Author: John D. (Page 173 of 202)

Ta no kami

April 20, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

In an article today in the Daily Yomiuri, Kevin Short writes of rice paddies and the ta no kami (kami of the rice fields). Surprisingly it was sparked by a chance encounter in a park in Ikebukuro in downtown Tokyo of all places. (The full article can be seen here.)

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Ta no kami representation

To my great disappointment, the park is currently walled off for construction. The two shrines, however, are still accessible. My destination this time was the Suitengu, situated at the northern end of the park. This shrine is dedicated to the spirits of Emperor Antoku, son of the famous late Heian-period (794-1192) warrior chieftain Taira no Kiyomori, and his mother and grandmother, who all drowned themselves in 1185 after the disastrous battle of Dannoura. The Heike clan of samurai warriors, which Kiyomori had led to power and glory, was totally defeated in this battle by their arch-rivals the Genji clan.

This particular Suitengu is just a small local shrine in front of which stand four very unusual stone statues. Seen from the front, these stones depict stolid standing monks with grinning, almost mischievous faces. In their hands, they hold small bowls topped with steamed rice, and shamoji paddle-shaped rice ladles. Although the local people treat these stones as Dosojin guardians, they are actually Ta no Kami, rice paddy spirits that have somehow arrived here from southern Kyushu region.

Sacred rice being swallowed whole at Izumo Taisha

The Ta no Kami cult is widespread throughout the country, and is at the heart of Japanese rural folk cosmology. The Japanese imbue rice with a sacred reverence and deep cultural significance that completely transcends the plant’s nutritional and economic value as a food grain. It was rice, first brought here from the Korean Peninsula nearly 3,000 years ago, that transformed Japan from a land of scattered hunter-gatherers to a great nation. Gohan, the basic word for cooked rice, is also a general term for food or a meal. Even today, the Japanese people, despite their insatiable appetite for bread and noodles, still think of themselves as rice eaters.

In most regions, the Ta no Kami are represented abstractly, with tree branches decorated with strips of paper, sometimes stuck into mounds of sand. In a restricted area of southern Kyushu, however, there is a tradition, dating back to at least the early 18th century, of carving unique stone representations, locally called Ta no Kansa. This tradition centers in Kagoshima Prefecture but includes a small portion of neighboring Miyazaki Prefecture as well.

The statues here are very typical of this Kyushu style. Each wears around his head a thick cowl that is actually the prop in a clever illusion. Seen from behind, this cowl turns into the top of a potent male phallic symbol. In Japanese folk cosmology, the rice-paddy spirits are actually one and the same with the Yama no Kami, or mountain spirits, which are sometimes represented as phallic symbols.

Yama no Kami reside in hills and forests all over Japan. They can be thought of as basic animistic spirits mingled with the departed souls of the local ancestors, which are believed to eventually rise into the mountains. In many regions, these basic protective spirits inhabit the mountains during the winter months, but come spring they move down into the rice paddies, turning into the Ta no Kami and watching over the precious crop until the autumn harvest is over, after which they return to the forested slopes. In Kyushu, the Ta no Kansa stones are placed on the dikes that surround and separate the paddies, and the villagers hold colorful festivals to welcome and petition the Ta no Kami in spring, and to see them off with great thanks in autumn.

Rice fields at Takayama (courtesy of craisen)

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For an interesting page on ta no kami at Gabi Greve’s Daruma Museum site, click here.

World Heritage Shrines

April 18, 2012 / John D. / 1 Comment

The Toshogu Shrine at Nikko

Nikko Toshogu; Futarasan Jinja; Kamigamo Shrine; Shimogamo Shrine; Uji Shrine; Kasuga Shrine; Kumano Sanzan (Hongu, Hayatama and Nachi Taisha); Itsukushima Shrine; Sonohyan Shrine and Sefa Utaki. What do they all have in common – they are all World Heritage sites. (They’re ordered here from north to south.) [More recently, I’ve discovered that Yoshino has three shrines listed in its World Heritage citation, namely Yoshimizu Shrine, Yoshino Mikimaru Shrine, and Kinpu Shrine. See here for a report.]

