Author: John D. (Page 96 of 202)

Sun poem

September 24, 2014 / John D.

I’m grateful to John Hanagan for bringing my attention to this beautiful poem by the American poet, Mary Oliver (b.1935). It’s a reminder of the beauty of existence, and of where our priorities should lie in life.

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The sun setting into the 'rumpled sea'

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

Sunset at Hamanako

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world –

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

Sunset on the Amakusa Islands

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From the Wikipedia page on Oliver…

Mary Oliver’s poetry is grounded in memories of Ohio and her adopted home of New England, setting most of her poetry in and around Provincetown since she moved there in the 1960s. … Influenced by both Whitman and Thoreau, she is known for her clear and poignant observances of the natural world. Her creativity is stirred by nature, and Oliver, an avid walker, often pursues inspiration on foot. Her poems are filled with imagery from her daily walks near her home: shore birds, water snakes, the phases of the moon and humpback whales. …
Oliver has also been compared to Emily Dickinson, with whom she shares an affinity for solitude and interior monologues. Her poetry combines dark introspection with joyous release. Although she has been criticized for writing poetry that assumes a dangerously close relationship of women with nature, she finds the self is only strengthened through an immersion with nature.

Sunset at Laka Hamana

Cry-baby festival

September 22, 2014 / John D.

Babies take part in the “baby-cry sumo” competition at the Irugi Shrine in Tokyo on Sunday. (AFP)

Having a bawl: Sumo wrestlers grapple with cry-babies
SEP. 22, 2014 Japan Today AFP TOKYO —

Japanese parents watched with glee on Sunday as sumo wrestlers tried to reduce their babies to tears, in a centuries-old ritual believed to bring good health to bawling infants. More than a hundred sobbing babies were subjected to the ordeal at Tokyo’s Irugi Shrine, with their doting parents watching happily as the amateur wrestlers bounced them up and down in a makeshift sumo ring.

Babies show their vigour by crying loudly, to the delight of onlookers (courtesy Hanamaki city, Iwate)

Some of the infants, aged between six and 18 months, were roared at in the face in a bid to get the tears flowing “The babies’ cries are intended to reach God and parents hope that their little ones will grow healthy and strong,” explained Yoshimi Morita, a priest at the shrine, where screams and squawks filled the air.

“So if a baby doesn’t cry at this event, sumo wrestlers try to make him or her cry on purpose, moving the baby up and down, while their parents watch with pounding hearts,” he said. “There is no victory nor defeat in this wrestling, and a match always ends with a chorus of ‘Banzai raku!’ which means ‘Live long’.”

The ceremony dates back some 400 years and is held at shrines nationwide. The rules vary from region to region — in some versions the babies are raced against each other to see who will cry first, while in others the first crier is the loser.

Delighted mother Mae Shige said her son had performed well at Sunday’s event. “He’s not a baby that cries much but today he cried a lot for us and we are very happy about it,” Shige said. Yuki Ibusuki, another mother at the shrine, said of her son: “He’ll be one year old soon and we wanted to come here so that we would have a memory of this event for when he grows up.”

AFP PHOTO / Yoshikazu TSUNO

Izumo enmusubi

September 21, 2014 / John D.

In the Japan Times today Stephen Mansfield writes of Matsue and its connections with Lafcadio Hearn (a writer featured previously on Green Shinto here and here).

Matsue is in the charming prefecture of Shimane, one of Japan’s best-kept secrets. Anyone wanting to get away from the tourist trail would do well to head for this area, and for the prime Shinto shrine of Izumo Taisha. Such is its prestige that the kami of all Japan gather there each year in the autumn (click here for a report).

The reputation of Izumo Taisha as Japan’s premier place of enmusubi (good relations) derives partly from the networking that goes on at the meeting of kami, and partly from the love-match of its deity, Okuninushi no mikoto with the daughter of Susanoo, Princess Suseri. The shrine’s reputation has had an enormous boost recently due to the engagement of an imperial princess with the heir to its ancient priestly lineage (see here).

The Izumo boom was reflected in a television programme last night in which Nishikawa Ayako, a divorced doctor, made a ‘pilgrimage’ to the shrine to seek good fortune in her hunt for a new partner. Below you can see what happened…

Nishikawa boards a special enmusubi train for Izumo, the seats of which are covered in heart marks

The divorcee arrives at the station for Izumo Taisha

On the way to the shrine she stops at one of the stalls to enjoy a special 'enmusubi sweet'

As she arrives at the shrine, it starts to rain – a bad sign perhaps

Even in the rain the enormous thick knots of the shimenawa rice rope stand out. The buildings still have a fresh feel after the 60 year cycle of renewal was completed last year.

