In an article for the Japan Times, Stephen Mansfield writes of a possible origin for Japanese gardens, rooted in native spirituality before the influx of continental culture from the sixth century onwards.
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Water, bridge and gravel at Kibitsu Jinja – influences on the Japanese garden design? (Photos by J. Dougill)
In the search for its origins, we have to return to a world of pre-Shinto forest glades. If, as Francis Bacon contended, “God Almighty first planted a garden,” the ancient Japanese had to contend, not with a single god, but a pantheon of deities too numerous to count. The simple arrangements of stones, created in forest glades and on pebbled clearings beside waterfalls, were the work of men in deference to the gods, perhaps even with a touch of fear for the calamities that could ensue if the correct observations were not made.
Nature, in a world devoid of temples, shrines or religious texts, provided a stage on which stones, trees, mountains and streams substituted as high altars. In these sacred sites, designed to create a space conducive to worship and benevolent co-existence, large boulders called iwakura, were placed.
Purified spaces were made around these stones, the area delineated with rice fiber ropes called shimenawa. At a later stage, paper streamers, known as gohei, were strung around the girth of cryptomeria trees. A convincing argument could be made that these ritual spaces, with their sculptural beauty and aesthetic appeal, were the prototypes of the Japanese stone garden. In a later development, beds of sand or white gravel were placed around the rocks, creating a border between the sacred and human.
Sacred rocks at Kibitsu Jinja, inspiration for the Japanese garden?
Just to the north of Kyoto, Ohara is a picturesque village with a traditional, rural feel. It’s known locally for its vegetables, but has a wider claim to fame as host to the celebrated Buddhist temple of Sanzen-in. The village has other temples of note, including Jakko-in which housed the tragic figure of Kenreimonin, mother of Emperor Antoku, until her death in 1214.
Along with its temples, Ohara has some interesting shrines which show how the religion is interwoven into the fabric of the village community and how it plays a vital part in keeping alive local folklore.
Ohara’s main shrine, Ebumi Jinja, stands on a mountain and is passed by the Kyoto Trail that runs round three quarters of the city. Easier to access is a branch shrine called Umenomiya, which stands beside the main road. It is unattractive as shrines go, and the surrounds look desolate. This is hardly representative of ‘a nature religion’ that one might expect in such a rural location.
Umenomiya Jinja. On the right is the storehouse for the mikoshi (portable shrine). On the left is the shrine itself. Unusually the storehouse completely steals the attention.
The dominant building here, seen in the picture above, is a storehouse for the mikoshi, which is paraded round the village on May 5 each year. Unusually, the storehouse overshadows the shrine itself. Thee was a desolate air to the scene, as if the shrine had been cut off from its natural surrounds, though it continues to play a vital part in the community life.
Despite its rural location, the shrine is hemmed in between a main road and adjacent buildings. One wonders whether the kami are comfortable in such surrounds.
As an auxiliary of Ebumi Shrine, Umenomiya enshrines Konohana Sukuyahime, goddess of Mount Fuji and the blossom-princess who represents life’s fragility. It is also understood to enshrine the empress and princess of Ebumi Shrine, known together as Himemiya. The kami thus have a strong female presence, though that is not at all evident.
On the other side of the village stands a shrine with a highly unusual name in these post-Meiji times. It’s called Hando-ji Jinja, literally Hando Buddhist Temple Shrine. Before the Meiji Restoration, such syncretic titles were common, and very few shrines acted independently of their Buddhist neighbours. In fact one statistic I’ve seen suggests that only 10% counted themselves as purely Shinto with a dedicated Shinto priest, rather than being served by Buddhist ritualists.
In the foreground notice the stone shrine for Jizo, a Buddhist deity, at the entrance to Hando-ji Shrine.
Meiji fanatics were keen to strip Shinto of all Buddhist connections, so how did little Hando-ji Jinja survive? Well, according to the notice board it’s a Shugendo shrine, and the kami worshipped here is Hando Daigongen (an avatar, or Buddhist deity manifest in kami form).
