IF CHRISTMAS IS FOR KIDS, how do children get in the holiday spirit in Japan, which doesn’t have traditions of dashing through the snow on a one-horse open sleigh, good King Wenceslaus surveying the winter landscape on the Feast of Stephen, or, for bigger kids, having a close encounter under the mistletoe after a couple of cups of eggnog as a prelude to Santa sliding down the chimney? Here are three examples.

The first is a special class for children and their parents in Christmas ikebana, or flower arranging, in Tokushima City. Held in a local community center, it was part of a program sponsored by the Agency for Cultural Affairs. The class attracted 20 primary school students and their parents.

Providing the instruction was a director of a national ikebana association and officers of the local branch association of one of the flower arranging schools. The children used holly, lilies, azalea branches dyed red, and carnations to create flower arrangements with a Christmas theme. Said 11-year-old Hayakawa Yuri: “I was able to do it better than I thought I would. I want to see how it looks in my room.”

Meanwhile, the Susami Aquarium in Susami-cho, Wakayama, which features exhibits of local shrimp and crabs, decided to decorate their main attractions to offer a festive accent to the season. They dressed up two types of crabs as reindeer with Santa, or, to ensure a white Christmas, covered in snow.

One of the varieties given a seasonal makeover was the sponge crab dromidiopsis dormia, which has 15-centimeter-wide shells as an adult. Sea sponges naturally attach themselves to the shell, so the museum employed this trait to stick on sponges reworked to look like Santa dolls. The other was a local variety of spider crab with two-centimeter shells that sometimes disguise themselves with floating debris. The museum has loaded 20 with white thread to represent snow in an exhibit that lasts until the 25th.

Finally, in Rumoi, Hokkaido, municipal workers came up with a clever idea that uses the Chii-chan character. Chii-chan was an idea conceived by city employees to promote local scallop production throughout Hokkaido. Employees drafted 200 of the young scallop shells into holiday service, drew faces on them, and dressed them in red to resemble Santa Claus. The photo here shows them being displayed in a city building.

The Chii-chan/Santa figures are being given as presents to those who contribute to a campaign conducted by the Marine Rescue Japan organization. Some children, anxious for a Santa of their own, have even donated to the campaign.

So who needs visions of sugarplums dancing in your head when you can groove on Yuletide fantasias featuring original ikebana, sponge crabs, and scallop shells instead?

THOUGH JAPAN is not a Christian country, the people know a good festival when they see one, and that’s why Christmas is celebrated in public spaces here as a winter festival of light. Two years ago, we had a series of posts called Nippon Noel presenting some of those public displays, which often involve a combination of light and Christmas trees. Sometimes they combine the idea of tree shapes and items unique to Japan, such as fishing boat pennants. But because Christmas for most Japanese is a postwar phenomenon, they have no long-standing tradition of decorating real evergreens in the home. (Those Japanese who do have decorated Christmas trees in the home use small, artificial trees.)

That means the Christmas evergreen here is more symbol than tangible object, which has allowed the Japanese to employ their artistic sense and create public displays based on the concept of “Christmas tree” that are quite striking, attractive, and often unique. You can see past posts on that topic by clicking on the Christmas tag at the end of this post. One even features a story about a Christmas tree at a public aquarium lit by an electric eel; in fact, he’s providing the juice again this year, according to a report I saw yesterday. Last year I didn’t have the time to collect any stories, but here are three for Christmas 2009.

The first is a display of two trees, or to be more accurate, conical structures representing trees, at the Chiyoda Ward office in Tokyo. Rather than the usual glass ornaments and tinsel, these are trimmed with decorations made from washi, or traditional Japanese paper, created by about 100 local primary school students and their parents. Both trees are 2.3 meters tall and are illuminated from the inside. They’ll be up until 25 December, which is not a public holiday here. That’s when people start to get geared up for New Year’s Day, which is the real yearend celebration.

