Tag: Japaneseness

National identity

Kathleen Drew (1901-57)

Every year there’s a Shinto festival held at the Sumiyoshi Shrine in Uto City, Kumamoto Prefecture, to an English woman called Kathleen Drew. (Her full name was Kathleeen Mary Drew-Baker.) It’s a curious phenomenon which reminds us of another foreigner celebrated by what has been described as a ‘religion of Japaneseness’, namely American inventor, Thomas Edison (featured here).

Kathleen Drew became known in Japan as Mother of the Sea for her research on edible seaweed. An article she wrote in 1949 in the scientific journal Nature came at a time when the Japanese economy was in dire straits and there was a failure in the seaweed crop.

The information provided by Kathleen Drew was picked up by Japanese scientists and passed on to fishing communities which enabled them to cultivate nutritious nori. From near starvation the fishermen turned around the seaweed industry to become part of Japan’s rapid economic success. Now it’s said seven billion sheets of nori are produced a year, and riceballs wrapped with nori are Japan’s favoured comfort food.

Out of gratitude the seaside community of Uto put up a monument in 1963 to honour the English woman and inaugurated an annual festival called Drew-sai which draws some 100 people. A norito prayer in Japanese is addressed to her, and a tamagushi sakaki branch offered to her spirit. Although not a kami, she is considered an Onjin to whom the community is indebted.

What does this little-known oddity have to tell us about Shinto? For one thing it shows the vital role that gratitude plays in the religion and in Japanese culture as a whole. More than that though, it shows how Shinto acts to preserve historical memory. Kathleen Drew never visited Japan, but she’s become part of the national consciousness. Shinto serves many functions and by sacralising the past it reinforces the strong bond of communal identity. In this way, ironically, gratitude to a foreigner turns out to deepen awareness of Japaneseness.

Legacy of Kathleen Drew: cultivating seaweed
(All photos courtesy Wikicommons)

Zen and Shinto 15: Japaneseness

DSCN7100On Sunday I took an out of town visitor to a combination of Tofuku-ji Zen temple and the popular Fushimi Inari shrine.  They are both in the south-east of Kyoto, a mere twenty minutes walk apart, and the Zen-Shinto combination makes a wonderful introduction to the world of Japanese religion.  The large solemn buildings of Zen provide a contrast with the colourful bustling crowds at Fushimi, and yet the similarities are striking.

Pulitzer finalist, Sukuta Mehta, admires a garden... but are those clean lines, raked gravel and simple wooden buildings Zen or Shinto?

Pulitzer finalist, Sukuta Mehta, admires a garden… but are those clean lines, raked gravel and simple wooden buildings Zen or Shinto?

There are clean austere lines in the architecture.  Meticulously raked grounds.  A cleaving to tradition.  An emphasis on male heritage in the priesthood.  Symbolism in the statuary.  Mythological underpinnings whose origins lie in China and beyond.

One common point of Zen and Shinto is that they both treasure closeness to nature as a means of enhancing spirituality.  In Zen one comes closer to one’s Buddha nature, in Shinto one comes closer to the realm of the kami.  Tofuku-ji boasts a wonderful gorge of maples, Fushimi Inari is famous for its torii-covered hillside. ‘People must respect nature as they cannot live without nature,’ says a noticeboard at Tofuku-ji.  ‘The spirit of Zen tells people of samsara (concept of a cycle of birth) and suggests people to tame their ego.’

Zen used to be number one in terms of Western interest in Japan.  Now Fushimi Inari is no. 1 on the tourist trail in Kyoto and proudly advertises its status.  Whereas Tofukuji has to charge to see its wonderful modern Zen gardens, Fushimi Inari relies on the constant stream of visitors tossing coins into its offering box and the queues to buy amulets and fortune slips as its office.  In both cases the religious institution is supported by a team of priests, many of whom are hereditary.  In both cases belief in the deities is not a requirement, but upholding the lifestyle of ritual and discipline is.

Did the water basin of Zen and the tea ceremony borrow from that of Shinto....

Did the water basin of Zen and the tea ceremony borrow from that of Shinto….

Rock worship... Zen or Shinto? A combination of both, in fact.

Rock worship… Zen or Shinto? A combination of both, in fact.

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Dosoujin, usually associated with Shinto but here in the Zen temple of Tofukuji

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Coming up soon at Fushimi Inari is the rice-planting ritual.

June 10: the ritual is held to ensure a good rice harvest; Women dressed in traditional Heian period costumes perform an elegant dance from 13:00; From around 14:00, about 30 women dressed in traditional farm worker clothing plant rice seedlings in the shrine’s sacred rice field.

A Zen-Shinto shrine. Actually it's not counted as Shinto as it's a kami shrine maintained by Zen monks. An anomaly not included in the post-Meiji artificial split.

A Zen-Shinto shrine at Tofuku-ji. Actually it’s not counted as Shinto as it’s a kami shrine maintained by Zen monks. An anomaly not included in the post-Meiji artificial split between the religions.

Dragon waterbasin at a Shinto shrine

Dragon waterbasin at a Shinto shrine

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Dragon ceiling at a Zen temple

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Fushimi boasting of being number 1 tourist spot in the whole of Japan! No wonder the sheaf of rice the fox is holding looks plentiful…

Japaneseness – whether Shinto or Zen, it’s a remarkable heritage!

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