as high as forty, but was later codified with the maximum being 12. Altogether the layers weighed 16 kilos, which when you consider Japanese women even today weigh as little as 45 kilos is a huge weight to be carrying around in 30 degrees of heat!

Intaro, a hanko 'character'

Afterwards there followed one of those curious Japanese incongruities. Inside the precincts was all the courtly elegance of a former age, with gagaku music, layered kimono and shrine aesthetics. The audience then came out to be greeted by one of those annoying cute ‘characters’ that appear at baseball games and other events. I’ve noticed that Shimogamo like other shrines has been trying in recent years to appeal to tourists in diverse manner, but I can’t help feeling that turning to Disney-type tactics in this way is most definitely ‘out of character’!

In contrast to the Disney-style character, the courtly elegance of an earlier age

Putting on one of the underlayers

On goes the final layer

The show is over, unusually in a shrine drawing a round of applause from the audience

Followed by a short dance, complete with fan

A New History of Shinto

September 21, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

The following book review by John Dougill first appeared this summer in Japan Review vol. 24…

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

Books on Shinto used to be scarce. Walk into a bookshop and you were lucky to find one at all. If you did, it would be Sokyo Ono’s Shinto (1962). The view it put forward was of a uniquely Japanese tradition that had existed in one form or another since time immemorial and which in Meiji times had been liberated from its Buddhist yoke to return to its original independent role. It’s a view Breen and Teeuwen are eager to challenge in this thought-provoking book. The agenda is made clear in the opening chapter, in which the term ‘Shinto’ is said to have been retrospectively and falsely applied to the distant past. The modern religion is, in short, an invented tradition dating from the 19th century when building national consciousness was a prime concern. ‘The crux of the matter is that kami shrines, myths, and rituals are a great deal older than their conceptualisation as components of Shinto,’ write the authors.

The book impresses throughout for the wealth of detail and depth of research. Much of the information is unavailable elsewhere in English, and the extensive use of primary material enables those without Japanese ability to gain insight into scholarly work in the field. Influential figures are introduced such as folklorist Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962) and scholar Kuroda Toshio (1926-93). The latter argued that there was no such thing as ‘ancient Shinto’ in the sense of an independent religion, since kami worship was subsumed into esoteric Buddhism until Meiji times. Breen and Teeuwen follow in his footsteps but with a difference, since they identify the roots of modern Shinto in the medieval period, particularly the 15th-century thinking of Yoshida Kanetomo. ‘Before Kanetomo’s time, Shinto had no currency in a sense at all recognizable today,’ the authors emphasise.

The Daigengu at Yoshida Shrine, part of the legacy of the 15th century push for dominance

So how about ancient times? How does one explain, for instance, the usage of ‘shintō’ in the Nihon shoki of 720? The argument put forward is that the term was borrowed from the Chinese to refer to such activities as the placation of kami. Practitioners would have had no sense of identification with anything called Shinto; furthermore, the authors suggest, pronunciation at the time was probably jindō and denoted the Buddhist worship of kami. Along with this went a jingi court cult that sought to bolster the emperor and his allies by incorporating shrines and manipulating the mythology. For the authors neither jindō nor jingi can be considered an indigenous tradition, since both inventions were largely based on imported notions. In order to demonstrate this, there then follow historical case studies of a shrine (Hie Taisha), a myth (Amaterasu’s Rock Cave), and a ritual (Daijōsai). These form the heart of the book, and collectively they illustrate how such items have been constantly reinterpreted over time.

The chapter on Hie Shrine forms almost a third of the book, and for all the fascinations (at one time it was the biggest in Japan), one wonders about its selection over Ise given the obvious match with the imperial themes that underlie the other chapters. The authors respond by saying Ise is unrepresentative, though the charge could be more tellingly laid against the choice of ritual which is used only at the time of the emperor’s inauguration. The murky origins and development of Ise offer material well suited to the book’s ‘Alternative Approach’, and with the shikinen sengu rebuilding due for completion in 2013 it would seem an opportunity lost to capitalise on the attention the shrine will get. It would have allowed too for discussion of Watarai Shinto, which is strangely missing from the book.

