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Kasuga Taisha (Nara)

March 5, 2013 / John D. / 2 Comments

Priest in the elegant surrounds of Kasuga Taisha

Kasuga Taisha is one of Japan’s foremost shrines. It is associated with the Fujiwara family, once the most powerful in the land, and is famous for its setting on the edge of Nara Park where it is surrounded by a primeval forest at the foot of two sacred hills. (Both shrine and the forest are part of the World Heritage listing of the ‘Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara’.)

According to legend, the Fujiwara invited a powerful deity to Nara who arrived riding a white deer, which is why the animal is regarded as sacred and allowed to wander at will around the grounds. Three other kami are enshrined, one of them being the founding ancestor of the Fujiwara. For centuries the family were able to marry their daughters to prospective emperors, so that even after the capital at Nara was abandoned in 784 Kasuga survived thanks to imperial patronage.

A deer grazes in the main compound, in a form of nature worship, with some of the 1000 bronze lanterns at the shrine

In the late Heian Period (794-1185) the shrine came under the auspices of Kofuku-ji, the Fujiwara family temple. The powerful Shinto-Buddhist complex (175 structures at its height) only came to an end following the Meiji Restoration of 1868 when the new government separated the two religions. Until then Kasuga maintained the shikinen sengu tradition of rebuilding every 20 years, in keeping with the notion of renewal that lies at the heart of Shinto.

The approach to Kasuga is lined with lanterns, donated in the past by worshippers of all classes. Lighting a lantern was the customary way to greet the spirits of the dead, and there are 2000 stone lanterns in all, some of which are so tall that they dwarf their human admirers. There are a further 1000 bronze lanterns hanging at the shrine, so that the total matches the 3000 Kasuga branch shrines throughout the country. When all of them are lit, which happens twice a year, the effect is spectacular.

Inside the shrine is a chumon gate dating from 1613, to the left of which is a Japanese cedar estimated to be eight hundred years old. The main compound with its vermilion pillars houses four sanctuaries, one for each of the kami enshrined. They are in the kasuga-zukuri style featuring a canopied entrance beneath a gabled roof, which is thought to have originated in the eighth century and which became a model for other shrines.

The cypress-bark roof harmonises with the surrounds, exemplifying the Shinto thinking that humans are an integral part of nature. The woods here have been sacred since 841, when hunting and tree-felling were prohibited, and the only human intervention apart from reforestation after typhoon damage is in the form of footpaths, one of which leads up the hill past stone statues and waterfalls.

Near the shrine are a number of other attractions. One is the nearby Wakamiya Shrine, an auxiliary shrine founded in 1135 which is famous for its Onmatsuri traditional dance festival. Opposite stands the Meoto Daikokusha, an enmusubi shrine where a pair of married deities bring good luck in match-making. Kasuga also owns a Treasure Hall containing precious items, many of which were imperial offerings in the Heian Period – items such as mirrors, masks, furnishings, calligraphy, decorated weaponry and musical instruments.

Near the Treasure Hall is a Botanical Garden featuring 250 plants from the Nara Period, as well as a section containing 200 wisteria trees of 20 different types (the tree is a shrine symbol since Fujiwara translates as ‘field of wisteria’). Next to the garden is the Nintai tea room, built in the eighteenth century, which serves a ‘Manyo porridge’ eaten in the Nara Period. In this way the shrine and its surrounds offer the perfect opportunity to eat, breathe and soak in the atmosphere of the eighth century when Heijo-kyo (Nara) was the country’s capital and Japanese culture as we know it was being shaped.

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For more about the shrine, see p.161 of Shinto Shrines (Univ. of Hawaii Press)

Shrine overview, with the chumon gate built in 1613 connected to the surrounding corridor

Deer decoration on the bronze lanterns

Deer spouting water for worshippers to wash their hands and purify souls

Deer and stone lanterns - two of Kasuga's motifs

Chosen race

March 2, 2013 / John D. / 2 Comments

An interesting poll has just come out about attitudes to immigrants with Japanese blood. “80% of Japanese welcome foreigners of Japanese descent'” shouts a headline in the Japan Times. It’s framed as if it constitutes a new openness to immigration.

