Page 199 of 203

British-Japanese parallels

July 14, 2011 / John D. / 0 Comments

For a bit of fun while avoiding the Kyoto heat, I was thinking of British parallels to the myths and developments of early Japanese history and came up with the following.

ancient Britons/ Celts – Ainu and Jomon people, pushed to the periphery by later invaders

Saxons – Yayoi incomers, bringing new gods and setting up rival kingdoms

ascendancy of Wessex – Yamato ascendancy

Normans – Korean invaders (Egami’s horserider theory of a conquering elite who came in from the continent and whose cultural influence is felt to the present)

Kojiki – Arthurian myths. I’m not sure if England or Britain have an equivalent founding myth to Kojiki, though Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘History of the Kings of England’ can certainly be equated to the Nihongi as legends threaded together into history.

Izumo Fudoki – Beowulf. Link of east England to Scandinavia could be equated to the Izumo-Silla link

Arthur – Yamato no Takeru. Legendary hero, blessed of the gods and owner of a sacred sword

St George – Susanoo. Slew the dragon and became a hero.

Oomoto impressions

July 13, 2011 / John D. / 0 Comments

In May 2005 I visited the two main Oomoto bases, their spiritual centre at Ayabe and the admin and training centre in Kameoka. My main impressions? Devotion, elegance, and money. Let me explain.

Priests warming up before the ceremony

Ayabe was hosting a festival, and there must have been well over 3000 people there for speeches and services on an estate that was huge and expansive. The grounds were artistically laid out, with a Heian type pond garden and small stream. The buildings were enormous; the main hall held 730 tatami, which is nearly as many as some of the great Buddhist temples in Kyoto. There were well apportioned buildings dotted around the grounds, which made me wonder how on earth this was all funded.

Even more striking in a way was the Kameoka base, which is housed in the former castle of Akechi Mitsuhide –the daimyo who killed Oda Nobunaga. It dominates the centre of Kameoka, with a moat and parts of the old wall still standing. Inside are plum groves, open spaces, a shrine building, and large admin buildings. Usually national universities or large corporations occupy such sites; how did Oomoto manage, I found myself wondering.

Family praying in perfect harmony

I talked with a couple of priests, who were friendly and open. They talked of the founder called Deguchi Nao who was possessed by a spirit in 1892, following which she miraculously began to write down teachings and prophecies. The man who is seen as cofounder of the religion, Deguchi Onisaburo, had some kind of vision to meet up with her and further her teachings. He married her daughter and produced 81 volumes of his own about his shamanistic travels in the spirit world. The present head of the sect is his granddaughter.

The central spirit of the sect is Ushitora no Konjin, not mentioned in Kojiki, which translates as something like Mixed Deity of CowTiger. It’s an intriguing hybrid to try and picture mentally. The sect says it is monotheistic, that all spirits are basically one and the same, and that all religions come from the same source. It also lays great stress on art as a way to the divine, and there’s a strong artistic touch to the grounds and atmosphere.

Elegant temizuya

Oomoto has played a significant part in opening up to foreigners. The founder of aikido, Ueshiba Morihei, was once associated with the sect, and in more recent times Alex Kerr was involved with them operating cultural seminars for foreigners. The big question for me was the relationship to Shinto, and for this I was referred to the official website which had this to say:

Q-How is Oomoto like Shinto?

A-The importance of harmony among nature, humans, and gods is a key belief of both. Oomoto’s rituals, architecture, and vestments are based on the ancient original practices that became known as Shinto.

Q-How is Oomoto different from Shinto?

A-Shinto is polytheistic, believing there are many gods – or kami. Oomoto teaches that many kami do exist, but they all come from the same Supreme God of the Universe, so in effect there is just one God. When Oomoto followers pray to a particular kami by name they understand this is just one manifestation of the single God. Even the name “Oomoto” emphasizes this point. It translates as “Great Source” or “Great Origin.”

http://www.oomoto.or.jp/English/enFaq/indexfaq.html

Aesthetically pleasing offerings

Enduring Identities

July 13, 2011 / John D. / 0 Comments

‘Enduring Identities: The Guise of Shinto in Contemporary Japan’ by John K. Nelson
Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii, 2000 324 pages, medium size. ISBN 0-8248-2259-5 $25

This book by John Nelson (now at Univ. of San Francisco) could be described as ‘A Year in the Life of a Shrine’ part two. Despite its title, it is a concentrated study of a single shrine in the north of Kyoto known as Kamigamo Jinja. The book is comprehensive and detailed, covering all the salient activities of the shrine such as its priestly structure and rites. As the clan shrine of the Kamo tribe, the 1400 year old Kamigamo Shrine has a very particular history, to which much space is devoted. This and the sometimes tedious recounting of every single event at the shrine must make the book of limited value to a general readership, and though the writing is accessible, the author is sometimes at pains to place the book within anthropological models. On the other hand, for those who would like to get on the ‘inside’ of a shrine the book offers up much valuable and authoritative information. It certainly helps if one is familiar with the shrine in question, though maps and descriptions fill in a lot of the context.

Summary: An extremely thorough and scholarly book, likely to appeal only to those eager to go into the details of Shinto. Others might prefer Nelson’s earlier work ‘A Year in the Life of a Shrine’.

