Author: John D. (Page 165 of 202)

Pagan connectons 12) Ancestor worship

August 15, 2012 / John D. / 4 Comments

Kyoto's Daimonji, a signal to the dead (courtesy of Aaron Williamson)

Today is Obon in Kyoto, when ancestral spirits are welcomed back home before being sent off with a grand fire ceremony called Daimonji, about which I’ve written previously. (See here.) The festival appeals to the syncretic sentiments of the Japanese, as can be seen by the Daimonji fires not only forming references to Buddhist teaching but to a Shinto torii too.

It’s sometimes said that ancestor worship is the true Japanese religion, underlying both Shinto and Buddhism. It’s such a strong component of national consciousness that Buddhism has become largely a funereal business centred around prayers at the family altar (butsudan) to deceased family members. Moreover, I’ve seen it argued that rather than a nature religion, Shinto is primarily a religion of ancestor worship.

When people think of the roots of ancestor worship, they often think of East Asia and China in particular. It’s not realised though that Britain too most likely had a flourishing ancestor worship of its own, probably around the same time as ancient China.

Stonehenge at dusk; ancestral gathering spot? (jphoto by Joel Sartore)

Megaithic mausoleums
The mystery of Stonehenge has attracted worldwide interest, and there are many theories about how and why it was built. The alignment with the solstice sunrise is well-known, but its use remains an enigma. Recent years have suggested though that it may have been a huge monument to the dead.

The National Geographic carries an article describing work carried out by Sheffield University’s Mike Parker Pearson, co-leader of the Stonehenge Riverside Project. ‘Latest discoveries by the project,’ writes the magazine, ‘appear to support Parker Pearson’s claim that Stonehenge was a center for ancestor worship that was linked by the River Avon and two ceremonial avenues to a matching wooden circle at nearby Durrington Walls. The two circles with their temporary and permanent structures represented, respectively, the domains of the living and the dead, according to Parker Pearson.’

“Stonehenge isn’t a monument in isolation,” he says. “It is actually one of a pair—one in stone, one in timber. The theory is that Stonehenge is a kind of spirit home to the ancestors.”

As for the massive Avebury stone circle which I recently visited, human bones found nearby point to some form of funerary purpose. These are not unlike the human bones found at similar sites. ‘Ancestor worship on a huge scale could have been one of the purposes of the monument and would not necessarily have been mutually exclusive with any male/female ritual role,’ says Wikipedia.

Our ancestors practised ancestor worship on a grand scale, it seems. Today in Kyoto the spirit of that past is still very much alive.

Avebury rocks!

Hidden Christians (Part Three)

August 12, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

Forgive me for a personal post here, but such is the state of printed matter these days that it’s rather rare to be able to boast of a book review, let alone a positive one. However, today’s Japan Times carries a pleasing piece about my work on Hidden Christians which I’m reproducing below. Though it may seem completely off-topic to this blog, there is in fact some relevance to Shinto as I tried to show in previous posts on the Hidden Christians. For those interested, please take a look at Part One and Part Two.

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Sunday, Aug. 12, 2012 (Japan Times)

For the sake of survival: concealing the cross
By STEPHEN MANSFIELD

In Search of Japan’s Hidden Christians: A Story of Suppression, Secrecy and Survival, by John Dougill. Tuttle Publishing, 2012, 272 pp., $22.95 (hardcover)

Hidden Christian altar (in Ikitsuki Island Museum)

When you travel with a mission, a theme in mind, encounters unfold, stories are forthcoming, history uncoils. John Dougill begins his own journey into the history of Japan’s hidden Christians in Tanegashima, where the Portuguese, bearing matchlocks and bibles, first landed.

Perhaps memories of the failure of the Crusades continued to rankle in the corridors of the Vatican or Escorial. In the age of oceanic exploration, the Catholic Church was reinvigorated by the prospect of making converts in the East.

