Author: John D. (Page 174 of 202)

Yasurai Festival (Imamiya Jinja)

April 9, 2012 / John D. / 1 Comment

Circling beneath the red umbrella brings protection from disease

A plague on you cherry blossoms!

That’s evidently what some Heian-era folk thought, for when a bout of plague hit Kyoto just over 1000 years ago, they thought it must be caused by the falling cherry blossom. So to pacify the ekishin, kami of pestilence, they started a festival for its entertainment. It’s still going today, and is known as Yasurai matsuri.

In fact there’s a whole group of festivals at cherry blossom time to do with warding off pestilence, known as gechinsai. Kyoto’s version centres on Imamiya Jinja, where on the second Sunday of April processions from two other places converge at the shrine to perform for the kami. The main feature is the dance of the demons.

The procession features large red umbrellas, or canopies. It’s said that if you get under one, you will be safe from disease for the coming year, so onlookers take advantage of the occasion to stand underneath. A large red umbrella is put up at the shrine too, with people circling underneath before paying respects at a temporary shrine.

Five spring branches atop the canopy

On top of the processional canopy is a bundle of five different spring branches – willow; pine; cherry; camelia; mountain rose (yamabuki). The idea behind this apparently is that the kami is thought to be distracted by the cherry blossom and wanders off, infatuated by their beauty. It thus fails to protect the locals. The flowering spring branches draw it to the procession and lead it back to the shrine. They act therefore as a kind of shamanistic vehicle (yorishiro) for drawing down the spirit.

Back at the shrine, the kami is entertained by young demons with red and black wigs dancing with drums. This pleases the kami, which is filled with benevolence towards the neighbourhood. In this way it agrees to protect and watch over the locals for the coming year.

As part of the festival the shrine provides bright red hitogata (paper effigy), which act as a substitute for a particular person. You write the name of a person you want to be in good health, then give it to the shrine to be prayed over while retaining the slip in the middle. This is placed at the entrance to the person’s house, ensuring protection from disease.

Red hitogata (effigy) for disease protection

According to Paul Carty, Kyoto scholar, the Yasurai festival launches an annual cycle of anti-plague festivals that runs from cherry blossom time through the summertime Gion Festival and ends with the Kurama Fire Festival on Oct. 22. The season of disease thus runs from spring to autumn through the hottest time of year. Presumably in winter it’s too cold for the germs.

Imamiya shrine parishioners are keen to point out their festival is the oldest in Kyoto, though it’s generally said that the honour belongs to the Aoi Matsuri. True or not, for 1000 years people have been carrying out the Yasurai Festival in cherry blossom time, and you have to say that those centuries of persistence have paid off. Not much sign of the plague or pestilence these days!

Procession heading towards Imamiya Shrine

Demons getting down to some serious dancing and drumming

Demons watching demons

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For more pictures and videos of the dance performance, click here.

Celebrating cherry blossom

April 7, 2012 / John D. / 4 Comments

View along the Takano River in Kyoto

Yes, it’s that time of year again… banks of pinkish cloud covering hillsides; cameras intrusively close to unfurling blossom; parks packed with drunken revellers more interested in karaoke than cherry. Here in Kyoto we have many special cherry blossom sites, and from my window I can gaze along the Takano River lined in pink as it meanders towards the northern hills. Ah, Saigyo…

Let me die in spring under the blossoming trees, let it be around that full moon of the fourth month.

blossoms/ on the withered trunk/like memories

The Japanese have long made a cult of cherry blossom. It used to be plum blossom until Heian times, a custom adopted from China, for the reawakening of nature after the long sleep of winter was marked by the miraculous first flowering of the fruit tree. But the Japanese preference for cherry gradually prevailed, driven by an affinity with the evanescence of its blossom.

The sentiment is usually associated with the Buddhist view of the transience of life, but Shinto shares a similar outlook. It was after all the great Shinto scholar, Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), who came up with the compelling notion of mono no aware (the pathos of things) as an underlying current in the culture. It was Motoori too who wrote the poem: ‘If someone asks about the spirit of a true Japanese, point to the wild cherry blossom shining in the sun.’

One way of looking at Shinto is as a celebration of life, and that includes cherry blossom viewing. Here in Kyoto we have a shrine famed for its cherry connection – Hirano Jinja. The precincts contain 400 cherry trees in all, with 50 different types that bloom successively over a month. Take a look at this page from the shrine’s website to see the loving detail with which the Japanese record these things.

The shrine has held a cherry blossom festival annually since 985. It began during the reign of Emperor Kazan, and is celebrated now on April 10 each year. In the morning at 11.00 there will be a ceremony at Emperor Kazan’s mausoleum, and in the afternoon at 1.00 a procession will head around the neighboring area.

