Japan’s cultural kaleidoscope (4)

JUST because the warts of the overseas media and the commentator-bloggers who rely on them think their folderol is insight doesn’t mean you have to fall for it. The national decline of Japan, if it exists at all, is greatly exaggerated. Here are a few short snorts testifying to the national vitality. The first is a translation of a brief article, while the rest are summaries.

Island hopping

Japan Air Commuter, a small Kagoshima-based airline serving the prefecture’s outlying islands, has hired its first female pilot, Hamada Eri (29). Her maiden flight was as co-pilot on two round-trip flights between Kagoshima Airport and the islands of Amami and Tokunoshima. After returning in one piece, Hamada said, “It was different from training. I sensed the weight of the responsibility for carrying passengers. I was very nervous, but it was a lot of fun and I was relieved when it was over.”

Hamada Eri

Her ambition to become an aviatrix originated when she was a student at Ryukyu University (Okinawa). While flying on commercial airlines to her home in Sendai (the northeast part of the country), “I discovered I liked the scenery from the cabin window and wanted to see the view from the front.” She enrolled at a flight school in Miyazaki City after graduation. She chose to work at JAC because she enjoyed her many flights over Kyushu during training, and because she wanted to repay the many people in the industry in Kyushu for their help.

The flights to the outlying islands are a lifeline for the people living there. “I was spurred by a desire to be of service on these flights, which are so important for their daily life.”

The Tohoku earthquake struck while she was still in training. The family home was washed away by the tsunami. While her parents were safe, a grandmother living in an institution died in the wave. She wanted to be near her family, but her parents encouraged her by saying, “We’re fine. You work hard in flight school.”

“I’m far from the stricken area (about 740 miles), but I decided to put forth my best effort along with all the people who suffered as they head toward recovery.”

Ms. Hamada is the 13th female pilot in the JAL group. “I intend to gain experience and become a full pilot, not only for my benefit, but also for the women who follow.”

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A Japanese sentiment permeates every sentence of that article. For contrast, imagine how much self-importance it would have contained had the story originated in the Anglosphere instead of Kagoshima.

Tokushima seaweed comes home

Last year’s Tohoku disaster was also a disaster for Sanriku wakame, a noted product of Miyagi. To help rebuild the industry, a Tokushima Prefecture maritime research institute in Naruto sent local fishing co-ops some wakame spores last October that the Miyagians raised in Kessennuma Bay. The first harvest was last week.

It was a homecoming in a sense for the wakame because the folks in Miyagi shipped the Tokushima institute some of theirs in 2004 for cross breeding. The spawn from that mating is what Tokushima sent back. The spores grew to a length of two meters, though the water temperature this winter was lower than ideal. The quality, color, and thickness of the seaweed is good enough for it to appear on your dinner table soon. Local watermen harvested 400 kilograms on the first day. The harvests will continue until the beginning of April, when they expect to have hauled in a total of 3,400 tons.

Off to see the Iyoboya

The big maritime product in Niigata is salmon. The Niigatans like it so much, in fact, they established the nation’s first salmon museum in Murakami called the Iyoboya Museum.

Niigata was the Murakami domain during the Edo period, and it was there that salmon were first successfully bred in Japan. Since then, salmon has been an important part of local culture. Iyoboya is the name for the fish in the local dialect.

Iyoboya fanciers say the best part of the museum is the mini-hatchery. Starting at the end of October, the museum recovers salmon eggs and fertilizes them. The eggs hatch two months later. Visitors get to see the fingerlings, and if they’re lucky, the hatching itself. The museum is now raising 50,000 fish, give or take a few, which it plans to release in the Miomote River at the beginning of next month. The museum also offers views of the river through glass windows.

There’s a restaurant on the museum premises. Guess what’s on the menu!

Snow fun in Kamakura

The Kamakura winter festival has been underway since 21 January at the Yunishikawa Spa in Nikko, Tochigi. The event is held in small snow huts in a gorge along the banks of the Yunishi River, which sounds like just the ticket for those who get off on nose-rubbing. This is a hot spring town, so visitors can enjoy both the hot and the cold of it, dipping in the spa waters for relaxation after all the fun with snowmen, snow slides, snow hut barbecues (reservations required) and musical performances. If you’re in no hurry for spring to start, the festival will last until 20 March.

Let 100 dragons soar

There’s a lot of snow in Hokkaido, too — probably more than in Nikko — but that didn’t stop Sapporo kiters from holding their 35th annual kite-flying contest in the city’s Fushiko Park. The winner this year was Tanaka Mitsuo, whose design featured a 100-meter-long chain of 100 linked kites.

Mao Zedong once said, “Let a hundred flowers bloom”, but that’s got to be easier than getting 100 kites up in the air. Each of the hundred was 60 x 42 centimeters, made of bamboo and washi (traditional Japanese paper), and designed to look like a dragon. This is Dragon Year in the Chinese zodiac.

Rebuild it and they will come

They’ve been repairing the Izumo Shinto shrine in Shimane lately, the first major renovations in more than 60 years. The local carpenters know just how to go about it, too — the Izumo shrine has been rebuilt 25 times, the last in the 18th century, and also moved several times.

It’s the oldest shrine in the country, but ranks only number two in order of importance. (The enshrined deity is Okuninushi no Mikoto, the nephew of the Sun Goddess.) There’s still a fence around one part where mortals may not enter.

The repairs are being made in conformity with the original construction techniques. That includes softening thin sheets of Japanese cypress by soaking them in water, and then using them to thatch the 600-square-meter roof with bamboo nails. Preparations began in 2008 and the work won’t be finished until next year, though the current phase ended in February. Had I finished this post when I intended, readers nearby might have been able to glimpse the main hall. Alas, I was sidetracked by other work and projects, and now the hall won’t be on view for another 60 years. Attendance also required a dress code: t-shirts, sweatsuits, or sandals will not do for a visit to the abode of Okuninushi, even though the divinity was moved to a temporary site on the premises in 2008 for the duration.

Leg room

Naruse Masayuki of Tamana, Kumamoto, has presented a paper on the safety of his single pedal automobile system to the Society of Automotive Engineers in the United States. Mr. Naruse operates a company that makes industrial materials, one of which is One Pedal. That’s an all-in-one pedal for controlling the gas and the brake to prevent accidents caused when drivers step in it by stepping on the wrong one. There’s an attachment on the right side of the floor pedal for acceleration, which drivers hit with the right side of their foot to move forward. Stepping on the floor still brakes the car.

The pedal’s been around for awhile — the old Transport Ministry conducted trials that demonstrated its safety. Mr. Naruse has custom-fitted nearly 200 cars in Japan with the device, but the major automakers don’t seem interested. Said Toyota, “Technicians have studied it, but we have no plans to adopt it now.” One complaint is that it’s more difficult to keep one’s foot against the gas pedal to maintain a constant speed than it is to downpress a pedal. Nevertheless, SAE plans to hold trials in Tamana with 70 drivers of all ages and foot sizes.

Hokkii rice burger

Tomakomai in Hokkaido has the largest haul of the surf clam — that’s the spisula solidissima for you shellfish enthusiasts — in Japan. They’ve got to eat them all somehow, so they’ve begun promoting a clam rice burger made with what’s called a hokkii, which is also the city’s “image character“. (The name isn’t derived from the hockey puck shape.) It was created by college students who liked the clam and made it for their school festival, and used rice for the bun instead of bread. City officials must have stopped by for a taste, because they adopted the idea and sold 1,600 at a three-day event last year. They then conducted trial tastings and questionnaires to get the perfect recipe, and shops around town began selling it in mid-December. There are several varieties with different condiments, but most sell for around JPY 400 yen, which is not a bad price. The idea is to get more people to come to Tomakomai.

Goya senbei

They’ve got as many goya in Kagoshima’s Minamiosumi-cho as they have surf clams in Tomakomai, so a local hot spring resort developed a way to incorporate them in senbei rice crackers. They slice and dice them and knead them into the batter. Reports say they give the crackers a slight bitter taste. That makes sense — the goya is also called the nigauri, which means bitter melon. Several groups in the city, including the hot spring resort and the municipal planning agency, created the snack as a way to use non-standard goya and gobo (yeah, that’s a vegetable) that can’t be sold on the market. They’re cooked by Yamato-ya, a Kagoshima City senbei company, and 40-gram bags are sold for JPY 315 yen. That’s a bit steep, but some of the proceeds go to local welfare services. Give them a call at 0994-24-5300 to see if they have any left.

