Author: John D. (Page 187 of 202)

Izumo: myths, mists and otherness

November 9, 2011 / John D. / 6 Comments

Izumo coast

Some of my favourite places are those enriched by myth, but which have escaped untouched from the ravages of modern life. Take the west of England, with its Arthurian tales, Somerset legends and Glastonbury mystique. Here in Japan the ancient byways of Kumano and the Yamato basin hold similar appeal. But even they can hardly compete with the allure of Izumo, on the ‘backside of Japan’. Put together with the prefectural capital of Matsue, one of the most attractive towns in Japan, and the area is a must-see for those who like to get off the beaten track. I’ve only made two short visits, but I hope to go for a longer spell next year.

Mythologically, Izumo is intriguing. It provides a dark alternative to the victorious Yamato narrative, which links the imperial line with descent from the sun goddess. By contrast Izumo is associated with Amaterasu’s brother, Susanoo no mikoto, the unruly storm god who throws a tantrum and causes trouble in the high plains of heaven. Amaterasu famously withdraws into a cave; Susanoo ends up an exile on earth where he wanders around the Hii River in Izumo. Amaterasu is female and determinedly Japanese. Susanoo is male and has foreign associations.

Most likely Susanoo represents Korean migrants, who came over from the kingdom of Silla and established a kingdom in the Izumo area. The rival Yamato kingdom, based near Nara, had ties to another Korean state, namely Paekche. No doubt when it came to writing the Kojiki (712), the Yamato myth-makers wanted to disparage Susanoo by having him defecate in Amaterasu’s rice fields, etc. In Izumo, though, he’s a folk hero who slew an eight-headed monster terrifying the territory and then founded the ruling dynasty.

The San’in region where Izumo is found occupies the Jpan Sea area of the Chugoku Region (Yamaguchi, Hiroshima, Shimane, Tottori, Okayama). It’s the shady side of the mountains (San’in = Mountain Shadows), with the southern part known as the sunny side (Sanyou = Mountain Sun). Significantly, there is a yin-yang significance in the Chinese characters. The Izumo region is all about ‘yin’ – darkness, moon, death, the subterranean and the unconscious.

Susanoo slaying the ‘yamata no orochi’ monster

Descent into the underworld

Yamato is represented by the sun goddess, Amaterasu; by contrast there’s something very dark about the nature of Izumo. Its name means ‘out of the clouds’, and the neighbouring area, from which Lafcadio Hearn took his Japanese name, is called Yakumo, ‘eight-fold clouds’. Compared with the sunny Pacific, it’s fair to say this is the overcast and gloomy side of Japan, as I know all too well from long years of living in Hokurirku.

It’s tempting to see a yin-yang opposition in the east-west contrast. The land of the sun, a yang element, is ruled over by a female goddess, whereas the land of darkness, a yin element, is ruled over by a male deity. The two are finely balanced, providing the energy field for the country as a whole.

I was only in the Izumo region for three days this time, but it was dark, rainy and overcast for virtually the whole three days. Swirling clouds. Mist hung on the hills. You have the feel that the veil between this world and the other is stretched thin. Ghostly shapes can form from the vapours at any time.

The climate is mirrored in the mythology, for the area is permeated with associations of death, darkness and the spirit realm. This is where Izanagi visited Izanami in the underworld after her demise, only to find her corpse rotten with maggots. You can see the boulder with which he supposedly stopped up the underworld at Yomotsu Hirasaka – though personally I found it lacking in atmosphere and, shockingly, it doesn’t even block the path properly!

‘Eight-fold clouds’ over Izumo

Peering into the underworld behind the boulder with which Izanagi supposedly stopped up the underworld

The setting sun

One of the great delights of my Izumo trip was discovering the delights of Hinomisaki Shrine. Serendipity is so much more enthralling than the expectation of something grand. The shrine is surprisingly large and well-appointed for such an out of the way place, stuck as it is on the end of the Izumo peninsula.

Spiritually it’s an intriguing shrine, for it honours both Amaterasu and Susanoo in separate haiden. Amaterasu is the primal deity, though it’s not the rising sun but the setting sun over the Japan Sea which is the focus. ‘We have a mandate to protect Japan at night,’ I was told by the couple manning the shrine office, though they were unable or unwilling to tell me who gave them the mandate.

There is also a shrine to Susanoo, who’s allegedly buried somewhere on the hill behind. According to local folklore, he hurled a kashihara branch up the hill and said that wherever it landed, his soul would rest.

