What price piety?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nippon Noel: Eelectricity!

NOW HERE’S AN EXAMPLE of thinking outside the envelope. The Aquatotto fresh water aquarium in Kakamigahara, Gifu Prefecture, has set up a Christmas tree in their first floor lobby with lights powered by the discharge of an electric eel. The tree will be up until Christmas day.

Electric eels—which are more closely related to catfish than eels–discharge electricity when locating their prey or defending themselves. The specimen in the aquarium generates the juice when it’s been fed. The keepers have placed electrodes in the tank that detect and amplify the electricity to light up the two-meter-high tree.

The lights on that tree burn more brightly than one might suspect. The fish can grow from one to 2.5 meters long and weigh up to 20 kilograms. They also can generate up to 500 volts and 1 ampere of current (500 watts), and can be dangerous for adult humans.

Leave it to the Japanese to think of a way to use fish to make spirits bright during the holiday season!

Matsuri da! (58): One for the gods and one for the road

THE WEATHER’S TURNED NIPPY IN JAPAN, and for a nip to ward off fall’s chill, many Japanese turn to a type of sake called doburoku (or nigorizake, explained here). And this time of year, where do people go for a taste of some divinely inspired doburoku?

To a Shinto shrine, of course! This isn’t like the Catholic church, where only the priests get to surreptitiously sip the sacramental wine behind the sanctuary—in Japan they ladle it out for all the parishioners who show up for the services.

One of the most well-known of the doburoku festivals was held at the Shirakawa Hachiman shrine in Shirakawa-mura, Gifu Prefecture, on 14 and 15 October (first photo). The ceremony is held every fall to give thanks for a bountiful harvest, and it’s so well known that 15,000 people showed up on the first day.

The shrine’s doburoku has been made from a combination of locally produced grains for about 1,300 years, making this one very well-established tradition in a country known for them. The shrine authorities are considerate enough to provide entertainment for their visitors, too; a traditional lion dance (shishimai) is held in the village in the morning of the 14th, before they tap the kegs. Local women dispense the cloudy sake to the shrinegoers, who sit on straw mats on the shrine grounds, watch traditional Japanese folk music performed on a temporary stage set up on the grounds, and enjoy the fall weather.

In fact, the people of Shirakawa enjoy doburoku so much, two other shrines in the village have their own festivals in quick succession—one is held right after the Hachiman shrine’s event on the 16th and 17th, and the other immediately after that on the 18th and 19th.

There’s no off-premises drinking, but the people who buy a red lacquer sake cup get unlimited refills.

By this point, you might well be wondering if all this holy rolling in the gutter doesn’t create some dicey conditions for those driving home. Well, that occurred to the shrines too, especially considering that drunk driving has been an issue of growing concern in Japan over the past couple of years.

That’s why the organizers of the doburoku festival held at the Shirahige Tahara shrine further down the archipelago in Kitsuki, Oita Prefecture, on 17 and 18 October (second photo) took the initiative to discuss the matter with local police. The talks resulted in two policy changes. First, shrine visitors are now able to take home the divine brew without drinking it on the premises. Second, police set up inspection stations near the shrine to catch anyone in their cups while in the car.

(The Japanese sometimes set up checkpoints on city streets late on weekend nights through which every vehicle has to pass. All the drivers are checked for their sobriety. These checkpoints can be avoided by taking the long way around, but their presence does send a message. Also, every town has at least one taxi company with two drivers assigned to each cab–one to drive the passenger home, and one to drive the passenger’s car home.)

Shrine officials were concerned these stringent measures might depress attendance at their festival, which will celebrate its 1,300th anniversary in 2010. To their delight, those concerns proved to be unfounded, as the number of visitors exceeded last year’s total of 18,000. (Yes, that’s a lot of people, but consider how many folks would show up at St. Elmo’s if they gave out goblets of wine.) The shrine also had to deal with about 2,100 vehicles, an increase from 1,600 the year before.

To meet the demand, the priests used 1,200 kilograms of newly harvested rice to brew about 2,200 liters of doburoku. (This kind of sake doesn’t require as much time to ferment.)

But one 46-year-old man interviewed by the local newspaper had his own solution—he brought along his wife so she could drive him home!

There are about 10 Shinto shrines in Japan with the legal authorization to brew doburoku, and only one of them is on Shikoku, the smallest of the four main islands. That distinction belongs to the Uga shrine in Mitoyo, Kagawa Prefecture. There’s a good reason they were selected–the shrine has two guardian deities: one for food, and one for sake brewing.

And the two deities are all the more reason for doubling their fun, so they have two doburoku festivals—one in the spring to pray for a bountiful harvest, and one in the fall to give thanks for the harvest. The fall festival is held on 20 and 21 October.

Just before that, however, on the 18th, they held the Kuchiakeshiki, which literally means “mouth open ceremony”. That’s an expression used to denote the beginning of an event, such as a special sale, but you’ll have to admit it’s also particularly apt for a party to down doburoku.

The Kuchiakeshiki is held to test palatability and sweetness. (Doburoku tends to be very sweet.) The third photo was taken during that ceremony.

Brewing started at the end of September with newly harvested local rice and well water taken from the shrine grounds. The parishioners donned eboshi hats and white robes to grind the rice grains with a stone pestle, and produced roughly 280 liters.

Fifty people attended the Kuchiakeshiki. No fools they–after offering the new sake to the divinities, they tried it out themselves. Reports indicate they were pleased with both the palatability and the sweetness, and one of the brewmeisters said it had been a good idea to start brewing just when the weather turned cold.