Shinto: The Kami Way

July 13, 2011 / John D. / 2 Comments

‘Shinto: The Kami Way’ by Sokyo Ono US/Japan: Tuttle, 1962 116 pages, small size. ISBN 4-8053-0189-9 $5.00

This book has for long been the classic work on Shinto in English. For years it seemed to be the only book on the subject, and it has been in print for an extraordinary length of time. It has the virtue of seeming authoritative, for it was written by a professor of Kokugakuin University who was also a lecturer for Jinja Honcho. As such, it comes close to presenting an orthodox, official version of the religion though in reality there is no such thing. It presents the traditional, conservative view of Shinto as Japan’s indigenous enduring religion which has in recent times recovered the independence it had before the advent of Buddhism. Though occasionally cautious and unclear, it covers itself by claiming that Shinto prefers ambiguity to clarity. Even though the book came out nearly fifty years ago, most of the content has not dated. All the important aspects of the religion are covered, from beliefs and practice to history and political characteristics. The author is concerned to present a balanced view, and while the writing may be bland at times, it is easily read and full of essential information in comprehensible language. Just about all the most commonly asked questions are addressed, and the author gives an admirably detailed overview of the religion as a whole.

Summary: It remains a classic and an essential introduction for anyone interested in Shinto.

******************

For another review, with some revealing points about the contents, see here.

Simple Guide to Shinto

July 13, 2011 / John D. / 0 Comments

‘Simple Guide to Shinto’ by Ian Reader UK: Global Books, 1998 128 pages, small size. ISBN 1-86034-003-2

This introduction to Shinto is by a lecturer at the University of Stirling, Scotland, who has written widely of religion in Japan. There are eight chapters covering the definition of Shinto, kami, history, sacred space, festivals, prayer and communication, nationalism, and contemporary situation. The book is clearly written and full of useful information, though surprisingly for an academic of Reader’s reputation there are several errors of content. His non-Shinto knowledge is brought to bear in describing Chinese influences, particular the merging with Buddhism. He also points out that the word ‘Shinto’ was first used in the Nihongi of 720, which he calls ‘a production of a sense of Japanese identity’. Reader’s Shinto is culture-specific, centred on a relationship with kami ‘in the land of the gods’, and he interprets its history as a concern with ‘Japaneseness’. This leads him to consideration of the latent nationalism he believes bound up in Shinto, and significantly one of the chapters is given over to the Yasukuni controversy.

Summary: An easily digestible book that presents Shinto as inherently Japanese rather than a universalising religion. GreenShinto readers beware!

High on hemp

July 11, 2011 / John D. / 1 Comment

From time to time the issue of marijuana comes up on the Shinto mailing list, because of the use of hemp for sacred ropes and clothing. Before cultivation of the plant was made illegal following pressure by the American Occupation forces, hemp was widespread but whether it was used as a drug seems doubtful. There are scholarly accounts that claim there’s no record or evidence of such use and that anyway the type of plant growing in Japan is not the right sort.

However, I came across a site by an enthusiast who’s very well informed, and he has some striking observations, including first-hand experience of cannabis plants being burnt at a Shinto festival. Here is the link along with the accompanying photograph…

http://www.japanhemp.org/stories/story001.htm

Shinto priests carrying cannabis plants in Shikoku (1990)

Wikipedia has this to say on the subject: “In Japan, hemp was historically used as paper and a fiber crop. There is archaeological evidence cannabis was used for clothing and the seeds were eaten in Japan back to the Jōmon period (10,000 to 300 BCE). Many kimono designs portray hemp, or asa (Japanese: 麻), as a beautiful plant. In 1948, marijuana was restricted as a narcotic drug. The ban on marijuana imposed by the United States authorities was alien to Japanese culture, as the drug had never been widely used in Japan before. Though these laws against marijuana are some of the world’s strictest, allowing five years imprisonment for possession, they exempt hemp growers whose crop is used to make robes for Buddhist monks and loincloths for sumo wrestlers.”

For a discussion of marijuana in Japanese history and of the use of cannabis leaves in Shinto ceremonies, see this link…. http://www.japanhemp.org/en/thc.htm. But be warned! An Englishman in Kyoto has recently been arrested for growing plants in his apartment without a license and is facing a lengthy spell in gaol. I doubt that he could plead he was doing so on religious grounds…

**************************************************

For a piece on Japan’s 2nd Annual Hemp Festival, please click here.

Shiraishi haiku

July 11, 2011 / John D. / 2 Comments

In 2005 I lived for four months on Shiraishi Island in the Seto Naikai and was much inspired by the spirit of place. It’s a small island that takes an hour and forty minutes to walk round, yet it’s full of intriguing history and attractive spots, offering wide views over the Inland Sea from the craggy rocks that run along its spine. There’s no convenience store, not a single traffic light and a population of 700 or so that seems to get older and fewer by the month. At the top of a small mountain was a stone desk which I used in the mornings to do my writing, while soaking in lungfuls of healthy sea air and gazing over the silent panorama of blues and greens. It was the kind of setting in which poetic thoughts gush up uninvited. Pure heaven!