The Hakone Gora Park in Kanagawa doesn’t use a real tree for its interior decorations either. A large pyramid structure has been built in the park’s greenhouse, on which 700 poinsettia plants have been arranged to create the impression of a Christmas tree. Dark curtains have been hung on the ceiling to provide a backdrop, and the scene is illuminated. Each of the four sides of the pyramid base is 3 meters long, and the pyramid itself is 3.5 meters high. The red and green poinsettias are decorated with blue, green, red, and yellow lights. Surrounding the display are what are termed objets representing snowmen, reindeer and other seasonal symbols. Visitors who want a poinsettia of their own to take home can buy them on-site for JPY 1,000 apiece. The exhibit is open from 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. right now, and until 8:00 p.m. from 19-25 December. Park officials have also festooned a Japanese cedar outside in the park itself with 25,000 LEDs for illumination to create something a bit more traditional. That tree, which is more than a century old, is the park’s symbol.

Sometimes the Japanese don’t need a tree structure at all—an illustration of a tree will do. That’s the basis of the Christmas lighting display at the Sony Building in Tokyo’s Chuo Ward, which also combines the custom of people tossing coins into a fountain to make a wish. The fountain here is called the Ai no Izumi (literally, Spring of Love), and visitors use their legal tender to purchase a special mock coin to cast on the waters. When a sensor inside the fountain detects the special coins, it activates a mechanism that increases the brightness of an LED display on the side of the wall that depicts a Christmas tree. You’ve heard of the more the merrier? This is the more the brighter. The money collected will be given to the Japan Red Cross and other groups for distribution to children’s charities around the world. This is the 42nd year the Sony Building has had a display of this type, and in that time they’ve collected a total of JPY 64 million. The LED tree on the wall will be turned off after the 20th, however.

The Japanese don’t play a lot of Christmas music—and half of what they do play seems to be Happy Christmas by John Lennon and Yoko Ono—but they don’t need a melody or lyrics to instinctively understand how to make spirits bright.

IF IT ISN’T UNIQUE, the Tokyo Metropolitan District is surely one of the few governments anywhere whose two top chief executives were men of letters before becoming involved with politics. Gov. Ishihara Shintaro first captured the attention of the public by publishing a spectacularly successful novel while still a university student. Vice-Governor Inose Naoki, meanwhile, made his name as a non-fiction writer.

In connection with a new book to be published later this week, Mr. Inose has distributed online an article he wrote for the 24 November 1988 edition of the weekly Shukan Spa. The article describes how and why some of Japan’s holidays were selected when the new Constitution came into effect after the war. It also explains how and why the Japanese weren’t always the ones to select the dates of those holidays.

My quick translation of most of the article follows.

*****
The Origin of Holidays and the Tenno System

Many of Japan’s holidays have a rather complicated history. Labor Day is originally associated with the Niinamesai (Harvest Festival), which is connected to the Tenno (Emperor).

Even those people for whom the name Niinamesai does not register should recall seeing on television the Tenno cutting the rice in the paddy at the Fukiage-gyoen (gardens) at the Imperial Palace. The Niinamesai is a festival to celebrate the rice harvest and offer a prayer for an abundant harvest in the coming year.

The Tenno’s rice harvest is a symbolic performance. The Tenno, whose spiritual power has been strengthened to the maximum through the Chinkonsai (Shinto service for the repose of the dead) held the previous night, conducts a ceremony at the Imperial Palace for offering the harvested grain to the divinities. The Daijosai is conducted when the new Tenno ascends the throne, and is best understood as a version of the Niinamesai on a larger scale.

The Tenno system has continued even with the changes to the Constitution after the defeat in the war and the transfer of ultimate sovereignty from the Tenno to the people. When decisions were being made on new holidays, the Niinamesai was offered as a candidate, adapted as a day to give thanks for the new harvest. The associations between the name of the holiday and the Tenno gradually grew weaker, and the holiday was established as a day to honor work, celebrate production, and to have the citizens extend their thanks to each other for the work they do.