Strawberry sake

Instead of clams or goya, Shimanto in Kochi has a strawberry surplus. That was the inspiration for a sake brewer in the city to combine the berries with their sake and create a liqueur with two varieties, one dry and one sweet. The employees even filled the 500-milliliter bottles by hand, and you’ve got to wonder if they had the temptation to sample some. There were 1,000 bottles of the sweet stuff and 2,000 of the dry type going for JPY 1,600 apiece. The idea is to sell it to “people who normally don’t drink sake”, which is code for young women. They’re even selling it outside of the prefecture, so if the idea of strawberry sake appeals to you, input 0880-34-4131 into your hand-held terminal and ask for some.

Extra credit

The more serious drinkers in Aira, Kagoshima, don’t fool around with fruity beverages, and demonstrated it by starting shochu study sessions last month. Some stalls specializing in that particular grog have been set up near the Kagoshima Chuo station, and the people who will operate the stalls attended three training sessions. One of them included lessons in the local dialect for dealing with customers. (Kagoshima-ben requires listeners to pay close attention, and even then you’re not going to get all of it, sober or sloshed. That includes their Kyushu neighbors.) The scholars also examined the traditional process for distilling it, listened to lectures on the origins of satsumaimo (a sweet potato variety) and how it came to be used in the local shochu, and visited the Shirakane brewers. Now that’s dedication for being a liquor store clerk. There’ll be 50 of them working in 25 shops at the stall complex.

Really high

If the last story didn’t convince you that Kagoshimanians are serious about shochu, this one will. They’ve just marketed a new brand called Uchudayori, or Space Bulletin, made with malted rice and yeast carried aboard the international space station Endeavor last May for 16 days. It was developed by researchers at Kagoshima University and the Kagoshima Prefecture Brewers Association. (The university has a special shochu and fermenting research institute for students, and I sniff a party school subtext.) There are 12 different varieties because 12 companies used the base materials to distill their own well-known products, including those made with satsumaimo and brown sugar. Those interested in getting spaced out can buy a set of 12 900-milliliter bottles for JPY 24,000 yen, which is reasonable considering the transportation costs for some of the ingredients. Sameshima Yoshihiro, the head of the research institute, says it has a better aroma than normal. No, he didn’t say it was “out of this world”.

This'll beam you up.

Exotic booze

Did that space travel bring back an alien life form? The shochu kingdom of Kagoshima is about to get its first locally brewed sake in 40 years. Hamada Shuzo of Ichikikushikino (try saying that after a couple of hits of shochu) announced they have started brewing the beverage. They’re the only sake brewery in the prefecture, and the first to go into the business since the last one shut down in 1970.

That's where they make it, you know.

Hamada Shuzo remodeled their shochu plant last year by adding facilities for producing 60 kiloliters of sake annually. An affiliated company used to make sake in Aichi until 1998, so they’ll blow the dust off the old notebooks and apply those accumulated techniques and expertise. A Shinto ceremony was held to receive the blessing of the divinities before they began fermentation with 20 kilograms of rice from other parts of Kyushu. (Kagoshima rice doesn’t work so well.) The company hopes to cook up 800 liters by March.

The company says Kagoshima’s higher temperatures — it’s Down South — make sake brewing difficult, and the shochu culture took root several hundred years ago. I have first-hand experience that Kagoshimanians drink shochu in situations where other Japanese drink sake, and it took about a week to recover. Statistics from the Tax Bureau support that anecdote. They say 36,767 kiloliters of shochu were consumed in the prefecture in 2010 compared to 1,379 for sake.

The company’s idea is to use sake brewing techniques for shochu product development. They might begin full scale production later, but the sake is now being brewed primarily for research. Didn’t I tell you these guys were serious? They’ve also got a restaurant/brewpub on the premises, and they hope it attracts customers who’ll also take a shine to their shochu. Sales in the restaurant begin in May, and in shops after that.

Build it and they will come

The slender, the fat, and the shapeless

Former sumo grand champion and now slimmed down stablemaster Takanohana announced he was starting a program to build sumo rings throughout the country to promote the appeal of sumo. The first will be in Shiiba-son, Miyazaki Prefecture. (Takanohana’s wife, the former newscaster Hanada Keiko, is a Miyazaki girl.) Mr. T believes that sumo helps build character, and he wants to see the rings restored at primary schools and other sites around the country. The Shiiba-son municipal government will contribute funds to the project and manage the ring once it’s built. The construction will be handled by the local Itsukushima Shinto shrine under the guidance of the Japan Sumo Association.

Mr. and Mrs. T sometimes visit a local juku that seems to be more of a character training institute than an academic enhancer. When they were in town to make the announcement about the sumo ring, they attended a lecture by the head of the juku on the Yamato spirit. (Yamato is the older name for the original ethnic group of Japan.) The lecture included this message:

Live as the cherry blossom, blooming vividly with full force and quickly falling from the branch.
We cannot see the color, shape, or size of the spirit, but a person’s spirit manifests in his way of life, deeds, and words.
There are three important things in the way of the rikishi and the way of sumo: form, greetings, and etiquette.

That old time religion is still good enough for plenty of Japanese, and not just old guys who drink shochu and watch sumo. This month, a team from Saga Kita High School in Saga City was one of two selected for the grand prize in an annual calligraphic arts competition in Nagano conducted for high schools nationwide. It was the 17th year the sponsoring organization held the event, and the 17th straight year Kita High School won the grand prize. Kita students also won 11 of the 65 awards in the individual division. Teams from 273 schools participated and submitted 15,420 works.

The Kita girls have been getting ready since October. They practiced every day after school until 7:30, and voluntarily give up their free Saturdays. Said second-year student Koga Misaki, the calligraphy club leader, “We encouraged each other while being aware of the heavy pressure of tradition, and I’m happy we achieved our goal.”

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And don’t forget Okinawa!

The masters of multiculti

IN a recent post, I mentioned a survey which broke down the national population by religious affiliation and found that the statistically average Japanese would consider himself a believer in 2.7 religions. While religious purists might find that appalling, the Japanese, perhaps the most naturally syncretic people on earth, wouldn’t even blink at the news. For example, I once worked with a young Japanese woman who was a such a serious Roman Catholic that she kept an illustration of Christ under the clear vinyl covering on her desk. Yet, for extra income (and probably because she enjoyed it), she also served as a miko, or Shinto shrine maiden, on weekends to assist priests during wedding ceremonies. No one thought this was unusual at all, including, I suspect, the Shinto priests.

One reason for the laissez-faire approach is the partial syncretism that has existed between the proto-religion of Shinto and the latecomer Buddhism, which showed up in the archipelago in the sixth century. The partnership got off to a rough start in 698 when a Shingon sect established a temple near the Ise shrines because they thought the Shinto deities required the Buddha’s spiritual guidance. That demonstrated some serious Shingon sack, because one of the enshrined deities at Ise is Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun and the universe and the progenitrix of the Imperial line.

They paid for the blasphemy, however, as the damage from a typhoon in 772 caused the shrine to be temporarily dismantled. The typhoon was said to be a sign of divine displeasure at the presence of Buddhist symbols so close to the most important Shinto place of worship.

But proselytizers everywhere are relentless, and the Japanese Buddhists kept plugging away throughout the Heian period (794-1185) to promote a synthesis. Their efforts culminated with the development of the Ryobu Shinto (Dual Shinto) school, one of the main tenets of which held that Amaterasu was the manifestation of Dainichi Nyorai (Mahavairocana), or the Great Sun Buddha. Ryobu Shinto lasted for centuries, influenced straight Shinto thought, and allowed Buddhist temples to take control of Shinto shrines. Sites with both temples and shrines were common in Japan for close to a millennium. That arrangement ended in 1868 when the government ordered their separation as part of the program to establish State Shinto.

Exceptions remain, however, as can be seen in the photograph, which shows a Shinto shrine in front of Nigatsu-do at the Buddhist temple Todai-ji in Nara. That temple is known for housing the largest bronze statue of the Buddha in Japan, as well as being the largest wooden building in the world. It dates from the 8th century, but is affiliated with the Kegon sect rather than Shingon.

