National Foundation Day at Kashihara Jingu

February 11 is National Foundation Day, and what could be more appropriate than to celebrate it at Kashihara Jingu in Nara prefecture (ancient Yamato). The shrine is supposedly located on the very palace where Emperor Jimmu started the country in 660 BC. At least that’s the mythology. Nearby lies his alleged grave, identified by the Meiji ideologues who introduced Shinto as the national religion after the restoration of the emperor system in 1868. As such the venue is a popular meeting place for nationalists.

The date originally coincided with the new year on the old lunar-solar calendar, but was fixed as Feb. 11 in 1873. The holiday was big in prewar times, but military displays as at Kashihara are restricted now to the small paramilitary far right groups from around the country.

A couple of years ago I was able to walk around the car park and see vans from all over western Japan. The paramilitary groups form up and march up to the shrine to pay respects, with orders being shouted out and their best uniforms on display. Some are well drilled, some are somewhat amateurish and comical. It’s all very surreal, as visitors and shrine priests politely ignore them. At the same time in the large courtyard in front of the shrine there’s an exhibition of martial arts put on by local groups, including aikido, kendo and swordsmanship.

Recently a law was passed to outlaw the vans of the far right groups, so whether things are quite the same I’m uncertain. Personally I find nationalism abhorrent, but intrigued by what kind of people would want to spend their free time marching around in uniform I got talking to a couple of members from a group in Nagoya. Like most Japanese, they turned out to be perfectly modest and civil. We didn’t talk politics, though!