There are many shrines that have won the Unesco stamp of approval for being of ‘outstanding universal value’, yet some are very obscure indeed. It’s of note too how few of the national and imperial ranked shrines there are. No Ise or Izumo. No Meiji Shrine. Yet the relatively obscure Uji Shrine gets in there. And who has heard of Sonohyan Shrine? What’s going on?

Opening in the rocks at Sefa Utaki

One key to understanding the oddity of selection is that most of the shrines are part of a larger locale. Nikko Toshogu and Futarasan Jinja are part of the Nikko complex. Kasuga Shrine is counted among the “Historic Mountains of Ancient Nara”. The Kumano Sanzan are in the “Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes of the Kii Mountains”. Kamigamo, Shimogamo and Uji are included in the “Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto” (Uji Shrine has the oldest standing shrine building in Japan).

Sonohyan Shrine and Sefa Utaki are rather special, as they belong to “Gusuku Sites and Related Properties of the Kingdom of Ryukyu”. In other words they’re part of the traditional Okinawan religion rather than being Shinto. Both are centred around natural phenomenon, in one case a wood and in the other a rock cliff.

Only one shrine is listed as a World Heritage Site in its own right, so a roll of the drums, please, for Itsukushima Shrine. The picturesque setting of the seaside shrine is seen as quintessentially Japanese, and the architecture is highly esteemed. The World Heritage citation quoted below explains what makes the shrine so special… (the full citation can be seen here: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/776).

The island of Itsukushima, in the Seto Inland sea, has been a holy place of Shintoism since the earliest times. The first shrine buildings here were probably erected in the 6th century. The present shrine dates from the 12th century and the harmoniously arranged buildings reveal great artistic and technical skill. The shrine plays on the contrasts in colour and form between mountains and sea and illustrates the Japanese concept of scenic beauty, which combines nature and human creativity.

The Committee decided to inscribe the nominated property on the basis of cultural criteria (i), (ii), (iv) and (vi) as the supreme example of this form of religious centre, setting traditional architecture of great artistic and technical merit against a dramatic natural background and thereby creating a work of art of incomparable physical beauty.

The torii of Itsukushima at high tide

Water – the stuff of life

April 16, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

Wet rice cultivation

People often associate Shinto with reverence of rice. The yearly cycle rotates around the planting and harvesting of the crop, and rice is seen as central to the Japanese identity. In addition, rice wine in the form of saké plays a vital part in offerings and celebrations when it’s known as ‘omiki‘. However, wet-rice cultivation could not take place without water, and its vital role in sustaining life has been recognised and celebrated in Shinto since ancient times. In the passage below, written jointly with Timothy Takemoto of the Shinto Online Network, we look at the importance of water in the religion.

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Waterfall in Tohoku

The vital role of water is acknowledged in most religions, both as a means of cleansing and as an essential component of life. In Shinto, water holds a particularly important place. It not only acts as a means of purification, but its life-giving nature is recognised in offerings to the kami. The significance is underlined by every visit to a shrine, because before entering the precincts visitors wash their hands and mouth at a wash-basin.

According to the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, the primary element is fire. In Shinto mythology, however, it is water. This may be because in a wet field rice-based economy such as Japan, water was essential to the production of food. And for early Japanese the crystal clear streams pouring down from the mountainside seemed like a blessing from the gods. From ancient times poets have written of the wonder of springs, wells, and rushing waterfalls.

In Kojiki, it is said that the first gods grew out of water, like blades of grass, and that the first land was raised out of the primal sea. The sun goddess and her siblings were born from drops of water which fell from the eyes, nose and mouth of their father, Izanagi. And the imperial gods of Japan were formed from the water sprayed from the mouth of the sun goddess over the well at the centre of heaven.