An estimated 99.39 million of the 127 million Japanese visited a shrine or temple (usually the former) during the three-day New Year period in 2009, so the Nara collocation makes it a convenient holiday stop.

In fact, ceremonies from the two traditions are combined here at an annual Buddhist rite called the Shunie, which is a gathering of priests for prayer and purification in February under the old calendar. (Nigatsu-do translates as February Hall.) Nowadays it starts on 1 March and continues for 14 days. The ritual at Todai-ji is one astonishing combination of elements that could happen only in Japan: disease-curing water magically traveling 175 kilometers, an archery demonstration, sake drinking, frenzied dancing with torches lit by sacred fire by Buddhist priests on retreat for exorcism and to pray for world peace while eating only one partial meal a day, and thousands of people who come to watch and hope that the sacred sparks fall on them. It was started by a Buddhist priest in 752 out of atonement for going fishing instead of going to a prayer meeting. (Read all about it at this previous post.)

Before the priestly procession holes up at Nigatsu-do, they stop off at the Shinto shrine and say a prayer to the tutelary deity. The procession is then blessed and purified with a gohei, a wooden wand with cloth streamers called shide that is used in Shinto rituals. (Here’s a Japanese site with a simple video and diagrams of how to make ‘em, including a photo of the finished product.)

Some of the too-cool-for-school rational secularists out there could learn a few things from the Japanese.

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Here’s a 30-second commercial for JR Nara showing Todai-ji and featuring scenes of the torch ceremony. The background music is Stranger in Paradise.

See what I mean?

Hospitality

FEW outside the country may be aware of it, but archaeological research is a thriving enterprise in Japan. The artifacts from two millennia of human activity lie beneath everyone’s feet throughout the archipelago, and it is likely that most people here have seen an excavation site at least once in their lives. Yoshinogari, one of the most important historical sites (see right sidebar), was discovered when construction work began on a shopping center on the outskirts of town.

Dazaifu dig

The accompanying photo shows just how close the past is to the mundane present. That’s the site of a former Nishitetsu railway switching yard in Dazaifu, Fukuoka. More than a millennium before that, however, from the early 8th to the early 9th century, it was the site of a reception and lodging house for official missions from the Korean Peninsula and the Asian continent. Scholars and officials have been shoveling away since 2005, and last week they confirmed the discovery at the site of Silla-type (i.e., early Korean) ceramics and high quality, metal alloy dinnerware. The spoons are identical to those in the Shosoin repository of ancient cultural treasures in Nara.

There’s another contemporaneous facility for receiving foreign guests in Fukuoka Prefecture closer to Hakata Bay, known as the Korokan. Historians now suspect the Korokan was used primarily for trade negotiations, and the Dazaifu facility was used for more informal interaction, i.e., parties and ceremonies. In other words, they talked turkey at Korokan and ate it at Dazaifu.

The visits of important delegations from overseas are a matter of historical record. The Silla Kingdom on the peninsula sent a delegation to Korokan in 688, 25 years after they and forces from T’ang Dynasty China combined to defeat the army of the Baekche Kingdom, backed by the Japanese. Many Baekche refugees wound up in Kyushu, including those from the royal house. In addition, the Silla prince and a group of 700 people visited in 752, and imperial emissaries from China came the following year. Considering that this Dazaifu site was for eating and drinking, and another site from the same period in the same place coughed up enough dice to gamble away a weekend in Vegas, the ancient Koreans and Chinese probably looked forward to the trip.

Dazaifu continues to offer distinctively Japanese hospitality today, albeit of a more modern variety. Starbucks Japan announced they will open a shop on the sando, or approach path, to the Dazaifu Tenman-gu Shinto shrine on the 16th. It will be the first Starbucks shop at a shrine or Buddhist temple.

Dazaifu Starbucks

The Tenman-gu shrine is a large facility with gardens containing 6,000 plum trees in addition to the buildings. A Shinto shrine was first built there in 905, and the current building, registered as an important cultural property, dates from 1591. It was built on the grave of Tenjin, the deification name of Sugawara no Michizane, renowned for his erudition and learning. They’re opening the Starbucks at just the right time, too, as tens of thousands of people will visit the shrine for New Year’s. The visits will continue into January as students make the pilgrimage to ask the deity for a blessing to pass their high school or university entrance examination. (I could have used some of that juice myself.) Another attraction, the Kyushu National Museum (right sidebar), is within walking distance nearby.

The location demands that this shop not resemble the typical shopping mall Starbucks. It was designed by University of Tokyo architect Kuma Kengo, known for his work on the Suntory Museum of Art and the Nezu Museum (got them on the right sidebar too). That design combines the traditional and the modern with natural materials, primary among which is 2,000 pieces of Japanese cedar obtained by thinning out forests. It will also have two gardens, one in front facing the sando and one inside with more plum trees. There will be 46 seats in the interior and 10 on the terrace.

The coffee and food, however, will be the same as that of other Starbucks outlets.

Said the company’s PR release:

From the entrance to the interior, the distinctive design employs a traditional wood pattern, which has been incorporated both in the interior and exterior. It offers the warmth of wood and the opportunity to spend some time in a luxurious setting while surrounded by the aroma of the highest quality coffee.

There’s more to modern Japanese hospitality than trendy coffee shops, too. Here’s some news that might wake you up faster than a cup of Starbucks espresso: Three Tokyo restaurants were awarded a third star last month in the Michelin guide to restaurants. Japan now has 32 restaurants with a three-star rating, the guide’s highest.

There are 25 in France.

More worthy of note for me is this dambuster-sized preconception destroyer: One of the new two-star eateries in Japan is a Korean restaurant.

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Want to take a quick visit to the Tenman-gu shrine without buying a plane ticket? Try this YouTube video. It starts at the Nishitetsu Dazaifu station and walks you right to the shrine. Along the way you’ll see the reason that a Starbucks won’t be out of place in the neighborhood.

Matsuri da! (122): The air’s apparent

THIS is going to stump everybody, including the Japanese readers: What is the object shown in the following photograph?

Here’s a hint, but it won’t help at all: Those are five-meter-square stainless steel sheets.

The answer? It’s a Shinto shrine in Asahi-machi, Yamagata.

In fact, that’s a photograph of the Kuki shrine’s main sanctuary, the site in all shrines which houses the shintai, the sacred object in which the spirit of the deity resides. The deity in Shinto is described as the yaoyorozu no kami, or the 800 myriads of divinities, which some (but not all) interpret as being different aspects of the One. Therefore, the presence of the divinity is manifest in every aspect of life.

Some deities are divinized ancestors or famous figures of the past. (That’s the point behind the often misunderstood concept of the Emperor as a “living god” until 1945, or the enshrinement of the spirits of the war dead in Yasukuni.) Natural phenomena are deities: the wind, sun, moon, water, mountains, trees, and rocks (including those that are phallic- and yonic-shaped). Man-made objects can be divinities: mirrors, swords, polished stones (tama), bells, clothes, dishes, and, after Buddhism began to exert an influence, paintings and statues. Mirrors have been used in Shinto worship since ancient times, so the creation of what is essentially a large mirror isn’t as odd as it might seem at first glance.

The deity worshipped at this shrine is air. That’s why it’s called the Air Shrine (unless you can think of a better translation for 空気神社).

On the approach to this site, one passes through monuments to earth, fire, wood, metal, and water, the five elements that created the cosmos.

As you might expect, Asahi-machi is located in a glorious natural setting — the somewhere in what city slickers would call the middle of nowhere — and the primary occupation of the residents is rice and fruit cultivation. Before he died in 1986, Shirakawa Chiyo, one of the older Asahi-machi natives, offered the opinion that the town should build a shrine in which air was the tutelary deity as a way to give thanks for the clean air that was a blessing to them all.

Nothing came of Mr. Shirakawa’s idea when he was alive, but it began to get serious consideration a year after he died in 1987, when the town launched a municipal development campaign. Because this is a religious institution, the money to build it had to come from private citizen/sector donations. Even though the Japanese are extraordinarily ecumenical, that wasn’t an easy sell. Still, they collected the money they needed and finished the shrine the following year.

