What price piety?

TO BE HONEST ABOUT IT, communing with the divinities by attending a service at a religious institution is a lot like attending an event at any other private sector facility. You have to pay to be there.

Of course attending a concert or a play requires money up front, and churches won’t turn people away for sitting on their wallets, but the priests still devote a lot of time and energy to making financial pitches to their patrons. The ushers never forget to pass out the collection plates and buckets at every service. The Catholic Church, which has been at it longer than the other Christians, is more efficient and businesslike. The squad of ushers at the church I attended as a boy wouldn’t put the receptacles directly into the hands of the parishioners. They had long poles with baize-lined wicker plates on the end that they thrust down the row at every pew. People dropped their money in as the plate went past.

The Presbyterians, meanwhile, shoot for higher targets. During my high school days, I went to a Presbyterian church for a couple of years because most of my school friends went there. Once a year, every year, the pastor gave a sermon about tithing—in other words, giving the church 10% of your income off the top. He and the elders were quite imaginative in coming up with ways to justify the expense, which they leavened with just the right amount of pious sincerity.

But there’s no beating around the bush or searching for justifications at a Shinto shrine in Japan. When people visit a shrine and stand in the presence of the divinities, the first thing they do is toss some coins into a large receptacle. They follow that up with two bows, two claps to make sure the divinities are looking their way, and conclude with another bow. Then they get down to asking silently for what it was they wanted to begin with.

Collecting the cash doesn’t usually present a problem since the daily traffic at a Shinto shrine is so light. But that changes during holidays, and that’s especially true during New Year’s. For example, about 680,000 people showed up at the Inaba shrine in Gifu City, Gifu, during the three-day holiday period this year, and nearly every one of them came bearing a cash gift.

They offer more cash than usual since it’s a special occasion, so the parishioners discreetly place it into a straw bag called a kamasu to deliver it.

The accompanying photo shows the shrine’s annual Kamasubiraki, or the kamasu opening, the ceremony in which they count their haul for the year. They get so much, in fact, that they can’t handle it all themselves. The Juroku Bank thoughtfully sent 14 employees over to help them separate the bills from the coins, and they probably carried it back to the vaults when they were done.

It was estimated that 80,000 more people visited the shrine during the holiday period this year than last year. But one of the shrine’s priests also said he thought they were not as generous with their folding money when compared to other years. “During tough economic times”, he observed, “more people come to ask the divinities for their blessing, but they put less money into the bags.”

Well that makes sense, but it somehow doesn’t sound quite right for a priest to say it out loud–especially when he needs 14 people from a bank to help tally up the swag!

Shogatsu 2009: Lighting up traditional Japan

AT LEAST ONCE IN THEIR LIVES, usually in early adolescence, Americans make a point to stay up to midnight on New Year’s Eve to watch the ball of light slide down the tower above Times Square in New York City to herald the start of the new year. My niece even went there to see it in person a couple of years ago and still lived to tell the tale.

Never ones to be shy about borrowing an idea that strikes their fancy, the Japanese turn the night sky’s darkness into daylight throughout the country on 31 December. Many venues offer a special countdown coupled with entertainment and charge an admission fee. One of them is Mitsui Greenland, an amusement park a couple of hours down the road here in Kyushu.

More interesting than the ersatz events at amusement parks, however, is the way in which the Japanese have adapted the concept and retrofitted it to more traditional settings, such as Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples.

For example, the Shinto priests in charge of the Himeji Gokoku shrine in Kobe, Hyogo, don’t light up a single ball—they light up 2,000 chochin, or traditional lanterns, on the shrine grounds. The first photo shows the chochin lit up earlier this week during a trial to see if any of the bulbs had burned out. Inspecting the fixtures seems to be another part of the miko’s job description. If you were lucky enough to be there at midnight on 31 December, you would have gotten to see the real thing.

The event is called the Mantosai, which literally means The Festival of 10,000 Lights. Before you start wondering about truth in advertising, keep in mind that it’s not supposed to be taken literally. In China and Korea as well as Japan, the number 10,000 has long been used to mean “a very large amount” rather than 10,000 in round numbers.

The shrine says they offer the ceremony in the hope of a “bright” new year. Explained the chief priest, “This year has been filled with “dark” events, including the financial crisis, but we want to raise a light at the New Year in the hope that people will be reminded of the beautiful Japanese virtue of treasuring a richness of spirit.”

Another Shinto shrine took the opportunity to use the lighting to promote one of its most recognizable assets. The Kumano Hongu shrine in Tanabe, Wakayama, light up their immense torii on the former shrine grounds at Oyu-no-hara from 31 December to 7 January. The second photo shows the dress rehearsal on 27 December, in which 13 spotlights placed around the torii were turned on at 5:00 p.m., just when it starts to get dark in these midwinter days.

The torii is 34 meters (111.55 feet) high and 42 meters wide at the maximum point, so it must surely be an impressive sight bathed in floodlights in the middle of a pitch black field. They purposely used a red light for the yatagarasu crest in the middle of the torii to set it off from the overall blue hue. That’s a mythical sacred magpie with three legs that was reputed to lead people to the proper path in life. Lit up like that, it’s almost as if there’s a neon arrow pointing to the Promised Land and flashing the message, Step Right This Way!