"It's good I am Japanese," says this shrine poster. But isn't it good to be a non-Japanese?

However, the poll stands in direct contrast to attitudes towards non-Japanese. According to the “J-CAST Company Watch” survey results, 48.5% of respondents expressed “firm opposition” to immigration to Japan. A further 19.3% “do not really want to let them in” and another 16.8% “might consider it if unavoidable.” Only 14.4% “wholeheartedly endorsed” letting them in. This is despite the looming labour shortage in a country which is about to have the biggest proportion of over-65s in world history.

What does all this have to do with Shinto?

Well, it just might be linked to the notion of a chosen race promoted by nationalists who draw inspiration from the Kojiki (712) to claim that Japanese alone are children of the kami. The chief culprit in this is the scholar Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), who had a visceral dislike of the Chinese and wanted to show the distinctiveness of Japan. Like many a fundamentalist, Motoori took the early myths literally and believed that the emperor really was descended from heavenly ancestors. It led him to make outrageous statements about the superiority of Japanese to all other races.

As it happened, the Nativist movement of which Motoori was a leading thinker inspired the Meiji Restoration politicians who shaped Shinto into an emperor-centred religion. The logical outcome was State Shinto and the excesses of World War Two. Other races were seen as inferior.

Fortunately those days are behind us, and as any foreigner in Japan knows it’s a most pleasant place to live. At the same time alone among developed countries it remains fiercely monoethnic. It has led to agonising about how to deal with the imminent shortages of labour and whether to let in more non-Japanese.

We stand at a crossroads now where Japan’s indigenous religion faces the painful process of moving from a racial to an interracial religion. The present generation has seen the adoption of the first ever non-Japanese priests and the spread of Shinto sympathisers in foreign countries. After 2000 years Shinto is facing its ‘St Paul’ moment of having to embrace ‘gentiles’.

In a global age, the old thinking of racists like Motoori will need to be discarded, and the notion of universalism embraced. We are all children of the kami now.

Embracing the future: Shinto's spread to non-Japanese is inevitable in a global world

Animals: good news

March 2, 2013 / John D. / 1 Comment

Good news for some animals in Japan… One might have hoped that a country whose culture derives from a part-animist religion might be leading the way in such matters, but sadly it seems that it only reacts to developments elsewhere.

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Sacred roosters at Atsuta Shrine, spared the torture of vivisection or battery farm

Cosmetics giant Shiseido scales back animal testing
Japan Today MAR. 02, 2013 – 06:52AM JST ( 0 )

Japan’s Shiseido on Friday said it was mostly dropping animal-tested cosmetics, as the European Union gets set to finalize a sweeping ban on the sale of such products later this month. But the company said exceptions to the policy meant it would still allow animal testing when that was the only way of proving the safety of products already being sold in the market, and in some countries where animal testing is legally required.

The policy, which starts from April, applies to all of the Tokyo-based cosmetic giant’s production sites, including those run by suppliers, it said. “Our business partners that supply material to us will not rely on animal testing, while we will no longer outsource such testing to outside labs,” a Shiseido spokesman said. The policy was officially adopted at a board meeting Thursday, he added.

Activists have for years pressured cosmetic firms and other companies that use animal testing to find alternatives to the practice, which they say is cruel and unnecessary. Shiseido, which dropped animal testing at its own labs in 2011, sells into the key Europe market, which is getting set to complete a ban on the import and sale of animal-tested cosmetic products from later this month.

Shiseido said it could ensure the safety of its products through others means, including using data from past experiments, human volunteers and other kinds of testing.

– See more at: http://www.japantoday.com/category/business/view/cosmetics-giant-shiseido-scales-back-animal-testing#sthash.GkFKJTbf.dpuf

Animals belong in nature - not laboratories or cages

Trees, please

March 1, 2013 / John D. / 3 Comments

Woods as a source of awe and spirituality

Woods were mankind’s earliest temples, and trees pointed the way to heaven. Wooded mountains held spiritual mystique, for the abode of the gods was shielded by a forest of leaves. As a country of forests, it’s no wonder that trees have played a prominent part in Japan*s spirituality. Naturalist Kevin Short here provides some interesting facts about the country’s situation, and how the environment has been disastrously affected in modern times by a rapacious desire for profit over ecology.