Yeah, they pray there.

The idea behind the use of stainless steel for the air shrine was that it would reflect natural views of the surrounding area throughout the year from different perspectives. This would help people reflect on the existence of air.

Yeah, they have festivals there too.

The townsfolk designated 5 June as the local Air Day, which coincides with World Environment Day. They hold the Air Festival every year on the Saturday closest to Air Day. The main sanctuary is open to the public for viewing the divinity and pausing for reflections suitable for the spirit of the occasion. There’s also a performance by the miko of kagura, or Shinto Dance, which is traditional at shrine festivals. That’s shown in the photo above.

Oh yeah, there’s even a video:

And to conclude here’s a question theological but not rhetorical — Is the sound of the wind on that video the voice of the divinity?

Matsuri da! (120): What goes down must come up

PARTICIPATING in the activities of most of the world’s standard-brand religions doesn’t require much physical exertion, other than getting yourself to the church/temple/mosque on time. (The less said about the exceptions of self-flagellation and self-immolation the better.)

Those who keep the Shinto tradition alive in Japan would rather enjoy than beat or burn the heck out of themselves, but heavy and difficult manual labor is part of the package at some shrines. One example is the autumn festival held at the Oyama Afuri shrine in Isehara, Kanagawa. A Shinto shrine is said to have been first established on that site, the summit of a 1,251-meter-high mountain (Oyama means “big mountain”), more than 2,200 years ago. Those skeptical of legends should know that shards of earthen vessels have been excavated at the mountain top that are thought to have been used in Shinto festivals and have been dated from the Jomon Period. That ended around 300 BC.

The shrine itself consists of two separate buildings: An upper shrine and a lower shrine, named for their position relative to each other. Their autumn festival is held for three days at the end of August, and it starts with a ceremony called the okudari. During that ceremony, the parishioners carry a portable shrine called a mikoshi that transports the tutelary diety from the lower shrine to the town below. As you can see from the photo here and the photos on the shrine’s Japanese-language website, that requires much more than rolling up one’s sleeves and spitting into one’s palms. The transportation of the divinity requires two separate groups of people — one to carry the mikoshi and another to keep it stable with ropes. Then there’s another group of taiko drummers to keep the spirits bright and to lighten the load. The trip downhill takes about 40 minutes.

When they reach bottom, they stash the mikoshi at the shrine office to watch over the proceedings for the next three days and to protect the town and its people. Those proceedings consist of a performance of yamato-mai, a dance often performed at Shinto rites and the ceremony during the Emperor’s accession to the throne. There are also other dances by maiko (shrine maidens), performances of noh and kyogen, and a procession of mikoshi from other local shrines.

Here’s a brief glimpse of that procession two years ago:

On the third day they rise again and carry the mikoshi back to the lower shrine, now that summer has been officially declared over. I couldn’t find a report on how long it takes go back up the mountain, but if my walk down and back up the Grand Canyon some years ago can be used as a yardstick, they’d have to multiply the descent time by at least three.

Any mundane thoughts of hazardous duty pay or restrictions on the amount of weight that can be lifted are left behind as they head for Higher Ground. Everyone’s probably thankful that they don’t have to climb to the upper shrine, but they’d surely find a way to do that too if it were part of the tradition.

There are no videos available of the mikoshi being hauled down and up the mountain, but there is a video of a six-minute cable car ride to a station at the top filmed from the interior. It’s worth the virtual trip.

Exquisite music

MORE than 800 years ago, in 1196, the Buddhist priest Hozan Kengyo was sent from the Myo-on-ji Jorakuin temple in what is now Shiga to attend the opening of a new temple in today’s Hioki, Kagoshima. Hozan was proficient in the biwa, and he taught 12 pieces of religious music to the local priests. It was performed with eight instruments, including the biwa, flute, taiko drum, and shell horns.

The name of the new temple was the Nakashima Jorakuin, and the music Hozan brought with him was known as Myo-on Junigaku (myo-on means exquisite music). The Japanese biwa is derived from the lute by way of the Chinese pipa, but several different types have been developed in Japan since then. This temple is said to be the origin of the Satsuma biwa, which was used not only for performing music, but also for the mental and moral training of the local samurai. In the past, only blind priests could serve at this temple, and many of the chief priests were renowned for their musical talent.

Nakashima Jorakuin is affiliated with the Tendai sect, at one time the mainstream Buddhist sect in Japan and at its zenith when the temple was founded. Tendai was once associated with the Imperial court, and the Jodo and Nichiren sects are derived from it. A class of warrior-monks emerged from the sect after the 12th century, which applied pressure to the Imperial court and took sides in military and political disputes to defend what it considered to be temple interests. That ended when the warlord Oda Nobunaga almost completely destroyed their headquarters in 1571.

The main temple of Nakashima Jorakuin was moved to a location near the Kagoshima Castle in 1619. With the early Meiji-period anti-Buddhist movement to disestablish Buddhism and replace it with Shinto, and the damage suffered during American bombing missions in World War II, the temple was again moved, this time to Miyazaki. What remains on the original site in Hioki was the subsidiary temple, which has been reduced to one building and the graves of the chief priests. Kagoshima has designated it a prefectural historical site.

Kagoshima also designated the 12 pieces of myo-on junigaku music as an intangible cultural treasure of the prefecture in 1971. The repertoire was once performed by blind priests throughout southern Kyushu, but it is now heard only once a year and only at Nakashima Jorakuin, accompanied by readings of sutras unique to the temple.

That performance always falls on 12 October. Ten musician-priests came from Kagoshima and Miyazaki this year to play. Said a sixth-grade boy who attended:

“I think it’s amazing when I wonder how the people of the past, who couldn’t record music, were able to memorize a performance of nearly an hour.”

Here’s a two-minute YouTube clip from last year’s performance of music that has changed little, if at all, from a millennium ago.

Tea party

TO outsiders, the Japanese tea ceremony can be a stiff and starchy affair that leaves some wondering why it’s been such a big deal for so long. To insiders, however, it integrates the appreciation of green tea (a fine beverage) with aspects of traditional architecture, gardening, ceramics, calligraphy, and religion. Its history is closely linked with that of Buddhism in Japan, particularly Zen.

The appreciation of tea was not always conducted in such an elegant atmosphere, however. For example, tea tournaments became popular among the aristocracy during the Muromachi period (1333 to 1568). The nominal objective of these contests was to distinguish which of the teas served was the “true tea”, i.e., that grown from seeds brought from China in the 12th century, and which were derived from newer strains. Extravagant prizes were awarded, more sake than tea was consumed, and the government banned them after they became an excuse for rowdiness.

The early master Sen no Rikyu founded his own school for the tea ceremony that branched off into three schools that survive to the present. He eventually became the tea guru for the warlords Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, receiving extensive land holdings from the latter and officiating at tea ceremonies for both, as well as for the Emperor Ogimachi. Rikyu became too successful for his own good, however; he irritated Hideyoshi for reasons that remain unclear and was forced by him to commit suicide in 1591. (Among the theories: he had a life-size statue of himself built, he refused to give his daughter to Hideyoshi as a concubine, and he charged too much money for his tea utensils.)

While the tea ceremony has become more sedate in the intervening centuries, it is still possible to catch glimpses of the past funkiness. One example is the annual Ochamori ceremony at Saidai-ji, a Buddhist temple in Nara, held this year on the 9th.

Those who visit the temple for the ceremony drink the same matcha that is consumed at other tea ceremonies. Matcha is a finely-ground, powdered, high quality form of the tea that is shade-grown. On this day, however, it is drunk not from the small, individual tea cups esteemed for their artistic value, but motherbruisers that are 40 centimeters in diameter, weigh from five to 10 kilograms, and are passed around to five or six people. In fact, the cups are so large the drinker needs help from the people on either side to handle them. (That’s where the “O” in Ochamori comes from. It isn’t the honorific but the character that means “big”.) They sometimes wind up with matcha-covered faces, which is an unlikely spectacle at a conventional tea ceremony.