A close up of the rope, aesthetically pleasing as well as impressive in dimensions – 13.5 meters in length and weighing 4.5 tons

Nishikawa pays respects to Okuninushi, the Great Land Master who is the putative founder of Izumo Province (tradition says the shrine stands on the site of his palace).

At the shrine Nishikawa runs into an engaged couple who met near the shrine and have come to give thanks and pose for photos

Now comes the big moment as Nishikawa discovers with trepidation what her fortune says - 'I'm afraid... my heart is beating fast', she says.

A smile comes to Nishikawa's face as the fortune slip turns out to be relatively good - after some difficulty she will be able to meet a person whom she likes.

Much relieved, Nishikawa goes off to explore some of the natural sites in the area associated with folklore and then to overnight in a hot spring resort. Typically for contemporary Japan, the trip has centred around enjoyment and a spiritual 'power spot'.

Island shrine

September 20, 2014 / John D.

Visitors can only approach Kojima Shrine in Nagasaki Prefecture at low tide, when the causeway is uncovered. The shrine itself is at the rear of the islet. (courtesy KYODO)

Islands have a charm of their own, and when they are imbued by a sense of the sacred their allure can be captivating. There are hundreds of charming island shrines around Japan, some set in lakes and some on off-shore islands. Set against a sparkling combination of green and blue, they speak of communion with nature. The aesthetic appeal is enhanced by the ebb and flow of the tide, as it laps at the base of the torii or exposes the pathway approach. The shrine above, featured in a Japan Times article, is off the island of Iki in the Japan Sea, a couple of hours by ferry from Kyushu. I visited Iki several years ago, island hopping my way from Korea to Fukuoka, and found it to be full of historical interest. Sadly, however, I didn’t know of the Kojima Shrine at the time. One thing is sure, however: it’s certainly a lot less crowded than Mont St Michel, to which it is compared in the article!

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Island shrine is picturesque destination for tourists and pilgrims alike
KYODO as carried in the Japan Times SEP 18, 2014

NAGASAKI – A tiny shrine on a tiny island that is drawing grand comparisons to France’s fortified Mont Saint-Michel monastery is drawing more visitors, raising expectations that tourism will improve in that part of Nagasaki Prefecture.

Kojima shrine is a Shinto holy site on Maekojima, an uninhabited islet about 60 meters wide that’s situated in a sizable bay off the southeast edge of much larger Iki Island. The two are connected by a tidal causeway about 200 meters long. “The path to the shrine appears at low tide,” said Susumi Goto, 68, the shrine’s chief priest. He added that pilgrims can “feel the Holy Spirit in (the site’s) mysterious nature.”

Visitors approach the island on foot and then climb a path that leads through trees to the rear of the island, where the unmanned shrine stands. Shinto believers consider the island to be a sacred spot, and visitors are asked to refrain from taking any leaves, twigs or pebbles as souvenirs.

Iki itself is home to multiple shrines built in ancient times, when travelers would visit from the mainland. The island and its holy sites have since become a draw for tourists today.

Mont Saint-Michel, represented by a towering castle off the coast of Normandy in northern France viewable from miles away, is a major tourist attraction. It used to be connected with the mainland 600 meters away by a tidal causeway that disappeared at high tide, but that was reportedly over a century ago. The 100-hectare monastery is now accessible by bridge and the permanently dry causeway is scheduled for removal under a project that will turn it into an island once again.

Mont St Michel in northern France is well worth a visit – if you can avoid the crowds

An island shrine in the Nojoriko lake in Nagano Prefecture

Harumiya Shrine on a small island at Suwa in Nagano

Animal Cruelty (Ageuma)

September 19, 2014 / John D.

In the Ageuma Shinji unwilling horses have to be forced up steep slopes (courtesy JCAW)

Since Shinto is promoted as a nature religion, one might presume that green issues would be uppermost in its social thinking. However, this is often far from the case, as traditional interests and political support for right-wing nationalism take priority. It explains why many Shinto believers in Japan, contrary to expectations, actually support whaling and the dolphin massacre at Taiji.

Green Shinto has written of animal cruelty in Shinto before, particularly in the glaring example of the Ageuma Ritual held every May at shrines in Mie Prefecture. (For details of the ritual, please see here.)

The horseback ritual forms part of the Tado Festival, in which horses are forced up dangerously steep slopes, and five representatives of the shrines involved have faced animal cruelty charges (click here). Beating, bullying and sticking the horses in the ribs is how the animals are forced up the slope, leading often to injury.

The cruelty is defended by traditionalists who claim it has been carried out for centuries and is therefore somehow justified. It’s an absurd argument, which could be used to condone all manner of abuse from slavery to summary execution. Fortunately the Animal Rights group to which I belong has organised a campaign against the animal cruelty, and in the report below is an account of the results together with the present situation. I’m grateful to the Japanese Coalition for Animal Welfare for permission to reprint the report and for the photographs.

