Author: John D. (Page 164 of 202)

Mikoshi chance in Nishinomiya

August 31, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

Mikoshi all dressed up and ready to parade

Kansai Scene this month reports a rare opportunity for foreigners to take part in a Shinto festival….

“Nishinomiya International Association is looking for volunteers to help carry omikoshi, portable shrines, in the city’s annual festival on Sunday September 23rd. It costs ¥500 to take part, and all festival clothing and food is provided. Men and women will carry separate omikoshi around the city streets, then take part in a boat procession at Nishinomiya Harbour.”

To join in, sign up by Friday 7 September. Send details of your name, contact details, nationality and native language to: niasakura@ceres.ocn.ne.jp

Mikoshi incidentally are said to have originated in 749 when the kami Hachiman was transported from Usa Shrine in Kyushu to guard over the Buddhist temple of Todaiji in Nara. I’ve always understood this to be simply based on the custom of aristocrats riding in a palanquin; one pays deference to kami as exalted beings much as to ‘those who live beyond the clouds’ i.e. the top level of nobility.

Wikipedia though has a most curious sentence about the supposed roots: “The altar of the harvest festival carried out to the time which repeated migration by hunting and collection is the origin of a mikoshi.” The rest of their page (see here) carries some useful information, so it’s a pity the page editor appears to have resorted at this point to machine translation. Either that or the writer took way too much of a certain substance!

Mikoshi on parade in traditional style

Mikoshi takes to the water

Off-duty mikoshi

Recovering a sense of Animism

August 27, 2012 / John D. / 6 Comments

Himukai Jinja in Kyoto

Animism is sometimes cast as primitive, or seen as outmoded by contrast with ‘sophisticated religions’ like Christianity and Buddhism. But with the rise of paganism and neo-shamanism, animism is again gaining ground in the West. Perhaps it never really went away…

And this our life exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
– As You Like It Act II, Sc. I

An intriguing paper by Bruce Charlton, reader in Evolutionary Psychiatry at the University of Newcastle, puts forward the notion that animism is basic to the human view of life. It is after all how we perceive the world as children but which we are schooled out of subsequently. The result is alienation from the world around us and a tendency to see nature as simply dead material to be used and abused. Worst of all, we even treat animals that way, as if they are bereft of feeling or sense.

But for Charlton, “animism remains the basic underlying mode of human thinking, and animism can be recovered.” He contrasts the world of the hunter-gatherer, who had concern for the animals he killed, with modern mechanistic thinking that has no pity for the factory animals served up as cheap and convenient food. “Hunter-gatherer knowledge is dependent on the most intimate possible connection with the world and the creatures that live in it.” he writes.

Of course the world of the hunter-gatherer has long passed, and it’s impossible to turn back the clock. So how are we to recover the sense of being part of a living world, rather than an alienated, manipulating controller? Well, one way is through detachment from the social systems that maintain tyranny over the earth. This can take all kinds of forms, from outright rejection and dropping out to vegetarianism, self-sufficiency, and insistence on organic food.

There’s also another path, suggests Charlton: altered states of consciousness. I know at this point what readers might be thinking, for like others I’ve had mind-altering drugs myself. But what Charlton wants to focus on is the kind of trance state beloved of the neo-shamanic movement that has “mushroomed” in recent years. Typically drumming and hypnotic dancing are used, but some people are able to self-induce a similar state of mind. For some the dream-state is more real than the material reality of consumer capitalism. Carl Jung referred to the freeing of the mind in this way as ‘active imagination’.

it is in this semi-trance state that Carter sees the possibility of recovering a sense of belonging, or reclaiming animistic thinking. Indeed, he sees the trend as likely to continue in the future, and this ties in with the theory of another evolutionary psychologist whose book I recently came across who believes that animism forms the bedrock of the human mind which has been forcibly suppressed by the likes of Christianity and other axial religions. In this respect it may be no coincidence that the bestsellers of the age are books with an animistic vision, such as Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. ‘We’ve got to get ourselves back to the Garden,’ sang Joni Mitchell in the 1960s, and animism might just be the way…

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“When the individual feels connected to the cosmos as a whole, it becomes clear that ecological awareness is truly spiritual.”
– Fritjof Capra

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Bruce Charlton’s paper is entitled ‘Alienation, Neo-Shamanism and Recovered Animism’ (2002). It is available at his homepage, together with other papers such as ‘The Meaning of Life’.

Cry baby sumo

August 26, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

Thanks to Green Shinto friend, Mark Schumacher (dictionary of Japanese religion), for pointing out this Japan Times article on a phenomenon that I have come across at a few places around Japan. It might not be politically correct these days, but it’s all to do with vigour which underlies much of the Shinto philosophy…

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Babies set to tear up the ring
By MADS BERTHELSEN Japan Times Staff writer (May 4)

While the grown-up sumo wrestlers prepare for the upcoming grand sumo tournament, a somewhat younger field of competitors will face off in Hiroshima. Dressed in colorful kimono, the contestants will compete in speed and stamina in the noble sport of crying.

