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Buddhist kami

August 7, 2013 / John D. / 0 Comments

The Hachiman shrine in the grounds of Ginkaku-ji, a Zen temple

One of the striking facets of kami worship in Japan is how much of it lies outside the official parameters of Shinto. This is evident above all in the syncretic festivals and places of worship, where kami worship is part of a continuum embracing Buddhism, Taoism and Shugendo.

Two of Kyoto’s World Heritage Sites reinforce the view, because both are Buddhist yet both contain not just one kami shrine but two. One of the temples is Zen – The Silver Pavilion, aka Ginkakuji. The other is Shingon, namely Toji. At Ginkakuji the kami is honoured in a shrine that stands right next to the (non-)Silver Pavilion itself. At Toji there are two large shrines, almost adjacent to each other.

Toji:s protective shrine in front of Kyoto's tallest pagoda, showing the harmony of kami and Buddhism

Why would Buddhists honour kami so fervently in this way? All across Asia Buddhism showed a syncretic tendency, even from its very inception acceptance of Hindu deities. It’s not surprising then that it should want to adapt the local deities in Japan.

Kami became protectors of the Buddhists, as if the spirits were tied to the land. it was part of a this-world other-world distinction that seemed to make good sense.

Some of the syncretic deities took on surprising qualities. The kami Hachiman, for instance, was depicted as a Buddhist priest and celebrated as Sogyo Hachiman (Hachiman the priest). Just as remarkably, the kami Tenjin was said to have travelled to China where he studied Zen and became enlightened. (Tenjin was the the wrathful spirit of statesman Sugawara no Michizane (845-903).)

The depiction of kami in this way was a means of integrating native folk-cults under the Buddhist umbrella as fellow spirits on the path to enlightenment. They had a special place as guardians of Japan and Japanese culture, but in the end they were subject to Buddhist doctrine. The Meiji Restoration sought to ‘liberate’ them, though one could say that in the syncretic fusion lies Japan:s true soul.

Kami or Buddhist? Sogyo Hachiman shows the kami in the guise of a priest, on the path to enlightenment (courtesy art institute, chicago)

Shinto: the big choice

August 4, 2013 / John D. / 0 Comments

An article in the Bangkok Post by Phil Cunningham shows the dilemma that Shinto faces, as well as Japan as a whole, by fcussing on two influential figures – finance minister Taro Aso and celebrated anime maker, Hayao Miyazaki.

Taro is a former prime minister and leading nationalist, who recently suggested Japan should follow Hitler’s lead in revising its constitution. Needless to say, he’s an ardent advocate of ministerial visits to Yasukuni and the reinstitution of the trappings of State Shinto. Miyazaki on the other hand has based several of his films on Shinto themes, in particular nature spirits and folk beliefs. (For an overview of Shinto in his films, click here. For an academic article on Shinto in Spirited Away, click here.)

The two men thus provide very different perspectives on Shinto. One seeks to reinvent an inglorious past. The other offers ecological guidance for a polluted world. In their clash of worldviews lies the battle for the soul of Japan.

The nationalist Finance Minister, Taro Aso

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Published: 3 Aug 2013

Unresolved issues of history continue to haunt and distort the present, all the more so when hidden from view. Historical controversies need a good airing from time to time, not so much to salvage the the past as to save the future from repetition of past mistakes.

Japan’s militarists pose a case in point. There’s no shortage of foreign media noise when ludicrous denials are made about issues such as the Nanjing massacre and comfort women, or when war criminals are glorified at the Yasukuni Shrine, but more attention needs to be directed to Japan’s ongoing argument with itself.

The latest domestic flare-up is between Japanese defenders and detractors of the Peace Constitution, known as such for its war-renouncing clause. The 1947 constitution was conceived under US guidance as an antidote to militarism, and it remains in force today, a remarkable testament to both its peaceful vision and practical durability.

Anime king, Hayao Miyazaki (AFP/Getty)

On the one hand you have the gentle and reclusive Hayao Miyazaki, anime auteur extraordinaire and Japan’s answer to Walt Disney, who broke with his characteristic reticence to state: “Taking advantage of low voter turnout and changing the constitution without giving it serious though is unacceptable. I am against it.”

