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Gion 2): Western input

July 4, 2013 / John D. / 2 Comments

A tapestry on the front of the Kanko-boko float at the Gion Festival in Kyoto is thought to depict scenes from Genesis in the Old Testament.

In Kyoto, the Gion Festival season has opened and interest is being directed to different aspects of this ancient and most fascinating festival. One little-known point is how much Western input there is, and an article from The Japan News details how this came about.

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Western influence on Gion Festival / Popular Kyoto event has crosscultural element
July 2, 2013 Yuji Washio / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

Kon kon chiki chin, kon chiki chin–When the quaint sounds of little gongs begin to be heard in central Kyoto, it’s time for the Gion Festival, one of the most popular summer events in Japan.

Amid the festive atmosphere, the festival’s climax on July 17 is marked by 32 gorgeously decorated floats parading through central Kyoto. In some cases, the floats’ elaborate ornamentation includes apparently Western tapestries hanging from their sides.

Model of one of the floats on display in the days before the parade

Kyoto is a center of the nation’s weaving industry. Artisans in the Nishijin district have manufactured many tapestries for the festival.

So, why are there Western tapestries at the festival?

The festival started as a ceremony at Yasaka Shrine in 869, when Kyoto was the capital of Japan. As plagues and natural disasters were prevalent in the country that year, 66 pikes symbolizing the 66 provinces of Japan at that time were put on display to wish for peace. These pikes later became larger and more decorated until they evolved into the floats seen today.

The floats are called moving museums, as they are painstakingly made craftwork pieces. Due to their high profile, they are often regarded as the festival’s centerpiece, but they are actually meant to herald the festival’s sacred palanquin, which travels around the area where the shrine’s worshippers reside.

The 32 floats are called either yama, which means mountain, or hoko (or boko), which means pike. Of them, five use Western woven tapestries: Kanko-boko, Niwatori-hoko, Hakurakuten-yama, Koi-yama and Araretenjin-yama, that were brought to Japan during the Edo period (1603-1867).

The Kanko-boko’s tapestry, 273 centimeters by 220 centimeters, bears two different scenes on its upper and lower parts, one depicting a man receiving a large jug from a woman and the other depicting a man giving a bracelet to a woman. It is said that the scenes depict a story of the search for a wife for Isaac in the Old Testament.

Lanterns on one of the Gion floats in the evenings before the parade

According to old documents, the tapestry was donated by a local wealthy merchant in 1718, at a time when Christianity was outlawed. Yet an artwork depicting a Bible story traveled around the town–how was it possible?

“The jug is so big that it looked like a sake container. So people of the time probably thought the patterns were very suitable for the festival,” said Masutaro Matsumiya, vice director of the organization maintaining the float.

The tapestries for the four other floats are themed on the Trojan War.

Local pride
Shigeharu Sugita, director of the organization maintaining Koi-yama, said that the use of these tapestries signified the pride and power of machishu, or local citizens, mainly wealthy businesspeople who were community leaders.

“As towns holding floats were getting more and more wealthy and began competing with each other, they collected novel items [to add to their floats],” Sugita said.

Susumu Shirai, an adviser to Tatsumura Textile Co. in Nakagyo Ward, which made reproductions of tapestries of the Kanko-boko and Niwatori-hoko, said: “The originals are very elaborately made. The weavers used silk threads to give glossy texture to the patterns of clothing worn by people in the tapestry. They are expensive masterworks. I felt they represented local people’s enthusiasm for the festival.”

It is also said that the tapestries depicting the Trojan War were a gift from the pope to Hasekura Tsunenaga, who was dispatched as an envoy to Spain and Rome about 400 years ago by Date Masamune, lord of the Sendai domain.

Meanwhile, the tapestry used on the Kanko-boko was reportedly one of the gifts from the Dutch Empire to Tokugawa Iemitsu (1604-1651), the third shogun of the Edo government, requesting the start of diplomatic relations. The piece is said to be the one recorded in a list of gifts as a “Dutch-made carpet.”

Although there is no definite evidence to support these stories, these tapestries are regarded as highly valuable.

The festival has been interrupted many times by wars, including the Onin civil war from 1467 to 1477. It was also affected by a fire in the Kinmon no Hen civil war in 1864. Only two floats, Hashibenkei-yama and Ennogyoja-yama, paraded at the following year’s festival. Nevertheless, some more floats joined the festival the next year and the number increased over the years that followed.

In 1988, with the rejoining of the Shijo-kasahoko, the current festival with 32 floats was established. The Ofune-hoko, which was destroyed in the 1864 civil war, is scheduled to rejoin the festival parade in 2014.