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NATURE IN SHORT / Japan is one of the most densely forested countries on Earth
Kevin Short / Daily Yomiuri Columnist

One of Japans thousands of sacred trees

Japan is certainly a land of trees and forests. Even today, 68.5 percent of the national land is covered with forest. This figure is third behind Finland (72.9 percent) and Sweden (68.7 percent), and over twice the world average of 31 percent. An estimated 1,000 species of woody plants live in Japanese forests, which is about the same as the figure for all of North America.

One reason for the amazing diversity of Japanese trees can be found in geologic history. The Japanese islands were almost completely free of ice during the last glacial period. In contrast, until 10,000 years ago much of northern and western Europe was covered by glaciers up to a kilometer thick.

Geographical conditions also help support sylvan biodiversity. With warm oceans currents flowing on both sides, the Japanese archipelago is blessed with a mild, wet climate that is ideal for tree growth and forest development. In addition, the islands stretch a long way in the north-south direction, and climatic zones range from subtropical in the Ryukyu Islands to subarctic in parts of Hokkaido.

Botanists understand and document plant diversity using a formal taxonomic system. Trees are first divided into two major groups, gymnosperms and angiosperms, based on the type of flower and fruit. Gymnosperms include all the trees we normally call conifers, and angiosperms the ones we think of as broad-leaves. Some trees, such as the ginkgo, however, have wide leaves but are actually gymnosperms.

The vast majority of Japan’s native tree species are broad-leaves, and most of the nation’s natural forests are dominated by broad-leaves. The general idea is that angiosperms, which sport a more advanced flower structure, enjoy a competitive advantage over gymnosperms. All else being equal, angiosperms will thus tend to monopolize favorable environments, leaving the gymnosperms to get by in marginal habitats such as deeply shaded valleys and exposed ridges.

Sacred ginkgo

But today, as anyone traveling around Japan can verify at a glance, the hills and lower mountainsides in most areas of the country are totally dominated by conifers. In fact, a full 40 percent of the nation’s forests are pure stands of conifers. These are not natural forests at all, but commercial timber plantations.

In many prefectures, however, this figure is well over 60 percent; it’s even higher on hills and lower mountainsides surrounding the major cities. In late February and early March, immense clouds of yellow-green sugi [cryptomeria] pollen dust float down onto the urban areas, like some amorphous monster out of a kaiju science fiction movie. The number of people suffering from sugi pollen allergy is estimated at over 20 million.

Most of these sugi plantations were established in the years following the Pacific War, when demand for lumber for rebuilding the destroyed towns and cities was high. Entire hillsides and even watersheds were stripped bare of their diverse natural broad-leaved forests, and completely replanted in tight rows of sugi. Several decades later, however, tariff reductions made cheap imported lumber products widely available, and the price of sugi wood dropped dramatically. As a result, many plantations have since been abandoned as commercially unworkable.

Cryptomeria is a truly magnificent tree, and properly thinned and managed sugi plantations form a valuable wildlife habitat of their own. The sheer extent of the plantations, however, has placed Japan’s magnificent natural broad-leaved trees and forest ecosystems in grave danger of extinction.

A pair of Yakushima cedars "Mother and child"

Ponsonby-Fane

February 27, 2013 / John D. / 6 Comments

The cricket-loving, scarf-wearing Shinto expert Richard Ponsonby-Fane (1878-1937)

An aristocrat with a penchant for cricket who went native, wore Japanese kimono with a scarf, and became the twentieth century’s foremost expert on Shinto. Richard Ponsonby-Fane (1878-1937) was the archetypal English eccentric, with a hatred of modernity that extended as far as trains and electric lights. He also clung fervidly to the notion of the Divine Right of Kings, a doctrine that had gone out of fashion in the seventeenth century after Charles I lost his head.

Prewar Shinto studies involved remarkable men. W.G. Aston, B.H. Chamberlain, Lafcadio Hearn, Percival Lowell, Jean Herbert. Some explored deep into linguistic and cultural mysteries at a time when there were no guides of any sort. Their dedication is astonishing, and more should be known about them.