On the other hand you have Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso, tough-talking political blueblood so impatient to revise the Peace Constitution that he carelessly invoked the Nazi perfidy of changing the Weimar Constitution before people realised what was going on, saying: “Why don’t we learn from that method?”

The two latest salvos cut to the quick in the battle for the hearts and minds of Japan in this moment of national disquiet. It’s an argument between those whose find strength in peace versus those who find strength in war, a battle between the better and lesser angels of Japan’s sometimes militaristic nature.

Although both men were mere toddlers during the Pacific War, seven decades later it continues to haunt them. Tokyo-born Miyazaki was left with a life-long fascination of airplanes – tales of daring aviators… The provincial Mr Aso, who was a crack shot with the rifle as a youth, a shooter in the 1976 Olympics and something of a Yasukuni crackpot in old age, had a career trajectory shaped by the guiding hands of an elite family with links to both war criminals and postwar elite. The family firm Aso Cement, which he helmed in the 1970s, had a history of exploiting Allied POWs for unpaid slave labour during the war.

On a lighter note, Mr Aso has been dubbed Japan’s number one manga fan, based on frequent media sightings of him reading boy’s comics, an association further bolstered by his claim of reading 10 or 20 manga a week, including Golgo 13 and other teen fantasies about assassins and warriors.

Around the same time, Miyazaki penned the apocalyptic manga series, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, which launched his lifework of creating morally nuanced animated films laced with themes of flight and escape.

Miyazaki is an ardent defender of the Peace Constitution, but he is no more willing than his political nemesis Mr Aso to consign to the dustbin of history the entire war generation of Japanese men and women, many of whom were hapless ordinary folk doing their best to survive. It is precisely this kind of nuance that animates Miyazaki’s best work; his characters are idiosyncratic, individualistic, stubborn and even odd, but rarely does one encounter villains of the cardboard cutout variety. Indeed, his latest film, The Wind Rises, is about the decent, hard-working men who created the Mitsubishi Zero, as fine a piece of aviation engineering as any American aircraft of that era.

What Miyazaki’s films teach us is that there are all kinds of people in every society, and decent people can be found in the worst places at the worst of times, despite nationalistic posturing and the daunting social pressure to conform.

[For the full article, see here.]

Watts on Man and Nature

August 3, 2013 / John D. / 0 Comments

Alan Watts has been talking about ‘Man and Nature’ in the fortnightly podcasts issued under his name. Many of the points he makes relate to Shinto concepts. The integration of humans and nature in ‘Daishizen’. The way all human life is connected, to merge into a single kamihood after death. The idea of harmony.

Most interesting of all, he explains the identification of self and the sun. The Shinto mirror represents Amaterasu, the sun goddess. But when you look in the mirror, you see yourself. In this way, you become merged with the sun. You are the sun. Ridiculous? In the passage below Alan Watts makes it seem absolutely logical. Read on….

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You see, the problem is this. We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us. We have a certain number of actions that we define as voluntary, and we feel in control of those. And then over against that, there is all those things that are involuntary.

But the dividing line between these two is very inarbitrary. Because for example, when you move your hand, you feel that you decide whether to open it or to close it. But then ask yourself how do you decide? When you decide to open your hand, do you first decide to decide? You don’t, do you? You just decide, and how do you do that? And if you don’t know how to do it, is it voluntary or involuntary? Let’s consider breathing. You can feel that you breath deliberately; you don’t control your breath. But when you don’t think about it, it goes on. Is it voluntary or involuntary?

So, we come to have a very arbitrary definition of self. That much of my activity which I feel I do. And that then doesn’t include breathing most of the time; it doesn’t include the heartbeats; it doesn’t include the activity of the glands; it doesn’t include digestion; it doesn’t include how you shape your bones; circulate your blood. Do you or do you not do these things? Now if you get with yourself and you find out you are all of yourself, a very strange thing happens. You find out that your body knows that you are one with the universe. In other words, the so-called involuntary circulation of your blood is one continuous process with the stars shining.