On New Year’s Eve, or o-misoka as they say in Japan, it was lit from 6:00 p.m. to 5 a.m., but for the rest of the week visitors will have to make do with just three hours from 6-9 p.m. (By the way, try this link for a previous post about the Yata Fire Festival at the same location. They use a nice lighting scheme for that event, too.)

Even more spiritually distant from the Times Square fleshpots is the ecumenical spirit of a group in Setochi, Okayama, which provides illlumination to more than one religious institution on Mt. Kamitera. The group was organized to preserve the joint Buddhist and Shinto culture that survives on the mountain, so they made sure to shine a light on both the main building of the Yokei-ji Buddhist temple and pagoda as well as the Toyohara Kitashima shrine. They used 150 lights for the temple, which is a nationally designated important cultural treasure, as well as the shrine and torii. The group gave visitors a taste of the brightness to come when they switched on the lights from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. on the 30th, but then they went the whole Hogmanay on the 31st by letting them burn from 6:00 p.m. until 2:00 a.m. the next morning. For an extra decorative touch, they also placed candles and lanterns along the pathways.

And while you’re still recovering from having stuffed yourself with o-sechi ryori, pickled herring, black-eyed peas, or whatever other special foods custom dictates be scarfed down during the season, you can get clicky with some blasts from the past presenting other aspects of the Japanese New Year.

Here’s a look at the Big Shimenawa in Hiroshima.

What else is there to eat? Well, there’s mochi. And soba. And even whale and shark, for the more discriminating palates.

The Japanese also deck the halls with boughs of pine trees, and all sorts of other things.

And to conclude, the New Year’s firsts shall come last!

Miko make the season bright during New Year’s in Japan

MOST OF THE TIME, a Shinto shrine is all but deserted. Shinto isn’t a religion in the way people usually understand it—there are no written doctrines and no set times for worship. People visit a shrine when it suits their mood, their circumstances in life, or to participate in a few festivals or other events.

During the New Year’s holiday from 1-3 January, however, the shrines will be packed with people on a hatsumode, the customary first visit of the year. In most cases, people will visit three shrines in one day.

It would be impossible for the regular crew to handle the immense influx of visitors descending on the shrine in such a concentrated period of time. The chores required to receive those visitors, as well making and selling good luck talismans for the year ahead, require that the staff be reinforced with part-time employees. These are young women hired to serve as miko, or shrine maidens, who roughly correspond to altar boys at a Catholic church. While the larger shrines already have a few miko on call, particularly to assist at wedding ceremonies, most shrines have to hire them for the season.

Left over right? Or right over left?

Because they’re working in the service of a religious institution and not a convenience store, the miko must conform to certain standards (i.e., no dyed hair). The priests provide additional training for the proper speech and deportment to be employed when greeting the shrine-goers, which demands a level of courtesy beyond that usually required in Japanese society.

This training includes instruction for dressing oneself in the traditional red and white garments, one of which is a hakama, or divided skirt. That’s normally part of a man’s formal wardrobe, particularly for traditional wedding ceremonies. While they aren’t as difficult to deal with as a kimono, wearing one is not intuitive and requires that someone show the wearer the ropes, or the drawstrings in this case.

The first photograph shows some miko-in-training learning how to dress at the Fukuyama Hachiman-gu in Fukuyama, Hiroshima. The training session, which also included lessons in the manner of address and the correct way in which to hand over lucky talismans to purchasers, was held about a week ago for the 40 women who will help out this year. The shrine needs the help: They expect 200,000 visitors over the three-day period.

Said the shrine’s priest, “The role of the miko is to connect the worshippers with the spirit of the divinity. I want them to approach that role with a pure heart.”

Santa’s elves

The shrines have plenty to do to prepare for New Year’s, which is still the most important holiday on the calendar. Some of the shrines that sell the talismans make them on the premises. That means the miko have been beavering away in the workshop as if they were a Japanese version of Santa’s elves.

The second photo shows a group of the 17 miko at the Onoyama-cho Gokoku shrine in Naha, Okinawa, making traditional fukusasa talismans by tying them into bundles after the materials were purified in a ceremony. Fukusasa is a combination of the words “lucky” and “bamboo grass”. A lot of lucky items will be sold to Japanese over the next few days in addition to bamboo grass, including fukubukuro, or lucky bags from department stores filled with merchandise and certificates for bigger-ticket items. One woman interviewed on television today was so intent on getting her fukubukuro that she rented a hotel room near the department store to ensure a spot in the queue enabling her to elbow her way inside when the doors opened in the morning.

The bamboo grass was specially cut by the priests in some nearby mountains. Said the chief priest Kaji Yorihito, “The bamboo grass grows pointing straight to heaven and is symbolic of the life force. We hope that as many people as possible will visit the shrine and add a sense of stability to their lives.”

The fukusasa are affixed with bells and small gourds, and then purchased and displayed by the parishioners who hope the luck will rub off in the form of domestic safety and business prosperity. It doesn’t take long for the miko to create a lot of potential luck. They can make 1,000 fukusasa in two days, as well as 10,000 hamaya, or exorcising arrows. When you expect 240,000 visitors, it’s good to have sufficient stock on hand. Besides, if you absolutely had to have an exorcising arrow, would you want to stand in line at the shrine and then be told they were sold out?