One of the floats with a tapestry displayed on the side below the musicians seated above, playing the characteristic Gion bayashi music

Crowds mill around the lit-up floats each year on 'yoyoyama' (July 15) and 'yoyama' (July 16) - a good time to visit Kyoto.

Gion 1): Festival begins

July 3, 2013 / John D. / 0 Comments

Charms and decorations that will be put on one of the floats in the Gion procession

The Gion Festival is one of Kyoto’s Big Three Festivals, along with the Aoi Festival and the Jidai Matsuri (Festival of Ages). For many people, it’s the most enjoyable. The big parade takes place on the morning of July 17, and on the two evenings before that the central streets of the city are packed with people sauntering around to enjoy the atmosphere and view the floats. For two magical evenings, the streets are free of noisy polluting vehicles.

The chigo mounted on a sacred horse (photo courtesy Micah Gempel)

What many people don’t realise, however, is that the festival is actually a month-long event which kicked off on July 1. As with the Aoi Festival, there are lots of pre-events to do with preparations and purifications.

If the Saio-dai representing the priestess-princess of old is the central figure of the Aoi Festival, then the chigo plays a central part in the Gion Festival – selection of the young boy, who is a vehicle for the kami, has already taken place (for which a handsome amount of money is paid, so I’m told).

Over the next couple of weeks, the impressive Gion floats (which come in two types, yama and hoko – more of that anon) will be taken out of storage and decorated in traditional fashion. The mikoshi will be purified in the Kamogawa river, and Gion bayashi festival music will be heard all around town (thanks to being piped throughout the shopping district).

It all helps build up to the 15th, 16th and 17th when good spirits and communal revelry will replace the grim reality of downtown traffic jams.

The Gion Festival has begun; let’s start celebrating!

A display of all the Gion Festival events in the month of July

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For previous pieces on the Gion Festival, please click here and here. For a Kyoto Shinbun account of the opening rites, see here. For a full list of the Festival events during the month of July (and the order of floats in the procession), click here.

For the next article in this series, click here for Part Two (Western Input). To understand the role of the Hindu deity Gozu Tenno in the festival, click here.

Fuji opening day

July 3, 2013 / John D. / 0 Comments

First sunrise of the climbing season on Mt Fuji

July 1 was the official opening of Fuji’s climbing season, which lasts for two months until the end of August. The event is accompanied by Shinto ceremonies at the Sengen shrines associated with worship of the mountain.

Since I was travelling to Tokyo that day, I stopped off at Shizuoka to visit Miho no Matsubara, part of the mountain’s World Heritage registration. It’s a beech with a famous view of Fuji, painted by Hokusai. Unfortunately the sacred mountain was shrouded in cloud, with not a peak or bump to be seen. Ah well, perhaps it’s saving itself for a better occasion…

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Hiking enthusiasts flock to Mount Fuji as climbing season opens
KYODO JUL 2, 2013

SHIZUOKA – Hikers flocked to Mount Fuji on Monday as Japan’s highest mountain, which last month was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List, opened for the climbing season.

At the 3,776-meter summit, climbers cheered as the sun broke through the clouds at around 4:40 a.m. Monday.

They trekked up the mountain, which straddles Shizuoka and Yamanashi prefectures, after three of its four climbing routes opened at midnight Sunday. Another route, from Fujinomiya, Shizuoka Prefecture, will be completely opened by midnight next Sunday.

The mountain’s registration on the world heritage list is expected to attract more climbers this year, so the authorities will face a greater challenge to ensure adequate safety measures are in place and to protect the environment.

To help preserve the environment and fund safety measures, the two prefectures will charge a ¥1,000 admission fee on a trial basis for about 10 days from July 25 near the halfway points, and conduct a survey of climbers about the admission fee.

About 350,000 to 400,000 people climb the mountain every year, according to the Yamanashi Prefectural Government.

Since it takes about six hours to climb the mountain by the Fujinomiya route and longer by the other routes, most climbers stayed overnight at mountain lodges to catch the sunrise from the peak.

An official ceremony was also held at a Shinto shrine in Fujinomiya to pray for the safety of hikers this season, with Shizuoka Gov. Heita Kawakatsu and Fujinomiya Mayor Hidetada Sudo attending.

Miho no matsubara - no sight of Mt Fuji from the beach, but a small shrine and sacred tree: the famous pine of Hagoromo

Pilgrimage

July 3, 2013 / John D. / 0 Comments

Green Shinto friend, Amy Chavez, has an article on pilgrimage in The Japan Times, which follows below. She’s the author of the recently published Running the Shikoku Pilgrimage: 900 Miles to Enlightenment.