If you find out it’s YOU who circulates your blood, you will at the same moment find out that you are shining the sun. Because your physical organism is one continuous process with everything else that’s going on. Just as the waves are continuous with the ocean. Your body is continuous with the total energy system of the cosmos, and it’s all you. Only you’re playing the game that you’re only this bit of it. But as I tried to explain, there are in physical reality no such thing as separate events.

So then. Remember also when I tried to work towards a definition of omnipotence. Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done; it’s just doing it. You don’t have to translate it into language. Supposing that when you got up in the morning, you had to switch your brain on. And you had to think and do as a deliberate process waking up all the circuits that you need for active life during hte day. Why, you’d never get done! Because you have to do all those things at once.

That’s why the Buddhists and Hindus represent their gods as many-armed. How could you use so many arms at once? How could a centipede control a hundred legs at once? Because it doesn’t think about it. In the same way, you are unconsciously performing all the various activities of your organism. Only unconsciously isn’t a good word, because it sounds sort of dead. Superconsciously would be better. Give it a plus rather than a minus.

Because what consciousness is is a rather specialized form of awareness. When you look around the room, you are conscious of as much as you can notice, and you see an enormous number of things which you do not notice. For example, I look at a girl here and somebody asks me later ‘What was she wearing?’ I may not know, although I’ve seen, because I didn’t attend. But I was aware. You see? And perhaps if I could under hypnosis be asked this question, where I would get my conscious attention out of the way by being in the hypnotic state, I could recall what dress she was wearing.

In the philosophy of Alan Watts we all shine the sun

So then, just in the same way as you don’t know–you don’t focus your attention–on how you make your thyroid gland function, so in the same way, you don’t have any attention focused on how you shine the sun.

So then, let me connect this with the problem of birth and death, which puzzles people enormously of course. Because, in order to understand what the self is, you have to remember that it doesn’t need to remember anything, just as you don’t need to know how you work your thyroid gland.

So then, when you die, you’re not going to have to put up with everlasting non-existance, because that’s not an experience. A lot of people are afraid that when they die, they’re going to be locked up in a dark room forever, and sort of undergo that. But one of the interesting things in the world is–this is a yoga, this is a realization–try and imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up. Think about that. Children think about it. It’s one of the great wonders of life. What will it be like to go to sleep and never wake up?

And if you think long enough about that, something will happen to you. You will find out, among other things, it will pose the next question to you. What was it like to wake up after having never gone to sleep? That was when you were born. You see, you can’t have an experience of nothing; nature abhors a vacuum. So after you’re dead, the only thing that can happen is the same experience, or the same sort of experience as when you were born. In other words, we all know very well that after other people die, other people are born. And they’re all you, only you can only experience it one at a time. Everybody is I, you all know you’re you, and wheresoever all being exist throughout all galaxies, it doesn’t make any difference. You are all of them. And when they come into being, that’s you coming into being.

You know that very well, only you don’t have to remember the past in the same way you don’t have to think about how you work your thyroid gland, or whatever else it is in your organism. You don’t have to know how to shine the sun. You just do it, like you breathe.

Doesn’t it really astonish you that you are this fantastically complex thing, and that you’re doing all this and you never had any education in how to do it? Never learned, but you’re this miracle? The point of it is, from a strictly physical, scientific standpoint, this organism is a continuous energy with everything else that’s going on. And if I am my foot, I am the sun. Only we’ve got this little partial view. We’ve got the idea that ‘No, I’m something IN this body.’ The ego. That’s a joke. The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention. It’s like the radar on a ship. The radar on a ship is a troubleshooter. Is there anything in the way? And conscious attention is a designed function of the brain to scan the environment, like a radar does, and note for any trouble-making changes.

But if you identify yourself with your troubleshooter, then naturally you define yourself as being in a perpetual state of anxiety. And the moment we cease to identify with the ego and become aware that we are the whole organism, we realize first thing how harmonious it all is. Because your organism is a miracle of harmony. All these things functioning together. Even those creatures that are fighting each other in the blood stream and eating each other up. If they weren’t doing that, you wouldn’t be healthy.

Yasukuni in the news

August 2, 2013 / John D. / 1 Comment

That Yasukuni is a political rather than a religious issue is all too apparent from the top news in today’s Japan Times where the leading headline screams….