The event is called naki-zumo, which translates as the “crying baby sumo,” and the rules are simple: Two toddlers are placed on pillows facing each other. A sumo referee will then start to taunt the babies, trying to persuade them to shed tears by ordering them to “nake, nake” (“cry, cry”). If this doesn’t do the job, the referee will pull out his devil mask and try to give the kids a fright. The winner is the toddler who cries the longest and hardest.

The competition, a Japanese tradition dating back 400 years, is inspired by the Japanese proverb, “naku ko wa sodatsu” (loosely translated as “crying babies grow fast” in English). While parents may think the screams of a child are shortening their own lives, the intention of this tournament is to encourage the healthy growth of the babies. Another aim of the tradition is to scare away evil spirits.

The crying baby tournament will take place at Gokoku Shrine in Hiroshima on May 5, which is Children’s Day in Japan. Families with babies who are between the ages of 6 months and 18 months are welcome to join.

Naki-zumo (crying baby sumo) will be held at Gokoku Shrine at 2-21 Motomachi, Naka-ku, Hiroshima, on May 5 (from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.). To enter the competition is ¥5,000, and it is free to watch.

Matsuri stalls in trouble

August 21, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

Photo by Jeremy Hoare

Anyone who has been to a festival at a large shrine will be familiar with the lines of colourful stalls that line the approach. These have a traditional feel, and their links with yakuza are well-known. Now however, Japan Today reports that their days may be numbered due to anti-organised crime laws. (For the full article, see here.)

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Shrine concessions face ruin through guilt by association
KUCHIKOMI AUG. 18, 2012

It’s bon-odori week. And as the drums beat out the old familiar cadence, the grounds of temples and shrines are lined with concessions dispensing draft beer, yakitori and edamame (green soya beans). The stall-keepers who operate such concessions may work at such jobs for as few as 80 to 100 days out of the year—perhaps 130 days, if travel and preparation times are included. What’s more, they might have to pay out as much as 12,000 yen per day for teko (young helpers) on busy days, leaving their own net income at around 7,000 yen on average—not nearly enough to raise a family.

Courtesy of intoJapan website

To make matters far worse, one impact of the organized crime exclusion laws that went into effect from last October may drive these stall-keepers, known as tekiya, out of the business for good. While only one of the 22 designated organized crime groups in Japan, the Nishi-Ikebukuro-based Kyokuto-kai, is regarded as a tekiya-centric gang (with the other, more common variety being the bakuto, or gambler-types), the tekiya are said to have links to several of the other major yakuza organizations through “blood-ties,” which may date back many decades.

Article 3, Section 3 of the aforementioned laws can be cited to keep tekiya from setting up shop. Such action was in fact taken last October at Tokyo’s Meiji Shrine, where stall operators were assigned spaces for four days during the coming new year. The action was protested a month later by a letter from the president of Mikuro Kikaku, an event planning company, sent with cooperation from the central body of the association of groups representing members of the former outcast class. The letter stated the stall-keepers’ livelihood would be damaged and urged the police allow them to continue their business. Applicants were obliged to pay a fee and provide documents to facilitate personal background checks by the police.

During the Toka Ebisu festival held each January in Nishinomiya City, Hyogo Prefecture, some 500 concessionaires—which are alleged to have ties to the Yamaguchi-gumi syndicate—operate for three days. Police estimate that if each of the 500 concessions turns over 30,000 yen per day, that will make for a total of 45 million yen in sales for the three days. But crime writer Mizoguchi supposes that after stalls pay for for cleanup, electric power, etc, the gang’s total cut from the 45 million was probably around 800,000 yen. By the time that amount was spread around the involved parties, it was barely enough to been worth the effort.

Courtesy of My Tokyo Dream

“When I was a kid,” Mizoguchi reminisces, “I used to stand in front of a stall watching the operators’ animated face and gestures with an awed expression. More recently I don’t see their caustic sales style.” Now, he writes, it’s become “winter” for the tekiya.

And not just due to the laws. Convenience stores and 100-yen shops are also full of the kind of brick-a-brack or cheap novelties in which tekiya once monopolized. Or, you can see such goods being offered as bonus products or incentives on TV “infomercials,” whose narrators make their pitch in an animated style remarkably similar to the tekiya of yore.

Except for summer fireworks events and the occasional shrine festivals, tekiya are becoming an increasingly rare sight. But their street stalls are in a league apart from garage sales or bazaars. Indeed, Mizoguchi says he prefers to deal with the tekiya, who, whatever else one can say about them, are pros who know their business. And who don’t deserve to be treated as hardened criminals.