Torii set in a lake, a reminder of how important travel by boat was in Japan's past

As in other animist religions, water spirits play an important part in Shinto lore. And purification rites include cold-water immersion known as misogi. This is based on the idea of merging with nature through entering into the flow of water. It carries with it the universal flow of life that pervades the universe.

The offering of water at the kamidana is therefore a recognition of its special properties. Out of respect to the kami, it should be as fresh as possible and changed every day. Water is mysterious, fluid, and magical. As we know from the Tohoku tsunami, it can be powerful enough too to destroy life. ‘Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,’ sang Joni Mitchell, and Shinto tells us that we should never take the gift of water for granted. When making the offering therefore, it is appropriate to be mindful of its special character and to be grateful for its blessings.

Ceremonial use of water every time you visit a shrine

Immersion in the cosmic flow: misogi in the Pacific at meoto iwa near Ise

Imamiya Shrine (Kyoto)

April 12, 2012 / John D. / 2 Comments

The rather grand entrance gate of Imamiya - like a miniature Heian Jingu

Imamiya is not one of Kyoto’s foremost shrines. But it’s atmospheric, boasts some unusual features, and hosts an interesting festival. it stands next to the temple of Daitokuji, famous for its Zen gardens and historical associations (such as with the iconoclast Ikkyu, and tea master Sen no Rikyu). It is also close to the grave of Murasaki Shikibu, author of Tale of Genji (c.1004).

The shrine was established originally on Funaoka Hill for protection against plague. It moved to its present location around the turn of the millennium, which explains its name (Now or New Shrine). it’s closely associated with the Yasurai Matsuri, which started as an attempt to placate the kami of pestilence during cherry blossom time (the falling petals were blamed for spreading the plague).

Praying at the Eight Shrines

The shrine is dedicated to three deities associated with the region of Izumo, with the main kami being Okuninushi (or Onamuchi). An unusual feature is a group of eight shrines ranged in a row, which are branches of eight powerful types of kami worship. There’s Daikoku; Ebisu; Hachiman; Atsuta; Sumiyoshi; Katori; Kagamitsukuri; and Suwa. The idea is that instead of making pilgrimages to the head shrines, you can just come here and do the whole lot in one go, so to speak. Neat!

The shrine has one of the best collection of omamori (amulets) that I’ve seen. (There’s an online display in English here.) One of them, interestingly, is the Zen figure, Daruma, presumably a nod in the direction of the temple next door. Another is styled as a Heian-era poem, presumably in honour of Murasaki Shikibu. And a third one, called tamanokoshi, is for Cinderella types who want to marry into a rich household. Personally I plumped for one shaped like a small mirror, which only reveals the fortune through reflection when the sun (or a light) is shone onto it. Mine was daikichi (big luck) I’m happy to report.

Magic Rock

The shrine makes much of its ‘magical’ rock ahokashisan, believed to possess wish-fulfilling properties. One often comes across such rocks at shrines, with your fortune depending on whether you can easily pick it up or not. Here it’s said that if you tap the stone three times and lift it, it will feel heavy. If you then stroke it three times and make a wish, it will feel light and your wish will be granted. It’s also said that if you rub the stone, and then rub an injured part of the body, it will heal (also a widespread practice).

One special feature of the shrine is found outside its entrance, where there are two ancient shops selling roasted rice dumplings called aburimochi. Amazingly, one of the shops has been doing business on the site since 1002. The other is relatively new, dating only to 1656. It’s amazing to think that for over 350 years these two rivals have been doing friendly business opposite each other and making a living off visitors to the shrine. Japanese traditions can be astonishingly enduring.

Roasting the rice dumplings

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Imamiya has an excellent website in English: http://www.imamiyajinja.org/eng/imamiya_ENG/TOP.html

They've been selling dumplings here for over 1000 years!

Protection from the plague at the Eight Shrines

A decidedly modern take on the traditional ema

A contemporary touch at a subshrine. Nice try, but it just doesn't work...

A curiously plastic ornament for a nature religion!