Abe will not visit Yasukuni shrine on Aug 15
POLITICS AUG. 02, 2013 – 06:45AM JST ( 15 )

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will not visit a controversial shrine to war dead on the anniversary of his country’s surrender in World War II, AFP sources and a report said Thursday.

The premier will stay away on August 15 from the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, two government sources close to Abe told AFP.

The decision to stay away from the shrine, also reported by Kyodo news agency, could be seen as part of efforts to avoid further tensions with countries such as China and South Korea, which were victims of Japan’s pre-war and wartime aggression.

Nationalists have made Yasukuni into a political football (photo AFP)

The shrine honors some 2.5 million citizens who died in World War II and other conflicts, including 14 top war criminals.

Visits to Yasukuni by Japanese leaders spark anger in neighboring nations, who say the country has failed to atone for its brutalities in the first half of the 20th century, including the 1910-1945 colonisation of the Korean peninsula.

Abe, a nationalist, has defended the right of leaders to visit the shrine.

“I think it’s quite natural for a Japanese leader to offer prayer for those who sacrificed their lives for their country, and I think this is no different from what other world leaders do,” he told Foreign Affairs magazine earlier this year.

Abe has stayed away from the shrine since taking office in December for a second term, but a growing number of his ministers have visited the site.

The long-simmering issue made international headlines in April when nearly 170 Japanese lawmakers made a pilgrimage there to mark a spring festival, angering Beijing and Seoul and sparking diplomatic protests.

Among those honored at the site in the heart of Tokyo is General Hideki Tojo, the prime minister who authorised the attack on Pearl Harbor which drew the US into the war.

Even at home there is significant opposition to Yasukuni, including among some relatives of those honored there who say it glorifies war and the darker chapters in Japan’s history.

Almost anthing can be used by nationalists for their dubious ends

Daimonji

July 31, 2013 / John D. / 1 Comment

Now that the Gion Festival has come to an end, Kyoto is looking forward to Obon and the days of the dead in mid-August. The highlight of the festival is the Sending Off (Okuribi) of the spirits of the dead on August 16, when bonfires are lit on the hills around the city.

The history of the event is obscure, and different versions exist, but the Japan News now has an authoritative account which contains some interesting expert opinion. (Though the festival is mainly Buddhist in orientation, it’s firmly syncretic in nature and one of the fires on the Kyoto hills shows a torii, as if marking a gateway to another world.)

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Bonfires for commoners: Origin of Kyoto’s popular Daimonji festival unknown
The Yomiuri Shimbun July 30, 2013 Yusuke Isoe / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

KYOTO–On the night of Aug. 16 each year, five giant bonfires are lit by local residents on mountains surrounding Kyoto, to send off the departed souls of their ancestors that have temporarily returned to this world. The grand Gozan no Okuribi (Bonfires on five mountains) is one of the most popular annual events in the ancient capital.

The Dai of Daimonji, most famous of the Okuribi fires, in the east of the city

The event is better known as Daimonji (The character “dai”), as two of the bonfires are clearly shaped like the kanji “dai,” which means large or great.

The traditional ritual has been preserved by five organizations, each earnestly maintaining one of the bonfires. Unlike the Aoi Matsuri festival in May and other major events in Kyoto, there are no documents that record or clarify the origin of the fire ritual.

Each of the five bonfires is in a distinctive shape. Three form kanji: Daimonji, which is lit on Mt. Daimonji; Myoho, which means wondrous dharma based on Buddhist teachings; and Hidari Daimonji (left Daimonji), which also forms the character “dai.”

The remaining two are called Funagata, which means the shape of a boat; and Toriigata, which means the shape of a torii shrine gate, according to their respective shapes.

The oldest description of the Okuribi event appears in the diary of court noble Funabashi Hidekata in 1603. It reads that he went to Kamogawa river to see the bonfires on the mountains. This is still a good location to view the Daimonji bonfire. Other good view spots include Mt. Funaoka and Shogunzuka.

Daimonji is said to have been started first among the five bonfires. As there are no reliable records on its origin, there are many theories about it.