The Ochamori originated more than 750 years ago in the Kamakura era with Eison, a high priest of the Shingon sect. In those days, tea was still a luxury item. During the January convocation of the monthly meeting for Buddhist instruction, he first offered the tea to the divinity, and then made sure it was passed to the parishioners and townspeople, most of whom wouldn’t have been able to afford it. The story goes that everyone wanted to drink sake instead — this is Japan, after all — but religious precepts prohibited it.

Reported a 15-year-old high school girl who came over from Hyogo for the event this year:

“It’s the first time I’ve ever drunk from a teacup this big. It was heavy!”

And to see just how heavy it was, try this brief clip from an Ochamori of the past.

Steamin’

EVERYONE associates saunas with the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, particularly Finland, and the bathing culture with the Japanese. But when baths in private dwellings became commonplace in Japan after in the postwar period, many of the sento, or bathhouses, installed saunas to attract customers. Now a good public bath in Japan combines the best of both worlds.

Less well known, however, is that the Japanese have had saunas of their own for quite some time — in fact, since at least the 8th century. That’s when the Empress Komyo, a devout Buddhist, had the Hokkei-ji temple built in Nara as a convent with a bath and a steam sauna. It’s a big enough deal to have been designated an important tangible cultural asset of the nation.

The sauna in its current form dates from the Edo period, and consists of two chambers of 2.5 square meters walled with Japanese cypress. Water is boiled in an adjoining room and passed through the floor. After the temple was repaired in 2003, the priests have opened the temple’s sauna to the public once a year. This summer, 30 people showed up to sweat out the sinfulness. No temperature readings were provided for the interior heat, but the 30-minute limit for individual bathers is about twice as long as I stay in a modern sauna. Then again, a young female grad student from Kyoto compared her perspiration volume to the flow after a hot yoga practice (such as Bikram yoga), so it must get steamy enough.

The Empress Komyo had several temples built, including at least three others in Nara. She is also said to have employed the same sauna mechanism for 1,000 people in a bath. Hey, cleanliness is next to godliness, right?

Special Buddhist memorial services are held every 50 years on the anniversary of a person’s death, and here’s a video of bugaku (Court music and dance) being performed at Hokke-ji in May 2010 to commemorate the 1,250th year of the empress’s death. Because it is associated with the Imperial Court, bugaku is more closely connected with Shinto than with Buddhism, but this is Japan — the world champs at mixing and matching.

What to do with the gods

THE SURVIVORS of the Tohoku earthquake/tsunami, as well as those residents near the Fukushima power plant forced to evacuate, must deal with the most basic of problems: securing food, clothing, and shelter. The immediate but temporary short-term solution to those problems is a matter of logistics. Resolving those problems will be difficult, but the difficulties lie in execution rather than conception.

The disaster has also created more subtle problems that do not admit of easy answers. The degree of logistical efficiency is irrelevant, and there are no satisfactory short-term solutions, either temporary or permanent. Those problems are not one of the physical survival of people, but rather the survival of the physical symbols of cultural identity.

Residents within a 30-kilometer radius of the Fukushima power plant have been evacuated from the area for an indefinite time. The people affiliated with and responsible for Shinto shrines in the evacuation zone are unsure whether they should take with them the physical objects representing the divinities in the shrines, known as shintai.

This isn’t a trivial issue for the people involved. They believe the spirit of the divinity at the shrine resides in the physical object, and they also think those divinities have protected the area for many years. In the Japanese perspective, “many years” usually means “several centuries” and often means more than a millennium.

The Association of Shinto Shrines, which represents more than 8,000 institutions, said:

“Shrines have been protected by the people of the community for many years. When the people who have been evacuated return, shrines, if they function, will become the spiritual center of life in the community through ceremonies and events.”

The association would prefer that the shintai not be moved. They understand that the evacuation could be for a long time, however, so say that preference must be given to local circumstances.

Another factor is Article 81 of the law governing religious corporations, which applies to the entities responsible for both Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. That law states the corporations are subject to dissolution if their facilities have been destroyed and they are unable to replace them for more than two years, unless there are extenuating circumstances.

Common sense says that the extenuating circumstances are as plain as the nose on your face, but government bureaucracies are filled with people who develop visual impairments as a means to justify their existence. The Agency of Cultural Affairs, which has jurisdiction in the matter, says the extenuating circumstances clause could apply, but want to wait to make a final determination until after they conduct a survey. The local people say that’s unreasonable, and they want their institutions to be removed from consideration for dissolution now.

The ramifications of this law could have an effect not only on the shrines and temples in the evacuation zone near Fukushima, but also on those in Iwate and Miyagi unaffected by the radiation because they (and the priests) disappeared in the tsunami.

The problem at hand for the shrines near Fukushima involves the shintai, however. Some people think it would be best to have them stay and keep watch over the land while they’re away (they use the phrase rusuban in Japanese), but others think they should be evacuated with the population for use in festivals and other ceremonies. In some cases, the priests have taken custody of the physical objects themselves, but that’s not always possible. Some shintai are large, heavy rocks that can’t be moved without equipment.

There are 14 Shinto shrines within a 20-kilometer radius of the Fukushima plant and four more in the 20-30 kilometer belt. The situation is more difficult for those in the former group. Some priests left with just the clothes on their back, so they have no idea what shape the shrine itself is in, and some of them died or are still missing in the tsunami. Even those who were allowed to briefly return to their homes can’t go to the shrines because entry is restricted to residences.

Okada Masashi is the chief priest at the Naraha Hachiman shrine within the 20-kilometer radius. He said:

“All the officers among the parishioners at all the shrines will discuss whether to evacuate the objects before making a decision, but everyone is troubled by the options.”

The tutelary deity at the Naraha Hachiman shrine is the spirit of the Ojin Tenno, an emperor whose reign is said to have lasted from the late 3rd to the early 4th century. (He may or may not have existed, and it’s possible he has been confused with a different tenno now generally considered to have been a real person instead of a legend.) About 1,000 families are in the shrine’s district, but people from only 50 have stayed, all of whom are working at the plant. So has Mr. Okada:

“My role is to protect the tradition that has been handed down in this place. I will continue to wait until everyone returns.”

The shrine’s spring festival was held on April 19, but he was the only person to celebrate it. He said he prayed for everyone to return as quickly as possible.

Let’s hope his prayers are answered.

Naraha Hachiman Shrine

Eco-torii

COMING to Japan from the United States, it sometimes seems as if the people of the former have a more relaxed approach to their many traditions than do the people of the latter about their fewer traditions. That’s to the extent that people in either country take an active interest in tradition at all.

Here’s another example I discovered recently. Nakashima Biniiru Kako in Hitachi, Ibaraki, manufactures torii for Shinto shrines using polyvinyl chloride pipe. That’s a good idea when you think about it—the material is cheap, durable, light, easy to replace, impervious to water or ultraviolet rays, and if it’s red, most people won’t notice the difference anyway.

Company President Nakashima Masayoshi came up with the idea to use PVC pipe as a replacement for the usual stone, steel, or wood about 17 years ago. (There are also a few made of porcelain, including one at a shrine in the ceramics center of Arita.) Mr. Nakashima says he receives orders for about 20 in a good month, so there might be more of them around than anyone realizes. In fact, he does well enough to have a website for them, which you can see here. (Japanese only, of course) His company has another clever product, by the way: folding, portable storage containers for garbage. Keeping the magpies away until the garbage trucks show up can be a problem.

No one has come up with a satisfactory theory on the origin of torii, which mark the entrances to the shrine’s sacred space, and have become the symbol of shrines themselves. A few of the oldest ones have doors, including those at secondary shrines at Ise, so they probably were real gates at one time. Now the gates are all doorless, which means anyone can come and go as they please. “Straight is the gate and narrow is the path” isn’t an idea that would have originated in Shinto, but then the Japanese have a relaxed approach to religion, too. Try this torii and shrine combo in Okayama City for another example.

None of this should be surprising. After all, no one is able to agree whether Shinto is a “religion” to begin with.

*****
Here’s something that is a bit of a surprise, however: Eighteen-year-old Terakubo Erena holding her own with some very heavy hitters.

Nengajo 2011

CENTURIES OF TRADITION inform the festivities during the New Year holiday in Japan, making it an analogue for the Christmas holidays in countries with a Christian orientation. That includes customs, activities, and events, both semi-sacred and secular, specific to the season. For example, just as others send Christmas cards, the Japanese send New Year’s cards to family, friends, and business associates called nengajo. If they’re mailed by a certain date, the post office will deliver them smack dab on 1 January, but, as with Christmas cards, their late arrival is acceptable.