Origins 2): Yayoi connections

April 10, 2012 / John D. / 3 Comments

Yayoi housing (courtesy of Ray Kinnane)

Around 500-300 BC a wave of continental incomers arrived into Japan who were genetically and culturally different from the Jomon natives. They may have entered from Korea, or from China via Korea, or even directly from China. Most likely a combination of all three. These Yayoi newcomers brought with them a brand new culture based on wet rice cultivation, together with weaving, metalworking and a more advanced form of pottery. “DNA tests have confirmed the likelihood of this hypothesis. About 54% of paternal lineages and 66% of the maternal lineages have been identified as being of Sino-Korean origin,” says this site.

These newcomers brought with them two different strands of East Asian religion. A southern, Chinese agricultural-based strand. And a northern, Siberian shamanistic strand. What could bring these two together? Migration routes into Korea, it seems.

Wet rice culture started in the area around around the current border between Myanmar and China. In around 400 BC, it spread widely over the lower Yangtze region, before the Han (Chinese) people settled there. It seems the people from there didn’t go directly to Japan, but moved first into the southern part of the Korean peninsula. The reason is unknown, but probably fighting drove them to look for a more peaceful place. The fact that rice culture didn’t enter directly into Japan meant that it arrived with many features of Northern Tungusic culture, which had migrated southwards into the Korean peninsula. This mixing of northern and southern strands led to the fusion in Shinto of Siberian shamanism with Chinese folk elements based around the agricultural cycle.

Yayoi-era symbols of spiritual authority: mirror, sword and magatama jewel

Now let’s see what Wikipedia has to say on the subject….

“The origin of Yayoi culture has long been debated. Chinese influence was obvious in the bronze and copper weapons, dōkyō, dōtaku, as well as irrigated paddy rice cultivation. Three major symbols of the Yayoi culture are the bronze mirror, the bronze sword, and the royal seal stone.

“In recent years, more archaeological and genetic evidence has been found in both eastern China and western Japan to lend credibility to this argument. Between 1996 and 1999, a team led by Satoshi Yamaguchi, a researcher at Japan’s National Science Museum, compared Yayoi remains found in Japan’s Yamaguchi and Fukuoka prefectures with those from China’s coastal Jiangsu province, and found many similarities between the Yayoi and the Jiangsu remains.

“Some scholars also concluded that Korean influence existed. These include “bounded paddy fields, new types of polished stone tools, wooden farming implements, iron tools, weaving technology, ceramic storage jars, exterior bonding of clay coils in pottery fabrication, ditched settlements, domesticated pigs, and jawbone rituals. This assumption also gains strength due to the fact that Yayoi culture began on the north coast of Kyūshū, where Japan is closest to Korea. Yayoi pottery, burial mounds, and food preservation were discovered to be very similar to the pottery of southern Korea.”

I would add to the above the influence of Korean shamanism, particularly in the form of miko possession and rock worship. ‘Fossilised shamanism’ is how Gunther Nitschke describes Shinto in his book From Ando to Shinto (1993), but there’s more to it than that… it’s a concoction, with a fair dose of Daoism and Confucianism added later for good measure.

Yayoi-era doutaku bell

It’s thanks to these diverse roots that Shinto is so rich a religion. To what extent it can be called ‘indigenous’, however, is debatable. To me, it’s much more meaningful to call it East Asian. This is of course anathema to Japanese nationalists, who like to think racially and culturally Japanese are unique.

Based on skeletal, DNA and linguistic studies the scholar Satoshi Horai argues that modern Japanese are a mix of 65 percent Yayoi and 35 percent Jomon. Modern Japanese in the northern prefectures have rounder eyes, more body hair and wider faces, which suggests closer links to Jomon people. The archeologist Yasuhiro Okada told the New York Times, “People from northern Japan can be 60 to 80 percent of Jomon origin, while those from western or southern Japan are 40 percent Jomon or less.”

