A glass of champon

WHEN THE FOLKS in Kyushu use the word champon, they’re usually talking about a bowl of noodle soup created at a Chinese restaurant in Nagasaki during the latter part of the 19th century. In other words, it’s a Japanese version of Chinese food.

But when the folks in Fukuoka City’s Higashi Ward use the word champon, they’re talking about glass toys sold during the Hojoya festival presented by the local Hakozaki-gu Shinto shrine. The work for putting the finishing touches on those toys is being done now, even though the festival is held in September.

Edo beauty toys with a champon

The champon is an unusual toy because it employs the flexibility of glass. The user alternately inhales and exhales from the tube end, causing the film at the bottom of the flared end to vibrate back and forth and make a noise. First there is a higher-pitched tone that to Hakata ears sounds like “chan”, and that’s followed by a lower tone that sounds like “pon”. The traditional glass blowing technique used to make the toys requires great skill, but the blowing technique to play with the toy takes little or no skill at all.

People in other parts of the country call these playthings biidoro, which is derived from vidro, the Portuguese word for glass. Some also call them poppen, which is a different onomatopoetic rendition of the sound the glass makes. Same sound, different ears!

The toys have been around in Japan for a while, as the illustration shows a well-known Utamaro print of an Edo beauty amusing herself with one. They weren’t sold at the Hakata festival until the second part of the 19th century, however, and the shrine stopped making them during the Taisho period, which ran from 1911 to 1925. But if your national history goes back a couple of millennia, it’s easy to find something old on a shelf in the cultural warehouse when looking for a new idea to spice up a custom, and the shrine resumed making the champon in 1971.

Hakata beauties making champon

The photo shows two of six miko, or shrine maidens, using bright acrylic paint and thin brushes to paint pictures on the toys. The decorative illustrations are usually of flowers and dragonflies. This year, however, the miko are using for the first time a chrysanthemum design that one of them created, demonstrating yet again how willing the Japanese are to incorporate new tricks into an old tradition. There are 10 different types of champon, and the miko will make about 2,100 by the end of August. That hand-painted labor doesn’t come cheap—it’ll cost from JPY 3,000 to 9,000 ($US 94.98) to buy one at the festival.

The Hojoe festival, by the way, is known as one of the three major Hakata festivals, Hakata being another name for the Fukuoka area. It attracts in the neighborhood of 300,000 people every year. The festival itself originated from a Buddhist ceremony for releasing fish and birds back into the wild, based on the old precept in that religion against the killing of animals. The Shintoists liked it so much they adopted it as well, and the festival is conducted at other Hachiman shrines throughout the country under the name of Hojoya.

All this talk of mixing religious traditions and giving them different names in different places is an excellent excuse to refer back to the bowl of Chinese noodles created in Japan known as champon. The origin of that word is not onomatopoetic; rather, one theory holds that it comes from the Chinese word 掺混 in the Hokkien dialect, which means “to mix”. It would be pronounced chanhun in standard Chinese, and the Japanese would naturally change that h to either a b or a p in their pronunciation because it follows a syllable-ending n.

But it gets better. The Okinawans have a dish of their own called chanpuru, which also means “mixed” in their dialect. The Koreans eat yet a different version, called jjamppong (짬뽕), which is also said to be slang for “mix up” (though it’s not in my K-E dictionary). And the word champon itself has entered standard Japanese to mean mix together or alternate. That one is in my J-E dictionary, though I can’t remember hearing anybody use it that way in a conversation.

Buddhist and Shinto, Hakata and Fukuoka, hojoe and hojoya, champon and poppen, and champon, chanhun, chanpuru, and jjamppong…doesn’t that sum it up perfectly? Northeast Asia in general–and Japan in particular–has always been a champon kind of a place!

Matsuri da! (107): The mikoshi marathon

A KEY ELEMENT of most Shinto festivals are the portable shrines known as mikoshi. Rites in other religions usually require the performance of strictly defined acts from which there is little or no deviation. One distinguishing feature of Shinto matsuri, however, is that there is very little from which to deviate to begin with. It’s hard to get stuffy about tradition when the founding principle seems to have been “Hey, that’s a great idea! Let’s try it and see what happens!”