The shrine does its rituals at sunset, which happened by chance to be the time we visited. There was a small group at worship in what seemed an unorthodox fashion, with an almost jazz-like riff on the taiko drum. I tried to find out from the people in the office what was going on, but they wouldn’t tell me anything more than it was special to the shrine.

Afterwards at a nearby restaurant we ate Izumo soba and watched the gathering darkness take hold. Here, in a land of mists and myths, it was good to know the shrine had a mandate to watch over us.

Izumo soba – three in one and one in three. The soba uses the whole grain, in contrast to the soba of other regions

Hinomisaki – small village, large shrine

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(This entry draws on ‘Izumo as the Other Japan: Construction vs Reality’ by Klaus Antoni in Japanese Religions Vol.30 (1&2) p. 1-20)

Izumo’s welcome party (Kamiari sai)

November 9, 2011 / John D. / 0 Comments

It might seem an impossibility to see all eight myriad of Japan’s kami in one single place. But every year there is an opportunity to do just that, in one of Japan’s most attractive regions. It takes place in Shimane prefecture, by the side of the Japan Sea.

The beach before dusk

Twenty minutes walk from Izumo shrine is a pleasant stretch of sandy beach. It’s here in the autumn that kami from the whole of Japan are welcomed. As in olden days, they prefer to travel by sea: land routes were few and far between in a country of unpassable mountains.

A tent is set up facing the sea, with a simple altar on which sits Ryuja-san – the snake familiar who acts as guide to the kami. Snakes and dragons are often conflated in the Japanese imagination, and in this case the dragon-snake may be a reference to the sea serpents that are blown here from southern parts in the stormy monsoon season.

Four ritual fires signal the place for the kami to land, and there are two himorogi tree branches into which the kami will descend. In the gathering darkness the throng of people is intense, and by the time of the ceremony there must be all of five thousand people crammed around the tent and along the narrow processional path. The ritual itself takes thirty minutes or so. In the open darkness the chant of norito is barely audible above the lapping waves, but there’s an unmistakable wailing sound to announce the arrival of the kami.

Some of the onlookers, holding gohei for the kami

All of a sudden priests are pushing through the crowd and asking spectators to step aside and observe silence. Some people annoyingly continue to chat or talk on mobile phones. Does it disturb the kami? It’s hard to say for they are secreted through the crowd on the himorogi behind white sheets.

The yaoyorozu (eight myriad) kami have arrived at Izumo, initiating a month-long celebration that starts with a kagura dance for them at Izumo Taisha. Those in the know leave early to secure their place in the shrine’s dance hall. Meanwhile, on the beach, others linger behind to pick over the remains of the ritual. Some scoop the ash of the fires into containers as a sacred item.

Collecting ash from the fires

Once at Izumo Taisha the kami are entertained by the kagura dance, then borne away to rest for the night after their long journey. They stay in a kind of dormitory along the sides of the worship hall, known as jukyusha. In front of them lies a busy month of conferences and shrine visiting. They will remain at Izumo Taisha for a week, then circulate around eight other shrines in all.

As well as attending ceremonies at the places they visit, they have much to discuss – the granting of love ties, the grain yields and saké production for the coming year, plus other weighty matters. On the 26th day after their arrival there is a farewell ceremony at Mankusen Shrine, and a final leave-taking at Izumo Taisha before they disperse back to their respective homes.

In the pre-Meiji calendar, this time of year was known as kanna-zuki (month without kami). In Izumo, though, it was known as kamiari-zuki (month with kami). It’s a reminder of the power that the Izumo region enjoyed before the fifth century, and how it was given spiritual dominion of the country in a treaty with the Yamato hegemon. Even now it remains in an odd kind of way an alternative power centre to the primacy of Ise. In the days to come, while the kami circulate Izumo, I intend to explore this fascinating area in further entries.

Kami leaving the kaguraden

The 'jukyusha' where the kami spend the night

Edo-era depiction of the kami in conference

Kyoto’s secret power spot

November 4, 2011 / John D. / 1 Comment

A rare sight: open gates at the Daigengu on Yoshida hill

Not many people know of Yoshida Shrine’s Daigengu. Yet this hexagonal building could be considered the city’s secret power spot, for it enshrines all the kami that existed in medieval Japan. Yes, that’s right: all the kami ! All 3,132 of them. There’s nowhere else in Japan that you can get to pray to anything like that many kami in one visit.