There are three major theories as to when it started: during the Heian period (794-1192), the mid-Muromachi period (1336-1573) or the early Edo period (1603-1867). As I’ve examined various theories on its origin going back into history, I’ve become fairly certain it was started by ordinary people without particular status or fame.

One ancient tale says it dates back to the Heian period. According to the tale, Priest Kukai, the patriarch of the Shingon sect of esoteric Buddhism, saw a light emitted by the principal image of Jodoji temple at the foot of Mt. Daimonji. He gave a prayer to the character dai and had drawn that character on the side of the mountain in an area about 30 meters high by 30 meters wide.

At the foot of the mountain is Ginkakuji temple, built by Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1436-1490), the eighth shogun of the Muromachi government. Some believe he started the event around the end of the Onin war (1467-77), a civil war that almost destroyed the capital.

Part of the Myoho fires, on the Takaragaike hills in the north of the city

However, Prof. Toru Yagi at Bukkyo University, a folklore specialist, doubts the event is associated with Kukai or Ashikaga Yoshimasa.

Yagi said it is related to the manto-e event, a Buddhist ritual still held at temples by illuminating votive lights. Yagi said local townspeople who had offered these lights at temples moved the ritual to the mountainside and the event developed into a bonfire to send off the departed souls of their ancestors.

Yagi states that if Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a mighty warlord in the 16th century, had seen the event, it would have been recorded in documents. As there are no such records, Yagi believes that the event had yet to be started or was not an annual event around that time. “I assume that local people started the event later, when Kyoto was back at peace, to pray for the departed souls of those who died in war,” he said.

10 bonfires in the past

Before the Meiji era that started in 1868, five more bonfires were lit from the northern to western mountain areas of Kyoto. These bonfires were shaped like a snake, a long-handled sword, a bell attached to the tip of a bamboo pole, the hiragana character “i” and the kanji that means one. Ten bonfires were magnificently lit on the mountains at the time. However, half of them were eliminated and even their exact locations are unknown today.

Ryojun Kishino, the head priest of Ekoji temple in Sakyo Ward, said based on his interviews of longtime residents, the bonfire for the character “i” was lit on Mt. Mukaiyama in the ward until the mid-Meiji era (1868-1912).

According to Kishino, lighting the bonfire was undertaken by local households that had lost family members in the year. It was an extremely demanding task and the village was poor, so residents could not afford to maintain the ritual. “Once a tradition is discontinued, it can’t be resumed. It’s too bad,” Kishino said.

The location of the bonfire on the mountain mentioned by Kishino is a wooded area now. I saw no sign of the ritual there.

“The event was launched by people with no particular status or fame, so there’s no record of its origin,” said Hideaki Iwata, who wrote a book titled “Kyo no Daimonji Monogatari” (Stories on Daimonji in Kyoto).

The five bonefires have continued to this day solely due to the enthusiasm of local people.

View from the Daimonji hill over Kyoto: someone at some point decided it was a good place for the 'Dai' kanji

Gion Matsuri 10) Kankosai

July 24, 2013 / John D. / 0 Comments

The Yasaka mikoshi are borne aloft and taken back home from their resting place (otabisho)

Today being July 24th was an important part of the Gion Matsuri, known as the Kankosai.

From 17:00, the three mikoshi are carried back from Otabisho in Shijo dori back to Yasaka Shrine, and when the mikoshi arrive at the shrine, special prayers are held to welcome the spirits back to their main ”home”. This ceremony ends around midnight.

The three mikoshi are to house the three enshrined deity at Yasaka, namely Susanoo no mikoto, the storm god; his wife, Kushiinadahime no mikoto; and Yahashira no mikogami, which is their ‘eight-child kami’ (i.e. their many offspring showing a happy blessed marriage).

Tomorrow being the 25th, there will be a Kyogen Performance, presumably to entertain the kami now they are back in their usual home. (Kyogen are stylised comedy sketches.) At 11:00, the Shigeyama Family will perform special kyogen plays at Yasaka Shrine.

A selection of ema at Yasaka Shrine. As well as Susanoo and the Orochi monster he slew, ther's his wife Kushiinade hime and also his ancestor, Okuninushi. As elsewhere, the shrine has taken advantage of the latter's enmusubi (love connection) credentials to cater to the boom for love charms, as can be seen below.