But this is in no way to detract from the many strengths of the book. Curiously for a history, it provides a particularly useful survey of the contemporary scene, in which the reader learns about such matters as the financing of shrines, the number of visitors, and the percentage of the population that partake in Shinto rites. There’s talk too of the shortcomings of the Jinja Honchō (abbreviated by the authors as NAS – National Association of Shrines), which include a relative lack of concern with environmental matters and an Ise campaign that causes friction with local shrines. The suggestion is of a disconnect between policy makers and ordinary practitioners. Non-mainstream Shinto is also featured, with illuminating sections on Fushimi Inari, the Yasukuni controversy, and Sectarian Shinto. There are important matters discussed here that feature in no other book in English of which I know.

The Golden Rock at Hie Shrine, where worship probably originated

It’s a credit to the New History that it leaves one pondering so many questions. How to explain the Nihon shoki focus on Takami-musubi rather than Amaterasu as instigator of the Descent from Heaven? How come there is a mirror in the imperial palace said to be that of Amaterasu, when the general understanding is that this acts as the goshintai (spirit-body) of Ise? Why do the authors presume ancient usage was jindō rather than shintō? Why aren’t imperial themes celebrated at Fushimi Inari? What is the significance of the ‘golden rock’ at Hie, where worship originated? Why, intriguingly, did a junior member of the shrine set about the chief priest with a metal pipe in the 1990s? And how about Yoshida Kanetomo, who emerges from the book as the virtual founder of Shinto? He comes over as a somewhat dubious figure who drew on esoteric Buddhism and Daoism to promote the Yoshida shrine as pre-eminent in the country at large. He even had the gall to claim that the holy relics of Ise Jingu had miraculously flown to Yoshida hill, then duped an emperor into certifying them.

At the end one can’t help wondering what exactly is this puzzling thing called Shinto. Traditionalists see it in terms of continuity, but for Breen and Teeuwen it’s characterised by change, conflict and construct. ‘Shinto in our view, appears not as the unchanging core of Japan’s national essence, but rather as the unpredictable outcome of an erratic history,’ they write. As such this revisionist book is much in keeping with the work of leading scholars such as Allan Grapard, who has suggested the need to talk of ‘Shintos’ rather than a unified Shinto. It’s a measure of the book’s achievement that it has managed to introduce such scholarly notions in a way that is at once accessible and instructive. Even those sceptical about its claims would have to admit the solidity of the research, and the book renders valuable service by opening up debate about Shinto’s origins to a general readership. Its influence is likely to be long-lasting.

At the end one is left pondering what exactly is this puzzling thing called Shinto?

Sacred trees

September 20, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

This huge sacred ginkgo tree stands in the grounds of a Shingon temple in the middle of Ashikaga City

A.J. Dickinson has kindly drawn attention to the inspiring thoughts below from Shepherd Bliss of the Dominican University of California. They are extracted from a longer article on the nature of trees,
which can be found here….

Shepherd Bliss writes: Years ago I made a promise to try to plant as many trees as I have consumed. That would be a lot of trees, since I have read many books, lived in wooden houses, and used nearly seventy years of toilet paper. Though I have planted hundreds of trees, I may never achieve that goal. Some goals are worthy, even if never achieved. How many trees do you think you have consumed? How many have you planted?

Sacred tree at Kurama, north of Kyoto

The ancient Greek god Pan is one of the divinities who offers blessings to trees. While at the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland I once sat without voice or movement beneath a tree in the woods for hours with the intention of seeing one of the little people. And see one I did…

Have you ever seen a sick forest? It is not a pretty sight. I recently walked in one with forty members of my Veterans’ Writing Group. A blight had struck the eucalyptus forest.