Cocoon balls

Meanwhile, work lasted for more than a week at the Kinomiya shrine in Atami, Shizuoka, to make the mayudama talisman for sale to those looking to get lucky in their business dealings. A mayu is a silkworm cocoon, and once upon a time the shrine attached real cocoons to willow branches and offered them over the counter.

That’s too expensive these days—silkworm cocoons were sold until recently on Japanese commodity exchanges, and the adventuresome investor can still buy raw silk from the cocoons on the Tokyo Grain Exchange. (For an idea of how people in East Asia view silkworms, the single kanji for the word is written by combining the characters for heaven and insect: 蚕.)

The more economical option today is the use of brightly colored balls (the tama of mayudama) made of rice meal. These and other decorations are attached to the branches of the hagi, or Japanese bush clover. The girls at the Kinomiya shrine made 3,000 this year, and you can see an example of their handiwork in the third photo.

Cleaning house

The miko are also responsible for performing the more housewifely tasks at the shrine, such as the yearly cleaning and dusting. Here’s a 40-second video of the miko banishing the cobwebs from the high ceilings using three-meter-long bamboo poles with bamboo grass on the business end instead of a mop or feather duster. Note how the priests are the model of liberated males, grabbing poles and working alongside the miko. But considering those spotless white outfits they’re wearing, one has to wonder how much dirt they expect to remove. Then again, how dirty can the inside of a shrine get in a year?

That’s the Hokkaido Jingo shrine in central Sapporo, by the way. They’re expecting 730,000 people to drop in this year. The end of the video has a shot of the shrine exterior that’s worth seeing for its stark Japanese beauty. Besides, it’s a lot better to view the shrine from the outside by video instead of in person at this time of year. Judging from the amount of snow on the ground and surrounding trees, I’d be hibernating until spring if I lived there.

Supersized kagami mochi

If you think cleaning the corners of the ceiling with bamboo poles and leaves is an unusual assignment, watch what the miko do at the Yasuzumi shrine in Takanezawa-machi, Tochigi. The shrine is noted for offering a jumbo three-level kagami mochi (decorative New Year’s rice cake) every year at this time in the hopes the divinities will see fit to bless them with a good harvest and that Japan’s print and broadcast media will see fit to give them a minute of free publicity. It works like a charm—this video is one of at least three from Japanese TV floating around on the web.

It shows some parishioners pounding the very glutinous mochi rice with wooden mallets to form the uncooked cakes, a forklift bringing in the first two layers, and the miko bringing in the third mochi cake in a procession as if they were transporting a daimyo in a palanquin. It concludes with the priests topping off the creation with one of the most delicious citrus fruits known to humankind: the bampeiyu. They resemble grapefruit about half the size of a basketball but without the sour tartness. And they’re coming into season soon!

Take a few seconds to imagine a ceremony that involves a forklift, a traditional pallet carried by young women in ceremonial clothing, and a giant citrus fruit used in place of a cherry to top off an enormous food offering. Ain’t Japan grand?

Takanezawa is one of Tochigi’s prime rice growing districts, and the shrine began making the jumbo kagami mochi in 1982. It took the parishioners two days to make this bruiser. The first level is 110 centimeters in diameter (3.6 feet), the second is 80 centimeters, and the third is 60. It’s about 90 centimeters high and weighs about 500 kilograms (1,100 lbs.) when fully assembled. If you’re passing through Tochigi, you can stop by and see it until the 20th. After that, the monster mochi will be removed and chopped up into smaller pieces for distribution to parishioners during the Setsubun festival on 3 February, unless Godzilla comes ashore and swallows it whole first.

Restoring a two-year tradition

There’s more to a miko’s lot than wearing traditional costumes to fashion handicrafts in the shrine sweatshop, serve as cleaning ladies, or do the heavy lifting of decorative rice. The two miko shown in the next photo are practicing the Urayasu-no-Mai (a dance), which was performed for the first time in 67 years at the Teruhi Shinto shrine yesterday in Osaki-cho, Kagoshima.

The dance for women is performed to music resembling gagaku with an elegant and deliberate choreography. It appears traditional, but it was actually created and first offered at the Ise shrine in 1940 to celebrate the 2,600th year of the Imperial line. (That anniversary was a very big deal in 1940, but that’s another story.)

The 79-year-old Fujioka Tomio of the local kagura preservation society says he was in the audience during the inaugural performance as a lad of 10 and has never forgotten it. The dance was performed for only two years—the Japanese had other fish to fry by 1942—and he’s been at the forefront of efforts since then to bring it back. He worked with a local teacher of traditional Japanese dance to teach it to two girls, one a first-year junior high school student and the other third-year high school student. They began practicing in November, and shown here is a photo of the miko in a dress rehearsal last week at the shrine. Mr. Fujioka and the shrine parishioners hope this will start a new tradition that will last longer than two years this time.

It might seem as if there is a sense of Japanese exclusivity and exoticism hovering about all these activities—young women dressing in traditional Japanese clothing to make traditional Japanese crafts for the celebration of New Year’s at Shinto institutions that they cleaned with ritual implements and adorned with ritual food offerings, and then performing a special dance created at a shrine closely associated with the Imperial house to celebrate more than two millennia of Imperial rule. Some might like to think the Japanese are so exclusionary and this behavior so defining that participation by anyone else would be unthinkable.

