Hiroshima 1945-2008

Thanks to Paul!

UPDATE: AMG points out a photo of Yokohama got in there somehow. That reminds me of an article I once saw in a Chicago newspaper with a map of Japan that showed Yokohama where Osaka is.

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

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

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

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

Left over right? Or right over left?

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

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

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

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

Santa’s elves

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

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

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

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

Cocoon balls

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

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

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

Cleaning house

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

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

Supersized kagami mochi

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

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

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

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

Restoring a two-year tradition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Akemashite o-medeto gozaimasu!

Matsuri da! (71): Demons detest smelly sardines!

AT TIMES LIKE THESE, it would helpful if computer technology had reached a point of development at which odors could be conveyed over the Internet in addition to audio, text, and video images.

That’s because some folks in Hiroshima City had a bright idea for driving out pesky demons way back in the Heian Period (8th to 12th centuries)—roasting sardine heads. It worked so well they’ve been doing it ever since.

The news department of RCC television filed a story about this year’s event earlier this month that you can see and hear with RealPlayer, if not smell it. The story lasts 58 seconds, the link is here, and it won’t last forever, so click quick!

Here’s a translation of the news reader’s summary:

Today is Setsubun (the 3rd). A Shinto shrine in Hiroshima City conducted an ancient Shinto rite for vanquishing demons by roasting sardine heads.

The Sumiyoshi shrine in Hiroshima City’s Naka Ward has been holding this event, known as the Yaikagashi, as a Setsubun festival since the Heian period. The shrine maidens roast the sardine heads, and legend has it that the odor will exorcise the demons.
　
(Shrine maiden at the start of the ceremony) “Everybody, let’s quickly roast 1,000 sardine heads to drive (the demons) away.”

Fanning the flames with a large fan will create such an unpleasant odor that it will disperse the red devil and the god of poverty.

(Woman) “I want to go golfing. I want a special invitation to go golfing.”

This drives away the evil spirit connected with last year’s incidents that involved golfing invitations and other deceptions. (This is a reference to former Vice Defense Minister Moriya Takemasa and his golf games with a former executive of Yamada Corp., who was involved in a financial scandal.)

After the rite, everyone was given a sardine head impaled on a holly olive branch to take home.

Now if that won’t drive away the demons, nothing will!

Whale and shark: New Year’s treats in parts of Japan

TURKEY OR HAM is usually the main course of choice for Christmas dinner in the United States. O-sechi ryori, the meal served on New Year’s Day in Japan, consists primarily of seafood and vegetable dishes. There is some variation in the types of food served in different regions, however, and some of those variations may raise a few eyebrows, if not whet a few appetites.

For example, people in southern Hokkaido, the northernmost of the four main Japanese islands, think whale meat, often prepared as kujirajiru (whale soup) is an indispensable part of their New Year’s feast. The accompanying photo shows frozen whale on display in a Hakodate market

This particular shop offers frozen steak and what is called bacon from minke whales. The steak sells for 1,000 yen ($US 9.17) for 100 grams and comes from whale caught in the South Seas, while the bacon, which is more expensive at 3,500 yen ($US 32.10) for 100 grams, is made from locally caught whale. One shop clerk admitted it was expensive, but said that it sold well because “people want to eat something tasty for their New Year’s dinner”.

Another seafood shop in the city offers whale bacon that it makes itself, which is not the usual practice. They sell it for a more affordable price of 1,200 yen for 100 grams. The shop owner said they use only salt in the production and eschew preservatives and artificial coloring. They also have minke whale steaks at 600 yen for 100 grams, and bacon made from the dwarf minke for 2,000 yen for the same weight.
　
All the stores report that the sliced varieties of whale, both frozen steak and bacon, have been selling very well in recent years.

Meanwhile, further south in the northern part of Hiroshima, a New Year’s day dinner is not complete without shark meat, which locally is called wani (a word that means crocodile everywhere else in Japan). Fishery cooperatives in Nagasaki and Wakayama ship the shark to merchants in the Hiroshima cities of Miyoshi and Shobara, where it is cut to order for retail customers.

Shark has little fat and a thick skin, which means it can keep for a long time. Years ago, when there was no mechanical refrigeration in the home, it was the only fish eaten as sashimi in some mountainous areas.
　
One maritime product company in Miyoshi orders shark about one to two meters in length. They handle about six tons worth of the fish at yearend, which is roughly 1/6th of its annual turnover. The highest quality shark sells for about 3,000 to 4,000 yen per kilogram retail.