The standard operating procedure during a festival is for the carriers to vigorously raise and lower the mikoshi while calling out shouts of self-encouragement during the procession. Meanwhile, the onlookers provide encouragement of their own from alongside the parade route, often drenching the carriers with buckets of water to cool them off—summer or winter, it makes no difference. When you’re hot and sweaty from all that work, you need to get cool!

But there are also festivals in which the mikoshi are hauled up the side of a steep mountain, run down the side of a mountain on narrow stone stairs at top speed in the middle of the night, carried under a waterfall, jumped over a blazing fire, used as a weapon in a street fight with another mikoshi-carrying group, or just smashed to pieces as a sign of devotion.

Though there are plenty of stories of how the mikoshi are used, few of those stories specifically mention how long those processions last. One exception is the story I came across for a festival last month at the Yudanosan Shinto shrine in Yamagata.

The event starts with the hakkosai ceremony, in which part of the spirit is taken from the tutelary deity at the shrine and placed in the mikoshi. Then about 150 young parishioners from a group known as the Miyuki-kai (神幸会) carry it around a six-kilometer course in Yamagata City chanting “Soiya sah!” The group does more than just go through the motions and then go home. It takes them seven hours to conduct this part of the festival. That must be one of the reasons for having 150 members in the Miyuki-kai–they have to take turns doing the heavy lifting.

That object at the top in gold leaf, by the way, is the ho’o, a type of phoenix whose myths originated in China. A mythical Chinese creature on top of a palanquin for a Shinto divinity–now how’s that for another example of Japanese syncretism? The ho’o seems to have been created from spare parts–the front was shaped like a giraffe, the rear like a deer, the head like a snake, the tail like a fish, and the back like a turtle. It’s enough to make you wonder how much hemp was cultivated in China in the old days.

The Yudonosan shrine has a history even more interesting than the festival it conducts. It’s located 1,500 meters (about 4,920 feet) above sea level, and the hike required to get there is not for the faint or weak of heart. The photo here shows the large red torii, but the shrine itself is far enough down the path and up the side of the mountain that a special bus leaving from the building at left takes visitors the rest of the way for 200 yen. It’s not possible to post a photo of the shrine itself, because photography at the site is forbidden.

Once visitors arrive, they have to remove their shoes to enter, and that, like the photo prohibition, is not a common practice at most institutions. Then again, the shrine is located in an uncommon area. The Yudonosan mountain is one of three in a group of mountains and valleys that were a site for Buddhist ascetic practices for more than a millennium. Some of the heavy hitters of Japanese Buddhism came here for meditation and enlightenment, including Kukai, the founder of the Shingon sect, and Saicho, the founder of the Tendai sect.

Their practices were uncommonly rigorous, and included vegetarian meals, daily ablutions, and Yudono no Hozen worship three times a day for 30, 50, or 1,000 consecutive days to remove their impurities. Another objective for some was to achieve Buddhahood while still in the material body, a practice called sokushinjobutsu, and at Yudonosan the preferred method was to meditate until one became “mummified”, as the explanation has it. Some of the remains of these people still exist in northern Niigata.

While in those days the site primarily attracted Buddhists, the institution itself was one of many that shared space with a Shinto shrine. When they were split up during the Meiji era reforms, the Buddhist temples relocated elsewhere. Why did they move and the shrine stay? I don’t know, but it might have been because the shrine’s shintai, the object of worship in which the divinity’s spirit dwells, was a large rock from which a natural hot spring emerges.

It has to be easier to build another temple than it is to change the course of a hot spring in the mountains!

Japan’s cultural kaleidoscope

TECHNOPOLIS TOKYO is the image of Japan for many—-an ultra-sheen world of hyper-intense, manga-reading otaku and hyper-style-conscious gyaru wearing fake hair color, fake designer clothes, and fake undergarments, all jazzed on robots and consumer electronics and with a cell phone welded to the palms of their hands.