Statue of Okuninushi and hare (which appears in his legend), together with a knot to symbolise he is the kami of enmusubi good connections

High hopes for a divine love connection: this ema votive plaque asks for a beautiful, young lady with a good figure.

Hinduism 6) Complete overview

July 24, 2013 / John D. / 0 Comments

This is the last in my mini-series on Hindu connections with Shinto, because I’ve now come across a page that carries a comprehensive overview of all the various links between Hinduism and Japanese culture. My purpose in drawing attention to the little known connection was to show how deeply entwined in continental beliefs Shinto is, rather than the ‘unique’ indigenous religion that nationalists like to portray.

Here is the page in question, which is a remarkable catalogue of facts and quotations:
http://www.hinduwisdom.info/Glimpses_XVII.htm

Someone has put an awful lot of work into the page, so I looked up the author. “My name is Sushama Londhe. I am an Indian-American who came to the U.S. as a graduate student 30 years ago, and I have settled here for good. This site is my personal endeavor to provide appropriate collection of information about Hinduism, as well as to attain a correct appraisal of India’s rich cultural heritage..” http://www.hinduwisdom.info/index.htm

Below I’ve included just a few highlights from the page……

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The belief prevalent in ancient Japan that there lived a rabbit in the moon was probably an outcome of the Indian influence.

Dr. D. T. (Daisetz Teitaro) Suzuki (1870-1966) was a Japanese Buddhist and Zen scholar, who has written several books, including Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture. He said: “The study of Japanese thought is the study of Indian thought”.

Izanagi and Izanami churn the primordial liquid

Donald A. Mackenzie (1873 – 1936) author of Myths of Pre-Columbian America has written: “The Indian form of myth of The Churning of the Milky Ocean reached Japan. In a Japanese illustration of it the mountain rests on a tortoise, and the supreme god sits on the summit, grasping in one of his hands a water vase.

The Japanese Shinto myth of creation, as related in the Ko-ji-ki and Nihon-gi, is likewise a churning myth. Twin deities, Izanagi, the god, and Izanami, the goddess, sand on “the floating bridge of heaven” and thrust into the ocean beneath the “Jewel Spear of Heaven”. With this pestle they churn the primeval waters until they curdle and form land.”

Dr. Subhash Kak (1949 – ) is a widely known scientist and a Indic scholar. He writes: “Vedic ideas were also taken to Japan by the sea route from South India and Southeast Asia . That serves to explain the specific transformations of some Sanskrit terms into Japanese through Tamil phonology. For example, consider the transformation of Sanskrit homa, the Vedic fire rite, into Japanese goma, where the initiation is given by the achari (Sanskrit ācārya). The Sanskrit mantras in Japan are written in the Siddham script of South India .”

Indra, god of thunder found in the Rig Veda, is adored in Japan as Taishakuten.

Ganesha, the Indian god of wisdom, who has the head of an elephant and the trunk of a human being, is worshipped under the name of Sho-ten, (literally, Holy God), in many Buddhist temples, as one who confers happiness upon its votaries, especially in love affairs. In Japan we very often find figures of two Ganeshas, male and female, embracing each other (Mithuna).

The Japanese sea-serpent, worshipped by sailors, is called Ryugin/Ryujin, a Chinese equivalent of the Indian Naga.

Suiten (water-god) is a Shintoist name. But the god, widely worshipped by people in downtown Tokyo, was originally Varuna (water-god in India) and was introduced into the Buddhist Pantheon by esoteric Buddhism, and then adopted by Shintoists, though Shintoists may hesitate to agree with this explanation. Kompira, a god of sailors, is worshipped at Kotohira Shrine, in Kagawa Prefecture, on the island of Shikoku. Kompira is corrupt form of Kumbhira, a Sanskrit word for crocodile in the Ganges. Ben-ten (literally, Goddess of Speech) is the Chinese and Japanese equivalent of Saraswati.

Benten, the biwa player, who originated as the Hindu deity Saraswati

“Shintoism has been designated by some scholars as the Japanese version of Hinduism” – Chaman Lal.