Think again. There’s another video floating around the web of a recent TV report on a miko training session at a shrine in Nagasaki City. The video wasn’t particularly distinctive, so I didn’t include it here, but a brief interview of one of the trainees casually tacked on to the end might cause cognitive dissonance among those who enjoy being narrow-minded about Japan.

This particular trainee was a 21-year-old Korean university student attending a local university. The woman was not learning about miko practices—she was taking a refresher course. She had already worked as one during the 2008 New Year’s holidays and enjoyed it so much she wanted to do it again.

You didn’t really buy that line about the Japanese being xenophobic Korean-haters, now did you?

Lest old acquaintance be forgot, let’s not forget this post from last year all about miko and some of the other delightful things they do.

Akemashite o-medeto gozaimasu!

Nippon Noel 2008!

JAPAN MAY NOT BE a Christian country, but that doesn’t stop folks from getting festive during Christmas. On the contrary, no one understands festivals better than the Japanese, and they’ve turned their Christmas season into a winter festival of light. They’ve also added some unique touches of their own to the global celebration.

Winter Vista Illumination

There is no example more apt than that of the Winter Vista Illumination held at this time every year at the Showa Kinen Park in Tokyo. The entree is several decorative lighting displays throughout the park grounds based on the theme of outer space, including those representing constellations and the Milky Way galaxy.

The park’s symbol is a large fountain, shown in the photo, and this is linked by watercourse to four other fountains. Not only are the fountains illuminated, but the watercourses themselves are festooned with lights. The gingko trees lining the waterways are also hung with lights to create a tunnel effect.

But a Christmas lighting display requires a touch of Christmas, does it not? The park provides considerably more than a touch with a 4.5-meter-high Christmas tree made from 6,545 champagne glasses layered more than 30 rows high, and two nearby 2.8-meter trees created with a combined 6,600 champagne glasses.

And of course it can’t be a Winter Vista Illumination unless the trees are lighted, so all three of the Christmas trees are presented in bright colors. But since the light and glass would be a bit static on their own, and they’ve already got that flowing water and those spraying fountains on the premises to begin with, and those champagne glasses are just begging to be filled with bubbly, they came up with a more dynamic display by assembling the illuminated champagne glass trees so as to have water directed to the top. There it spills over to fill the initial level of glasses, which overflow, sending the water cascading down to the next row, and the next, until it reaches the bottom.

For those who find this a bit overwhelming, there is a smaller, three-level mini-tree made with about 100 champagne glasses nestled among the gingko trees. It sounds positively relaxing in comparison.

For those who find this to be insufficient and prefer a more explosive Noel, there was a Christmas-themed fireworks display with 500 fireworks every night from the 20th to the 24th. The outer space lighting and champagne glass Christmas trees were displayed through Christmas night.

Who wouldn’t love to see in greater detail what those illuminated Christmas trees made of champagne glasses and overflowing water looked like? While there are several videos of this attraction on the web, I thought most were either poorly done or were technically recalcitrant. Here’s the one I consider the best. You have to scroll down the page a bit. The notation says it lasts two minutes, but it ends after about one minute every time I play it.

And while we’re at it, let’s not forget:

The Ghost of Christmas Past!

Last year I offered several posts featuring some extremely imaginative and attractive public Christmas trees in Japan. The posts are still around, and the photographs look even better with the improved WordPress software. So let’s break open the Christmas photo album!

Here you can see an attractive department store tree, a tree trimmed with people instead of ornaments, and an abstract art tree.

Here is a Christmas tree lit by an electric eel.

This post uses polls and surveys to explain how the Japanese view Christmas and how they prefer to enjoy the season. It is adorned with photos of a tree made of fishing boat flags and an abstract tree that is both bold and elegant.

How about a tree trimmed with live chrysalises, or another one with seashells? Try here.

This story about two kinds of Christmas cakes—only one edible—also has a photo of a Christmas tree decorated with uchiwa, or hand fans.

Don’t pass up this post showing how the Japanese turn old PET bottles into Christmas trees. They all look great, including the huge one outside of a Fukuoka City department store.

Here’s a poinsettia tree accompanying a story about a Christmas tree for a Japanese family living in Seoul, showing that the Christmas spirit is present in Northeast Asia.

And you won’t want to miss this post with a stunning Christmas objet, a tree of pearls, Christmas roots, and the Christmas decorations on a bridge built in 1839.

What are you waiting for? Get down and get clicky!

Here’s hoping that Santa sent down your chimney just what you asked for, whether you sat on his knee or not! Merry Christmas!

December means spring cleaning in Japan

IT’S DECEMBER, and that means the Japanese are getting started on their spring cleaning chores. Families throughout the country will soon be freezing their fannies off as they clean their houses inside and out. It’ll make a lot more sense when you realize that one expression in Japanese for New Year’s is shinshun, which is literally “new spring”. New Year’s in Japan is considered a time of renewal, so it’s a spring cleaning in more ways than one.

And in Japan, where cleanliness is closer to godliness than anywhere else, the cleaning has become an annual religious ritual at Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. The first photo shows the Spring/New Year’s cleaning of the shinkyo, or sacred bridge (literally divine bridge) at the Nikko Futarasan Shinto shrine in Nikko, Tochigi, on the 12th. The activity is called a susuharai, which is a combination of the words susu, or soot, and harai, or cleaning, with the added nuance of purification.