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Amy Chavez making offerings at one of the shrines on the mini-88 temple course on the Seto Naikai island of Shiraishi, where she lives

Exploring Japan’s ancient past through pilgrimage
BY AMY CHAVEZ JUN 29, 2013 Japan Times

I’ve been running pilgrimages in Japan since 1997. So far, I’ve run the Shikoku 88-Temple Pilgrimage, the Mount Hiei Kaihogyo route in Kyoto (of the Tendai-shu monks), and tens of other smaller pilgrimages in Japan. If you are a runner in Japan, you should be running pilgrimages. If you’re a hiker, you should be walking or hiking them.

Pilgrimages are spiritual domains that encompass mountains, waterfalls, sacred rocks and miracle spots. There are pilgrimages to sacred places (reijo) such as the Kumano route to the Three Grand Shrines, or the Ise Shrine Okage Mairi that celebrates the Shinto goddess Amaterasu.

There are also circuit pilgrimages (junrei) such as the Saikoku Kannon Pilgrimage, a 33-temple route and the Shikoku 88-Temple Pilgrimage route (both Buddhist). On the Shikoku pilgrimage, the pilgrim visits a circuit of 88 sites that form a mandala, or spiritual map to the cosmos. In addition, there are hundreds of smaller pilgrimages, and replica pilgrimages throughout Japan. So, why not take your chances on the spiritual walking path?

These ancient pilgrimages are still alive and well in Japan, but most people don’t know about the smaller, lesser-known routes. The Japanese know, but they see them only for their original purpose: offering prayers to the various kami, bodhisattvas and Buddhas. And these days, few people are interested in doing this. It’s a wonder the Japanese have not thought of using the paths and infrastructure for exercise purposes instead. To my knowledge, the bodhisattvas are not opposed to a little exercise.

Pilgrims on their way to visit Nachi Shrine in Kumano

These pilgrimage routes offer plenty of diversions for the avid hiker or runner: a chance to bushwhack, get lost, fight off spiders and search for viable toilets. But with the proper preparation and practice, even these things will no longer be obstacles. The rewards for “following the path” are tenfold. A pilgrimage is a magical world you step into, brimming with history, beauty and solitude. And since few people are aware of them, you’ll have the whole route to yourself. Toilets too.

On these smaller pilgrimages, you will never encounter a school group on the trail (“Haro, haro?’), nor paved trails (and thus more shade) and nary a vending machine. Is this Japan?! You say, aghast. Yes, my friend, this is Japan, undiscovered. This is heaven.

The biggest barrier to hiking local pilgrimages is finding them. Despite these routes having been around for anywhere from 400 to 1,000 or more years, they’re usually fairly hidden. There’s probably a pilgrimage in your own neighborhood disguised among the buildings and concrete, but they are relics of Japan’s past and the Japanese people themselves have little interest in them.

So when it comes to asking around your neighborhood, look for a pious 80-year-old o-baachan. She’ll be able to give you very detailed information. The city or village hall is another good place to start since maintaining these historic routes lies with the local governments who may even have maps of them. You may decide these maps are pretty useless, but at least they confirm that a pilgrimage exists.

In the countryside, there is an interest in preserving the routes for historical reasons, even though the paths themselves are seldom used. Many small towns have a yearly organized pilgrimage route clean-up, where everyone gets together to cut weeds, clear debris and attend to the different gods and goddesses at the designated “stations” along the route. Shortly after, there may even be a neighborhood sponsored group hike to do the pilgrimage. This is the best time to investigate a pilgrimage! Not only are the trails in their best condition now, but you’ll have some good local guides to show you exactly where the route goes. Modern day roads, traffic lights and buildings may necessitate detours of certain parts of these old routes. The sacred sites themselves, however, remain.

Ise Jingu,Japan's prime pilgirmage destination in Japan

Most Japanese agree that a sacred site should not be disturbed, and will build around it accordingly. This leads to some interesting arrangements, such as one stone statue of the goddess Kannon on our island pilgrimage who was spared at the local rock quarry and now looks over it (no one was game to move the dame), and a Dainichi Nyorai Buddha who lives in what is now someone’s backyard. Usually, such people become the caretakers of that shrine. They keep fresh flowers in a vase next to the deity and sweep the area around the shrine.

Other times, a city will grow up around a pilgrimage, and the shrines may seem out of place among the cars, pollution and concrete of the city. You’ll find these deities poking their heads out from behind utility poles, or enduring hoards of passersby who don’t even stop to greet them. Be compassionate. Take pity on these poor stone deities and leave a small offering of some coins or a piece of fruit.