The weather forecast is good. The blossom are coming to their peak. The shrine sure is going to be packed!

800px-Hirano_Shrine_Cherry_Blossoms_April_2010

Crowds flooding into Hirano Shrine (Photo courtesy of Brian Adler)

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For more on Japan’s cherry blossom soul, see Michael Hofmann in the Japan Times
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20120325x1.html

For a firsthand account of Kyoto’s cherry blossom festivals, see
http://www.travelvisionweekly.com/article.php?id=2100

Is Shinto a religion? (again)

April 6, 2012 / John D. / 6 Comments

Michael Saso, professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii, has written simply yet succinctly of the nature of religion in East Asia. Substitute ‘Shinto’ for Daoism in the passage below, and you pretty much have Japan instead of China.

Is Shinto a religion? Well, yes and no… (quote follows)

‘Buddhism and Daoism are cultural systems, not religions, in the sense of that word in Indo-European language usage. Religion, in Semitic, English, Arabic, Latin, Germanic, Turkic, and Hindi languages, means a faith or belief system to which one must subscribe, in order to belong. Thus, in all Indo-European cultures, one must belong to, or believe in only one system. It is unthinkable, for instance, to be Christian, Judaic, and Islamic, all at once.

In East and Southeast Asia, on the other hand, wherever religion is defined as the celebration of “rites of passage” (sacraments) and “annual festivals”, at least three (and sometimes more) religious systems provide rituals, moral ideals, and festivals. In China, for instance, Confucian social values, Buddhist rites for the deceased, and Daoist annual festivals, are all celebrated as essential elements in a healthily functioning society. One must be Confucian for human encounter, Buddhist for burial services, and Daoist when harmonizing with the great seasonal changes in nature. Confucian mind, Buddhist heart, and Daoist belly, is another way of expressing the “Three teachings, one culture” proverb that defines Asian religious culture.’

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For an earlier take on this question, see here.

Religion by another name...

Nukes into shrines

April 6, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

Fukushima no. 1 nuclear power plant reenvisaged as Shinto shrines

Here’s an odd but intriguing idea: a plan to convert the failed nuclear power stations of Fukushima into Shinto shrines!! And no, it’s not an April 1 joke, for the article was posted on March 18 in the Japan Times. (Click here.)

The proposal to convert nuclear power into spiritual power is the brainchild of an architect called Katsuhiro Miyamoto…

The 51-year-old who, in 1996, represented Japan at the “Olympics of architecture” — as the Venice Biennale is known — has suggested erecting giant shrine-style thatched roofs over each of the crippled reactor buildings — and so creating what he dubs “The Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant Shrine.” This, he tells The Japan Times, will “pacify a malevolent god.”

As yet, no long-term strategy for dealing with the now highly radioactive plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. has been developed. Far from it, in fact, since work is still ongoing to stabilize the leaking reactors. Ultimately, however, Miyamoto believes the key issue will be what to do with the highly radioactive nuclear fuel that either remains in or has melted through the reactors’ containment vessels.

“They won’t be able to bury it on the site because the land there is not geologically stable enough, and I doubt they will be able to take it off the site because no other local government will agree to take it,” Miyamoto observes. “That means they will have to stabilize it somehow and more or less leave it where it is.”

That done, the next task as he sees it would be one he believes architects are uniquely positioned to address: the creation of some kind of structure above and around the reactors that will convey to future generations — possibly for 10,000 years — the danger of what lies within.

In this respect he points out that, “Whereas the original blue confetti-like pattern painted on the reactor buildings seems like a device to conceal danger, a shrine-like structure will do the opposite.”

As to the choice of a shrine-like appearance — rather than, say, giant skull-and-crossbones graphics adorning the buildings — Miyamoto concedes that “not all Japanese would describe themselves as ‘believers’ in Shinto.” Nonetheless, he thinks “most would agree that when they visit a shrine they sense a kind of inexplicable power there. Shrines have been conveying that impression for many generations already, and they are likely to do so in the future, too.”

The architect notes that with thatched roofs topping each of the six reactor buildings at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, the site will come to resemble Uesugi Ancestral Hall in the city of Yonezawa, Yamagata Prefecture, where 12 small shrines laid out in a line commemorate 12 successive generations of the Uesugi clan’s feudal lords, whose lives spanned more than 250 years from 1623-1876.

And like that ancestral hall, the architect believes the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant Shrine “will respectfully serve as an icon to enshrine the souls of the departed” — but unlike it, “it will also deter anyone from approaching.”