Imagine a world without trees. The Amazon is the Earth’s lungs, along with all the other trees. They make the oxygen we need to survive. Without trees, there would be no humans. Trees bring more than fruit and beauty. They create the oxygen we need to survive.

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

Afternoon: Gratitude

Trees protect and provide habitat and comfort. Blessings to them for all that they do.

This unconditional ground on which I recline, looking upward into the sky, always provides.

May we listen to the forest guardians – like poison oak – and keep our human selves and our pollution out of certain areas.

Your ancient air, beneath the infinite sky, infuses all our cells.

Sacred split tree at Omiwa Jinja

May we honor the winged-ones, the four-leggeds, and the crawling ones, including the maligned skunks, vultures, snails, and bats.

Thank you for these outreached branches, strong enough for us to climb and swing from, receiving us. After a day out among the trees, I think that when I get back home I will climb up a couple of my favorite trees. A sturdy wind has bent them downhill and made them even easy for an elder like me to climb into them.

You have not abandoned us. May we not abandon you. You keep us alive, alive, so alive. May we realize that by walking in the woods we are walking in beauty.

Thank you for your perpetual embraces. You give so much – nutrition, cover, beauty, protection, paper, firewood.
Trees are so hardy, yet so fragile.

We eat of your plenty. May we learn to give back more, and take less.

A long, long time ago, after crawling from the sea onto the shore and then moving deeper within the woods, we climbed down from you. We swinging four-leggeds then stood up and became two-leggeds. May we remember the long-ago homes you provided us, and still provide.

Praying to a sacred tree in front of Omiwa haiden

In awe of a sacred tree at Ise

Hiraizumi 2: Mt Kinkei

September 19, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

Entrance to Mt Kinkeisan. The grave of Yoshitsune's wife and children stands to the right of the torii.

Tiny Mt Kinkei is a sacred mount and a World Heritage Site. Yet it’s only 96 meters tall and barely noticeable on the Hiraizumi skyline. So why is it so special?

In The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade writes of the importance of the link between Heaven and Earth, and how the true world is always at the centre – right here, right now. The axis mondi can be erected anywhere and represented by a tree, a mountain, a pole. As the tallest structures on earth, mountains come closest to touching heaven and are therefore often privileged for their sacred quality. For the Pure Land community of Hiraizumi, Mt Kinkei was their sacred focal point.

A sutra container (courtesy of Tokyo National Museum). Sutras were buried so as to preserve them during the age of Mappo, when it was thought teaching would be corrupted.

Mythology grew up around the hill, the most ancient legend being that a golden chicken had been buried as an offering at its summit (hence the name Kin -gold, kei – chicken or cockerel). There were also mounds where Buddhist sutras were buried, and a container made of copper was unearthed in excavations and is displayed at the Tokyo National Museum.

At least one of Hiraizumi’s buildings was purposely aligned to the hill, that being a villa-temple at Muryoku-in. Twice a year the sun sets just behind Kinkeisan, setting it ablaze with colours.

When Basho visited Hiraizumi in ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’, he found most of the sites in ruins but the hill remained intact. “I came upon Lord Hidehira’s mansion, which had been utterly reduced to rice-paddies. Mount Kinkeisan alone retained its original shape,” he wrote. It still stands untouched today, away from the bustle of tourists and quietly neglected. When I visited, a lone cicada sang plaintively in the lingering summer heat.

Sacred summit

Believe in the kami!

September 19, 2012 / John D. / 2 Comments

I was driving along a road near Shirakami Sanchi, the mountainous beech forests that straddle Aomori and Akita prefectures, when I happened to notice the above banner by the roadside saying ‘Believe in the kami from your heart’. I’d been thinking to myself how rich the area was in shrines and how this reflected the evident blessings of nature, so my first reaction was to marvel at a most unlikely piece of Shinto propaganda. Almost immediately, however, I realised this must refer to the Christian kami – God.