The Hindu deities in course of time again passed through another phase of transformation to suit the Japanese thoughts and ideas, and many of these transformed deities gained highly revered positions which they had never before attained either in India or China.

In fact, several minor gods and goddesses who were too insignificant to merit careful attention in India, attained a considerably exalted position in Japanese Buddhist pantheon. It is commonly believed in Japan that the Hindu deities if worshipped properly, bestow quickly material benefits and other favors in day to day life on their devotees rather than any spiritual gain. This has made these gods and goddesses very popular in Japan as “the common people are more interested in worldly or material benefits than in the so-called abstract spiritual achievement.”

Co-existence of the native Shinto and Indian Buddhists and Vedic deities in the same temple was, and is a common feature in Japan. Like Buddhism, Tantricism, an inseparable part of Hinduism spread far beyond the boundaries of India, Nepal, Tibet and Burma. Thus, we find that the Hindu gods who were incorporated into Indian Buddhism gradually found their way to China and then to Japan where many of these Hindu deities found a status which they had never attained either in India or China. (source: India and Japan: A Study in interaction during 5th cent – 14th century – By Upendra Thakur p. 27 – 41).

‘Many fragments of the Japanese myth-mass were unmistakably Indian. The original homeland of the first man and women of Japanese mythology is said to have been in the Earth-Residence-Pillar i.e. Mount Meru of Indian mythology. There is another story of Buro-no-Kami whose identity has been established with the deity called Brave-Swift-Impetuous-male. This Kami may be none other than the Indian deity Gavagriva, the Ox-head deity. The story recounts in the style of the Jatakas how the deity punished the heartless rich brother and rewarded the king hearted poor brother. In India one of the names of the moon is Sasanka (lit. having a rabbit in the lap) and there is an ancient Indian legend why it is so called. The belief prevalent in ancient Japan that there lived a rabbit in the moon was probably an outcome of the Indian influence.

Some Japanese warriors in medieval Japan went to the battle ground with helmets bearing Sanskrit characters for blessing (mangala) on their heads. While scaling the sacred Mt. Ongake as a religious observance, the Japanese climbers wearing traditional white dress have inscribed on their robes Sanskrit Saiddham characters of early type. Sometimes they put on white Japanese scarfs (tenugui) carrying Sanskrit character Om, the sacred sound symbols of the Hindus.

One can also see the influence of the Indian epic Ramayana in the traditional Japanese dance forms of ‘Bugaku’ and ‘Gigaku’

Does sacred dance have its origins in India too?

Apart from the widely known fact that Buddhism in Japan has its origin in India , not many probably know that so many Hindu deities surround the life of a Japanese. Speaking at a lecture titled ‘Hindu Gods and Goddesses rooted to Japan’ here Friday, Lokesh Chandra, the director of International Academy of Indian Culture, highlighted how deeply Indian religion and culture has influenced Japanese culture and tradition over the past centuries. He said that many temples across Japan are full of Hindu deities.

Together with Hindu gods and goddess, ancient Japanese society was also introduced to Indian dance forms and musical instruments. A typical example is the ‘ Biwa ‘,which actually had its origin from the Indian ‘Veena’.

“It is the Mantrayana sect of Buddhism emphasising mantras (chants) and rituals through which Hindu deities reached Japan,” Dr Chandra said. “The Japanese also perform “homa” known as “goma” to their deities even today, they get ghee flown from Australia,” he added.

Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796 – 1866) German scholar has written that in 1832 there were 131 Shrines dedicated to Goddess Sarasvati and 100 to Lord Ganesha in Tokyo itself .

The earliest known music dance of Japan is Gigaku a kind of mask-play which Mimashi brought to Japan from Korea in 1200 AD. This art (Gigaku) was of Indian origin as indicated by masks representing Indian features which are still preserved in a considerable number in the temples of Nara. There were characters among the dancers who represented a lion and an eagle which does suggest links with India, because in China and Japan there were no lions. Moreover, the term for the eagle character is Karuna which is nothing but the derivative of the Sanskrit world Garuda.

The Goma ceremony, here performed by Shogo-in yamabushi, originated in India

For an academic paper on the subject, see Medieval Shinto as a form of ‘Japanese Hinduism’