For most of the country, however, that’s just an alternate reality flickering in and out of existence over a template of tradition more than a millennium old. Here people can flirt with fashion while staying within eyesight of customs maintained for hundreds of years. The following stories are recent examples of how the timeless in this country is still the quotidian. All of them occurred in the space of less than a fortnight, and Tokyo was the location for only one.

Kakimoto Festival

Waka and tanka poet Kakimoto no Hitomaro (662-710) was the most prominent of the poets represented in the Man’yoshu, the oldest anthology of Japanese poetry, which itself dates from the 8th century. The Toda Kakimoto shrine in Masuda, Shimane, held its annual festival to honor Kakimoto on the date he is said to have died, as it has for more than 1,200 years.

Kakimoto is the tutelary deity of the shrine, which was built in his honor when someone from the area returned with a lock of hair from his corpse.

After the primary ceremony, a mikoshi (portable shrine) holding his spirit was carried 300 meters from the main shrine to the site of his birth. Local children dressed as miko, or shrine maidens, performed a dance there in his honor while ringing bells, and the 70 people watching quietly bowed their heads.

Naoe Kanetsugu Lantern

Naoe Kanetsugu (1560-1619) was known for his service as retainer to the Uesugi daimyo, his seamanship, and his love affair with Uesugi Kenshin in the beautiful samurai style. The Uesugi clan fought on the losing side in the Battle of Sekigahara, which cleared the way for the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate. A recent NHK television program renewed interest in Naoe and his life.

In December 1600, a few months after the battle, Naoe presented a lantern to the Kasuga Taisha, a Nara City Shinto shrine whose close ties with the Uesugi family dated from 1588. (The shrine itself was founded in 768.) It was offered in supplication for the peace and tranquility of Kenshin’s adopted son Uesugi Kagekatsu, who assumed control of the clan and had also fought with Hideyoshi in Korea before his defeat by Tokunaga Ieyasu.

The 56-centimeter-high bronze lantern usually hangs in a corridor of the shrine’s main hall, but shrine officials recently displayed it outside so everyone could see it.

Nara Yabusame

Those who went to see the Naoe lantern at the Nara City Kasuga Taisha could have shot two birds with one arrow by watching a group of 40 archers from the Ogasawara school of yabusame (equestrian archery) offer a display of their technique to the shrine.

One ceremony was the Hikime-no-Gi, in which arrows called kabura-ya were fired over the roofs of buildings as a way to drive out evil spirits. If you were standing next to a building and the sky was suddenly hailing arrows, wouldn’t you leave too? They also performed the Momote-shiki, which is part of their daily practice. Ten archers lined up in front of the shrine dressed in white robes and fired 10 arrows apiece in pairs at a target. The depth of the tradition involved is such that the paired arrows have names; the first is called haya and the second is called otoya. Ten times ten equals one hundred, which is the origin of the ceremony’s name: momote in Japanese means a hundred hands.

Tokko no Yu

Enough of this new stuff whose age in centuries you can count with your fingers—here’s another millennium-plus story.

Legend has it that the famous monk/scholar/poet Kobo Daishi, who introduced the Shingon teachings in Japan, washed his ill father in the chilly waters near Izu, Shizuoka. For some reason he decided to break a rock with a tokko, an implement used in Buddhist services, and lo and behold, water sprang forth. That’s the origin of the Shuzen-ji hot springs. The annual Tokko no Yu (the hot water of the tokko) ceremony is held to commemorate the founding of the spa about 1,200 years ago, to thank the monk for picking that spot, and to placate his spirit. The original location of the incident is said to now be submerged in the Shuzenji River, and the spa itself was moved downstream this year to escape flood damage caused by heavy rains.

A group of 34 women wearing pink kimono and yukata and carrying wooden buckets departed from the grounds of the Shuzen-ji Buddhist temple and headed for the spa in a procession accompanied by children. Each of the women received spa waters from monks waiting at the site, paraded through the town, and returned to the temple to offer the water. After a reading of sutras, the water was presented to several local ryokan (Japanese-style inns).

Ise Spring Festival

The Ise shrine in Mie, closely associated with the Imperial household, held its spring kagura festival of Shinto song and dance on a stage specially built on the grounds. The festival is held in both the spring and fall to pray for peace and give thanks for the blessings of the divinities.