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“Part of this article is excerpted from the JCAW newsletter (The Japanese Coalition for Animal Welfare).”

Ageuma　Shinji

1. JAWS Tokyo has been sending a petition to Inabe Shrine and Tado Shrine (both in Mie prefecture) to stop cruelty to the horses as a leading member of JCAW (The Japanese Coalition for Animal Welfare) since 2002.

2. We had conducted a strong campaign [No cruelty to Ageuma horses] in 2003

3. In 2004, both shrines declared an official promise to keep loyalty to mutual agreement between them and JCAW in the presence of Mie Local officials. So we stopped the campaign.

4. But there are no progress so far in 2006, so we sent a strong petition letter to both shrines again.

5 Five spectators were injured seriously by being involved in the horse accident.

6. Since we found more cruelty deed at the festival site, we sent a bill of indictment to Kuwana Police Department with Video tapes we made to prove many ill-treatments.

7. Kuwana police started investigation for both shrines

8. In 2011, Mie Council for the Protection of Cultural Properties discussed the cruelty issue and conducted inspection to both shrines. Thanks to both investigation and inspection, there was a dramatic improvement to reduce cruelty this year.

9. But we see some change for the worse this year 2014, and we are considering again to organize another campaign [No more cruelty at Ageuma].

Since Ageuma is seen as an traditional cultural event based on Shinto deeply rooted in local communities, it is so difficult to persuade local people involved to change their way of thinking and behavior. But we will keep fighting those ill treatment to the animals.

We don’t think it is a good idea to conduct online petitions, because those local people are not well accustomed to internet communications and there is always strong suspicion about misbehaving of net freaks on touchy issues in Japan.

An indication of the sickening challenges faced by the horses (courtesy JCAW)

Click to conserve

September 18, 2014 / John D.

Anyone interested in nature worship will also be concerned with conservation. In this respect there is one easy way in which to help protect the natural world, and that is by simply clicking your mouse every morning on the website described below. By this one simple action, you can help preserve rainforests and endangered species. The explanations below provide the rationale and a description of how it works.

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About EcologyFund

EcologyFund is owned and operated by The Hunger Site Network as a way to get new funds for critical habitat and wilderness preservation using the power of the internet. When you “click to give” our sponsors pay the project you selected to preserve the number of square feet shown by each project. You pay nothing.

To maximize the contribution, click on each project every day. If you register, The Hunger Site Network will donate 500 square feet of wilderness in your name, and will keep a running tally for you of all the land you have preserved. Other sites owned and operated by The Hunger Site Network are The Hunger Site, The Breast Cancer Site, The Rainforest Site, The Animal Rescue Site, and GreaterGood.com.

All monies from sponsorships generated on EcologyFund go to purchase and protect wild lands. Sponsors are interested in supporting wilderness preservation for the same reasons we are: 1) its good for the environment, 2) our advertising budgets can do double duty and accomplish something important, and 3) the best form of public relations is good work.

If you click and visit a sponsor’s site it will usually double their contribution. Clicks to site advertisers in our Special Donations section will save additional land or plant trees. Certain actions (ordering free catalogs or registering for free) will save even more land or plant additional trees through our Rainforest Rewards section. Shopping through Shop For Acres will save an average of 50 square feet per dollar spent. The average amount of land protected through each action of the site is always specified. A breakdown of the amount contributed is listed in our totals section.

Click here for the Ecology Fund

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Testimony to the effectiveness of the Ecology Fund follows below written by the World Pantheism Movement, of which I am a member…

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Nature can be tenacious, but it needs our help from the predations of mankind

The WPM has saved more than 100 acres of natural wildlife habitat from destruction through our click group at EcologyFund, and an additional 75 acres through sponsorship of click schemes at EcologyFund and Care2. Most of this land is rainforest brought under the protection of conservation organizations in Central America.

We currently focus our efforts on EcologyFund, where we have a click group with over 1,200 members. We have saved more land than any other religious or environmental group on the site (including Sierra Club and WWF groups), and even more than some groups listed in the top ten.

How it works

Each person who clicks every day, at the current total of 87 sq ft per day, can save almost three quarters of an acre (almost 32,000 sq ft) of wildlife habitat per year from development or exploitation!

This has benefits for the climate as well as for biodiversity. If this area were cleared for farming, it could emit carbon dioxide equal to what the average American produces in half a year – or an average European in a full year. Your daily clicking can prevent that from happening.

Rainforests are the most biodiverse habitats on earth. Just one acre contains around 300-400 individual trees of 20-80 different species, and each tree is home to thousands more species. One tree in Peru was found to house 43 different species of ant.

Who pays for it?