On October 10 each year a miko performs a hot water splashing ceremony, and until recently on the same day there used to be a sumo competition for the enjoyment of the kami, with boys in the afternoon and adults in the evening. It started around 1942 during WW2 when there was a nationalistic sumo boom, and a dohyo was made. Such was the excitement that they even had a yokozuna come visit. As the boom passed in the postwar period, the practice fell out of favour and is no longer held.
Otsuu no mori where the head of a huge serpent is buried which once tormented the village. The little shrine visible in the picture serves to pacify its spirit.
A third village item to catch our attention was a piece of folklore sanctified by a small Shinto shrine, known as a hokora. A notice board told of a young woman called Otsuu who caught the eye of an aristocrat visiting Ohara one day. Captivated by her beauty, he took off to his palace back in Kyoto. But when she fell ill, he grew tired of her and returned her to Ohara. She was so distraught at this that she drowned herself in the river.
As her spirit left her body, it turned into a big serpent that haunted the village and scared the villagers. When the nobleman made another visit to Ohara, the serpent rose up and attacked him, but in the nobleman’s procession were armed guards who leapt to his defense and cut the serpent into three separate pieces – head, body and tail. That night there was a storm, during which a scream could be heard, and the villagers supposed this must be Otsuu’s ‘hungry ghost’ thwarted of revenge, so they took the serpent’s remains and buried them in three different places, performing rituals to pacify her soul. The place in the picture above, called Otsuu no mori, was where the head was buried.
So what can we learn from all this? The shrines of Ohara suggest Shinto is not simply ‘a nature religion’ but a mainstay of the community. It cherishes the past and fosters ancient customs. It represents continuity when all around is change. It exemplifies too how particularism can ally itself to a universal religion like Buddhism. It is, in the end, what gives a place like Ohara its identity.
View over Ohara, nestled beneath the surrounding hills
The following piece by George A. Keyworth is extracted from the beginning of a longer paper, annotated and with Japanese kanji for names. To see the original, please click here.
On the ‘SHINTŌ’ STATUES OF MATSUO SHRINE
In 2004, the curatorial staff at Kyoto National Museum launched a special exhibition called, ‘The Sacred World of Shinto Art in Kyoto’. Chief among the objects on display was a ‘seated male deity’ from Matsuno’o. The statue is 99.6 cm high, was apparently carved from a single block of Hinoki cypress wood, and can be dated to the mid ninth-century according to the consensus reached by art historians. Details provided by the accompanying exhibit catalog describe the statue as a gohōjin, a protector of the Buddhist dharma. It is most likely an image of the male Ōyamakui no kami (alt. Ōyamagui), who was enshrined at Matsuo alongside his wife, Ichikishimahime no mikoto (alt. Okitsushima), no later than 866 CE. What makes this statue unique is its status as the oldest so-called ‘Shintō’ statue from Kyoto, as well as the fact that it is the primary—or larger—one in a triad of ‘Shintō’ statues on display in a building called the Shinzōkan. This building has been on site at Matsuo Taisha in western Kyoto since 1975, when a major renovation of the shrine precincts was completed. Both the Shinzōkan and three landscape gardens—the Jōko no niwa (Prehistoric Garden), Kyokusui no niwa (Meandering Stream Garden), and Hōrai no niwa (Penglai Garden)—designed by Shigemori Mirei (1896–1975) promote the legendary antiquity of Matsuo shrine as the chief clan shrine for the Hata family. There seems to be scholarly consensus that the Hata clan of wealthy immigrants arrived in Japan from Silla (Shiragi), Korea—probably in the Chikuzen region of Kyūshū first—by the second half of the fifth-century.
In a study published in 2011 of the ‘Shintō statues’ of Matsuo shrine that are on display within the Shinzōkan, Itō Shirō, an eminent art historian and current director of the Wakayama Prefectural Museum, agreed that the ‘seated male deity’ lent to Kyoto National Museum in 2004 is a statue of Ōyamakui. However, he postulated that it may have been commissioned by Enchin (814–891), the Tendai patriarch and fifth abbot of Enryakuji on Mount Hiei , before he departed for China in 853. On the contrary, perhaps it is simply a mishōtai (lit. revered true body) that was enshrined at Matsuo kami shrine-temple complex or multiplex— jingūji —during the ninth-century. This is following eighth-century precedents historical accounts that discuss offerings being made to statues at shrine-temple complexes in the provinces, such as at Iwasahiko jinganji (Obama city, Fukui prefecture during the Yōrō period (717–724)…
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For the rocks and roots of Matsuo Shrine, please see here.