Two male dancers entered the stage bearing halberds (a spear/battle-ax combo) and purified the area to the accompaniment of flute and taiko drums. This was followed by another Shinto dance called the Ranryo’o, after which four female dancers wearing brightly colored butterfly wings performed the Kocho. The performances were presented twice a day for a three-day period.

Picking Tea in Shizuoka

No story of Japan past or present is complete without a green tea pick-me-up, so here’s a photo of the Misono tea picking ceremony held at a special plantation at the Sengen shrine in Shizuoka. The four tea-picking miko wore period costumes and worked in pairs as 60 watched. They wound up bagging 3 kilograms, which a local society used to brew for offering as sencha (medium-grade tea) to the divinities at a separate tea festival.

Here’s the best part: This is a new event that this year was held for only the fifth time. Considering the content, however, it could just as easily have been 500 years old as five. In Japan, the new being the old and the old becoming the new is just a matter of nichijo sahanji—literally, daily rice and tea, meaning an everyday occurrence.

Akihabara Gagaku

Another example of nichijo sahanji is the combination of the very old with the very new, as demonstrated by the live gagaku performance held at Akihabara, the Tokyo district famous as the Mecca of consumer electronics. It was presented by the nearby Kanda shrine to publicize an upcoming festival. The site was a stage at a vacant building in the district most often used by budding pop singers and dancers. But shrine officials wanted to attract to their festival younger people who had never been before, so this was their first-ever gagaku performance outside shrine grounds.

The miko performed a dance usually reserved for wedding ceremonies to the accompaniment of flutes and drums.

And I’ll bet the first thing they did when the dance was over was to check their cell phones for messages!

A Japanese wedding bell, Shinto (and Buddhist) style

YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW what that yellow thing hanging from the post is when you first see it—I didn’t either—but the inspiration for its creation was a combination of love (or lust), religion, and commerce. That should be a dead giveaway the location of the photo is Japan. To be specific, it’s hanging near a 200-year-old Japanese linden tree (shinanoki; tilia japonica) designated as divine on the shores of Lake Chuzenji in Nikko, Tochigi.

A Nikko miko and a yellow bell

It turns out that the yellow thing is a bell. It’s 55 centimeters long, 20 centimeters in diameter, and weighs six kilograms. Made of steel and painted yellow to attract good fortune, it’s modeled after a 10-centimeter hand bell excavated at nearby Mt. Nantai that was used by devout Buddhists to summon the spirits of the divinities.

So what’s the bell doing on a post out in the open? It’s next to a sacred tree at the Futarasan Shinto shrine, one of the Nikko shrines and Buddhist temples that are part of a UNESCO World Heritage site. Founded in 782 by Shodo Shonin—a Buddhist monk—it has two swords that are national cultural treasures. He had already established the famous Rinno-ji temple complex 16 years before. For centuries the temple and the isolated location made the site a destination for ascetics, and it became a resort area in the modern era when people began to think that asceticism was kind of a drag compared to the delights of the material world.

But more to the point in this case is that one of the tutelary deities of the Shinto facility is Daikoku-sama, the god of marriage. The Japanese linden has also been traditionally associated with connubial bliss. And nearby is a small hall in which is enshrined Aizen, the guardian (or god) of love of the esoteric Mikkyo sect.

As this excellent site explains, Aizen is the:

King of Sexual Passion, (who) converts earthly desires (love/lust) into spiritual awakening; saves people from the pain that comes with love; three faces, three eyes; six arms (typically holding weapons; often wears crown containing a shishi (magical lion); red body, symbolizing the power to purify sexual desire; often carries a bow and arrow (like Cupid).

Aizen is a Japanese Buddhist deity that is not known in India, though he was also given a Sanskrit name. This is the first I’d heard of him, but then a divinity that purifies sexual desire is even less appealing than asceticism these days.

The bell was also created to symbolize a happy marriage, and it was purposely cast to make a sound resembling “kon”. Kon is the reading for the second kanji in the word kekkon, which means marriage, and the kanji itself also has that connotation.