I’ve raised before the question of why Christians came up with the confusing translation of Kami for God, and remember learning that it was something to do with the Protestant Church after the post-Meiji influx. Historically, the Catholics of the sixteenth and seventeenth century tried a number of terms, which started with Dainichi (causing them to be confused with Buddhists) and moving on to the more reasonable Deus or Dios.

Given the lack of distinction between singular and plural in Japanese, it’s a most curious state of affairs to have two different types of gods/God referred to by the same word. Once a newspaper headline caught my eye saying that Japan should be a ‘kami no kuni’. Since prime minister Mori was forced to resign for using such prewar language, I wondered who had made the headlines in similar manner, only to find out it was a Christian bishop in Kobe – and he certainly wasn’t advocating prewar State Shinto!

Kojiki origins of the Japanese

September 18, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

In an article for The Daily Yomiuri, Naoki Matsumoto of Waseda University raises the question to his fellow countrymen of ‘When did we become Japanese?’ and goes on to answer his question with reference to the myths of the Kojiki (712) and Nihon shoki (720).

His thesis is that the Yamato polity integrated the myths and gods of those they conquered, much in the manner of ancient Rome. It’s hardly an original idea, but it does lead him to suggest that the ceding of Izumo by Ohonamochi to the Yamato led to the people there becoming ‘Japanese’. When exactly the ‘kuniyuzuri‘ took place is a matter of dispute, though it’s thought to be sometime in the fourth century, possibly around 380. Matsumoto appears to be saying this was Japan’s 1066 moment when the country as we know it had its beginning.

On the left is Inasa no Obama, or the Little Beach of Inasa (photo by Matsumoto). Ohonamochi aka Ookuninushi-no-Mikoto allegedly swore to cede control of his kingdom at this place, just near the Izumo Taisha shrine in Shimane Prefecture.

For the full and somewhat lengthy article, see here.

Hiraizumi

September 15, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

The all-year round chinowa at Hiraizumi's Hakusan Jinja

In recent days an observant reader may have noticed that I’ve posted entries on Shiretoko in Hokkaido, Shirakawa Sanchi in Aomori and now Hiraizumi also in Tohoku. What do they have in common?

The answer is that they are all World Heritage Sites. Japan has 16 in all, and I’m currently on a trip to visit them as part of my next book project. It’s a journey that is taking me from the northern parts of Hokkaido all the way down to Okinawa. But for the moment I’d like to concentrate on Hiraizumi.

Rise and fall of the Pure Land

Hiraizumi is all about the Pure Land, Amida’s Western paradise. The Buddhist deity made a vow that he would save all who believed in him, and the end of the Heian period saw an upsurge in devotion to his Pure Land. It was at this time, following a series of wars in the region, that Fujiwara no Kiyohira (1056 – 1128) set up a temple at Hiraizumi dedicated to the salvation of those who had perished in the fighting – regardless of to which side they belonged. Such was his attachment to Buddhism that he even included consideration for the souls of animals that had suffered in the fighting.

Over the next 100 years Kiyohira’s successors continued his vision of representing the beauty of the Pure Land. The result was a complex of villas and gardens built to the highest of aesthetic standards, such that the ‘Northern Capital’ came to rival Kyoto itself in terms of splendour.

It all came to a sad end after 1189 when the vindictive Kamakura shogun, Minamoto Yoritomo, turned on his half-brother Yoshitsune. The latter was seen as a potential rival, and he was forced to flee from Kyoto to the northern stronghold where he had personal connections. For a time he was shielded, but following the death of his protector he and his faithful companion Benkei were betrayed and killed by Yoritomo’s men. The shogun then ordered the destruction of the fiefdom that had stood up against him.

The site of Benkei's grave. He supposedly died defending Yoshitsune to the end, pierced with arrows.