The shrine is properly known as Daigengu Saijosho (Ceremonial Site and Shrine of the Great Origin). It was first established in 1484, and the present buildings date from the early seventeenth century. It owes itself to the remarkable Yoshida Kanetomo (1435-1511), head of Yoshida shrine, who made an audacious bid for supreme spiritual authority.

The semi-circular arcade around the main shrine which enshrines all the kami of the whole of Japan as it existed in Kanetomo's time

Yoshida Kanetomo
Kanetomo must have been a charismatic character. He lived at a time when Shinto was subsumed in Buddhism, and according to the honji-suijaku theory kami were considered traces of the Buddhist essence. They were local manifestations rather than the real thing, and they were in need of salvation. Buddhist priests served at many of the country’s shrines and prayed for enlightenment of the kami.

Kanetomo made a single-handed attempt to reverse all this by asserting kami primacy. Buddhist deities were secondary and owed their existence to kami, he claimed. He concocted a barely intelligible theory to substantiate his view, using metaphysical notions and arguments drawn from esoteric Buddhism. He maintained that all of creation derived from a kami called Kuni no Tokotachi, and falsely attributed to Shotoku Taishi a saying that Shinto was the root of the national culture, while Confucianism represented the leaves and Buddhism the fruit.

The model Naiku of Ise Jingu

Bid for supremacy
Kanetomo had good connections at court, for he had worked as Imperial Chamberlain and Senior Assistant Director of Divinities. No doubt this emboldened his drive for spiritual authority. He built an altar at Yoshida Shrine to serve as the centre for Shinto practice, thereby attempting to usurp Ise, and constructed the Daigengu with its semi-circular arcades to enshrine all the kami of the country.

For good measure Kanetomo built models of the Naiku and Geku of Ise Shrine at the back of the Daigengu courtyard. Then, in his most breath-taking stunt, he claimed that the sacred objects of Ise had flown to Yoshida! Such was his gall that he was able to persuade a gullible emperor to come and authenticate the objects.

The Shinryusha (Sacred Dragon Shrine), marking Kanetomo's burial place on Yoshida hill

Yoshida power
Kanetomo’s legacy was a body of work known as yuitsu Shinto (the one and only Shinto). He was also able to set up a system of licences issued by Yoshida Shrine which was highly influential in Edo times. It was only after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 that Yoshida lost its power, but it still remains one of the city’s great delights with its hillside setting next to Kyoto University.

The British Council used to have offices opposite Yoshida hill, on Imadegawa street. When I first visited Kyoto, I had an appointment at the Council and afterwards, drawn by the red torii at the base of the hill, wandered up the tree-lined paths of the enchanted hill. In a clearing at the top a lone saxophonist was blowing a melancholy tune, and the vista behind him opened up to a view of the city in the valley below. I knew then that I had to come and live in Kyoto…. Perhaps, unbeknown to me, I had been lured by the unseen power of the Daigengu!

(N.B. The Daigengu is usually shut, but opens exceptionally on the first day of every month; at New Year; and for Setsubun.)

The unique structure of the hexagonal main building

Shiraishi bound (Spring Buds)

October 22, 2011 / John D. / 3 Comments

In 2006 I spent four months on the island of Shiraishi in the Inland Sea and fell in love with it. I’ve often been back and I’m heading off there again tomorrow.

Following my sojourn on the island, I wrote a long haibun about it entitled Spring Buds and Autumn Leaves, the theme of which was, appropriately enough, arriving in spring and leaving in autumn (I skipped the summer as it was too hot). Amy Chavez, who lives on the island and has become a good friend, was kind enough to put an illustrated version on the net. It runs to nineteen pages in all and can be seen in its entirety here. (It takes a minute or two to load because of the many colour pictures.)

The excerpts below are taken from the spring section and focus on Shinto themes.

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Arrival at Shiraishi from the Okayama mainland. The island has a population of about 740, no traffic lights and not a single convenience store. On the other hand, it has a wealth of history, sacred rocks and island trails.

Spring in Shiraishi. Springtime sunshine and falling-in-love time. Late spring when the days are warm and golden, the blues brilliant, and nature alive with the joys of creation. Here one passes from the frantic pace of modern Japan and into a world of unhurried ways. Here time slows down, days lengthen, and anxiety kicks off its shoes to enjoy the lulling massage of gentle waves. Here is a world apart.

What is it about small islands? Self-contained, secluded, surrounded by water, perhaps they remind us of our origins. Here we can return to a private paradise, away from the busy bustle of the mainland. Here one feels closer to nature, closer to the eternal verities, closer to the source of life itself.