The whole bell idea is the brainchild of the priests at Futarasan Shrine. Tourism in the area is slumping, and they hoped the bell would become a symbol of the town, giving it the image of a romantic getaway. They thought it might entice engaged or newly married couples to visit in the hope that the good mojo would rub off on them. Purifying their sexual desires is probably the least of their cares.

So to sum up, the officials at a famous Shinto shrine created a bright yellow bell designed to look like a religious artifact found during an archaeological dig. They hung the bell next to a tree associated with marriage near a Shinto shrine whose deity is associated with marriage, and a small hall with a Buddhist deity that is the King of Sexual Passion and carries bows and arrows like Cupid. Their intention was to attract more tourists to come and ring the bell, which would result in local merchants more frequently ringing up the cash registers.

Evidently, being a part of a UNESCO World Heritage site with a history dating back more than 1,200 years in a district with the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu’s mausoleum and plenty of hot spring resorts isn’t enough to appeal to potential tourists.

Considering the integral role rice plays in Japanese culture, it’s a wonder they didn’t find a way to work in the Western custom of throwing rice at newlyweds as they leave the church after their wedding ceremony. With all those other ingredients in that gumbo, no one would think the rice was unusual at all, and some would think it made the dish even tastier.

Who knows, it might attract even more people who want to live happily ever after their unique wedding ceremony!

Finish that bowl of rice and you’ll get into a good school!

IT’S PADDY PLANTING TIME again in Japan, and thousands of colorful rice-planting ceremonies are being held throughout the country to mark the start of the season. Last year we had a post that focused on several of them. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I’ll just offer the link to that post and describe another ceremony that’s a bit different from the others.

This one was held specifically to plant rice that will be sold as a good luck charm to those taking school entrance examinations. It was held at a wet paddy in the Kameoka district of Takahata-machi, Yamagata, on the 15th. The Yamagatans have been planting and selling the rice as brain food since 1991, when the ceremony was cooked up by the local branch of the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations. The crop is grown on a 1.5-hectare paddy that yields about eight tons of rice, which should be more than enough to get the local hopefuls into the school of their choice. After being harvested in the fall, it will be sold in five-kilogram bags.

What makes the Kameoka rice more of a cinch than a crib sheet? Daisho-ji, a Buddhist temple in Takahata-machi, is the home of one of Japan’s three great statues of the Monju Bosatsu, the Bodhisattva of wisdom. Students throughout Japan have paid homage to that divinity for centuries because Monju, as the personification of the Buddha’s teachings, is a symbol for wisdom and enlightenment. One of the priests from Daisho-ji blesses the seedlings before they’re planted, and he’ll put the double whammy in for the examinations by blessing the rice itself after it’s harvested.

Once the priest takes care of business, a group of 15 people plant the rice by hand, as you can see in the photo. And that’s the intriguing part.

Those ladies ankle deep in the muck are wearing the traditional outfits of miko, or the maidens at Shinto shrines who serve in roughly the same role as altar boys at a Catholic church. Bending over to their right is a Shinto priest. In fact, in this photo Daisho-ji more closely resembles a Shinto shrine than a Buddhist temple. It’s also the case that most of the rice-planting ceremonies are Shinto affairs.

Confused? The Japanese aren’t. This has got to be one of the most naturally ecumenical places on the planet. And the Buddhist priests don’t mind bringing a divine spark to a profit-making enterprise as long as it’s in the cause of higher education.

But then again, who wouldn’t want to do their part to promote the cultivation of knowledge as well as grain? In fact, it’s a shame that ceremony is held way up north instead of down here in Kyushu. I’d be glad to tutor those girls for the English part of their exams!

The Buddhist temple Koreans built in Japan

THERE’S NO TELLING what’ll turn up when someone sticks a spade into the ground in Japan. In Okinawa, as we saw in this recent post, the diggers might strike undetonated bombs or artillery shells buried since the Second World War. More often, however, what they’ll uncover are fascinating glimpses of periods dating back more than a millennium.