Your pilgrimage is bound to incorporate a bit of the geocaching element combined with the old summer camp intuition of a scavenger hunt as you seek locations of shrines built under large hanging rocks or down mysterious paths.

The trick to knowing a pilgrimage is doing it. The first time on any route, you’re bound to get lost a couple times. But once you know the trail, you can only improve on it and each time you’ll learn something new. It’s also a good idea to take a stick or hand towel with you just in case you meet some wrathful spiders building webs across the trail. Carry plenty of water and take note of the public toilets near each section of the route.

Pilgrimages can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days or even a month (as in the Shikoku pilgrimage) to complete, but most people break them up and do sections at a time. If you only want to do a few kilometers a day, that’s up to you. There are no hard and fast rules to free-form pilgrimaging. You can stop and give a little prayer or a mantra at each shrine, drop a few coins to the deity, or you can simply breeze on past with a friendly wave of recognition. With time, you may find yourself more and more drawn to pilgrimages. When you’re ready, the area residents will be happy to fill you in on the local folklore.

So get out there and indulge yourself in nature! The pilgrimage world awaits.

Descending the sacred Mt Miwa, where a one-hour pilgrimage leads up to the holiest site of early Yamato times

Essay competition

July 1, 2013 / John D. / 0 Comments

ISSA Shinto Essay Competition, 2013 (Sponsored by International Shinto Studies Association)

1st prize US $ 1,500 2nd prize US $ 1,000 3rd prize US $ 500

Subjects: 1) Izumo and Ise 2) Pilgrimage in Shinto

Regulations
The competition is open to university students (undergraduates, graduates) and researchers. Applicants should submit an essay of no more than 3,500 words (including footnotes and bibliography) on one of the above topics.

Essays will be judged on their originality and the clarity of their argument. Essays should be e-mailed as Word file attachments in 12-point type, double-spaced, on A-4 format to info@shinto.org. All entries must be received before July 15, 2013. Applicants must attach a brief biography (including nationality, current postal and email addresses) on a separate sheet.

Important advice
1. We strongly recommend that non-native speakers of English have their essays checked by a native speaker.
2. It is vital for all applicants to cite all sources used. Failure to do may constitute plagiarism, and lead to the disqualification of the essay submitted. Sources can be cited as footnotes or endnotes. For examples of how to cite sources, the applicant can refer to one of the following: a) The footnotes as used in Japanese Journal for Religious Studies (JJRS articles can be accessed online). b) The end-notes as used in Breen and Teeuwen, A New History of Shinto, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
3. We ask that all applicants append to the essay a bibliography of the sources they have used in the writing of the essay.

Notes
1. Those who have already been awarded prizes in previous years’ competitions are not eligible to participate.
2. All entrants will be notified of competition results, and winners will be publicly announced in October 2013. Winners will receive prize money by bank check. All submissions become the property of International Shinto Studies Association.

Inquiries
Please address all e-mail inquiries regarding the Shinto essay competition to info@shinto.org

Jomon spirituality

June 27, 2013 / John D. / 1 Comment

The Oshoro stone cirlce in south-west Hokkaido (courtesy Japan Times)

It’s sometimes said that Shinto’s roots lie in the Yayoi period (300BC – 250 AD), when incomers from the continent brought in beliefs connected with wet-rice agriculture from Korea and China. So what was the situation before that?

It seems no one knows for sure about spirituality in the Jomon age (c.14,000BC – 300BC), though archaeologists have put forward theories connected to unearthed items, such as the mysterious dogu featured in a previous posting. Along with the artifacts are stone circles, normally associated with Britain and northern Europe.

In the article below, the suggestion is that the stone circle here, like Stonehenge, was essentially a place for the dead. And in the final sentence comes a statement about Jomon people believing that objects had souls. It seems then that even in Jomon times there was a bedrock of animism and ancestor worship such as underlies modern Japanese spirituality – though the form it took was undoubtedly of a very different kind from the beliefs that supplanted it in Yayoi times.

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Mystery shrouds the ancient Oshoro circle
BY MICHAEL HOFFMAN in The Japan Times

The Late Jomon period (circa 2400-1000 B.C.) was an age of northward migration. The north was warming, and severe rainfall was ravaging the established Jomon sites, primarily in the vicinity of today’s Tokyo and Nagoya.

Perhaps resettlement stimulated thought, for it coincided with a novel Jomon institution — the cemetery.

“By devoting a special area to burials,” writes J. Edward Kidder in “The Cambridge History of Japan,” “Late Jomon people were isolating the dead, allowing the gap to be bridged by mediums who eventually drew the rational world of the living further away from the spirit world of the dead.”