Each page of the site shows ads for eco-friendly companies and non-profits. The income from these advertisements is given to nature conservation organizations. These organizations in turn buy private land in sensitive areas and dedicate the land in perpetuity to wildlife habitat. Basically, your clicking stimulates organizations and companies to spend money on conserving wildlife habitat. You can increase their gifts by visiting, and perhaps even buying from or otherwise supporting an advertised site that catches your eye.

How do I know this is for real?

The World Pantheist Movement has direct experience that it works, because we have advertised with EcologyFund in the past. Our check was always addressed and sent directly to the conservation organization we wished to sponsor – in our case the Rainforest Trust (formerly World Land Trust USA). EcologyFund did not take a cut. World Land Trust undertakes to preserve one acre of habitat for every $100 donated.

Why participate?

We are an integral part of Nature, which we should cherish, revere and preserve in all its magnificent beauty and diversity. Conserving rainforest is also a matter of survival for millions of humans whose homes and livelihoods may be threatened by sea level rise or climate change.

Of course you can save land on your own – but being in a team that can show visible collective results is a good motivation to stick at it and not forget, and it gives the excitement and satisfaction not only of your own totals but also those of the group.

Unspoilt nature in the grounds of the Togakushi Jinja in Nagano

Overseas shrines pre-1945

September 18, 2014 / John D.

The information below about former overseas shrines is taken from a paper in the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 37/ 1 (2010) by Nakajima Michio, entitled “Shinto Deities that Crossed the Sea.” It covers the spread of shrines in areas under Japanese political sway, which explains why it ignores shrines in Hawaii and Brazil.

Nakajima comments; ‘The Japanese government, which encountered resistance on foreign soil, saw those newly erected Shinto shrines as an opportunity to launch a policy that would incorporate them into its colonial governing system; consequently, it established government-sponsored Shinto shrines in its colonial territories. Taiwan and Korea functioned as testing grounds for what proved to be the quite successful attempt to indoctrinate native peoples into Shinto.’

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There were 611 jinja and 1,029 sha/shinshi—altogether, 1,640 shrines. The regional distribution of these overseas shrines was as follows: 995 in Korea (57 percent), 243 in Manchuria (15 percent), 184 in Taiwan (11 percent), 128 in Karafuto (8 percent), 51 in the Republic of China (3 percent), 27 in the South Sea Islands (2 percent), and 12 in Kwantung (1 percent).

Interestingly, talismans from the Ise Grand Shrine were distributed to almost sixty percent of all households in Taiwan, a rate surpassing that found in Korea and even in Japan itself. Along with displaying such talismans, each family was encouraged to set up a household Shinto altar (kamidana), and this led to the “improvement” of the local household ritual facility (seichō) and the removal of many local statues of gods and buddhas. This policy was intensified to such an extent after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 that local religious facilities called jibyō were massively destroyed. This had such a traumatic effect that the order to abolish jibyō was suspended by another order in June 1941.

Entrance to Chosen Jingu, Korea's supreme shrine (Wikicommons)

On the Korean peninsula, a small Shinto shrine (shōshi) had already been built by the late seventeenth century. In 1678, when Japan House (Wakan) was moved to the foot of Mount Yongdu (Jp. Ryūtō), Sō Yoshizane, the head of the Tsushima domain, established Kotohira Jinja on that spot. This shrine later changed its name, first to Kyoryūchi Jinja in 1891, then to Ryūtōsan Jinja in 1900 (and later still, it was upgraded to the rank of national minor shrine).

As the Japanese advanced on the Korean peninsula in the late nineteenth century, Japanese migrants began to erect shrines in which they could pay tribute to the Ise Grand Shrine (Jingū Yōhaijo). These included one in Wŏnsan (Jp. Genzan, erected in 1882, later renamed Genzan Jinja, elevated to the status of “shrine receiving county offerings” in 1936) and another in Inchŏn (Jp. Jinsen, erected 1890, soon named Jinsen Daijingū, renamed Jinsen Jinja in 1916, elevated to the rank of “shrine receiving provincial offerings” in 1936).

in July 1919, the government-sponsored great shrine Chōsen Jinja was established as the supreme tutelary shrine of the Korean peninsula. The deities to be enshrined there were Amaterasu Ōmikami and Emperor Meiji. Construction of the shrine began in 1920. It was renamed “Chōsen Jingū,” becoming an imperial shrine in June 1925, and a few months later, in October, construction was completed. In this way, Shinto shrines in Korea increased in number and were systematically incorporated into the colonial governing system.

After the Manchurian Incident in 1931, however, shrine visits were required of all students in Korea; in 1936, it became policy to close those schools that refused to participate in shrine visits.

A shrine in prewar Manchuria (http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/USMC-C-Tinian/)