Urban blues dissolve
In golds and greens and marine:
Still ocean mind

Japan is a country of islands, yet sadly many have been destroyed by the rapacious demands of industry. From Okinawa to Tsushima to the islands off Hiroshima I had travelled in quest of an island getaway, yet it seemed wherever I went the Concrete State had always got there before me. Tacky and tasteless tourist traps mar the most famous, and one soon learns to avoid them.

By contrast, the places where people tell you there’s nothing to see are often the ones with most allure. I once came across an appealing place with a population of just fifty people, not a single one of whom was under pensionable age. A few dilapidated houses, a sad-looking shrine, and one sole vehicle to drive the one short stretch of tarmac. You could understand why the young had left. Yet you’d never find a more cheerful community, all hearty, laughing and toothless. It was like the mythical island of Chinese legend where people live happily forever.

Benten island, with its shrine dedicated to the female muse of art and song

It was not with high hopes that I first came to Shiraishi, for an island with an International Villa hardly speaks of seclusion. Yet from the moment I got off the boat and walked round the headland I was entranced. There in front of me, serene on the blue sea, was a small island with evocative shrine and torii. It was a gorgeous sunny day, and in my enchantment I seemed to hear the sound of sirens singing.

Wave after wave;
There’s music softly playing
On Benten Island

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Not far from the island’s sole temple is a landscaped area beneath a hillside shrine to Inari, deity of rice and business. Follow the path and on turning a corner you are greeted all of a sudden by the magical sight of red torii leading up the hillside. It was such a pleasing sight, with such a strong sense of rightness, that it brought an involuntary smile to my face.

Inari shrine. The trail leads up to a small cave in the rocks.

What spirit of place
Could possess these mountainsides:
Red torii rising

The trail leads up to a large rock beneath which a cave-like opening houses a rock shrine. Mysterious, dark, womb-like, it brought to mind the narrow recesses where Taoist sages sought inner peace. It was surely in such places that early Shinto was cultivated, for incomers from Korea brought with them shamanistic notions of rocks as vessels for un-seen spirits. It was with quickening heart-beat that I entered the dark, cramped space, only to find an offering that spoke not of ancient mystery but rather modern consumerism.

Some rocks just stand out

Spring bounty –
But for the kami
Tinned pineapple

Beyond the cave the path leads up to a hilltop. Here as elsewhere on the island one can’t help being struck – if that is the right word – by the remarkable rocks that are such a feature of the island. They tell of elemental forces, and some are awe-inspiring.

‘Until you can feel, and keenly feel, that stones have character, that stones have tones and values, the whole artistic meaning of a Japanese garden cannot be un- derstood,’ wrote Lafcadio Hearn. The same could be said for the Shiraishi landscape.

Hawk rock

As I wandered the island hills, I came to realise how vital the rocks are to the spirit of place. There is one shaped like a hawk’s head, one like a phallus, and one that hovers magically on the edge of a cliff. Some draw one like a magnet, their solid surface vibrating with a special resonance, and when I stood for a while by one such rock, soaking up the atmosphere, I was joined by a small bee:

Hovering, buzzing –
Can it be that you too
Sense the rock’s power?

The native reverence for rocks is evident in the way that many are used to house small religious statues and offerings for the gods. It brought out my pagan inclinations, awakening spiritual yearnings deadened by an urban existence. Under one massive boulder, on the edge of a precipice, I came across the threefold manifestation of Zao Gongen, patron of mountain ascetics. It seemed delightfully impish.

Zao Gongen, tucked delightfully under a rock

Shinto rocks:
Stones drinking saké
Spirits stoned

Amy Chavez getting into the spirit of things with one of the island characters

Island festival

Barefoot
On the way to heaven:
Island of the gods

Beach shrine: love the setting, love the simplicity

Simply divine:
Across the Inland Sea
Red carpet

Shiraishi sunset seen from the International Villa – it was time for me to say goodbye till autumn

Haiku and Shinto

October 22, 2011 / John D. / 3 Comments

A shugendo practitioner blowing his own conch-horn

The haiku group I belong to published a small volume in 2007 entitled Seasons of the Gods on the theme of Shinto. It contained an afterword by Toji Kamata, who has described himself as a freelance Shinto priest. He’s written some great articles about prehistoric times, and he’s fond of shugendo (mountain ascetism). I attended one of his lectures once at the Kyoto Arts College, which he started off by blowing on a conch-horn. That got students’ attention! He then went on to talk about the Shinto aspects of Hayao Miyazaki’s films, thereby linking the ancient traditions with the mindset of today’s young.