In the section below of Isabella Bird’s account of the Ainu (Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, p. 275), she deals with the most famous aspect of the religion – the cult of the bear. Most people today think of the Ainu as a bear-worshipping tribe who are hairier than the typical Japanese. It’s also supposed that because they ‘worship’ the bear, they have some kind of close relationship, though as Green Shinto has noted on previous occasions, the treatment of bears can be extremely cruel and involves blood sacrifice. (See here for the release of museum bears, for which Green Shinto campaigned.)
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Wikicommons picture of Bear Festival in the 1930s
Bird writes,…
The peculiarity which distinguishes the rude mythology is the ‘worship’ of the bear, the Yezo bear being one of the finest of his species; but it is impossible to understand the feelings by which it is prompted, for they worship it after their fashion, and set up its head in their villages, yet they trap it, kill it, eat it and sell its skin. There is no doubt that this wild beast inspires more of the feeling which prompts worship than the inanimate forces of nature, and the Ainus may be distinguished as bear-worshippers, and their greatest religious festival or Saturnalia as the Festival of the Bear. Gentle and peaceable as they are, they have a great admiration for fierceness and courage; and the bear, which is the strongest, fiercest, and most courageous animal known to them, has probably in all ages inspired them with veneration. Some of their rude chants are in praise of the bear, and their highest eulogy on a man is to compare him to a bear. (…)
In all Ainu villages, specially near the chief’s house, there are several tall poles with the fleshless skull of a bear on the top of each, and in most there is also a large cage, made grid-iron fashion, of stout timbers, and raised two or three feet from the ground. At the present time such cages contain young but well-grown bears, captured when quite small in the early spring. After the capture the bear cub is introduced into a dwelling house, generally that of the chief, or sub-chief, where it is suckled by a woman, and played with by the children, till it grows too big and rough for domestic ways and is placed in a strong cage, in which it is fed and cared for, as I understand, till the autumn of the following year, when, being strong and well-grown, the Festival of the Bear is celebrated. The customs of this festival vary considerably and the manner of the bear’s death differs among the mountain and coast Ainus, but everywhere there is a general gathering of the people, and it is the occasion of a great feast, accompanied with much saké and a curious dance, in which men alone take part.
Yells and shouts are used to excite the bear, and he becomes much agitated a chief shoots him an arrow inflicting a slight wound which maddens him, on which the bars of the cage are raised, and he springs forth, very furious. At this stage the Ainus run upon him with various weapons, each one striving to inflict a wound, as it brings good luck to draw his blood. As soon as he falls down exhausted, his head is cut off, and the weapons with which he has been wounded are offered to it, and he is asked to avenge himself upon them. Afterwards the carcass, amidst a frenzied uproar, is distributed among the people, and amidst feasting and riot the head, placed upon a pole, is worshipped i.e. it receives libations of saké, and festival closes with general intoxication. In some villages it is customary for the foster-mother of the bear to utter piercing wails while he is delivered to his murderers, and after he is slain to beat each one of them with a branch of a tree.
For one or two years the bear cub is brought up by a foster-mother before being ritually slaughtered. Here seen with a Japanese visitor c. 1930.
For an excellent 28 minute documentary made in the 1930s of the Ainu Bear Festival (Iyomande/Iomante), please see here. It shows how the Bear Spirit made incarnate in an individual bear is released to join its maker by ritual killing. After the sending off ceremony, there is celebration with dance, song and saké in the hope of being blessed with more bear hunting in the coming year. Interestingly this revelry takes place in mid-winter, season of death and rebirth celebrated throughout the northern hemisphere with frolics and feasting.