About 20 people were involved, including priests, shrine maidens, and members of the local committee for preserving cultural treasures. They used three-meter-long sticks with sasa, or bamboo grass, on the end, to wipe off the posts. More conventional methods work best for the steps however, so they used old-fashioned mops and cloths to clean those. It took only 30 minutes to do the whole bridge, but susuharai goes a lot faster when a crew of 20 works together to apply the elbow grease.

Nikko Futarasan is a cultural landmark, incidentally—UNESCO combined it with the nearby Nikko Tosho-gu shrine and the Rinno-ji Buddhist temple to make it a World Heritage Site, but it was famous long before UNESCO came along. The shrine also has two swords that are national treasures of Japan and more buildings and cultural artifacts registered as important cultural assets than you can shake either a stick or a susu broom at.

The bridge itself, which crosses the Daiya River, is also famous, and you’ve undoubtedly seen other pictures from different perspectives. In fact, the shrine has a website with photos taken throughout the year that it offers to the news media. And for those who want to see what the bridge looks like this very minute, the shrine also provides a live camera view, which you can see here. A truck was driving by the last time I looked.

Getting clean at yearend in Japan is not just a Shinto custom—the Buddhists do it too. The second photo shows priests at Kashozan Miroku-ji, a temple in Numata, Gunma, cleaning their famous tengu masks on the 12th.

No, it is not out of the question for a Buddhist temple in Japan to have as a prime attraction three large masks of a mythological creature whose Pinocchio-like nose is surely a phallic symbol. Those noses, by the way, are from 5.5 to 6.5 meters long.

It is not possible to briefly explain what tengu are, so here’s a link that will provide more information on the checkered but fascinating background of these characters. One intriguing legend is that they were said to punish Buddhist monks who used for their own ends the supernormal powers gained through religious practices. Having three big reminders staring at the priests every day as they go about their business makes it a lot less likely they’ll misuse their magic with female parishioners, despite the ideas those noses must put into their heads.

Look at that photo of the brooms wiping off the tengu noses long enough and you’ll be convinced there are jokes just waiting to be found about sneezing and all sorts of other activities. There’s probably a particularly rich vein to be discovered by exploring the phallic symbolism, and wouldn’t you know, the phrase “coming clean at New Year’s” floated into the ether all of a sudden. Perhaps there’s a Buddhist sutra I can chant for keeping my mind from drifiting too far off course.

There’s been a temple on the site since 848, incidentally, so the local wise guys have probably had that territory well covered for more than a millennium.

At midnight on New Year’s Eve, the temple bells in Japan toll the joya no kane, which are 108 strokes to cleanse away the 108 delusions of mankind. It’s an old Buddhist ritual, so don’t start thinking about 108 strokes, tengu noses, and coming clean at New Year’s.

The chief priest played it straight, however. He said, “This has been a year of uncertainty both in politics and in the economy. We hope to wash away that uncertainty along with the dirt, and move on to the next year with the firm tread of the ox.” (Next year is the year of the ox.)

When you’re a priest taking care of tengu with noses that long, playing it straight and hiding your supernormal powers is the safest option. I wouldn’t turn my back on them either!

The Shinto beauty pageant in Osaka

THERE’S SOMETHING for everyone at Shinto shrines and festivals: simulated sex acts on stage, sake drinking parties, physical competitions that resemble rugby scrums, water fights, chariot races for the gods, and acrobatics.

So why not a beauty pageant?

That’s the treat awaiting Osaka residents at the end of every November when the Imamiya Ebisu shrine, known for its exaltation of Ebisu, the god of commercial prosperity, selected the fukumusume for their Tokaebisu festival to be held from 9 to 11 January 2009.

Fuku means good fortune and musume means daughter or young woman, so rather than being the local version of the Broadway Golddiggers of 2009, they will serve as the shrine’s Girls of Good Fortune for this year’s edition of the event. Their job during the festival will be sell good luck talismans and pour sake for the parishioners.

No, they will not sit on your lap and listen to stories about how your wife doesn’t understand you and why your boss is a heartless slave-driver. But they will make personal appearances as a group at other events to boost attendance, just as beauty pageant winners do elsewhere.

And just as some beauty pageant winners use the competition as a springboard to professional success, the fukumusume parlay their selection into a future career. At least five have later become actresses or television announcers.

Instead of wearing bathing suits, playing the flute, and pretending to have a social conscience, their job at the festival will be to dress in somewhat traditional kimono, wear funny hats, project some demure Shinto sex appeal, and hawk the shrine’s amulets by calling out, “Bring business success right away!”

That “right away” part in Japanese, by the way, is the expression sasa. Perhaps the world’s champion punsters, the Japanese never pass up a chance to make a play on words, and they certainly didn’t overlook this prime opportunity. With each amulet they sell, the fukumusume also offer a twig from a plant known as bamboo grass in English—or sasa in Japanese.

A girl has to be more than lucky to be a Good Luck Girl. Every year, about 3,000 women apply for 45 positions, and those picked have to prove themselves in two personal interviews. Since the event is conducted by a Shinto shrine, the winners are called “representatives” to downplay the competitive aspects.