Here’s the Ampontan nengajo for 2011 with my apologies for its delayed delivery, which pushes the limits for acceptable late arrivals. As we get ready for our Great Leap Forward in the year of the rabbit, let’s take a quick look back at what happened in Japan during yearend 2010.

It started with a thorough housecleaning, as December is the month for spring cleaning in these parts. That includes Shinto shrines, which are de rigeur as a destination on New Year’s Eve or the first three days of the New Year for those who follow the tradition. Instead of climbing on tall ladders in those clothes for susubarai, or cleaning the dust from the eaves, the shrine priests and the miko (the Shinto equivalent of altar boys) make it easy on themselves by attaching bamboo grass leaves to poles so they can swipe from the ground. Here, eight priests and miko at the Gokoku jinja in Oita City, Oita are wielding four-meter-long poles in their devotion to ensure that cleanliness is next to godliness.

They also hung a 10-meter-long shimenawa, a rope made of rice straw denoting a sacred space. This one weighed about 200 kilos, and was made with the help of senior citizens clubs and veterans groups. The straw came from rice grown in a special field called a shinsenden (offering/paddy).

Everything—everything—gets cleaned at yearend, and that includes the 24 loggerhead and green turtles at the sea turtle museum in Tokushima City. Here’s Hamataro getting sponged to remove the moss and crud, after the big guy reached the turtle equivalent of kanreki (age 60) this year. They also changed the water in the pool to give their charges something clean to gurk around in. The museum likes to encourage visitors this time of year because turtles are traditionally thought to bring good luck, and it’s hard to keep a turtle in one’s pocket instead of a rabbit’s foot.

Shinto shrines aren’t the only ones who settle the heavenly accounts at yearend—Buddhist temples get involved too. The priests at the Naritasan Shinsho-ji, a temple in Narita, Chiba, near Tokyo’s international airport, burned all the ofuda amulets from the year in their annual ceremony to give thanks for blessings to Fudo Myo’o, who is one nasty-looking dude to judge from the photo at the link. He’s a divinity reputed to convert anger into salvation and who also brings financial blessings.

It took 15 priests to create a fire from a 1.5 meter high pile of cryptomeria branches to burn all 50,000 of the tapped-out amulets while parishioners prayed. The temple says the ofuda are the body of Fudo Myo’o, (an East Asian echo of the Eucharist?) and returning them to flames gives thanks for health and safety.

The temple expected as many as three million visitors during the three-day New Year period.

Shrines need extra help to deal with all the people who turn up on their doorstep, so in addition to serving as the equivalent of altar boys, the miko play the role of Santa’s helpers. They hire young women specifically for this role to handle the public during the yearend holidays to augment the miko already on their staff. The recruits undergo a day of training, during which they’re taught how to properly conduct themselves on the premises, receive guests, and how to wear the unfamiliar clothing—the white hakui and red hibakama. The new miko above were among the 80 local university and junior college students hired by the Suwa-jinja in Nagasaki.

If there’s anything better than a photo of miko trying on clothes, it’s two photos of miko trying on clothes, especially when they’re having so much fun. Here are some ladies learning the ropes—or perhaps the knots—from the full-timers at the Dazaifu Tenman-gu in Dazaifu, Fukuoka. Dazaifu is a large shrine, and they also hired 80 part-timers to work until the 7th. They expected two million people to visit during the first three days of the new year, the largest turnout in Kyushu.

Once they’ve finished decorating their bodies, it’s time to decorate the premises. There are almost as many types of New Year’s decorations as there are Christmas decorations, and one of them is this shimekazari being hung by Tokushima City Mayor Hara Hideki on the front gate at the Chuo Park in the city. He had to stand on a four-meter high ladder to put up the one-meter-long shimekazari, which weighed three kilograms.

It’s actually being hung to greet spring—Shinshun—which is a synonym for New Year’s, and was up until just yesterday. The gate naturally had to be cleaned before His Honor ascended the ladder, and that chore was handled by two city officials. As yet another demonstration of how that old time religion is still good enough for many, this is an older custom that had fallen out of practice but was restored in 1989. A matching decoration was hung on the entrance to the gardens of the old Tokushima castle located next door.

Another New Year’s decoration is the kadomatsu, which is placed in front of homes as an abode for the divinities. This 3.5-meter-high number was set up in front of the Ohmi-jingu, a shrine in Otsu, Shiga, on 13 December. It took two hours to make using mahonia berries and flowers as well as the traditional pine, bamboo, and plum. The Otsuans used to cut down the pine trees for their kadomatsu until six years ago, when they decided to get ecological and dig up a pine tree on the shrine grounds instead. They replanted it on the 15th.

Some shrines don’t use a kadomatsu, however. The Ikuta-jinja in Kobe creates a tree-like facsimile using 2,000 cryptomeria branches, a talisman the shrine has long used for good luck in the New Year. It too stood until the 15th.

The folks at the Ikuta shrine chose cryptomeria instead of pine because centuries ago a pine tree fell over during a flood and smashed the main shrine building. These are priests, after all, and they know how to pay attention to omens when they see one.

A group of about 30 priests and miko wrapped a 5-meter-high pole in straw and then arranged the branches.

Now for the souvenirs. Here’s a group of miko at the Asakunitsuko-jinja, in Koriyama, Fukushima, making hamaya, the arrows sold as amulets that drive away evil spirits, and which some also think provide safety to the home and prosperity to business. Dang, I need me one of those!

The four miko attached small trinkets to the hamaya that symbolize wishes for children or a bountiful harvest, and others that represent the rabbit. They made 5,000, and since they’ve been at this for centuries, they probably have a good idea of demand before they start. The proper way to dispose of these arrows, by the way, is to burn them in a ceremony at the end of the year, as with the ofuda amulets above. And no, they don’t shoot any flaming arrows!

The hamaya arrows are made and sold throughout the country, but some shrines think locally and produce unique items. For example, the Urahoro-jinja in Urahoro-cho Hokkaido, makes and sells oppai mori, or literally, breast protectors. The shrine has a reputation nationwide as a Mecca (to mix religious metaphors) for those wishing to have children, give safe birth, or give milk during nursing. That means their oppai mori is a popular product.

The custom derives from the tutelary deity for the shrine, which was a breast-shaped bump on a nearby large nara tree (called the common oak in English). Some women who had difficulty giving milk and went to the shrine to pray for help in early 20th century had their wish granted. The tree eventually collapsed, but the priests took their eyes off the sparrow and switched them to the important part to salvage it. That section of the tree was moved to a new shrine in 1982 at the request of the Urahoroans.

Sold for JPY 1,000 since 2006, the oppai mori are made from the wood of the nara tree and given a decoration based on a painting by a local artist. A nearby studio produces them individually in the shape of the human breast. Some have straps so they can be used for cell phones, and I’ll bet that’s a conversation starter.

Jack Seward, the unofficial patron saint of students of the Japanese language and country, died last year at the age of 86. Any native English speaker with any interest at all in fluency beyond a standard textbook has read his memoir/manual, Japanese in Action. Here’s one passage discussing local drinking habits:

The large family of gods (in Shinto mythology) who founded Japan were heavy sake drinkers. They were often drunk, and the mythology nowhere implies censure for this drunkenness. If it was good enough for the gods, why not for us? the Japanese ask. Think of what our attitude toward drinking might be if the Bible told us that Christ and his disciples met every afternoon at a Jerusalem cocktail lounge and got glassy-eyed.

So now you won’t be surprised that the Sanzo Inari-jinja in Fukuyama, Hiroshima, sells divine sake made by a brewer at nearby Minoshima-cho for New Year’s visitors. They even had a special packaging ceremony during which the head priest filled the first large bottle. He was followed by the three Misses Sanzo Inari, who filled 100-milliliter bottles and attached labels.

In the good old days, the parishioners could have a swig on site when they made their New Year’s visits, but the shrine changed its policy in 2007 and now only gives out bottles of the heavenly brew. They say it’s to prevent DWI, but it might also prevent some guys from getting any ideas about volunteering for oppai mori duty after eyeballing the young miko. Noshima Naomi, one of the misses, said:

We did this with the wish that people would feel good (kimochi yoku) as they greeted the new year.