Unlike colonized regions of Asia where Catholicism thrived, the imported religion in Japan conflicted with loyalty to the shogun. There was also, as the writer explains, the problem of ancestor worship. The notion that non-Christian members of the family might be dispatched into a fiery damnation made many Japanese as uncomfortable as the concept of confession, in a society where people were taught to keep their private thoughts and emotions in check. Suicide, a virtue according to samurai culture, was a sin in the Catholic one.

Japan had grounds to be concerned. With the arrogance that characterized papal decrees, the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 saw Spain and Portugal dividing the known world into two spheres, with the former claiming possession of everything to the west, the latter the east. The unity of the cross and the sword was real. Missionaries formed a beachhead, softening the ground; soldiers arrived later to harden it.

Chapter One of Dougill’s book, focusing on Kagoshima, is aptly named Genesis, for it was here that the foreign faith made its first incursion in the form of the Jesuit zealot Francisco Xavier who, as the writer puts it, led a “religious crack force in the service of the pope.” Appropriately, each section of the book has a biblical title, so we have chapters with names like Commandments, Persecution, Revelation, and Last Rites, lending the work an almost scriptural weight.

Maria Kannon - a statue of Kannon worshipped as Maria by the Hidden Christians

The author describes how Christianity was linked to uprising, the components of doctrine often being less important than revolt against oppression. It is doubtful, in fact, whether many of the illiterate peasants who followed Christian leaders into battle, grasped the principals of the faith itself. The more powerful and better informed may have had their own agendas, the Japanese being, then as now, nothing if not pragmatic. Many of the conversions of daimyo were trade motivated. Dougill quotes the old truism, “whereas the missionaries used trade to get the Japanese to heaven, the Japanese used heaven as a way to get trade.”

Dougill provides some interesting, little known facts of history. During Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea, for example, we learn of tension between the two Japanese armies, one led by a devotee of Nichiren and bearing pendants with Glory to the Lotus Sutra on them; the other, with a Christian general at its head, their soldiers carrying crosses.

The instruments of persecution appeared as early as the 1560s, however, when an unnamed woman was beheaded for the crime of praying in front of a cross. Even given the times, the depth of cruelty is difficult to grasp. Before the 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki were crucified — a 12-year-old boy was among them — their right ears were cut off, and the prisoners displayed in carts. The Japanese authorities executed over 4,000 people in a mere 30-year period, more than the Portuguese Inquisition managed in over 250 years. Thousands more were tortured, with methods ranging from snake and excreta pits to amputations, water torture, branding, upside down suspension, and suffocation among them. It is hardly surprising that, with Christianity banned, thousands of converts would go underground, creating a syncretic form of the faith that, even today, is not fully recognized by the Catholic Church in Japan.

A nonfiction work about devotion, the book is also a lively travelogue. And Dougill is a tireless journeyman and sleuth, going to wherever there is a story or lead. He tracks down descendants of hidden Christians on the island clusters of Amakusa, Goto and Ikitsuki, meets with curators, historians in Shimabara and Nagasaki, engages fisher folk in conversations about history.

Dougill has written an important book, one that bears accurate and empathetic testimony to a period that many would rather conceal behind the bloodstained drapes of history.

An Aomori power spot

August 8, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

Black-tailed gulls at Kabushima Shrine in Hachinohe

The Japan Times recently carried a report about Aomori ‘power spots’. The boom has now come to the attention of prefectural authorities, who are eager to milk it for its potential in boosting the ailing tourism market. Not all the power spots are shrines, but several are and here is an extract about Kabushima Shrine. (Incidentally, bird droppings were an important means of divination for onmyodo (Yin-yang) wizards.)

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Power spots and prehistory in beautiful Aomori Prefecture
By TOMOKO OTAKE (July 21, 2012)

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fv20120722a1.html

The moment I got off the bus, though, it wasn’t history (or turnips) that overwhelmed my first impression — but the massive presence of umineko (black-tailed gulls) wherever you looked. At the gate, on the steep steps, the rails, the stone statues and just about everywhere there perched, wheeled and squawked positively mind-boggling numbers of the long-beaked, red-eyed and ominous-looking migrant avians on high alert as they tried to keep their fluffy chicks on this breeding colony safe from predators and inattentive wanderers like myself.