A poem in the Man’yoshu suggests the Niiname was once a ceremony conducted in the home. The name Niiname is not to be found among the harvest festivals held throughout the country in the early modern period, however. In short, it is best considered a ceremony restored under the Meiji Tenno system.

The origin of Labor Day has not been taught in schools in the postwar period, so children think of it as a day of appreciation for their father’s daily efforts. But if that is the case, why isn’t 1 May—May Day—a holiday?

Culture Day on 3 November was known as the Meiji Setsu before the war. It is the birthday of the Meiji Tenno. During the Meiji period, it was known as Tencho Setsu (The Imperial Birthday). During the (following) Taisho period, the birthday of the Taisho Tenno was known as the Tencho Setsu, and the birthday of the Meiji Tenno was eliminated as a holiday. But the Meiji Setsu was brought back as a holiday soon after the Taisho Tenno died and the Showa period began.

Postwar decisions

The Law Regarding Citizens’ Holidays was promulgated on 20 July 1948. Of course, Japan was still an occupied nation under GHQ control. Provision was made for nine holidays at that time: New Year’s, Coming-of-Age Day, the Vernal Equinox, the Tenno’s Birthday, Constitution Day, Children’s Day, the Autumnal Equinox, Culture Day, and Labor Day. Of these, five were holidays related to the Tenno; only their names were changed. The Vernal Equinox and the Autumnal Equinox were originally known as the All Imperial Ancestors’ Day for the spring and fall respectively. The Tenno’s Birthday had been known as the Tencho Setsu. As we’ve already seen, Culture Day was the Meiji Setsu and Labor Day was the Niinamesai.

The author and politician Yamamoto Yuzo, who was a member of the upper house Culture Committee considering that legislation at the time, wrote with great sorrow the behind-the-scenes story about setting the date of Culture Day. According to his account, the committee placed the greatest emphasis on 3 November and wanted to make that Constitution Day. Their reason was that Japan’s new Constitution had been promulgated the year before on that day—3 November 1947.

As he wrote, “The Civil Information and Education Section (of GHQ) did not allow that, however. They thought 3 May would be a better choice for Constitution Day. It wasn’t long before the lower house approved 3 May as the date, making negotiations all the more difficult. But I did not give up. I thought the date the Constitution was promulgated rather than the date it came into force to be a more appropriate date. Considering the distribution of the holidays, the seasons, and the weather for each, I kept up the good fight for seven months.”

Why was GHQ so adamant? Yamamoto Yuzo explains that both the Americans and the Japanese had ulterior motives. He wanted to make the date for commemorating the Constitution the day it was promulgated rather than the day it went into force. The new Constitution was passed by the Diet and approved by the Privy Council on 29 October. He wanted the promulgation date to be 1 November and make that the holiday. But the Constitution was to come into force six months later, and that would mean it would coincide with May Day.

At that time, the United States was engaged in the Cold War with the Soviet Union and did not want the date the new Constitution came into effect to overlap with the day commemorating laborers. Therefore, GHQ ordered that 3 November be made the date of promulgation.

The next dispute arose over whether to make Constitution Day the date of promulgation or the date of effectiveness. The Japanese old guard was certain that 3 November would be the date because it was the former Meiji Setsu. But GHQ, which was trying to promote democratization, thought that should be prevented and insisted the most suitable date for Constitution Day was the day the document came into effect.

Other factors

I suspect there was perhaps one more reason that GHQ went counter to common sense and stuck to 3 May. That was the day the International Military Tribunal for the Far East—the Tokyo War Crimes Trial—held its first session in 1946. Surely they wanted the date to coincide with the first day of the ceremony that sat in judgment of militarism. They did not want anyone to ever forget the spirit of war renunciation in the new Constitution.