Here are a couple of short extracts from Toji Kamata’s short piece on ‘Haiku and Shinto’.

The stillness –
Great rocks take in
Cicada cries.

In this haiku by Basho, the ‘voices’ of both rocks and cicadas may be heard in communication, or interpretation, with each other: a living world networked together. Animal, vegetable or mineral; wind, snow, earth or stone; sun, moon, and stars; mountains, rivers, grasses, trees – in haiku, any one of them may take centre stage.

…….

The shortest poem in the world, haikai (or haiku), is a form of literature that expresses itself by catching both the dynamism and the inner workings of the life creation energy residing in all the phenomena of the universe. The enjoyment of this haikai world, in which ‘not only people, but everything speaks’, is something I truly love.

Heaven, earth and man,
Each to tell its story –
A banquet indeed!

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For a selection of Shinto haiku from the same volume, please click here.

The Hailstone Haiku Circle has a webpage called Icebox.
Seasons of the Gods was co-edited by Stephen Gill, Duro Jaiye, Hisashi Miyazaki and Jane Wieman.
Orders can be made here: http://hailhaiku.wordpress.com/publications/

The Cult of the Cute

October 20, 2011 / John D. / 2 Comments

Shrine guardian at the Daikoku-sha in Kyoto's Otoyo Jinja

Cuteness is highly treasured in Japan. ‘Kawaii,’ is one of the country’s catch-phrases, along with gaman (endurance), gambatte (do your best) and shikata ga nai (it can’t be helped). You come across cuteness in daily life, on tv, and in the big-eyed characters of anime and manga. Koala and panda bears are national favourites. Children’s literature is loved for its cute figures like Winnie the Pooh and Beatrix Potter animals.

One day I happened to pass a police-box with a long line of cute little dolls lined up in the front window. From a Western viewpoint it was such an odd juxtapositiion that it set me thinking about the cultural roots of the phenomenon. Could not the cult of cuteness be linked with innocence and a pure heart? And were these not Shinto traits?

An early celebrant of 7-5-3

Sincerity (makoto) is a key Shinto virtue. Doing your best with a pure heart is a key Shinto ethic. The traits go hand in hand with innocence, and the lack of cynicism and irony in Japanese culture has been often noted. That Japanese are innocents abroad, easily duped and deceived, became such a global phenomenon in the 1980s that the foreign ministry ran campaigns about how to prepare for travel abroad in order to avoid being robbed or ripped off.

It’s a cultural trait that can be traced back to the dawn of history and Japan’s earliest writings. In the Manyoshu verse collection, some of which dates back to the fifth and sixth centuries, expression is given to the thinking of the times. ‘Genuineness of thought and feeling pervades all the Manyo poems,’ writes Seiichi Taki, ‘with scarcely any trace of vanity or frivolity.’

By contrast, the Western tradition has been to guard against childlike naivity. ‘Grow up!’ is a common admonition, and children are encouraged to develop an adult sense of distance and cynicism. Cuteness equals childishness, we’re taught, and while a childlike attitude is fine for little children, it’s ridiculous or embarrassing in adults. You don’t find Western women dressed as Bo-Peep or wearing Mickey Mouse socks.

Ema prayer requests at Fushimi Inari

Doi Takeo has written of the tendency to emotional dependency of the Japanese (amaeru), due to overmothering. It results in a tendency to evade the responsibilities of adulthood, and General MacArthur, ungraciously, once described the Japanese as a nation of ‘twelve-year olds’. For Westerners it’s a stunning insult, yet it’s worth noting that twelve-year olds have an innocence which Jesus and others found closer to heaven than the cynicism of adults.

In the Shinto view of life, humans are the children of the kami. Does that encourage childlike qualities? I think the striving for a pure heart might well have something to do with it…

D.T. Suzuki famously claimed that an understanding of Zen was necessary to an understanding of the Japanese, but I’d like to take him up on that because it’s my belief that Shinto is even more fundamental. This is the first of a series of articles by which I hope to prove my point.

(See also Of Innocence and Cynicism)

Fushimi fox guardian, well wrapped against the cold

Shin-Buddhism in action

October 19, 2011 / John D. / 1 Comment

Today I witnessed a fully fledged Shin-buddhist ritual. It was carried out by priests of the Nichiren sect of Buddhism at a small shrine in the woods dedicated to the kami, Shichimen Daimyojin. Fascinating!

