Author: John D. (Page 170 of 202)

Making a magatama

May 19, 2012 / John D. / 2 Comments

The Yoshinogari magatama expert gives instructions

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

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

Stages of magatama making

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

Using the corner to get a rounded effect

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

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

Freshly made magatama (mine on the right). The Yayoi people had more time, patience and expertise!

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

The answer might well have surprised me if I had not on the previous day visited Atago Shrine in Fukuoka. The shrine’s symbol looks like a pair of yin-yang elements, but when I asked a priest about it he told me they represented a wild boar’s tusks. So there we have it. Who ever knew that the plucky wild boar played such a part in Shinto?

Mark of Atago Shrine in Fukuoka

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

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An informative page on magatama can be found on Mark Schumacher’s onmark website here. Wikipedia also has a good and even lengthier page, with seven different theories as to its significance.

Aoi Festival (Kyoto)

May 16, 2012 / John D. / 1 Comment

Setting off from Gosho

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

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

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

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

All dressed up and somewhere to go...

A dapper looking horserider

Ox-cart proceeding without any horse power

A very dignified imperial messenger heading the procession

Playing the part of the former princess-princess Saio

Armed guards, past and present, at the starting point in Kyoto's Former Imperial Palace

Arriving at Kamigamo Shrine, end point for the festival, some five hours later

Secret rite (Miare sai)

May 16, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feathers play a part in many shaman costumes

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

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

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

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

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

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

The celestial home of Kamo Wake-ikazuchi

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

Shinto scouts

May 13, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

Scouts at prayer to the Shimogamo kami

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

Toju Takabayashi, aged 83 and still a scout leader

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

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

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

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

Scout's honour

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

Mikage Festival pt. 2

May 12, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Azuma dance offering to the kami

Gagaku musicians with the plaintive 'sho' in the lead

The ceremonial drum takes a leading part

Procession of the halberbs, preceded by a sakaki branch

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

Mikage Festival (Shimogamo) pt. 1

May 12, 2012 / John D. / 3 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

Sacred truck for a sacred ride

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

Interesting sartorial differences for male priest and female

Aoi leaves on the processional participants

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

Foxes

May 11, 2012 / John D. / 4 Comments

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

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Foxes are among the great perennial stars of Japanese folklore. To begin with, they are considered to be familiar spirits serving the immensely popular rice deity Inari. A set of two stone foxes stand watch in front of every Inari shrine.

Some folklorists believe that foxes became associated with rice farming because of their role in controlling mice, hares and other agricultural pests. In the past farmers would even leave out food to attract foxes to their rice paddies. Foxes are thought to be especially fond of abura-age, thin slices of deep-fried tofu soy bean paste. Pockets of abura-age stuffed with rice are known as Inari-zushi.

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

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

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

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

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