That’s why Constitution Day falls on 3 May, but there are also some strange circumstances involving 3 November. Culture Day was created as the result of a dispute between the Japanese forces of reform and conservative forces. Yamamoto Yuzo wrote: “Our task was to select holidays for the people, not select holidays for the Imperial Household.” This can be understood as a kind of declaration of defeat. The result of the effort to make 3 November Constitution Day was ultimately to give that day the nonsensical name of Culture Day.

In spite of Yamamoto Yuzo’s intent, Meiji Setsu survived, but ironically in a different form. In his later years, he recalled that he was criticized every year for the unfathomable day called Culture Day.

Ironically enough, 23 December, the birthday of the Kotaishi (Crown Prince—now the current Tenno), which would become a holiday sometime in the future, was the date Class A war criminal Tojo Hideki was executed.

- Inose Naoki

Afterwords: The last sentence above is the topic of Mr. Inose’s new book.

HERE’S A STORY that will either delight or terrify those post-adolescent, pre-adult males who think the surest way to win a young woman’s heart, or some other part of her anatomy, is to get her drunk first. For some eternal boys, the idea that liquor is quicker seems to have eternal appeal.

Drinkin' wine spo-de-o-dee: A cultural construct

But I’m not sure the lads have what it takes for this one. Women, as so often happens, are way out in front. You know how they say girls just want to have fun? Well, not only do university co-eds enjoy a good time, they also elevate it to the level of academic inquiry. Some serious female scholar/drinkers held a symposium at Kagoshima University on the 1st called The Women’s View of Shochu Boogie-Woogie, and isn’t the title alone enough to get you jazzed and thinking of a cooling fizzy beverage and other things besides? The objective was to examine the relationship between women and shochu, which Kagoshimanians are much more likely to drink than sake.

The panel consisted of four women, including a representative from a distillery and a wine sommelier. They discussed how the product Rento, a shochu made from brown sugar, incorporated women’s ideas of softness and gentleness in the marketing, including the name and the blue bottle. Rento doesn’t sound like a particularly feminine name to me, but if I were knocking back a couple of glasses with a female companion, I’d probably change my mind just to be sociable. They also discussed their theory–which they said was based on experience–that regardless of the type, liquor was an element in the creation of culture, including conversations and the general mood.

Doesn’t experiential research with such diligent scholars really turn you on? It does me.

The panelists said they regarded Kagoshima City’s Tenmonkan district, a large commercial and entertainment area in the city, as a college campus. In addition, they stressed the growing importance of conveying the knowledge and traditional culture of liquor to tourists and prefectural citizens alike, and by this point, it’s starting to sound as if the ladies were sharing snorts from a flask passed around the table during the discussion.

Preceding the seminar was an address by Koizumi Takeo, a visiting prof at KU, who described the large sake competitions during the Edo period, in which women went elbow to elbow with men to see how much they could drink. Women were the ones, he asserted, that nurtured the Japanese alcohol culture.

Either Dr. Koizumi has conducted some groundbreaking historical research, or the sly devil has come up with a new way to individually compliment a room full of women all at the same time.

Meanwhile, in more sobering news, a federation of shochu distilleries in Kagoshima reported that last fiscal year (which ran from July 2008 to June 2009), shipments of the local liquor staple were down by 1.7% from the previous year to about 149,500 kiloliters. They attributed this to price increases and concerns over the safety of the varieties made with rice. It was the second consecutive year-on-year decline after nine straight years of growth. Consumers, they said, were also downshifting to more inexpensive types.

Come on girls, get with it—there’s a culture that needs the nurture only you can provide!

Afterwords:
Prof. Koizumi talks about women taking part in drinking competitions during the Edo period (1603-1868), which reminds me of a previous post that mentions an essay by Hiraga Gennai titled Hohiron, or A Theory of Farting. The artist reported that 18th century Edoites used to meet for public thunder-farting contests to see who could make the most noise.

I can see I’m going to have to start doing some more reading on the Edo period.

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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?