The doburoku was passed out from 3:00 to 9:00 p.m. on the 20th, and on the morning of the 21st. We hope none of the recipients passed out later. They would have missed out on the entertainment—in addition to a lion dance and a taiko drum performance offered on the night of the 20th, visitors were also served local cuisine.

Doesn’t this sound like a great way to spend some time at a religious institution? And here’s the best part—you don’t have to convert to Shinto. You just show up at the shrine!

Matsuri da! (56): Walk through the magic ring…

THAT OLD-TIME RELIGION is still good enough for many in Japan, as some have observed, and the chinowa festivals shown in the photos are as old as any religious ceremonies in the country. They’re still being held throughout the archipelago today.

Chinowa, or more properly chi-no-wa, literally means “ring of the chi plant”. This is a eulalia grass found throughout East Asia and goes by several names in Japan, including kaya (which might be the most common).

The Bingo Fuduoki contains the first mention of chinowa. The fudoki were records kept over a 20-year period starting in 713 for each of Japan’s provinces at the time. They include agricultural, geographical, historical, and mythological information. The Bingo region corresponds to what is now the eastern half of Hiroshima Prefecture.

According to the Bingo Fudoki, the divinity Susano’o-no-Mikoto gave a chinowa to a local hero named Somin Shōrai, who escaped the effects of an epidemic by wearing it around his waist. (We’ve discussed this particular divinity before, here.) As a result, chinowa festivals are held throughout Japan in midsummer, when people were most concerned about the spread of contagion.

The first photo shows priests passing through a two-meter wide chinowa at the Inaba Shinto Shrine in Gifu City, Gifu Prefecture. After the priests go back and forth a few times, the shrine parishioners will follow suit. This is said to protect against illness and disaster.

Not all chinowa festivals are conducted to receive the blessings of good health, however. The Susukimizu shrine in Chikuma, Nagano Prefecture, uses a three-meter- high wreath in its festival to promote growth and intelligence in children. Their festival, which is not shown here, dates from the Edo period.

An elaborate variation, shown in the second photograph, is found at the Aoiaso shrine in Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto Prefecture. They don’t use eulalia grass in the construction of this chinowa. While keeping the general shape, they employ a bamboo frame instead. Strips of paper called gohei are hung from the frame. These are used to mark sacred areas or to attract the attention of divinities.

When I said old-time religion, I was serious; this shrine was established in 806, but they didn’t get around to holding a chinowa festival until 1386, almost 600 years later. (And that itself was more than 600 years ago.) The shrine stopped holding the festival for a time–no one exactly knows why–but they resumed in 1533.

The objective of this ceremony is to remove the sins and impurities of the parishioners. That chest the priests are carrying contains hundreds of human representations, called hitogata, which are drawn on more gohei. Those local parishioners who are unable to pass through the ring themselves, for whatever reason, write their name, address, age, and sex on the paper (and pay a fee). The priests hold a ceremony in which the sins are transferred from the person to the gohei before they are put in the chest. Then they walk through the ring three times. in this ceremony too, they are followed by area residents.

As often happens at traditional Japanese events when something good is free for the taking, this festival ends in a mad melee when the parishoners try to grab one of the gohei for themselves. Heaven help you if you get in the way. Those people who succeed in getting one place it on their kamidana, a sacred Shinto shelf in Japanese homes. Meanwhile, the priests dispose of the hitogata by setting them afloat on the river in another ceremony.

Now here’s a thought: this ceremony ends where Christian baptism begins.

But I’ll leave any speculation on the shape of the chinowa in the first photo to you…

Matsuri da! (18): Floats of unparalleled beauty

THOSE IN THE KNOW say it’s one of the three most beautiful festivals in Japan, and it was held last weekend on the 14th and 15th in Takayama, Gifu Prefecture. That’s the spring version of the Takayama Festival, the name used for both the Sanno Matsuri in April and the Hachiman Matsuri at Sakurayama Hachiman-gu Shrine in October. The main event is a large parade featuring about a thousand people in period costumes and 12 of the most elaborate floats you’ll see anywhere.

This is a joyous celebration of spring’s arrival, so the brilliant colors, sounds, and costumes are no surprise. The parade is a panorama of people wearing hats with bird feathers playing gongs and drums, or others performing the shishimai, or lion dance, wearing headgear that resembles a lion’s head. This is followed by the 12 floats, photographs of which often appear in newspapers around the country over the next few days, and two of which you can see here. These floats are exquisitely decorated, both on the exterior for public display, and on the interior as well, concealed under the roof or behind the doors.

They are indeed elaborate. The story goes that years ago, the local artisans and tradesmen who had accumulated great wealth were prohibited from using that wealth to enhance their rank, so they applied it for more material pursuits, one of which was the festivals. As a result, these events became more extravagant as the years passed.

The decorations include carvings, thick woven curtains, lacquerware, and bamboo blinds. The floats also have various devices, such as moving marionettes. Nightfall does not signal the festival’s end; rather, each float is decorated with some 100 traditional lanterns to create yet another stunning effect.

The origin of the Takayama Festival is not definitely known, but there’s a letter dating from 1692 stating the festival had been held for the last 40 years. Some historians think it may date back more than 100 years before that.

These floats were built through a scheme seen in other festivals throughout Japan. Several households joined together to form a community, with each household making a financial contribution. Human vanity being a universal trait, the communities started to vie with each other to produce the most beautiful or elaborate float. Some floats in festivals in other cities are built specifically for competition to break up the others. You won’t see that here–the Japanese government designated Takayama’s floats as an important cultural treasure in June 1969.

For more Takayama Festival photos, take the time to visit the sites here and here.