Once they clear that hurdle, they appear in the beauty pageant. Five primary representatives are selected from the 45 finalists at another interview conducted on stage at Asahi Hall in Osaka, with questions asked by a nine-member panel of celebrity judges. The event is broadcast live on television in the Osaka area, and the master of ceremonies is show business veteran Katsura Sanshi. (Originally a rakugo artist, or performer of traditional comedy monologues, he also is the host of a long-running nationwide television show in which he and a female assistant interview goofy newlyweds.)

Here’s how it works: Each of the 45 girls is allotted a mere 15 seconds to promote themselves. Then the judges ask their questions and make the selections.

To demonstrate the sort of good fortune the girls can bring, here’s a little bit of luck for you–a one-minue clip from a local television report of the event. Now you won’t have to slog up to the Imamiya shrine and buy some bamboo grass to see the fukumusume!

Some explanations for those who don’t understand Japanese: The first girl interviewed offstage said that she was very nervous at having to demonstrate her appeal in just 15 seconds. The second said that she practiced every night to develop a “small, rounded, pleasing face” that would invite prosperity.

Novelist Namba Toshizo headed the panel of judges, but the judge shown asking the question was Imade Toji, who made his name as a TV weatherman. Mr. Imade’s question: “Do you check the weather forecasts when you leave the house? The girl’s answer: “The first thing I do every morning is check the weather on my cell phone.”

Naturally women come from outside the Osaka area for a chance to get their divine break in life. In fact, one of the five representatives every year is now a foreigner. This year’s overseas representative is from the Czech Republic. That’s her on the left in the photo above. (And that’s the face of Ebisu on the backdrop, bestowing his blessings on the proceedings.)

It’s no surprise that an event of this type would be held in Osaka. The original idea is to coax the divinities to send a lot of customers their way, and Osaka is a center of commerce. One of the enterprises that found fertile soil in the city is show business: It’s the headquarters of the entertainment conglomerate Yoshimoto Kogyo. The company was founded as a traditional theater in 1912, but has since become an all-round entertainment provider. They recruit, train, and employ most of Japan’s popular comedy performers, including the traditional rakugo artists and the more conventional television comedians (including event MC Katsura Sanshi). They also produce and promote shows for their stable of performers, both for stage and TV. Just as everyone in the United States knows about Universal Studios, everyone in Japan knows about Yoshimoto Kogyo. And like the American company, they even operate their own amusement park.

Now I ask you: Where else in the world can you get your break in show business by auditioning for an event conducted by and held on the grounds of a religious institution?

The ume of good fortune

TWO MONTHS AGO, we had a post about the different uses of ume, a Japanese fruit related to the apricot but sometimes referred to as a plum. One of the ways it’s consumed is as fuku-ume, or the ume of good fortune. The fruit is cured in salt, dried in the sun, and sold at shrines for the New Year’s holiday. The idea is to put one in some hot water, drink it, and enjoy good health in the year ahead.

Well, good tidings I bring: fuku-ume season has arrived at last. The priests and miko, or shrine maidens, at the Kameyama Hachiman-gu Shinto shrine in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi have begun the work to wrap the ume of good fortune in straw for sale to the public.

The shrine cured 300 kilograms (about 661 lbs.) of the ume in salt and spread them to dry in the sun starting in early July. The wrapping began at the end of November at the shrine, with the miko slipping five of the dried fruit into the straw wrappers the shrine priests made.

Tradition has it that the people who drink the ume immersed in either hot water or tea will enjoy good health all year. It derives from an incident during the Heian period (which was more than a millennium ago) in which someone was cured of the plague by drinking ume tea.

The shrine says this year’s crop is about normal, and hopes that everyone drinks some of the juice on New Year’s Day. One of the straw twists with five of the fruit sells for 600 yen ($US 6.28).

Last week my wife came home with a couple of packs of dried ume to be eaten as a snack that someone had given her. I tried one, and it instantly puckered the insides of my mouth. They’re a bit too briny for my taste.

But I’d drink some hot water in which one had been dunked. That business about keeping you healthy for a year may be only a legend, but who knows? It won’t hurt and it just might help!

Dazaifu elvettes getting ready for New Year’s Day

AS YEAREND APPROACHES, many people begin to look forward to the Christmas season. For most Japanese, however, Christmas is still just the entrée for the main holiday course: the three-day New Year’s holiday.

The story of Santa’s elves beavering away at the North Pole making toys for good little boys and girls is a pleasant fiction, but in Japan, the miko, or shrine maidens, (similar to altar boys) actually do take their places at the workbench in red and white costumes to make New Year’s gifts. They’re also a lot more pleasant to watch than any imaginary elf.

The miko at the Dazaifu Tenman-gu, a Shinto shrine in Dazaifu, Fukuoka, got down to work this week. A Fukuoka City television station filed a report that I can’t upload, but you can watch it while it lasts here. A quick translation of the voice-over appears below.

With just one month left until New Year’s, the preparations have begun at Dazaifu Tenman-gu to make good luck talismans for the parishioners who will make their first visit to the shrine on New Year’s Day.

The miko clad in hibakama gathered at the large hall in the shrine at 9:30 a.m. and began putting the finishing touches to the new year talismans. Working by hand, the miko attached small ema with pictures of an ox (2009 is the year of the ox). They also painted dolls made to look like oxen that were created by Hakata Ningyo (doll) maker Nakamura Shinkyo.

There are 12 types of talismans in all, starting with the good fortune arrows that come in three varieties, from “Extra Large” to “Small”.