Digging a hole

That was demonstrated again last week when the Education Committee of Hirakata, Osaka, and the city’s cultural treasure research and survey association announced they had discovered a trench used to cast iron and bronze utensils at Kudara-ji, a Buddhist temple in that city.

Here’s where it gets interesting: The temple was built in the latter half of the 8th century by members of the Baekche royal family from the Korean Peninsula who fled to Japan. In fact, it was named for them: the Chinese characters for Baekche (百済) are read Kudara in Japanese.

One of the three ancient Korean kingdoms, Baekche was located in the southwestern part of the peninsula, an area that still maintains close ties with Japan. It wound up the loser in frequent battles with Silla and Goguryo, the other two kingdoms. Some members of its royal family dashed across the Korea Strait after the kingdom’s defeat by Silla and their Chinese allies. Japan sent a substantial military force to fight with Baekche, and it’s estimated that as many as half of that force did not return home after being beaten. Meanwhile, the transplanted Baekche royal family is credited with introducing the Chinese writing system, Buddhism, and the advanced technology of the period to this country. Indeed, one of the Baekche kings, Muryeong, was born in Kyushu. (He ascended to the throne after his elder brother was assassinated.)

The researchers think they’ve discovered the remnants of the facility used to build the temple and make the implements used there. Only a handful of these facilities have been unearthed nationwide, so scholars consider the find important because it may shed light on the structure of the temple buildings of the time.

The committee said they found a pit 2.5 meters in circumference at the northeast section of the site used for the placement of casting molds. In addition to iron and bronze utensils nearby, they found about 300 shards from a melting furnace which is thought to have been used for casting.

They also found the remains of six posts, which they think formed a gateway at the northern wall. About 500 meters to the north of that gate is the site of ruins in Kinyahon-machi. The researchers say the find tends to confirm the close connection between the latter district and the Baekche royal family, which was given preferential treatment by the Japanese state at the time–including intermarriage with the Imperial family.

City officials noted that in addition to aiding research into temple structure of the period, the discovery is important because it provides further support for the idea that the Baekche royal family enjoyed great influence in that area from the Nara period to the Heian period (covering the 8th century).

There is another significant aspect to this story that city officials might have mentioned had they been disposed to do so. Namely, some ungenerous expatriate foreigners in Japan, as well as some South Koreans misinformed by the political and media axis in that country, labor under the belief that Japanese do not care to be reminded of their ancient ties with the Korean Peninsula and the impact those ties had on their culture.

Yet this story about a temple named after Koreans was openly and widely reported in the Japanese news media. The reports also noted that archaeological excavations have been conducted at this site since 1932.

Or, to take it to another level of detail, the Baekche kingdom itself was founded by people who headed south down the peninsula from Manchuria. So who’s your daddy, daddy-o?

All of which suggests that the Nippo-crits might be less informed on this subject than the Japanese public they hold in such disdain.

Shogatsu 2009: Lighting up traditional Japan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From hot naked men to a cold snowy temple

IF THERE ARE PEOPLE ANYWHERE who are more blasé about the human body and less squeamish about the facts of life than the Japanese, I’ve yet to meet them.

That’s why it was so puzzling earlier this year when JR East—the train company serving Tokyo and the Kanto region—refused to display a poster in its stations publicizing a centuries-old Iwate festival with a photo of a shirtless, hairy-chested man shouting at the top of his lungs. JR East was afraid some people would become offended if they thought the images constituted “sexual harassment”.

More than a few Japanese, who grow up from the age of zero going to public baths with their parents and are aware that all sorts of rowdiness and revelry can go on at a traditional festival, were boggled by the news. Yet JR East held its ground. (Here’s my post from earlier this year, which includes a brief explanation of the festival and some links.)

The story resurfaced in the national media again today when the sponsors released the poster that will be used to publicize next year’s festival, which will be held in February. Fortunately, we also have a brief TV report from TBS that includes shots of last year’s offending poster, next year’s poster, and some of the wild and wooly behavior of the nearly naked men getting primitive while surrounded by flaming torches. A translation follows below.