Shrine official Hisanori Furudate explained that the island is the only place in Japan where up to 40,000 of these birds can be observed up close. Indeed, he said that as the shrine has been the gulls’ nesting ground for centuries, many couples visit to be blessed with children.

He added that many visitors who used to gripe about the bird droppings are happy now, as the shrine recently started distributing a wooden certificate to each of those who “are lucky enough” to get un (which in Japanese means both “good fortune” and “poop”) for free.

Good luck is also said to attend those who walk along a short trail around the shrine’s premises three times. But to do so, of course, means dodging the ubiquitous and aggressive birds all around you, in what looks like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s famed 1963 suspense film, “The Birds.”

And while Furudate reassured us that umineko are the tamest of all seagulls, being pecked in my leg from behind made me almost shriek in terror. Consequently, for any future visit, it was pertinent to learn that the gulls are in Kabushima every year from the end of February through early August.

Koshinto role-play game

August 7, 2012 / John D. / 4 Comments

I’ve come across a very curious website, the nature of which I don’t fully understand… Apparently it’s a role-play game of some kind, yet someone’s gone to enormous trouble and written some fascinating stuff.

Take a look for yourself and see if you can work it out…

http://wiki.white-wolf.com/camwiki/index.php?title=Koshinto#Basic_Overview

Book Review: Shinto in History

August 7, 2012 / John D. / 3 Comments

I’m reposting this review from the Japan Times (originally in Monumenta Nipponica) because I think it’s important… As the review title suggests, the book has to do with common misperceptions about Shinto…

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SHINTO IN HISTORY: Ways of the Kami, edited by John Breen and Mark Teeuwen. Richmond, Surrey, U.K.: Curzon Press, 1999, 368 pp.

Dismantling stereotypes surrounding Japan’s sacred entities
Reviewed by FABIO RAMBELLI (Sunday, July 15, 2001)

“Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami” is the first attempt in any Western language (and possibly even in Japanese) to offer a critical examination of the Shinto tradition in its various aspects and guises. It constitutes a powerful critical and analytical tool to counter widely circulating textbook-like treatments of the subject.

Shinto is often presented as the indigenous religion of Japan, a cultural formation that supposedly has existed in an almost unchanged form from the remotest past as the unique expression of the Japanese polity and that is characterized, among other things, by a close relation with nature.

One of the aims of the book, as is clear from the subtitle, is precisely the dismantling of such stereotypical views. “Ways of the Kami” suggests a plurality of modes of interpretation of and interaction with sacred entities — the kami — a term that is itself to be understood in the plural. Far from being a simple and unified tradition, as is often assumed, Shinto is presented here as a complex and diverse entity.

Historicity is a fundamental component of the editors’ view of Shinto, as the title indicates. The structure of the book, which follows a strictly chronological order, further underlines the historical emphasis. This should not, however, be understood as a form of historicism, in which each essay describes a stage in the unilinear evolution of Shinto.

To the contrary, all the essays show — in their subjects, methodologies and broader theoretical concerns — the diversity and complexities inherent in the kami traditions of Japan. The individual articles can be envisioned as pieces of an evolving mosaic that does not have a clear thematic center but grows more complicated and intricate over time.

The Ways of the Kami are multiple and complicated

The generative matrix of the book derives from a seminal article by Toshio Kuroda entitled “Shinto in the History of Japanese Religion,” originally published in English in 1981. The editors underline the enormous importance of this article, which argued that Shinto as an independent religion took shape only in the modern period, having emerged in the medieval age as an offshoot of Buddhism.

The introductory essay, “Shinto Past and Present,” by the two editors, John Breen and Mark Teeuwen, despite its relative shortness, well deserves to be included in course readers on Japanese religions as a healthy alternative vision to traditional textbook stereotypes.