The centerpiece this year is the new fukumusubi, patterned after the round chi-no-wa (a ring made using a plant in the eulalia family). It was created with the wish that those who possess one will meet someone especially nice from the opposite sex this year and form a strong bond.

Roughly 2.02 million people visited the Dazaifu Tenman-gu during the three-day New Year’s period this year, more than visited any other shrine in Fukuoka Prefecture. They also expect two million visitors during the same period next year.

Happy Culture Day!

MONDAY IN JAPAN was a public holiday called Culture Day. The law for national holidays states that it was established to inculcate a love for peace and freedom and to promote culture. The Tenno (Emperor) dispenses culture medals at the Imperial Palace on that day, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs holds a festival to present awards to entertainers and organizations for exceptional achievement.

3 November was also the birthday of the Meiji Tenno, and it was one of the four important national holidays before the war. Officially, there is supposed to be no connection between his birthday and the establishment of this date as Culture Day, but debate in the Diet at the time the new holiday was created (the late 1940s) suggests some people thought otherwise.

This year, the Japanese had a three-day holiday, and here are three ways people enjoyed themselves during the midway point on Sunday.

Hanya Festival

About 5,000 people celebrated the joys of culture at the Hanya Festival n Satsumasendai, Kagoshima, by dancing up and down a two-kilometer stretch of National Highway #3 that passes through the central business and shopping district. About 4,300 people in 81 different groups got down and got funky, either to the Sendai Hanya-bushi or the Sendai Hanya, for about two hours. Neighborhood or workplace groups created their own costumes and choreography, some of which were intentionally humorous. The homemade presentations included a recreation of a daimyo procession, jazz dancing, and a takeoff on Atsuhime, a period drama now being broadcast on NHK TV. Said 24-year-old Furukawa Mika: “We practiced for two days at work. We watched the other groups dancing and cheered each other on. It was a lot of fun.”

Naruto Kite Flying Competition

The kite-flying folk had their day in the sun in a park in Naruto, Tokushima. Yes, flying a kite is also a cultural pursuit as well as a day spent in pursuit of a strong breeze. The 26th annual event was sponsored by the Naruto Kite Preservation Society, and the eyeball attraction (as the Japanese say) was a competition with the 8-meter-wide Wanwan Kite shown in the photo. First made about 300 years ago, the paper and bamboo kite is considered a traditional craft. The practice of flying the Wanwan eventually died out, but the society revived it some years ago. In addition to the 20 groups in the competition, about 100 spectators also got to try mini-wanwan that were handed out for free.

All Kyushu Abacus Calculation Championship

Smart folks like to have fun too, and they had a chance to strut their stuff during the holidays at the 27th All Kyushu Abacus Calculation Championship in Naha, Okinawa. It was fitting that the event took place in the southernmost islands because the Okinawans are stone killers at the abacus. Competitors from the prefecture won first place in 12 of the 13 divisions, and the individual champion for the entire event was a girl from Kyuyo High School in Okinawa City, whose name I unfortunately can’t read. (Okinawan names can be like that.) Also, an Okinawan group won the team competition for primary school students, making it the 20th straight year the hometown kids took home the trophy for this division.

This was not a casual affair, as 243 people competed either as individuals or as part of a team, and the island of Kyushu is an hour’s flight away from the Ryukyus. Not only did the participants compete on accuracy and speed using an abacus itself, but they also went head-to-head (in more ways than one) in a separate competition by performing calculations while only visualizing the use of an abacus. All of this must be a great way to intensify the brain waves, and that’s confirmed by some articles on the website of the League of Japan Abacus Associations. (There’s also a link on the right sidebar.) Click on the section related to right-brain development.

And to think some people believe that all the Japanese like to do on a Sunday is lie around and watch the ekiden marathon relays!

Greeting the new year the Japanese way

YEAREND IS THE ENGLISH WORD used to describe both the end of the business year and the period during which New Year’s holiday events take place. The same word is used in Japan, but more frequently to denote the end of the business year. When referring to the period during which the holiday events take place, the Japanese tend to use the term nenmatsu nenshi, or year-end, year-beginning.

That’s because there are as many New Year’s events after the year begins as there are before it ends. Often, these events are held to mark the first occasion in the New Year people will perform a specific activity.

Everyone knows about the custom of the daily bath in Japan, for example, so it will be no surprise that one of the New Year events would be the first bath of the year at the Arima hot springs in Kobe (first photo). Naturally, they make a point of using the first bath water of the year.

This year, about 400 people were present to watch the tribute to the hot spring founders and the offering of a prayer for future prosperity. There was also a parade with mikoshi, or portable Shinto shrines, and combined Buddhist and Shinto ceremonies.

Legend has it that the Arima hot springs were discovered by two gods, O’onamuchi-no-mikoto and Sukunahikona-no-mikoto. No one seems to have pinpointed the date of the discovery, but there are records of Imperial visits to the bath in the 7th century.

The facilities later fell into disrepair, but were restored by the monk Gyoki in the 8th century. It also was destroyed after an earthquake and rebuilt by the monk Ninsai in the 11th century. The spa waters of Arima must be superb for people to keep bringing the place back to life!