The Oshoro Stone Circle was probably a cemetery.

It was other things as well, but primarily that, says Naoaki Ishikawa, chief curator of the Otaru Museum, where many of the finds from around this stone circle can be viewed.

It is one of about 30 Late Jomon stone circles scattered through northern Japan. In terms of size it ranks about midway between the smallest enclosures and the largest one at Oyu, Akita Prefecture, bounded by thousands of stones.

No bones have been found to make an airtight case of the cemetery theory, but relatively few Jomon bones have been found anywhere, the acid in the soil claiming them long before the archaeologist’s trowel can.

Why regard it as a cemetery? Partly, says Ishikawa, because of the large number of unidentifiable, and probably ritual, objects unearthed in the vicinity; partly because of the many tools found unbroken, suggesting grave goods; partly also because “graves are among the few things that would have justified the degree of effort involved.

Constructing a stone circle is a major undertaking. You have to flatten the land, quarry the stones, transport them, lay them out. . . . Only something of the highest importance could have taken people away from their daily hunting and gathering.”

Tabata stone circle in Machida city. On the winter sostice, the sun sets exactly over the top of Mt Hirugatake.

Very likely also, he says, it was a market, a trading center for the exchange of tools, local foods, regional products, lacquer — and information, gossip. What would people have said to each other? In what language? Not Japanese, writes archaeologist Richard Pearson in the International Jomon Culture Conference Newsletter. Proto-Japanese, he says, only begins with the succeeding Yayoi culture.

Ishikawa raises another possibility for the Oshoro Stone Circle — that it could have been a trash dump, which would explain the roughly 400,000 tool and pottery fragments so far unearthed there. “Things may have been brought on purpose to such a site for ritual disposal,” he says.

“To the Jomon, each object, animate and inanimate, housed a spirit. Throwing things away would have been done ceremonially.”

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For an excellent article on the Jomon stone circles, see the Heritage of Japan article here.

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Wonder-ful dogu

June 23, 2013 / John D. / 3 Comments

With Mt Fuji’s registration, World Heritage sites are much in the news at the moment, and in this regard I’ve been looking at Japan’s Tentative List and the twelve sites which are currently waiting their turn to be nominated. One of them is titled, Jomon Archaeological Sites in Hokkaido and Northern Tohoku, which led me to the wonderful Japanese pottery website and its page on the clay figures known as dogu.

Some dogu are clearly related to fertility, and some are baffling goggle-eyed aliens apparently dressed in space wear. Mankind’s links with other worlds was never shown so graphically. Erich von Daniken hardly needed to build a thesis in Chariots of Gods (1968) about extraterrestrial influence on earthlings; it’s all demonstrated visually in the dogu !

The following excerpt, and the photos on this page, are taken from the superb yakimono.net (with thanks to Robert Yellin):

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Some of the most intriguing works from the Jomon period are clay figurines called dogu (pronounced dough-goo). There are many theories on what they were used for with the main agreement being they were a talisman for good health or safe childbirth. As many were excavated in fragments, it’s believed that after the wish was fulfilled, or not, the dogu was broken and thrown on the trash heap; that’s where many were discovered. Another theory is that these were goddesses to whom Jomon people prayed to for food and health.

Other explanations are toys for children, funerary offerings, or objects used in some unknown ritual. And, of course, there are those who believe they were aliens from outer space. Yet, if you look at similar primitive artifacts from around the world (the Valdivia culture of Ecuador, for example) there is a certain resemblance that can’t be explained in logical terms. It might have been part of the collective consciousness of the times though, or did earth in fact have space-suited visitors from a distant galaxy? The pictured dogu sure seems to fit the match!

Dogu were found all over Japan with northern Japan, the Tohoku region, yielding the most variety. Dogu first appeared in early Jomon but began to flourish in Middle Jomon through Late Jomon. (For a timeline outlining the development of Japanese pottery, please click here.)

Many of them have the distinctive Jomon rope-cord patterns while others have been intricately carved with arabesque-like designs. Some in outer-space garb are known as the “goggles type” and no explanation is needed for that naming. Whatever the markings, they are all eerily moving and can’t help but spark one’s imagination in wondering about life so many thousand of years ago, and the miracle it is today.

As Joseph Campbell once wrote: “Take, for example, a pencil, ashtray, anything, and holding it before you in both hands (in this case looking at dogu), regard it for awhile. Forgetting its name and use, yet continuing to regard it, ask yourself seriously, What is it? Its dimension of wonder opens, for the mystery of the being of that thing is identical with the mystery of the being of the universe, and yourself.”