Gohei

Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850-1935) was a fascinating person, who stands in opposition to his one-time friend Lafcadio Hearn. I’ve recently ordered his biography. Chamberlain was a scholar and a rationalist.  Hearn was a romantic, who sought escape from convention and industrialisation.

Both men wrote illuminatingly on matters to do with Shinto. Chamberlain displayed his astonishing knowledge in Things Japanese (1890-1936) and contributed a translation of Kojiki (1882) which is still in print and used today.  Hearn wrote seductively of Japanese folk religion in such books as An Attempt at Interpretation (1904), as well as writing specifically on Japanese Religions.

In a short paper entitled ‘Notes on the Japanese Gohei, or paper offerings to the Shinto Gods’, Chamberlain traced the history of these ubiquitous items.  Prior to the eighth century, he says, they were made of cloth.  There was a white kind made from paper-mulberry (brussonetia papyrifera) and a blue kind made of hemp.  In ancient times the cloth would have been a most precious product and therefore a worthy offering.  I couldn’t help but be reminded here of the cloth one finds in shamanistic cultures, fluttering evocatively in the wind.

Shaman offerings of the Buryat Mongols near Irkutsk

After the advent of new technologies and the arrival of Chinese silk, cloth was no longer regarded as so special as before.  As a result paper was substituted at some stage, also a treasured item in ancient Japan.  The move was partly through frugality, Chamberlain claims, and partly “in accordance with that law of progress from the actual to the symbolical which characterises all religions”.

There are different styles of gohei, with the Yoshida style having four folds and the Shirakawa style having eight folds.  Major shrines such as Ise, Izumo and Kashima have their own slight variations too, so it’s something to look out for when visiting shrines.  If I could be permitted to coin a Japanese-type slogan, “let’s go-hei watching” !

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Basil Hall Chamberlain, “Note on the Japanese Go-Hei, or Paper Offerings to the Shinto Gods”, ‘The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland’, vol. 18 (1889), pp. 27-29.

For a gohei presented by Chamberlain to the British Museum, see here.

Gohei displayed at a sacred site at Iya Jinja in Shimane prefecture