During the event, which is roughly 300 years old, employees of a local ryokan, or Japanese inn, and monks in ancient dress carry the mikoshi from a temple to a local elementary school. There they hold a ceremony to cool the water until it’s the right temperature for bathing. And by way of honoring tradition and thanking the people who made the spa what it is today, they also splash water on statues of Gyoki and Ninsai!

Karuta

Since the start of a new year is a holiday, there’s no better way to spend one’s free time than by playing games—or in this case, cards, or karuta as they are traditionally called in Japanese (second photo).

The Yasaka Shrine in Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto, held the first karuta competition of the year early in January with the help of the members of a local association called the Nihon Karuta-In. The women playing the game— dubbed the karuta princesses—dressed in the clothing of court nobles during the Heian period (794-1185).

This is not the Japanese version of gin rummy. Instead, the game is a fascinating blend of the artistic and the competitive. It is sometimes called hyakunin isshu, or Single Poems by a Hundred Poets. That name is an apt description because the poems used are a collection of 100 waka, or verses consisting of 31 syllables. These specific poems are thought to have been written by 100 different people during the period from the mid-7th century to no later than 1242. Here’s how the game is played.

There are two sets of 100 cards on which the poems are written. One set is used by a reader, and the other set is used by the competitors, who face each other with the cards lying on the floor between them. The reader recites the first three lines of the waka, and the two contestants compete to be the first to take the card on which the full poem is written.

Don’t let the costumes fool you—those ladies have lightning fast reflexes, and by the rules, they don’t have to grab the cards. All that’s required is to be the first to flick them to the side. Simply watching a match can be engrossing, as it combines elegant historical clothing and knowledge of poetry with the steely gaze, calm demeanor, and cobra-quick attack of seasoned competitors.

Flower Arranging

Those women who prefer artistic pursuits without the head-to-head competition might have chosen to participate instead in the first flower arranging ceremony of the New Year on the 5th at the headmaster’s dojo of the Ikenobo school of flower arranging in Kyoto’s Nakagyo Ward (third photo). A total of 1,400 people ranging in age from 11 to 97 came from around the country to create their own floral works of art.

The event dates back to the Muromachi period (1333-1568), when people met to exchange New Year’s greetings and pledge to promote the art of flower arranging. The practice soon became an annual custom.

The 11-year-old girl who participated, Yamane Ayaka, told an interviewer she visualized a flower garden during the creation of her work, and that she hoped to continue flower arranging as a junior high school student.

It’s likely that Ayaka got her early start in flower arranging because her parents are involved in the art. The two characters used to write her first name mean “brightly-colored flower”.

Archery

Read a Japanese newspaper early in January, and you’re almost certain to see photographs such as this one in which the practitioners of traditional Japanese archery take aim for their first shots of the New Year in their own ceremony (fourth photo). The archers shown here gathered on the 3rd at a site in Otsu, Shiga, to demonstrate their resolve to improve their skills in the coming year.

It was sponsored by the Shiga Archery League, and about 80 members ranging in age from 16 to 83 participated. The head of the organization conducted a formal ceremony called the yawatashi, or “handing over the arrow”, to open the event, and then 10 people formed lines to shoot two arrows at a target 28 meters away.

Firefighting

Most of these events are derived from centuries-old Japanese traditions, and the participants are usually serious hobbyists. One exception, however, was the first firefighting drills of the New Year conducted by the Tokyo Fire Department with 2,800 firefighters on the morning of the 6th at the Tokyo International Exhibition Center. The participants also included personnel from regional fire departments and corporate firefighting teams.

This was a full-scale drill, complete with entertainment. A total of nine squads were mobilized, and they used 130 trucks and four helicopters. Tokyo Fire Chief Teruyuki Kobayashi started the morning off by remarking that Tokyo area firefighters were given a reminder of the difficulty of their work last year by their struggles to contain a fire resulting from an explosion at a Shibuya bathing facility. He urged the men to use their training and experience to protect the lives and safety of the citizens.

Then they showed off their firefighting and rescue skills in exercises based on conditions they might expect to deal with when confronted by fires in buildings and ships, or collapsed buildings in earthquakes.
　
The event closed with the acrobatic display shown in the fifth photo of the traditional ladder-climbing techniques firefighters used during the Edo period (1606-1868). Some of those moves seem as if they might have been performed more to impress the audience than to demonstrate actual techniques that were used to fight fires!

Dondoyaki

Many different decorations are used during the New Year’s holidays, as we saw in this previous post, and most of them originate with Shinto. Because some of these decorations are thought to be associated with the divinity—or even considered to be a divinity’s temporary dwelling–they are not casually tossed in the trash when the holidays are over.

Instead, Shinto shrines conduct a special ceremony known as the dondoyaki to ritually burn these items. This particular New Year’s burning took place on the 7th at the Takayama shrine in Tsu, Mie, with a prayer for peace, health, and safety in the coming year (last photo).

The priests held a special fire-lighting ceremony at 8 a.m., after which they started the fire at the site for sacred incineration with 15 parishioners helping.

After all the decorations were burned, the shrine thoughtfully distributed nanakusakayu, or rice gruel with the traditional seven spring herbs, to visitors.

It’s worth remembering that these events are held by and for members of the general public with an interest in traditional activities (except for the firefighters, of course). In Japan, at least, there are still pleasant and rewarding ways to spend one’s time during a time of year that for some is just dead space to be filled by watching television.