Mountains and ancestors

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120421cc.html

The late Narao Higashiura in his climbing outfit (photo by Tomohiko Yoshida/Chunichi Shimbun)

A small article in the Japan Times yesterday caught my attention.  it was an odd item about a man who had climbed mountains for 9,738 consecutive days.  That’s a staggering 27 years!! Every single day, come rain or come shine, he’d gone out and climbed up some mountain or other. What’s more the man in question started when he retired at age 59 and only gave up at the point of death when he was 86.

What sort of motivation would drive anyone to embark on such craziness?  Well, there are all kinds of reasons one could imagine. Environmentalism.  The adrenalin rush.  For charity.  The benefits of exercise and fresh mountain air.  Desperation to get into the Guinness Book of Records…

The reason given by the man in question is unexpected…   the reason, he declared, is that he was doing it for his deceased relatives and as a gift to his dead parents.  It was a form of offering to his ancestors, and the thought of them helped sustain him on his endless mission of mountain climmbing.

What makes the story interesting is that it cuts at the very essence of Japanese spirituality – ancestor worship and mountains.  Both have been part of the religious frame in Japan since time immemorial, without belonging to any one religion in particular.  Instead they extend across the spectrum, affecting Buddhism and Shinto alike. Indeed, it seems to me they can – and do – exist quite independent of any belief system.  They are rooted in the Japanese soul.

There are many people in countries around the world that find spirituality in climbing mountains.  But few have made such a cult out of it as shugendo (mountain asceticism).  Similarly there are many Japanese who profess to be atheist, who follow no religion in particular, yet maintain a butsudan (altar) and honour the memory of their parents and grandparents in ritual fashion.

Mountains and ancestors inhabit different dimensions.  The former is physical, the latter generational. One reaches upwards, the other backwards. One invokes awe, the other gratitude. When they come together, they pack a powerful punch – ancestral spirits on mountain sides lie outside most settlements in Japan.

Mountains and ancestors – the twin pillars of Japanese spirituality!

Shugendo practitioner blowing a conch-horn in the mountains