I’ll bet!

Mochi rice cakes are a popular traditional snack and soup ingredient in Japan, and during the New Year, they’re also used to decorate the home. These are called kagami mochi, and some families still pound them out in the yard for the holidays.

The ingredient is a particularly glutinous form of rice, and Takanezawa-machi in Tochigi is a big rice production center. That’s how the local Yasuzumi-jinja got the big idea to decorate their shrine with jumbo mochi. The priests and miko don’t have to make it themselves, as the locals donate it as thanks for a good year and supplication for a good harvest next year. The mochi cakes they use have gotten jumboer over the years, and now weigh 500 kilograms. As you can see from the video above, they need some equipment to help haul it. The lower level is 110 centimeters in diameter, while the second is 80. The miko tote only the top level.

Though many people pay the traditional first visit to a shrine on the first, any time through the third is fine. The photo above is of the Taga-jinja in Taga-cho, Shiga, the shrine with the largest turnout in the region. About 160,000 people showed up on the first day of the year to pray and buy amulets. That was about 10,000 fewer than last year, but equilibrium was achieved when 150,000 people showed up on the 2nd, 10,000 more than last year.

The holiday shrine pilgrimage is an ecumenical affair, as even Buddhist priests come too. The priests at Kofuku-ji in Nara joined the Shinto priests on the 2nd in a prayer for peace in while paying their respects at the local Kasuga Taisha (a World Heritage site) and its affiliated Wakamiya-jinja. The Buddhist priests used to read sutras at the shrine every day during the Edo period, but that practice ended when the government legally forced the separation of the institutions during the Meiji period. They still hold joint ceremonies once a year, and this year the procession included nine priests of both varieties and two miko. They offered sake and rice during the Nikkuhajime-shiki ceremony and the priests took their chance to read some sutras. They they trooped over to Wakamiya and the Buddhists read the heart sutra just to make sure.

To top it off

Once upon a time before video games, children had special amusements on New Year’s—kite-flying, hanetsuki (a type of badminton) and top spinning. There are 450 years of tradition behind the Hakata koma, or tops, in Fukuoka. Upholding that tradition is the current Shuraku Chikushi, a woman, who describes how she maintains that tradition, performs, and makes the tops she uses during her performances in this fascinating English-language interview. The interview tells you as much about Japan and the Japanese as I could—including her intention to pass the art down to her taiko-playing, jazz-listening son. There are no videos on the Net, alas, but that photo of her balancing a spinning top on the edge of a folding fan is still impressive.

Akemashite o-medeto gozaimasu!

Plums and elegant pursuits

THERE IS AN EXPRESSION in Japanese which combines the kanji for flower, bird, wind, and moon. Read kacho fugetsu, that expression evokes the appreciation of the beauty of nature. When used with a verb, it becomes a phrase that means “to follow elegant pursuits”.

One might expect the rites of spring to be Dionysian, inspired by intoxication with heat, light, and passion after a cold winter, but the Japanese seasonal celebrations tend toward the Apollonian wth their incorporation of kacho fugetsu.

For example, everyone knows that the floral symbol for springtime in Japan is the cherry blossom. The Japanese have long enjoyed the custom of holding parties under cherry trees in full bloom, and anyone who has been to a hanami at a large park understands that much of its charm is derived from an uncommon intensity of elegance.

The custom is more than a millennium old, so the Japanese know just where to go. Thousands of local governments nationwide tout the prime cherry-viewing sites in their jurisdiction for tourists. Nowadays, partygoers can plan their excursions in advance because the weather bureau provides reports on the “cherry blossom front” as it moves northward and eastward up the archipelago. The print and broadcast media present these reports as news.

There is a less well-known floral harbinger of spring, however, that arrives even earlier than the cherries—the ume blossoms. Commonly called a plum in English, the ume is more closely related to the apricot, is not eaten raw, and neither looks nor tastes like Western plums (for which a different word is used).

Ume trees were brought to Japan from China in the 8th century, and according to ancient belief are capable of warding off danger. No matter how modern their outlook becomes, northeast Asians are careful to take heed of feng shui principles, so these trees are often planted in the northeast corner of plots. That corner is known as the kimon, or demon’s gate, the entryway for danger and evil. Is there a more elegant way to beat the devil than blossoming fruit trees?

There is even the custom of plum-viewing parties, though they are are less well-attended. February in the Northern Hemisphere is not the best time for a poetic picnic. Ume trees grow throughout the country, but everyone knows the best place for plum viewing is the Kitano Tenman-gu, a Shinto shrine in Kyoto. The shrine has a garden with more than 1,500 plum trees of several varieties of red and white flowers, which happily are the same colors as the national flag. Everyone also knows when to plan the trip because the event at the shrine is held on the same day every year—25 February, the anniversary of the death of the enshrined deity, Michizane Sugawara. Ume blossoms were said to be his favorite.

Then again, it’s unlikely that anyone would forget. The shrine dates from 947, and the plum viewing parties began a century or so later. In other words, it’s been part of the social calendar at the same time and same place for more than 900 years.

The ceremony starts at the main hall at 10:00 a.m., when a Shinto priest offers steamed rice to the spirit of the divinity. That’s followed by an offering of ume branches placed in cylindrical paper stands. There are 42 branches with white flowers and 33 with red ones, the numbers of which are critical years in the lives of men and women respectively. (Critical years are those years when people are supposed to be especially mindful of their health and safety.)

The viewing of the plums comes later in the day, and it is enhanced by flowers in human form–30 geisha pouring tea and offering sweets for JPY 1,500 (about $US 16.80) a serving along a stretch canopied with blossoms. The outdoor part of the ceremony is much newer, dating to 1952. Kyoto outdoors can be very un-spring-like in February, but this year the air temperature was 15.2°, five degrees warmer than normal for this time of year.

The geisha make a special trip for the occasion from the next-door Kamishichiken district east of the shrine. It’s the oldest geisha district in northwest Kyoto. Geisha districts, by the way, are known as hanamachi, or flower town. Kamishichiken itself has particularly close ties with the shrine. The name means “seven upper houses”, and it refers to seven teahouses built there using materials left over when the Kitano Tenman-gu was rebuilt centuries ago.

For more photos, try these Japanese pages from the shrine’s website. (The link above is to their English page.) Then consider: Is not this annual custom the very essence of an elegant pursuit?

Catallaxy, or the Meiji period comes to China

THE CHINESE have always wanted to cherry pick the fruits of Western and/or global culture while rejecting that which they considered unhealthy–particularly for the ruling class’s grip on power.

David Boaz of the Cato Institute pulls several strands together to show how the recent flap between China and Google is just the latest manifestation of that desire. He also reminds us of David Ramsay Steele’s 1979 observation on that process.

Steele quoted the Beijing Review:

We should do better than the Japanese. They have learnt from the United States not only computer science but also strip-tease. For us it is a matter of acquiring the best of the developed capitalist countries while rejecting their philosophy.

Before explaining the facts of life:

You play the game of catallaxy, or you do not play it. If you do not play it, you remain wretched. But if you play it, you must play it. You want computer science? Then you have to put up with striptease.

It’s just a matter of time–however long–before catallactics and the natural human urge to claim one’s human rights, including reproductive rights, the right to free speech, and unfettered property rights (from which all other rights flow) eat away at the pseudo-socialist, neo-imperialist superstructure.

Boaz’s post is here.

Bagging beans to beat the devil

SOME AMERICAN TELEVANGELISTS want you believe you have to send in money—right away!—to beat the devil, but the Japanese have a more inexpensive way to send Beelzebub packing. They scatter beans at Shinto shrines and households once a year.

Today was the day the demons took it on the lam, as 3 February is known as setsubun in Japan. Several traditional ceremonies are held to dispatch Old Scratch, and the magical rite of scattering beans (usually roasted soybeans) is one of those.

After a process of cultural evolution, the practice of setsubun was applied to New Year’s Eve in the ancient solar calendar, which is the traditional beginning of spring. Note that Chinese New Year, which is a moveable holiday, falls around this time of year. In traditional Chinese culture, lichun—or risshun in Japanese—is a solar period or term marking the start of spring, which occurs around February 4.