The Somin Festival of the Kokuseki Buddhist temple of Oshu, Iwate, garnered nationwide attention this year due to controversy over a poster it used to advertise the event. Festival organizers have now released the poster for next year’s festival. Based on the theme of tranquility, it features a photograph of the temple during a snowstorm.

The festival is known for combining (nearly) naked men and fire rituals. JR East refused to hang last year’s poster because they thought the photograph of the naked upper body of a man giving a loud roar would cause discomfort to some. This touched off a national controversy.

Oshu alternates the themes of the poster every year from tranquility to dynamism. Officials say the change this year is nothing special.

Afterwords: JR East’s decision still mystifies me, as well as the Oshuites I saw interviewed on TV this evening. Anyone who would think this year’s poster was an example of sexual harassment needs to schedule an appointment with a competent psychologist. And stop subjecting the rest of the world to their personality quirks.

December means spring cleaning in Japan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Matsuri da! (86): Here’s fish in your quiver!

WHAT BETTER WAY to guarantee a big haul of fish than to have an archery contest?

That’s how the folks in the Minoshima district of Yukuhashi, Fukuoka, have looked at it for several centuries now, and every year they put their arrows where their mouths are at the Minoshima Momote Festival. This year’s event was held on Thursday the 21st.

Here’s the idea: amateur archers shoot arrows into a target set up on the grounds of the Minoshima Shinto shrine. The more arrows they can pump into the bulls-eye, the bigger the catch will be for local fishermen that year.

The event features another combination in addition to the mixture of archery and fish. Most traditional Japanese festivals are Shinto affairs, but for this one, the Shinto priest at the Minoshima shrine is joined by priests from Hosen-ji, Saiho-ji, and Jonen-ji, local Buddhist temples of the Jodo sect.

It all started in the 16th century during the latter part of the Muromachi period, when the pirates who infested the waters of the Seto Inland Sea to the east would periodically stop by to attack and plunder the coastal village. If they were anything like pirates in the rest of the world, they probably took the opportunity to ravage a few women while they were at it.

The pirates made Minoshima a frequent port of call because for centuries it was an important transit point for maritime traffic—it’s located an arrow’s flight away from the northeast corner of Kyushu and the big city of Kitakyushu. Lying just across the strait from Kitakyushu is Shimonoseki with its still-bustling Port of Moji.

The villagers resolved to defend themselves by taking up the manly art of archery, and a tradition was born. It must have worked—there are no more pirates on the Inland Sea, and the locals still have the archery festival every May.

The event begins with a joint Shinto-Buddhist service at the shrine. When the priests are finished, it’s time for the archers to enter. Since their success, or lack of it, will foretell the success of the fishermen, it would be cheating to use a few semi-pros to shoot the arrows every year. They solve that problem by selecting two teenagers by lot to play the role of the bowmen.

But choosing two young guys who didn’t know which end of the bow was which could create the opposite problem by jinxing the fishermen, so they’re allowed to practice a little before taking their official shots. The recent switch from bamboo to metal arrows has also reportedly improved their aim. Some might think the use of modern technology gives them an unfair advantage, but then again, the fishermen are unlikely to be plying their trade with 16th century techniques and equipment. Let’s just say it’s another example of how traditions can be updated to reflect changing times while maintaining the original spirit of the festival!

The newly deputized archers assume their positions at the southwest part of the shrine grounds, where two targets are set up in front of a smaller shrine, called a shoshi. Both of the targets are about two meters in diameter, and both have black circles, representing pirates eyes, painted on instead of bulls-eyes. The archers fire two arrows each at both of the targets.

This year, four of their eight arrows hit the mark. One of the boys accounted for three of the hits, but the other archer’s only success stuck smack dab in the middle of the pirate’s eye. According to the shrine’s priest, that means fish galore in every Minoshima household in 2008!

Some families in the region will be blessed with more than fish. The reports say that the targets themselves will be removed from their stands and taken to local homes—they didn’t say whose—to be used as objects of veneration in supplication for health and safety in the coming year.

They might find it a bit unnerving to be stared at by a big old black pirate’s eye every time they go into the kitchen for a snack, but if it gets them through the year hale, hearty, and full of fish, then why the heck not?