Once the tekiya have been killed off for good, he warns, the atmosphere of the omatsuri as Japanese knew it will die out as well.

Izumo exhibition

August 20, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

Thursday, Aug. 16, 2012 Special to The Japan Times By SACHIKO TAMASHIGE

Izumo: The myths and gods of Japan’s history

“Shinkoku is the sacred name of Japan — Shinkoku, ‘The Country of the Gods’; and of all Shinkoku the most holy ground is the land of Izumo,” wrote Lafcadio Hearn more than 100 years ago in his book Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. For Hearn, it had been an ambition to visit Shimane Prefecture’s Izumo, “the land of gods” as he described it, ever since he learned about it from the Kojiki (“Record of Ancient Matters”), the oldest extant manuscript in Japan.

The giant wooden pillars that once supported the enormous elevated shrine at Izumo, in its time one of the tallest buildings in the world

This year marks the 1,300th anniversary of the compilation of the Kojiki, while next year, a “grand installation” ceremony of Izumo Taisha will take place for the first time in 60 years. The grand installation marks the return of Okuninushi no Mikoto’s spirit, which had been temporarily moved to another location during the shrine’s renovations.

To commemorate these two events, The Kyoto National Museum presents “The Grand Izumo Exhibition,” featuring archaeological finds from important historical sites in the area, as well as other exhibits. The show highlights documents and artifacts related to the Kojiki, whose myths and legends have made it an indispensable reference in understanding the origins of Japanese culture.

Ancient chronicles
In the later half of the seventh century, Emperor Tenmu (c. 631-686) commissioned the Kojiki to be the official history of Japan in order to help strengthen imperial rule. It was completed in 712 and the Nihon Shoki (“Chronicles of Japan”), another manuscript of myths and legends was compiled in 720.

Oldest extant version of Kojiki from 1371

It is believed that one third of the myths in the Kojiki are about Izumo, which was once a region of power significant to the Yamato province (modern-day Nara Prefecture), the central regime of ancient Japan. The oldest version of the texts, Volume 1 (1371), a national treasure, is on display, and it serves not only as a reference to the relationship between Izumo and Yamato, but also as a manifestation of a fascinating way to record history.

In a tale depicted in the Nihon Shoki, Okuninushi is rewarded with Izumo Shrine for giving his domain to the Heavenly Grandson, the grandson of Amaterasu. According to oral traditions, the shrine once stood at 96 meters tall, and then later at 48 meters tall. Those measurements seemed unlikely until the discovery of pillar bases on the grounds of the shrine in 2000. The massive size of the bases suggest that they could have supported a structure of 48 meters in height.

“The discovery confirms the enormity of the ancient structure as well as endorses an old construction plan of the Izumo Shrine that has been handed down through generations of the Senge family, one of the lineages of the Shinto priests of Izumo Shrine,” said Katsumi Adachi, the director and curator of the Shimane Museum of Ancient Izumo.

This exhibition showcases the excavated uzubashira (axis pillars) for the first time outside Shimane Prefecture. And to give them context, they are exhibited with a large-scale reconstruction of the ancient structure that includes staircases reaching to the heavenly realm.

Historical role
Other great archaeological finds from Izumo include numerous bronze objects excavated from ruins at Kojindani and Kamo Iwakura — all of which have greatly informed historians’ view of Izumo’s role in ancient Japanese history. A spectacular display of Yayoi Period (about 300 B.C. to A.D. 300) bronze swords and bells, for example, indicate that long before the Kojiki, Izumo had been a major place of sanctuary and formed a unique culture around the spiritual world.

By examining cultural objects related to the history of Izumo, the myths and legends of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki can be deciphered. Those two manuscripts represented an official view of the nation’s central governments and were designed to justify their rule. However another text, Izumo no Kuni Fudoki (“Records of Customs and Land of Izumo,” completed in 733), compiled by an ancestor of an Izumo Shrine priest, tells different tales that reflect the view of local rulers.

This unprecedented exhibition is based on the results of joint investigations by the Kyoto National Museum and the Shimane Museum of Ancient Izumo, and in it Izumo emerges as a crucially significant region of ancient Japan — both politically and spiritually. Visitors will gain not only a clearer vision of Japan’s history, but also a deeper understanding of the Japanese spiritual world and its land of the gods — a place often called the home of Japan’s soul.

Izumo Shrine (from Daisuki Japan website)

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The exhibition at the Kyoto National Museum continues until Sept 9 and then moves to Tokyo from Oct 10 to Nov 25. See http://www.kyohaku.go.jp/eng/index_top.html

For more about Izumo, see here or here.