This is the second part of a series based around the writings of the remarkable Isabella Bird, who visited Japan in 1878. In Part One she is taken by some Ainu villagers to visit a hill shrine dedicated to Yoshitsune, the medieval warrior. In the passage below, taken from p.274-5 of Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, she discusses nature worship and Ainu gods. (The libations of saké, sprinkled in different directions is the same purification rite as in Siberian shamanism.)
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There cannot be anything more vague and destitute of cohesion than Ainu religious notions. With the exceptions of the hill shrines of Japanese construction dedicated to Yoshitsune, they have no temples, and they have neither priests, sacrifices, nor worship. Apparently though all traditional time their cultus has been the rudest and most primitive form of nature-worship, the attaching of a vague sacredness to trees, rivers, rocks, and mountains, and of vague notions of power for good or evil to the sea, the forest, the fire, and the sun and moon. I cannot make out that they possess a trace of the deification of ancestor, though their rude nature worship may well have been the primitive form of Japanese Shinto. The solitary exception to their adoration of animate and inanimate nature appears to be the reverence paid to Yoshitsune, to whom they believe they are greatly indebted, and, it is supposed by some, will yet interfere on their behalf.
Ainu prayer sticks
Their gods – that is the outward symbols of their religion, corresponding most likely with the Shinto gohei – are wands and posts of peeled wood, whitted nearly to the top, from which the pendent shavings fall down in white curls. These are not only set up in their houses, sometimes to the number of twenty, but on precipices, banks of river and streams, and mountain-passes, and such wands are thrown into the rivers as the boatmen descend rapids and dangerous places.
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I have taken infinite trouble to learn from themselves what their religious notions are, and Shinondi tells me that they have told me all they know, and the whole sum is a few vague fears and hopes, and a suspicion that there are things outside themselves more powerful than themselves, whose good influences may be obtained, or whose evil influences may be averted, by libations of saké.
Ainu garment
The word worship is in itself misleading… it simply means libations of saké, waving bowls and waving hand, without any spiritual act of deprecation or supplication. In such a sense an such alone they worship the sun and moon (but not the stars), the forest, and the sea. the wolf, the black snake, the owl and several other beasts and birds have the kamoi, god, attached to them, as the wolf is ‘the howling god’, the owl ‘the bird of the gods,’ a black snake the ‘raven god’; but none of these things are now ‘worshipped,’ wolf-worship having quite lately died out. Thunder, ‘the voice of the gods,’ inspires some fear. The sun, they say, is their best god, and the fire their next best, obviously the divinities from whom their greatest benefits are received. Some idea of gratitude pervades their rue notions, as in the case of the ‘worship’ paid to Yoshitsune, and it appears in one of the rude recitations chanted at the Saturnalia which in several places conclude the hunting and fishing seasons; –
‘To the sea which nourishes us, to the forest which protects us, we present our grateful thanks. You are two mothers that nourish te same child; do not be angry if we leave one to go to the other.
‘The Ainus will always be the pride of the forest and of the sea.
The solitary act of sacrifice which they perform is the placing of a worthless, dead bird, something like a sparrow, near one of their peeled wands, where it is left till it reaches an advanced stage of putrefaction. ‘To drink for the god’ is the chief act of “worship,” and thus drunkenness and religion are inseparably connected, as the more saké the Ainus drink the more devout they are, and the better pleased are the gods. It does not appear that anything but saké is of sufficient value to please the gods. The libations to the fire and the peeled post are never omitted, and are always accompanied by the inward waving of the saké bowls.
Ainu housing with thatched roof and walls of woven reed over a timber frame
The Ainu religion dates back further than Shinto and has much in common. Indeed, it’s sometimes said that it was the basis from which Shinto developed. The similarities are at once apparent for the Ainu worshipped kamuy, invisible spirits that equate to kami.
Due to suppression by the Wajiin or Yamato Japanese, the Ainu religion is no longer practised in the way it once was, but we can get a feel of the traditional way of life thanks to the amazing Isabella Bird (1831-1904). This extraordinary adventurer made a journey in 1878 to Japan, during which she travelled with a Japanese attendant into Ainu-occupied Hokkaido.