The connection with New Year’s led to associations of the ritual purification and exorcism thought essential for the coming year and the spring planting season.

Yet another connection was made with the tsuina rite, or zhuinuo in Chinese, another ceremony for driving out demons that originated in the Zho dynasty (1027 BC-256 BC). In those days, when men were men, the Chinese wore bear skins and masks and carried sharp weapons when they stalked the evil spirits. The practice was later adopted in some form in Japan, became an annual Imperial court event by the 9th century (hence the association with shrines), and had turned into a bean scattering rite by the Muromachi period (1333-1568).

The ceremony can be conducted at home, but nowadays most folks head for a Shinto shrine to snatch a bean bag tossed by the priests. One incentive is that some of the bags contain gift certificates for items which can range from stationery to consumer electronics products. In addition, toshi otoko, men born under the Chinese zodiac sign for that year, help toss out the beans, and some shrines bring in the famous or celebrities from the area to juice up the PR value.

The visitors to the larger shrines can number in the thousands, and somebody’s got to put those beans into the lucky bags. When it comes to performing such menial chores at a shrine, the lot usually falls to miko, or shrine maidens, the Shinto equivalent of altar boys.

The first photo shows three miko at the Ikuta Shinto shrine in Kobe, Hyogo, using a masu, a traditional measuring box, to scoop up the beans and put them into the lucky bags. On one side of each is the kanji for kotobuki, which means long life, while the illustration on the side of the masu is of a cute little devil. They put about 120 grams of beans into each bag, making them quarter-pounders, and they filled 3,000 bags, which the shrine sold for JPY 300 (about $US 3.30) apiece. Send in your money to beat the devil!

Some shrines put in certificates for different sorts of gifts. One of them is the Kirishima-jingu in Kirishima, Kagoshima. This year, among the lucky slips were those for 240 bottles of shochu donated by 41 Kagoshima distillers.

The Japanese have no problem at all mixing hooch and holiness, and many Shinto festivals involve the brewing of sacred sake. The Kagoshimanians down south, however, much prefer shochu to sake, so while it’s unusual to offer booze in the bean bags, none of this staggers the imagination, either. The only staggering is done by the shochu drinkers.

The shrine asked the distillers for donations at the end of last year in a transaction that contains an element of the marketplace in addition to the mystical. In return for offering prayers for safety for the distillers, the Kirishima shrine put up labels of their product as PR on the shrine grounds. Each of the distillers ponied up six bottles each, as you can see from the second photo. Starting at 4:00 p.m. today, the priests started tossing about 5,000 beanbags, of which 1,000 contained gift certificates. Among the lucky recipients, 240 are going to get righteously high.

Here’s a setsubun scene from the Kirishima shrine in the past.

Afterwords:

The toshi otoko who was the main attraction at the Ikuta shrine in Kobe this year was Hasegawa Hozumi, the current WBC world bantamweight champion. He’s the only Japanese boxer to have defended a world bantamweight title more than four times.

This ESPN.com article on the fighters of the year for 2009 says Hasegawa “might be the best fighter boxing fans haven’t heard of”.

Less than zero

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW what’s happening in Japan, don’t go looking for the answers in the news media. Here’s yet another example, this time from CNN, which now–understandably–is the least watched of the four American cable TV news networks.

Their latest story on Japan starts with this headline:

“Japanese monks serve up alcohol and hip hop music to lure in followers”

How many monks? Read the story and you’ll find out they cite one who serves alcohol and one who performs sutra raps, for a total of two—the threshold needed to permit CNN’s use of the plural.

To put it another way, more men bit dogs in the greater Atlanta area last year.

“The Buddhist religion has largely remained the same over the past few centuries, but a group of monks in Japan are spicing things up by turning to alcohol and rap music to lure in followers.”

Suddenly, the number “two” has now taken on the meaning of a “group”.

Kansho Tagai…a Buddhist monk, believes it’s time to change for the future and doesn’t mind if it means dropping the chants and bringing on the rap music.
Tagai also prefers to go by his street name — Mr. Happiness.

Some questions for Mr. Tagai:

1. What will you do when rap music loses its image of hipness and becomes a thing of the past? It won’t be too much longer now.

2. Just what is this thing referred to as a “street name”, and how many people—if any—actually call you Mr. Happiness?

“Getting the young people back to religion is key to Buddhism’s survival,” Tagai told CNN. “In Japan, it’s a religion in crisis.”

What CNN doesn’t tell you is that you are unlikely to see any Japanese person at a traditional Buddhist temple, other than the monk or his family, for anything other than a funeral service. (When people have a religious or semi-religious wedding ceremony, they usually choose Shinto.)

All of my residences in Japan during the nearly 26 years I’ve been here have been across the street from a Buddhist temple. I could throw a rock from the front yard of my house into the graveyard of a Buddhist temple across the street, were I so inclined. I could also have pitched one underhand into the entrance of another temple from the front steps of my previous apartment. The only people I’ve seen visiting those temples for a reason other than to attend a memorial service were there to clean and pray at the family gravesite.

“Each year, hundreds of temples close in Japan and it’s a similar struggle seen by other religions around the world.”

What CNN doesn’t tell you is that Buddhist temples are even more neighborhood-based than churches in the U.S., and that temples sometimes close for reasons other than a lack of religious faith. Temples in rural areas that have lost population to the cities are not going to survive. Neither are some temples in urban areas that have become primarily business or commercial districts.

Nevertheless, there were roughly 76,000 Buddhist temples of all sects in Japan as of last year to serve a population of 127 million. Meanwhile, there were roughly 68,000 Christian churches of all denominations in the United States three years ago to serve a population of more than 300 million.

Of Japan’s 127 million people, 96 million identify as Buddhist. Those numbers, however, don’t translate into regular traditional religious practices, and haven’t for some time.

“Another idea that monks hope will help get more young people involved is mixing faith with fun at something called the Monk Bar. This modern day bar serves up alcoholic drinks while teaching the Buddhist mantra, according to Zenshin Fujioka. ‘This is closer to what Buddhism was intended to be,’ Zenshin said.”

One of the Five Moral Precepts of traditional Buddhism was the prohibition of intoxicants, so Mr. Fujioka’s conception of what Buddhism was intended to be may not be the consensus opinion. It might instead be just a clever way for Mr. Fujioka to indulge his favorite recreational pastime. I was once shown a very small, exclusive drinking establishment set back from the other shops on a narrow side street. My guide told me the prices were so high only doctors and Buddhist priests could afford to drink there.

“While many traditionalists may criticize both the Monk Bar and hip hop rapping styles, it seems their ideas are paying off. ‘Twice as many people, especially the young, are now visiting the temple,’ Tagai said.”

Zero doubled is still zero, though Mr. Tagai likely gets a few more visitors, if only out of curiosity to see a rapping monk once or twice.

Really, this is past the point of absurdity. The network is wasting its enormous resources to generate for its dwindling number of viewers a story that is a waste of time to watch. If anyone thinks they’re learning something about Japan by following any print or broadcast media outlet, I honestly feel sorry for them.

The tragedy in today’s Wiki-age is that such vapid ignorance is the standard rather than the exception.

For example, a Google search will occasionally throw up such detritus as the About.com website that claims to offer the general reader basic information. Here’s what it says about religion in Japan:

“In Japan, Shinto and Buddhist practices are combined into a single religion, with Buddhist temples being built at the sites of important Shinto shrines.”

Here’s what it should say:

“In Japan, Shinto and Buddhist practices are not combined into a single religion, and Buddhist temples have been prohibited from occupying the same building as Shinto shrines by government order since March 1868. The contiguity on some sites does not mean they are syncretic in function.”

The most puzzling aspect of these misleading news reports and websites peddling inanity instead of knowledge is why they exist at all. Discovering the truth is so easy to do.

But being this stupid is difficult. People have to go out of their way and work at it.

Afterwords: A Japanese woman in her mid-60s once told me that she was married in a Buddhist temple wearing a Western-style wedding dress, which is an unlikely combination even for this country. I asked her how that happened, and the other Japanese in the group were just as interested in her answer as I was. Unfortunately, she just laughed and said it was a long story. I’ll bet!