Americans often complain about eating turkey sandwiches for three or four days after Christmas. I wonder if Hiroshima housewives hear the same complaints about shark meat!

It’s unlikely that anyone in Hokkaido complains about several consecutive days of whale, however. As I’ve noted before, some whale tastes better than steak. (I don’t understand the point of making bacon out of it, though.)

To read about another way of chowing down on shark meat, try this previous post. You might find yourself wondering why the folks in Hiroshima find it so appetizing.

Spirit of the Season in Seoul

THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT LIVES in Northeast Asia too, as this brief article from the Chunichi Shimbun reveals.

It was written by the newspaper’s Seoul correspondent, is in Japanese, and will not stay online for long, so here’s a quick translation:

I went to buy a Christmas tree with the family. We were looking for a large one about 180 centimeters high. We were told they would be cheaper than trees in Japan.

The store had several different types on display, with different heights and branch arrangements. We found a tree that we liked, and with the lights and silver-colored decorations, the bill came to 87,000 won. (About $US 92.60)

The clerk explained that the tree would be delivered to our home in the next two days, but it didn’t come. What did come was a call from the shop on the evening of the second day. “We’re all sold out of the tree you ordered. Would you like to have a different tree that costs 15,000 won more? We’ll cover the difference in price ourselves.”

I wondered how it would be different from the tree we ordered. The clerk explained the differences in the shape of the branches and the color, but I only vaguely understood what he said because he used a lot of vocabulary that I wasn’t familiar with. I asked them to deliver the tree on the condition that we could return it if we didn’t like it.

Happily, my family liked the tree, so I was relieved. I can understand the Korean that I use in my work because I’m accustomed to hearing it, but shopping still gives me a lot of trouble.

You might keep that story in mind the next time you read an article that would have you believe the Japanese and Koreans get along poorly with each other.

Note on the Tree

Sorry, that’ s not Seoul, but a Christmas tree story needs a Christmas tree photo, and I liked this one.

The tree is actually made of poinsettias and is on display at the Hiroshima Botanical Garden in Hiroshima City. About 130 plants were used to create the 2.5-meter high tree.

It is part of a larger seasonal exhibit in one of their greenhouses, which also includes the Manettia luteorubra, whose flowers are said to resemble candles, and cat thyme, which is a potent form of catnip and has silvery leaves.

Shogatsu: Hanging ropes instead of stockings in Japan

CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS are ubiquitous in commercial districts and individual shops throughout Japan this time of year, but at the same time more unobtrusive preparations are underway for the most important holiday in the country: New Year’s Day.

The Big Shimenawa

The many customs, both religious and secular, associated with the day make it the counterpart of Christmas in Western countries. One such custom is the hanging of shimenawa, ropes made of rice straw, over the exterior doorways of homes–and sometimes the front bumper of automobiles!

They are used to demarcate a place considered sacred and have traditionally been thought to ward off sickness and evil. That’s why they’re hung at Shinto shrines in front of the main hall and on the torii, or front gate. The photo with this post shows the parishioners at the Kameyama Hachiman Shinto shrine in Jinsekikogen-cho, Hiroshima Prefecture, replacing their shimenawa in time for the New Year’s holidays.

The shrine in Hiroshima gets a new shimenawa once every five years or so; the practice started here in 1949, and this year’s replacement was the 11th. The rice straw was gathered from about 1,000 square meters of land in late October after the harvest. Last month a group of 50 men did the work to braid it, and they hung it at the shrine entrance a couple of weeks ago. They started at 8:00 in the morning and finished in time for lunch; after all that work, they must surely have worked up an appetite.

The shrine priest remarked that fires caused serious damage throughout the town this year and hoped the new shimenawa would help protect them in the year to come.

This particular rope is much larger than usual: it is roughly 8 meters long, 1.2 meters in diameter at its widest point, and weighs about 300 kilograms. Nonetheless, it still isn’t nearly as big as the Big Daddy of shimenawa at the Izumo Shinto shrine in Shimane Prefecture, the oldest and one of the most important shrines in Japan. That one is nearly 4 meters in diameter and weighs 1,500 kilograms.

I’m glad I’m not part of the crew that has to replace it!