She visited several villagers, stayed in Ainu houses, and took part in the Ainu way of life, including their religious rites. These are written up in a detailed account of her visit, which begins with the introduction below to an Ainu hillside place of worship. (pages 251-2 in the Doverbook paperback edition). Remarkably it’s for Yoshitsune, a Japanese warrior of the twelfth century. How extraordinary, one might think, but it turns out Isabella Bird was quite mistaken as shown by the passage by John Batchelor which follows hers. In fact she might well have been the victim of a piece of misinformation by the Ainu designed to deceive the Wajin (Yamato Japanese). Please be sure to read both passages….
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Chris Willson/Alamy Stock Photo
On the very edge of the cliff, at the top of the zigzag, stands a wooden temple or shrine, such as one sees in any grove, or on any high place on the main island [Honshu], obviously of Japanese construction, but concerning which Ainu tradition is silent. No European had ever stood where I stood, and there was a solemnity in the knowledge. The sub-chief drew back the sliding door, and all bowed with much reverence. It was a simple shrine of unlacquered wood, with a broad shelf at the back, on which there was a small shrine containing a figure of the historical hero, Yoshitsune, in a suit of tarnished brass candlesticks, and a coloured Chinese picture representing a junk. Here, then, I was introduced to the great god of the mountain Ainus. There is something very pathetic about these people keeping alive the memory of Yoshtsune, not on account of his martial exploits, but simply because their tradition tells them that he was very kind to them. They pulled the bell three times to attract his attention, bowed three times, and made six libations of saké, without which ceremony he cannot be approached. They asked me to worship their god, but when I declined on the ground that I could only worship my own God, the Lord of Heaven and Earth and Heaven, of the dead and of the living, they were too courteous to press their request. As to Ito [her Japanese servant], it did not signify to him whether or not he added another god to his already crowded Pantheon, and he ‘worshipped’ i.e. bowed down, most willingly before the great hero of his own, conquering race.
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Later in a footnote, Bird explains that Yoshitsune was a hero of the Gempei War in the twelfth century and brother of Yoritomo, the barbarian quelling great general, and that he was forced into committing suicide by his brother suspicious of his popular appeal. “Many believe that he escaped to Yezo [Hokkaido], she continues, “and lived among the Ainu for many years, dying among them at the close of the twelfth century. None believe this more firmly than the Ainus themselves, who assert that he taught their fathers the arts of civilisation, with letters and numbers, and gave them righteous laws, and he is worshipped by many of them under a name which signifies Master of the Law’.
Yoshitsune shrine at the supposed place of his death in Hiraizumi (photo Dougill)
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In a revealing extract from his book on Ainu worship, the Anglican missionary John Batchelor provides a very different story from Isabella Bird’s account. Batchelor lived from 1877 to 1941 among the Ainu, and as such must be considered the leading authority on their spirituality. Fluent in Ainu, he was a fierce critic of Japanese cruelty to the people. (Thanks to Green Shinto reader, Joseph Cronin, for pointing out the passage below.)
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In the first place, it must be clearly understood that, when persons say the Ainu worship Yoshitsune, they mean not that people as a nation, but merely a few individuals resident in the Saru district. Again, it is not even asserted that all the Saru Ainu worship him, but only those of Piratori. Now, there are two Piratoris, viz. Piratori the upper, and Piratori the lower. These two villages were once united, but now are situated from a quarter to half a mile apart. The shrine of Yoshitsune (and there is but one shrine in Yezo) is at the upper Piratori, and the inhabitants of the lower village will tell an inquirer that it is the people of the upper Piratori who worship the person in question. Now, the upper village contains only thirty-two huts, and we find that not even ten persons out of these families really worship Yoshitsune. It is clear, then, that the Ainu, considered as a race or nation, do not at the present day deify that hero.Then, again, it should be noted that the present shrine is decidedly of Japanese make and pattern: in all respects it is like the general wayside shrines one may see anywhere in Japan. It was built about ten years ago by a Japanese carpenter resident at a place called Sarabuto (Ainu, San-o-butu). Previous to this there was also a Japanese-made shrine on the same spot, but a much smaller one. The idol in the shrine is both small and ugly; it is a representation not so much of a god as of a warrior, for it is dressed in armour and is furnished with a pair of fierce-looking, staring eyes, and has a horribly broad grin. It is just such an idol as one might expect in this case, seeing that Yoshitsune was a warrior. Besides this, the Ainus have treated the image to an inao or two. There is nothing more, and the shrine is too small for a person now, according to Ainu ideas and usages, it is necessary to turn to the east in worshipping God, the goddess of fire alone excepted. Hence the custom of building all huts with the principal end facing the east. But the shrine of Yoshitsune is placed in such a position that the worshippers would have to sit or stand with their backs to the east. The image of Yoshitsune is looked upon from the east; hence, speaking from analogy, it would appear that it is not the Ainu worshipping Yoshitsune, but either Yoshitsune worshipping the Ainu, or the Ainu insulting the Yoshitsune. Such a conclusion may appear far-fetched; but, in any case, the position of the shrine of Yoshitsune does not come up to the acknowledged requirements of the Ainu ideas of deity worship.