Ainu

August 19, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

Japan Today carries news of a new political party planned by an Ainu activist…

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Ainu Couple (Univ. of Minnesota website)

Fairer-skinned and more hirsute than most Japanese, the Ainu traditionally observed an animist faith with a belief that God exists in every creation—trees, hills, lakes, rivers and animals, particularly bears.

Ainu men kept full beards while women adorned themselves with facial tattoos which they acquired before they reached the age of marriage. Ainu clothes were robes spun from tree bark and decorated with geometric designs.

But like many indigenous groups around the world, most of Japan’s 24,000 Ainu have lost touch with their traditional lifestyle after decades of forced assimilation policies that officially banned their language and culture, leaving them a disadvantaged minority in modern Japan.

Earlier figures have pegged the number of Ainu at about 70,000 but the real figure is unknown since many have integrated with mainstream society and some have hidden their cultural roots.

“We think what is necessary for modern Ainus is our participation in politics,” said Kayano, who now curates a museum of Ainu heritage in Hokkaido. “Given the current political turmoil, I expect maybe we’ll have a chance.”

“If I’m elected, I’d like to work on introducing Ainu language classes in elementary and middle schools—I believe we will be able to recover our language.”

But Kayano, whose father was the only Ainu lawmaker in Japan’s history, has his sights on more than just reviving his ethnic group’s traditions and all-but-extinct language. He wants the Ainu to be granted their traditional homeland of Hokkaido island—now a popular spot for skiing and wilderness-seeking tourists—and even some two-thirds of Japan’s territory, mostly national parks.

Historically, the Ainu dominated Hokkaido until the 19th century when Japanese were encouraged to settle there, pushing the Ainu off their land and further to the periphery.

Kayano acknowledged that his vast land claims idea was unlikely to succeed, and it was not even part of his new party’s manifesto. “I know it’s a long shot, but nothing will begin without starting to say a word,” Kayano said.

(See the full article.)

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The Bear Clan

Hokkaido brown bear (higuma), courtesy of Yamasa Institute

This legend about how Ainu are descended from the Bear comes from the informative Island of the Spirits website.

“In very ancient times there lived two people who were husband and wife. The husband one day fell ill and soon after died, leaving no children, so that the poor wife was left quite alone. Now it happened to have been decreed that the woman was at some future time to bear a son. When the people saw that the time for the child to be born was nigh at hand, some said, ‘Surely this woman has married again.’ Others said, ‘Not so, but her deceased husband has risen from among the dead.’ But the woman herself said that it was all a miracle, and the following is [her] account of the matter:

“‘One evening there was a sudden appearance in the hut in which I was sitting. He who came to me had the external form of a man and was dressed in black clothing. On turning in my direction he said, “O, woman, I have a word to say to you, so please pay attention. I am the god who possesses the mountains (i.e., a bear) and not a human being at all, though I have now appeared to you in the bodily form of a man. The reason of my coming is this. Your husband is dead, and you are left in a very lonesome condition. I have seen this and am come to inform you that you will bear a child. He will be my gift to you. When he is born you will no longer be lonely, and when he is grown up he will be very great, rich, and eloquent.” After saying this he left me.’

“By and by this woman bore a son, who in time really became a mighty hunter as well as a great, rich, and eloquent man. He also became the father of many children. Thus it happens that many of the Ainu who dwell among the mountains are to this day said to be descended from a bear. They belong to the bear clan, and are called Kimun Kamui sanikiri—i.e., ‘descendants of the bear.'”

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The Smithsonian has an online tour of its breakthrough 1999 exhibition on Ainu, including a revealing description of the Ainu bear ceremony here.

There’s also an extensive website on Ainu on this Japan Focus page, which suggests links with other groups on the Pacific Rim.

Festival for the dead

August 19, 2012 / John D. / 1 Comment

Photo by Mark Buckton of the Nagataro Funadama Festival

The Nagatoro Funadama Festival was held on the Arakawa River in Saitama Prefecture this week, reports Japan Today. It is a traditional event staged in Nagatoro, a town famous for whitewater boating, and the origin lies in requesting that the gods of water protect the boatmen.

Photo from Metropolis magazine

After dark, boats decorated with paper lanterns and about 1,000 individual lanterns are floated on the waters of the Arakawa River to pray for the repose of drowned persons, creating an otherworldly atmosphere.

Part of the festival features fireworks, as can be seen on a youtube video here. Held annually in the Chichibu area of Japan in Saitama, the Nagatoro Fireworks festival is held right beside the river, preceded by sending off a boat lit up with lights. The festival takes place during Obon, to honor the spirits of the dead that visit the realm of the living during this period.

Lanterns floating towards to the sea; boats floating to another world; the spirit of drowned souls seeking repose. In the heat of midsummer thoughts turn to water and what lies beyond on the far side.