Another essay, “Shinto as a ‘Non-religion’: The Origins and Development of an Idea,” by Hitoshi Nitta, presents the origins of the idea, still widely circulating, that Shinto is not a religion but a set of customs, rituals and beliefs related to ancestor cults, the emperor or the state. “The Structure of State Shinto: Its Creation, Development and Demise,” by Koremaru Sakamoto, argues, in my opinion unconvincingly, that wartime State Shinto was a “faithless” movement without “contact with the mystery of the sacred spirits,” that is, that it had little to do with a supposedly real Shinto. He holds at the same time it was “far removed . . . from the ideologies of ‘ultranationalism,’ ‘expansionism’ and ‘militarism.’ ”

One of the co-editors, John Breen (taken from his Wikipedia page)

“Tanaka Yoshito and the Beginnings of ‘Shintogaku,’ ” by Junichi Isomae, traces the modern development of Shinto studies as an academic discipline originally animated by xenophobic and authoritarian concerns. The book concludes with a useful general bibliography and index.

The abundant materials and references make this book a rich source of suggestions for future research. For example, the interaction between traditions “native” to the Japanese archipelago and “foreign” religions (not just Taoism and Buddhism, but also Confucianism and, why not, Christianity) deserves a more systematic study. The same can be said about traditional state cults and their relation with modern “state religion.” A more general, theoretical problem is the impact of premises from the modern academic field of religious studies on the definition and study of Shinto, as seen, for instance, in the fact that Shinto rituals are often denied the status of religious activities, instead defined as “customs.”

This is an important, groundbreaking book. For its plurality of topics, approaches and perspectives, its scholarly soundness and its genuine international sensibility (it was written by scholars from a half-dozen countries), it will become required reading in courses on Japanese history, culture and religion. It will be the reference text on Shinto studies for years to come, and it well deserves to be translated into Japanese.

This review is excerpted from Monumenta Nipponica, 56:2.

Pagan connections 11) Festivals

August 6, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

Glastonbury's Goddess Festival gathers in a grove

Ties and knots
On my final day in Glastonbury, the annual Goddess Festival took place to coincide with ancient Lammas. It allows me to tie up some loose ends, beginning, suitably enough, with knots. It’s said that ties in the most literal sense played a large part in early religion, expressive of ties to the land and the gods that ruled it.

Pagan charms at Glastonbury's White Spring

There’s a great Open University youtube interview with of a hedge witch, which shows her collecting plants for her spell casting. It shows too how she ‘seals’ her intention into the charm with a ritual knot. You can find charms like this around Glastonbury at copse and sacred spring. They’re reminiscent of the amulets at Shinto shrines.

Ancient man had a a strong awareness of ties to the land, and these were celebrated in their festivals. The Goddess Festival has been inaugurated to re-create that awareness of being bound to the Earth. Gratitude is given to the many manifestations of the Goddess down the ages.

At the 2012 festival participants gathered at the foot of a hill, to be accompanied by drumming and chanting across some fields to a hilltop in sight of Glastonbury Tor. There the group gathered around a bonfire, and beneath sporadic showers thanks were given for the gifts of greenery, abundance and fertility. ‘The earth is our Mother, we give thanks to her, the earth is our mother,..’ ran the insistent chant.

Informality and spontaneity characterised the proceedings, with themed clothing, rhythmic drumming and choreographed ritual providing coherence. The open setting, broad horizons and heavy bursts of rain provided a strong connection to nature. With the Tor in the background, the spirit of place was manifest.

Heading higher up the hill

Matsuri
The Goddess Festival is an outgrowth of the search for authenticity that drove the 1960s. In the revolt against the numbing conformity of a consumer society lay a desire for transcendence that looked to eastern religions and to the past.

There’s something of the wild abandon of neo-paganism in Japan’s traditional matsuri (festivals). You have the feeling that here lies the real roots of the religion. Some of the festivals are all too stately, but some are so frenetic they have been shut down and controlled by the authorities. Fertility festivals, ‘naked man’ festivals, rampant crowds…. there’s an almost shamanic frenzy in the religious ecstasy.