Again, the Ainu say that they would not worship an idol because it would be directly against the expressed command of Aioina Kamui, their reputed ancestor. The Ainu are, in many things, a very conservative people, and in the matter of religion particularly so. Note the following incident. In the days of the Tokugawa regime so runs the tale the Ainu were ordered by the Government, or rather by the authorities of Matsumai, to cut their hair in the Japanese fashion. The result was a great meeting of the Yezo chiefs, which ended in sending a deputation to beg that the order might be countermanded, or at least suffered to lapse. ‘For,’ say the Ainu,’ we could not go contrary to the customs of our ancestors without bringing down upon us the wrath of the gods.’ And though a few Ainu, particularly those at Mori, did cut their hair as ordered, the people as a whole were let off. If, then, a mere change in the fashion of cutting the hair was resisted, what would have been done to prevent the institution of idol-worship? Notwithstanding all this, there is still the fact to be accounted for that some Ainu state that Yoshitsune is worshipped by a few of their number, though very seldom. What is the explanation ?
An Ainu himself shall answer the first question. You know,’ says he, ‘we have for a long time been subject to the Japanese Tono Sama and Yakunin, and it has been to our interest that we should try to please them as much as possible, so as not to bring down trouble upon ourselves. As we know that Yoshitsune did come among our ancestors, it was thought that nothing would please the officials more than for them to think that we really worship Yoshitsune, who was himself a Japanese. And so it came to pass that the shrine was asked for and obtained.’
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The above is taken from The Ainu of Japan (1892) and the extract can be accessed here. For an alternative version of the Yoshitsune story, see this Hokkaido Prefecture site which claims the warrior-deity was in fact foisted on the Ainu by Japanese newcomers. (With thanks to Joseph Cronin for pointing out this reference too.)
Donald Richie (left) handing over a signed copy of his book to one of his fans
Donald Richie was one of three American giants of Japanese culture in the postwar years, together with Donald Keene and Edward Seidensticker. He came to speak at my university and was kind enough to write a foreword for my book on Kyoto. Like many others, I loved his travel writing in The Inland Sea, and amongst the many thoughtful insights is a passage on Shinto that deserves wider recognition. So here it is, hung around a visit to an out of the way hillside shrine he had come across. (pages 25-27 in the Stone Bridge Press edition)
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Many Shinto shrines lie on heights. One goes up and up and up to worship. The steps lead straight into the sky and are always steep. It is work to reach such a shrine. The faithful must arrive puffing, gasping, senses reeling. This is as it should be. One arrives as though new born, helpless, vulnerable. One’s panting sounds in the ears because a shrine is very quiet, quieter than a church. A church is hushed because one is made to be quiet; a shrine is simply quiet. It is so far away that noise does not reach.
You yourself may be as noisy as you please. Gasps for breath, eventual shouts and laughter, are quickly swallowed up. You speak in a normal voice as you walk about, investigating everything, peering behind this door, into that box. The reverent, the hushed, the awed – these have small place in a shrine. If there is any restraint, it comes from nature itself. You may lower your voice, just as you naturally lower your voice in a grove or a gorge. If you feel like it, you impose a willing silence upon yourself.