The little shrine of Shichimen-gu

If, like me, you love the spirit of place, then the appeal of Shinto is often in the smallest of shrines. Unmanned and modest, they blend into their surroundings, enhancing rather than dominating the nature they celebrate. One such is little Shichimen-gu in Matsugasaki, here in Kyoto, which I often pass on my walks.

It nestles in the hollow of a hillside, enveloped in the greenery of the woods. A small stream trickles across the clearing, dividing the realm of the kami from that of the human. It’s everything I love about Shinto.

For many years the shrine had a desolate air – neglected, despoiled, the stream dried up. Recently it’s been looking much fresher and happier. When I made enquiries as to who had transformed it, I found to my surprise it was owned by a Nichiren temple. Today (Oct 19) being the day of its annual festival I went along to watch, expecting that a visiting Shinto priest would conduct the ceremonies. I was wrong.

In the clearing a group of twenty elderly parishioners gathered in glorious autumn sunshine. The offerings arrived in unconventional manner, carried casually by a young mother, followed by three priests bearing a box. This was set in the shrine and its doors opened to reveal what seemed to be a Buddhist deity. A candle was lit, and the scene was set. The priests took their place on the stage facing the shrine, and the little clearing filled with the chanting of sutra, accompanied by the occasional banging of a mokugyo drum and the snapping of clappers.

Here come the offerings...

and here come the priests, bearing the kami statue...

The shrine bedecked with a syncretic mix of decorations from both Shinto (sakaki branches, white gohei zigzag strips) and Buddhist traditions (the lit candle, the flowers, the statue)

Chanting fills the clearing

After all the chanting, there was a list of requests to the deity which had been written on wooden tablets. These were read out by the head priest. So-and-so, 67 years old, male, wants to request the safety of his family. So-and-so, 45, female, asks for the healing of her mother who has cancer….

Finally the priests got up, faced the parishioners and did some serious snapping of wooden castanets before going around and rubbing people’s shoulders and back. The rituals were over, but before departing envelopes were handed out containing paper stickers the priest called ofuda. These, he said, should be stuck in the north-west of the kaguraden platform, because that was the unlucky direction for the coming year. It was the first Shinto-like thing I’d heard in the whole ceremony.

Kaguraden with unusually shaped shide hanging from the ceiling

Applying power first hand

Though I had recognised the Nichiren chant of nam myoho renge kyo echoing through the grove, this was all new to me and I asked afterwards about the technicalities. For a start, was there a goshintai (kami spirit-body) in the shrine? It didn’t appear so from what I could see. In Shin-buddhism, I was told, you don’t say goshintai, but go-fu (honorable talisman). In this case the go-fu was a piece of paper on which was written ‘nam myoho renge kyo‘. So where was the kami? The kami was the statue, they told me. Shichimen Daimyojin.

Shichimen Daimyojin in Buddhist guise

The story goes that Shichimen was a dragon spirit which manifested to Nichiren in the thirteenth century in the form of a beautiful woman to ask how she could obtain enlightenment.

In what seems like a win-win situation, the dragon spirit agreed to guard Nichiren’s temple located on its mountain (Kuonji on Mt Shichimen in Yamanashi), while the sect honours her in return as a boddhisattva. The curious result is a kami in nun’s clothing. In the past Shichimen bosatsu would have been a female counterpart to the syncretic Hachiman boddhisattva, often depicted in priestly garb (Hachiman soryo).

A stone post bearing the Buddhist moniker, Shichimen Daitennyo

But how did all this survive the separation of Shinto and Buddhism in Meiji times? By way of explanation, the youngest of the priests told me how the sect had simply changed the name. Shichimen Daimyojin (a kami) was renamed Shichimen Daitennyo (a Buddhist deity). Once the Meiji mania for separation had passed, the priests simply reverted to the Shichimen Daimyojin name – a cunning priestly ploy! Shin-buddhism may not be what it once was, but it lives on in rituals like this.

I had one final question for the priest: when he was making requests for the parishioners, was he directing them towards a Buddhist deity or towards a kami? He hesitated for a good long while before replying. After all, It was a ridiculously Western analytical quesiton and I presume he’d never given it much thought. In the end, though, he managed to cover himself by saying something like ‘We Buddhists believe all beings are essentially buddha nature…’

Nowadays people tend to think of Shinto and Buddhism as two entirely separate traditions. Here, in this wonderful sun-blessed setting, was a reminder that for well over a thousand years the beliefs were closely intertwined. When is a kami not a kami? Perhaps when it’s a Buddhist…

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Sutra chanted spells
Sunshine woodland enveloping
Bright spirit of place
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Verdant surrounds leading the heart-mind upwards