Ise oracle

April 5, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

I’ve come across information on a website that is far from authoritative, so am wondering whether it’s true or not. The information seems startling, yet I’ve never seen it mentioned elsewhere. The website in question is full of errors and politically repugnant, so I’m not inclined to trust it. Perhaps readers could help out here…

According to the website, an official delegation was sent to Ise in 1941 to ask whether the country should go to war with the US. The answer given by the priests, on the presumption that it derived from Amaterasu, was in the affirmative. As a result on Dec. 7, 1941 – ‘a date which will live in infamy’ – Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

Similarly in 1945, with Japan facing defeat, another delegation was sent to Ise following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The question posed this time was whether the nation should die fighting to the last man, or whether the country should surrender so as to be able to fight again in future. The answer this time was that the nation should surrender, because the kami loved the people.

I can’t find any other reference to this on the internet. Does anyone know whether there’s any truth to the claims?

Otafuku and Uzume

March 25, 2012 / John D. / 5 Comments

Otafuku mask at Kinefuri Matsuri (photo by mboogiedown)

Otafuku is a curious crossbreed character, familiar to anyone who lives in Japan. She’s a dumpy, homely, cheery faced figure who’s also a bringer of happiness. At some shrines she’s given out as an engimono (good luck charm). But who on earth is she?

Accordng to Hirata Atsutane (1776-1843), the erratic polymath of Shinto studies, there are two theories about her origins. (The following passage comes thanks to Norman Waddell’s translation in The Religious Art of Zen Master Hakuin.)

According to one source Otafuku first appeared around the end of the Ashikgaga period (1392-1569) as the name of a miko named Kamejo (Tortoise Woman) at a certain Shinto Shrine, whose face resembled the traditional mask known as Okame (Tortoise). She was devoted to the goddess Uzume no mikoto, and had a charming exuberance that seemed to radiate from her very being. Despite her homely appearance, her sincerity and purity of spirit was such that even a villain of the most dastardly stripe would undergo a change of heart just by gazing at her face. Because of this a mask resembling her was fashioned and given the name Otafuku (Much Good Fortune). From the beginning the name Otafuku became known through the land. However, there is another theory that Otafuku’s face was modelled after the goddess Uzume no mikoto.

Statue of Ame no Uzume at Takachiho Shrine

Uzume no mikoto is a well-known figure from Japanese myth. It was she who danced provocatively before the assembled kami when Amaterasu retired into the Cave, inducing guffaws and roars by lifting up her skirt and exposing herself. Later she was sent to entice Sarutahiko, when the Yamato clan “descended from heaven”.

Otafuku too has a sexual connotation and is known as a fertility symbol. But whereas accounts of Ame no Uzume usually suggest she was beautiful, Otafuku is regarded as plain albeit homely and humorous. So how is one to explain the association with the divine Uzume?

Katsuhiro Yoshizawa, author of the book on Hakuin, has an intriguing suggestion. Perhaps, Uzume resembled the ideal of feminine beauty in classical Japan – a stout-looking woman with full cheeks and thick black eyebrows.

The depictions of Ame no Uzume I’ve come across certainly look like that. In which case it occurs to me then that Otafuku might represent a later caricature of the ancient ideal… an extension for comical effect that plays on the sexual attractiveness and turns her into a figure of fecundity (her cheeks are said to resemble buttocks).

Known also as Ofuku and Okame, Otafuku is a popular figure in folk tales and paired with a male caricature called Hyottoko, also with podgy cheeks. With her ribald and good-hearted nature she spreads a smile whenever she appears. She features too in Shinto festivals, and here’s an example from the Kokugakuin online encyclopedia:

An annual festival held September 16 at Togakushi Shrine in Wara Village, Gujō District, Gifu Prefecture. On the day of the festival, two large floats are decorated with mechanical dolls. The dolls on one float represent priests while the other float carries dolls that bear the faces of a plump, cheery woman (otafuku), a good luck symbol.

Priests and cheery women. Now I wonder how that connection arose…..

Ame no Uzume's meeting with Sarutahiko Okami when the 'heavenly kami' descended to meet 'the earthly kami'. (Photo from the ema of Tsubaki Shrine in Mie Prefecture)

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Jake Davis has some good photos of Otafuku, particularly of her sexual guise, at the following link…http://ojisanjake.blogspot.jp/2008/12/otafuku-mask.html

The Daruma museum by Gabi Greve also has a piece on Otafuku/Okame, including the intriguing Ofuku Daruma http://darumadollmuseum.blogspot.jp/2005/12/otafuku-daruma.html

Readers may be interested in the role of Okame in contemporary goddess worship; see http://journeyingtothegoddess.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/goddess-okame/#comments