DNA analysis also indicates that Yayoi people and modern Japanese are similar genetically to modern Chinese and Koreans. This evidence strongly suggests that modern Japanese evolved from people who came from Korea or China, a notion that debunks the pre- World War II ideology that states that Japanese are racially distinct from other Asians. Some Japanese still hold this belief. In some museums in Japan you can find displays of ancient hunter-gatherers evolving into modern salarymen without any input from the Asian mainland.

(The above is taken from an excellent website full of interesting facts and snippets about early Japanese: See http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=484&catid=16&subcatid=105)

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For the first part of this article, about Jomon Japanese and the Polynesian connection, please click here.
For information on Korean mountain worship and shamanism, see David Mason’s San-shin site here.

Korean priest - not unlike a Shinto priest

Korean offerings - not unlike Shinto offerings (except the pig's head!!)

Korean drum – with triple tomoe

Korean rock worship – origin of Japanese sacred rocks

Korean wrestling - much like sumo

Korean communal repaste after a ceremony – much like Japanese naorai

Purity and pollution

April 10, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

In a review of a book on waste management in Japan, Michael Hoffman writes of how traditional notions of purity and pollution affect modern values. It’s a theme close to my heart, though I’m not sure that I follow the reasoning on this occasion. Not one of Hoffman’s better pieces, I feel… (For the full review, click here.)

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What can an anthropologist teach us about waste? That its definition and the responses it calls forth are not universal but in large part culturally determined, Japan’s being rooted in notions of “purity” as old as Japanese civilization itself.

Do traditional notions of purity affect contemporary social values?

What does “purity” mean? An answer would help us answer a related question: What does “pollution” mean? Ancient Shinto beliefs held that purity was violated by sickness, menstruation, childbirth, physical injury. These were the “pollutions” of primitive Japan, seemingly irrelevant today, and yet primeval thinking can be oddly tenacious, as Kirby’s study of what he calls “Azuma Disease” shows.

Azuma is his pseudonym for an otherwise unidentified ward in western Tokyo where, in the mid 1990s, the opening of a new waste processing facility coincided with mysterious symptoms affecting some 10 percent of residents living nearby. Sufferers experienced breathing difficulties, bad coughs, various aches and pains, high blood pressure, insomnia, mental disorientation. What could the cause be?

The new plant was not an incinerator, merely a transfer facility, where waste was compressed prior to removal to landfill sites. It was scarcely visible, screened from view by a nicely landscaped “Forest Park.” Ward permission to build it had brought generous subsidies from the Tokyo Metropolitan government. The 90 percent who suffered no symptoms saw only benefits. When sufferers banded together to form a Group to End Azuma Disease (GEAD), they found themselves ostracized as pariahs, outcasts. Victims of pollution were reviled as polluters, their symptoms scorned as infecting the communal harmony.

When GEAD commissioned a scientific study that showed toxic levels near the plant to be significantly higher than elsewhere, members expected — “naively,” says Kirby — that the Tokyo Metro government would move promptly to protect them, but science, it seems, cuts both ways, depending on who’s manipulating it. The plant’s adamant assertion that there was no scientific basis for the protesters’ claims carried the day.

Cleanliness is next to godliness

The standoff drags on. Most victims have left; some stubbornly remain. As one put it, “Someone’s got to stay! I’ve got to make sure people remember here, right?” Post-3/11 readers will catch a premonitory echo here of the despair of residents of “hot spots” irradiated by Fukushima’s nuclear reactor meltdowns.

“Azuma Disease” is just one item on Kirby’s agenda. He discusses dioxins emitted by laxly regulated incinerators, Tokyo’s war on invading and proliferating jungle crows, and “the world’s most serious nuclear accident since Chernobyl” — not Fukushima, which happened after the book went to press, but its precursor, the 1999 “criticality incident” at Tokaimura — a clear and dire warning of worse bound to come, if only people had heeded it.