Shinto prayer is not communal prayer. It is solitary and spontaneous. No one says when to begin or when to stop. You choose your own time. You speak to the gods in the way you might greet your hosts at a party. It is a discreet, friendly, happy, polite prayer.
Apparently no came to pray any more in this small shrine. The stone steps had been forced apart n places by roots of trees grown large after the shrine was built. the only motion in this tangle of bushes and weeds were the large red crabs that, looking already cooked, refused to move, menaced with waving cleft claws, and denied being afraid.
AT the top one is ready for the god. One is reeling, fainting, panting. And there, as though for reward, spread out like a banquet, is a view of the other side of the bay, the sea, the distant farther island, all gleaming in the setting sun, as though cast from bronze and floating on lacquer.
Here at the top it was still day, though below, back toward the village, the sea was clouded and the beach was darkening. The shrine, seen through a line of trees, gleamed a rich yellow, the color of cut wood in sunlight. It was silent. I heard the cicadas the moment they ceased.
Walking through the clinging weeds I crossed to the shrine and stood before the votive box. The god was just inside the closed doors in front of me. I pulled the rope of the god-summoning rattle. The sound was like that of a dry husk shaken. These gods have no bells – the only sound they know is this dusty sound of dried seeds shaken by the winds.
Shinto is nature. Perhaps animism – and Shinto is the only formal animistic religion left – is the true religion. It has roots deep in all of us. One recognizes this. It is the only religion that can inspire the feeling children know when the wind or a rock is made god for a week or a day. Its essence is unknown. The religion speaks to us, to something in us which is deep and permanent.
Once I had sounded the rattle, once its rasping cry, like the quiver of a cicada, had died, once the god was looking from his trellised door way, I was afraid not to give. The votive box looked hungry, its slats like teeth.
The Shinto gods are near us. they prefer money. I dropped a coin; then, not knowing what else to do, shook the rattle again. A dark shape stood for a second against the sky, whirled about me, was a speck of black in the darkening sky, was gone. It was a bat.
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One of the many buildings at Ise that is rebuilt every twenty years
Climbing slowly down the shadowed tones, I thought of Ise, the greatest shrine of all, the mother shrine, home of the Sun Goddess herself. A visit to any shrine, as humble and forgotten a one as this, leads one to consider such imponderables as life, death. Thoughts of ancient Ise led me to consider another – time.
Time for the West is a river. Down its changing yet forever unchanging length we float. In the East, however, the river is more. a symbol for life, our earthly span, the ukiyo, than it is for time itself.
Time has no symbol in this Asia where almost everyone, at least formerly, lived in a continuous and unvarying present. If it had one, it might be a symbol as startlingly up-to-date as the oscillating current. The reason this occurs is Ise – not only one of the great religious complexes of the world but the only answer yet discovered to man’s universal wish either to invent the perfect perpetual-motion machine or, else, to stop time entirely.
The way to stop time, the Japanese discovered, is letting it have its own way Just as the shape of nature is observed, revered, so is the contour of time. Every twenty years – and for over a thousand years – the shrine at Ise is razed and a new one is erected on an adjacent plot reserved for that purpose. After only two decades, the beam-ends barely weathered, the copper turned to palest green, the shrine is destroyed. Only twenty generations of spiders have spun their webs, only four or five generations of swallows have built their nests, not even a single blink has covered the great staring eye of eternity – yet down come the great cross-beams, off come the reed roofs, and the pillars are carried off to be reused in other parts of the shrine grounds.
On the adjacent plot is constructed a shrine that is in all ways similar to the one just dismantled. More, it is identical. Something dies, something is born, and the two things are the same. This ceremony, the sengushiki is a living exemplar of the greatest of religious mysteries, the most profound of human truths.
And time at last comes to a stop. Forever old, forever new, the shrines stand there for all eternity. This – and not the building of pyramids, or ziggurats, not the erection of Empire State Building or Tokyo Towers – is the way to stop time and make immortal that mortality which we cherish.