The intoxicant of choice is the divine miki (saké), and participants are often stirred up into an intoxicated mania. It’s said that festivals are intended to build collaboration among the community and to solidify ties to the local deity. Many of them clearly do. But there are other festivals where the wildness speaks of a desire to transcend physical limitations in the manner of trance dance and neo-shamanic gatherings, as if seeking to pass into a realm beyond the ego.

In the celebration of life, whether east or west, all are united in the miracle of existence.

All hail to the elements in front of Glastonbury Tor

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There are several youtube videos of the Glastonbury Goddess Festival from previous years. There are also several youtube videos of Japanese matsuri, including this one which gives an indication of the frenzy of a ‘naked man’ festival: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q3DufVsktc

Pagan connections 10) Earth energy

August 4, 2012 / John D. / 3 Comments

Some places radiate with a special energy

Ley lines
In 1921 an amateur archaeologist named Alfred Watkins noticed on a map that various ancient monuments and spiritual places were aligned in a straight line. He spent the following years researching the phenomenon of what he termed ley lines, and in 1925 published The Old Straight Track in which he proposed that they were traders’ tracks dating back to the Stone Age.

The idea was taken up in the 1960s, when interest in the occult led to theories that they might be lines of energy or magnetic nodes. There was talk too about UFOs being attracted by ley lines. By the 1970s ley hunters began to split into two camps: one that researched possible ancient tracks; and one that investigated lines of energy running through the earth, akin to meridian lines in acupuncture. Nowadays the notion of energy lines has become widely accepted, and Glastonbury Tor is held to derive its power from standing at a conjunction of those of St Michael and St Mary.

Good vibrations
There’s nothing specially New Age about the notion of place and power. For the Romans it was taken for granted that places had a spirit of place – the genus loci. Personified, it became the guardian deity of the locale.

Down the ages artists and writers have tried to capture the spirit of place in painting and words. In modern times D.H. Lawrence was instrumental in popularising the notion:

‘Different places on the face of the earth have different vital effluence, different vibration, different chemical exhalation, different polarity with different stars: call it what you like. But the spirit of place is a great reality.’

Kyoto's 'power spot': the woods at Shimogamo Jinja

Power spots 
You’d expect animist religions to be sensitive to the spirit of place, and many Shinto shrines are clearly situated at places that resonate with power. Some are associated with striking natural phenomena, such as Nachi Shrine located by a waterfall radiating negative ions. Others celebrate holy hills, sacred rocks and sites of spirituality.

‘There were no bogs before Dickens, no sunsets before Turner,’ said the great Oscar Wilde. It’s a typical Wildean paradox, startling yet true in its own way. It shows the significance of celebrating the physical world in art and religion, by helping us see things as if for the very first time. For me the great attraction of Shinto and paganism lies precisely in this: in helping us be more aware of the spirit of place, of the wonder of creation, of the special qualities of place and natural phenomena.

Recent years have seen a boom in ‘power spots’ in Japan, many of which are famous or ancient shrines. How far this has borrowed from New Age notions in the West I’m not sure, but the boom was sparked by a television programme about psychic matters called Aura no izumi (Well-spring of the aura), starring Ehara Hiroyuki. One of his books Shinkikou (2005) promoted the idea of power spots. I’ve got some of the popular power spot series which followed, based on a mix of tourism and whatever special power the place or shrine is traditionally thought to possess.

Booms come and go in Japan, but as long as humans don’t destroy it the spirit of place will continue undaunted. Shinto shrines mark its most striking manifestation, and I’m pleased to announce in this respect the beginnings of a new website on Shinto Shrines by my collaborator, Joseph Cali. Please see http://shintoshrinesofjapanblogguide.blogspot.jp/

Sunrise over Glastonbury Tor (Photo courtesy of Keiko Futaguchi)