That they didn’t highlights the multifaceted anomaly of Japan’s approach to pollution. Shinto “purity” flowed into the “mottainai” (waste not want not) austerity of the 17th and 18th centuries, an ethic — or was it an instinct? — astonishingly ahead of its time in terms of what a later age would call eco-consciousness. This in turn prefigured willing wartime sacrifices under the slogan, “Extravagance is the enemy!”

So it was, and so in a sense it is today, but a modern peacetime economy does not run on austerity, and Japan’s postwar “economic miracle” produced, Kirby notes, “the world’s worst health damage from industrial pollution up until that time,” Minamata Disease being the most famous, though by no means the only, example. So clear was the evidence back then, and so overpowering the effects, that vigorous citizens’ movements arose and were remarkably effective. Pollution was regulated and up to a point cleaned up. The protests faded. A new generation of outbreaks like “Azuma Disease” — fortunately or unfortunately — are less visible, less widespread, and so easier to sweep under the rug. Japanese thinking was never tormented, as Western thinking was early on, by the rift between appearance and reality.

Apparent purity will do, as long as the real impurity doesn’t show.

Purity in the year of the dragon

Origins 1): Jomon and the Polynesian connection

April 9, 2012 / John D. / 7 Comments

Jomon man

Here’s an interesting quote:

“Japanese matsuri (festivals) resemble so much Balinese ones that one could wonder if one was not copied from the other. During cremations in Bali, the dead body is carried on a portable shrine, very much in the way that the Japanese carry their mikoshi. Balinese funerals are joyful and people swinging the portable shrine in the streets are making loud noise to scare the evil spirits.

Basically, Balinese religion is a form of Hinduism that has incorporated the aborigenal animist religion. Japanese Shintoism is also a variety of animism, and is practised side-by-side with Buddhism, a religion derived from Hinduism (Buddha himslef was born a Hindu). There are lots of other cultural similarities between ancient cultures of Indonesia and Japan.

For example, both Balinese temples and Japanese shrines, as well as traditional Japanese and Balinese houses have a wall surrounding them, originally meant tp prevent evil spirits from penetrating the property. Despite the radical changes that Indonesian culture underwent after the introduction of Islam and Christianity, and the changes that Buddhism brought to Japan, it is still possible to observe clear similarities between the supposed original prehistoric cultures of the two archipelagoes.”

Things get even weirder when one considers the linguistic connection:

“From a linguistic point of view, Bahasa Indonesia/Malaysia and Japanese language share only a few similarities, but nonetheless striking ones. Apart from the very similar pronunciation in both languages, there is the same hierarchical differences in personal pronouns. For example “you” is either anda or kamu with the same meaning and usage as anata and kimi in Japanese. Likewise, the Japanese verb suki (“to like”) translates suka in Bahasa. Such similarities are probably more than mere coincidences, and may reveal a common origin.”

Jomon woman

So how is one to explain this? Well, research in genetics has turned up compelling evidence of migratory links.

“The Paleolithic Jomon people appear to have come from Austronesia during the Ice Age, before Japan was resettled by Bronze-age rice farmers from the continent. The Chinese had previously expanded southward to South-East Asia. The original inhabitants of Indonesia and the Philippines might have been related to Dravidians of Southern India. Y-haplogroup C, which has been associated with the first migration of modern humans out of Africa towards Asia, is relatively frequent in Kerala (southern tip of India) and Borneo. These early Austronesians are thought to have been the ancestors of the Ice Age settlers of Japan.”

So there we have it: Jomon Japanese have a southern Austronesian origin. The Jomon era was roughly from 15,000 BC to 300 BC, so what’s that got to do with modern Japan? Well, Jomons never died out but were assimilated into the immigrant waves from Korea and China that created the Yayoi culture. Research has shown that 43% of modern Japanese men carry a Y-chromosome of Jomon origin.

The Polynesian roots of the Japanese live on. And they’re evident in the form of modern Shinto too.

The style of shrine at Ise is said to have Polynesian influences

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Information draws on the following article:
http://www.wa-pedia.com/history/origins_japanese_people.shtml