Monument on the site of Yoshitsune's last residence, built on a small hill overlooking the countryside

View from Yoshitsune's last residence

Pure Land and Shinto
Advocates of the Pure Land are not noted for their Shinto sympathies, for the stress on submission to Amida leaves little room for dependence on other deities. But Tendai is an eclectic kind of sect, which embraces different forms of Buddhism including Pure Land and Zen meditation as well as esotericism and mountain asceticism. Hiraizumi was built in the twelfth century, before the split with the Pure Land sects, and it remains to this day a Tendai stronghold, Ever since its beginnings the sect had been sympathetic to the kami and a leading practitioner of syncretism. (Yoshitsune and Benkei, it’s worth noting, were Tendai men: Yoshitsune trained as a youth at Kurama Temple, north of Kyoto, and Benkei was a warrior-monk at the Tendai headquarters on Mt Hiei.)

The eto shrines at Hakusan Shrine, bearing animal pictures to denote the Chinese zodiac

Nowadays there are only the remains of the once glorious Hiraizumi heritage, but an enormous amount of research has been carried out on the settlements of former times. As a result it’s known that there were seven Shinto shrines at the time of its Pure Land glory.

One was the Hakusan Jinja, that predates the Tendai temples, and whose rebuilt modern counterpart still stands amidst the wooded precincts of Chuson-ji. As well as a wonderful Noh stage, I found it had a chinowa and a set of small eto shrines bearing animals to denote the Chinese horoscope. Both were unexpected.

‘Isn’t the chinowa usually for June?’ I asked the priest, who was in the shrine office doing some calligraphy.
‘Yes, but ours is for all the year.’ he answered without further elucidation.
‘The eto shrines are unusual,’ I ventured further. ‘I’ve only ever seen them before at Shimogamo Shrine. Are the ones here traditional, or have they been added in recent times?’
‘They are recent,’ he said. Since he clearly didn’t want to explain what had motivated their construction, I left him to continue with his calligraphy for I had other places to visit.

Torii lining the entrance way to the Takkoku temple

A cliffside temple
Ten minutes outside Hiraizumi, and not part of the World Heritage designation, is an eye-catching temple called Takkoku no Iwaya, founded in 801 by the imperial general, Sakanoue no Tamuraramo who subdued the ‘Northern barbarians’ known as the Emishi. It was built on stilts in the manner of Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto, and set into the side of a small cliff. It’s a great example of just how syncretic Tendai can be.

Torii line the entrance to the temple. Ema are hung up for prayers. And a pamphlet invites people to pray by either clapping hands (Shinto style) or by holding their hands together silently (Buddhist style). The Buddhist deities are described in the kind of way you might expect of kami. Bishamon, for example, the principal deity, is said to invite happiness and to look kindly on those who pray for health, promotion or a good partner. Moreover, as a god of war he’s said to intercede forcibly on the petitioner’s side in conflicts.

Carving of a big Buddha set in the cliff face

Interestingly, the temple’s pamphlet says that Bishamon looks after those born in the year of the tiger; that Benten, also worshipped at the temple, is the patron of those born in the year of the snake; and that another temple figure, Fudo, protects those born in the year of the chicken. Does every year of the Chinese zodiac have their own Buddhist patron?

The head priest saw fit to finish off his pamphlet with a piece of political propaganda. In recent years, he said, the notion had arisen that Sakanoue was an agent of the central state based in Kyoto who had unjustly suppressed a local hero. This was far from the case, the head priest maintained, for in fact Sakanoue had acted as a liberating force who freed the people from an unjust regime which was making their life a misery. They had, and continue to have, every reason to be grateful to him.

From its foundation Tendai’s rationale has been to protect the interests of the imperial capital, and here in the twenty-first century it seemed the head priest was continuing to serve the cause. It was with a similar justification that according to mythology Jimmu embarked on his eastward passage of conquest to establish the fledgling Yamato state. Perhaps it’s no coincidence either that the Takkoku pamphlet was written about the very time that Bush and Blair were planning an illegal war for just the same kind of argument. It seems there’s a thin line indeed between intervention and imperialism.

Cliff temple of Takkoku no Iwaya, featuring here the raised platform of the Bishamon-do hall