Of all the experts, none went as far as Richard Ponsonby-Fane in glorifying the religion. This great British scholar, born to a sizable family estate deep in rural England, forsook his family birthright for far-off lands, eventually settling in Kyoto where he delved into Shinto history and shrine lore to become such an authority that his books are still used today for research and Wikipedia entries.

The list of Ponsonby-Fane publications is remarkable, and they were collected after his death and published in six volumes by the Ponsonby-Fane Memorial Society. They are prized items. He wrote in Japanese too, and he achieved widespread respect among shrine figures. When I visited Ise once, a priest there on hearing I was from Kyoto asked if I knew of Ponsonby-Fane.

So who was this extraordinary person? Well, it turns out that he escaped the confines of British upper-class society by joining the colonial administration first in South Africa and then Hong Kong, where he became interested in Japan and started learning Japanese. Like many an expatriate, his discomfort in his native environment may have had to do with his sexuality. A confirmed bachelor, he distrusted women and in Japan lived for sixteen years with ‘a secretary’ called Sato Yoshijiro, much as Somerset Maugham in his French abode.

After he settled in Japan in 1919, Ponsonby Fane thought he had found refuge from a modernising rationalistic West. He also hated Western democracy, which he despised as government by an ‘ignorant and self-seeking mob’. Like many a reactionary, he was drawn to Shinto by its idealisation of a leader invested with divine authority. Devotion, loyalty and unswerving self-sacrifice are the virtues Ponsonby-Fane treasured in a faith he clearly found sympathetic (though he remained a high church Christian).

Ponsonby-Fane's country seat in Somerset (this and above courtesy Wikipedia)

Like Hearn, Ponsonby-Fane sees the essence of Shinto as lying in the patriotic spirit it fostered through the person of the emperor. ‘What this country really owes to Shinto is patriotism,’ he writes, ‘for no real Shintoist can fail to be patriotic when his sovereign is also his deity… the world over the Japanese are regarded as the very incarnation of patriotism.’ Ponsonby-Fane was writing in the run-up to WW2; Hearn had written in similar vein with even greater prescience some thirty years earlier.

Ponsonby-Fane was to develop close ties with Japan’s imperial family. In 1921 he acted as interpreter to the Crown Prince (future Emperor Hirohito). He was the only foreigner invited to Hirohito’s coronation at Kyoto’s Gosho palace, and being a tall figure who stood out among the relatively short Japanese he astonished the crowd by getting down on his hands and knees in respect before anyone else. In 1930 he sailed on the same ship to Europe with Prince Takamtasu, Hirohito’s younger brother, and was invited to attend all the prince’s receptions in England. And the scarf which he insisted on wearing everywhere with his kimono was apparently knit for him by Empress Teimei, widow of the Taisho emperor.

Ponsonby-Fane succeeded to his family estate, a large property in Somerset, and could have gone home any time he wanted to live the pleasant life of an English country gentleman, but he chose to remain in Japan and dedicate himself to Shinto studies. His final eight years were spent at the house he built for himself near Kyoto’s Kamigamo Shrine. It incorporated shrine elements into its design, finished off with his family crest on the eaves. He was friends with local priests, and at the Kyoto Middle School where he taught he was known as Dr Ofuda (ofuda hakase) because of his collection of shrine talisman. He died shortly before his sixtieth birthday, spared the dilemma in World War Two of having to choose between the stately home where his ashes are buried and the country he so eagerly embraced.

The house of Ponsonby-Fane, near Kyoto's Kamigamo Shrine, now owned by a company and remodelled

Fee for Mt Fuji?

February 25, 2013 / John D. / 0 Comments

Mt Fuji at rush hour (photo courtesy of Kyodo)

It’s often said distance lends enchantment, and Mt Fuji is a case in point. Now it seems the local authorities are getting serious about doing something to clean up the sacred mountain…

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KYODO FEB 25, 2013 (extracted from the Japan Times)

Admission fee for Mount Fuji in works: Yamanashi, Shizuoka governors

The governors of Yamanashi and Shizuoka prefectures have warned they might start charging an admission fee to visit Mount Fuji in a bid to finance environmental efforts on the iconic mountain.

Yamanashi Gov. Shomei Yokouchi said the two prefectures, whose borders are straddled by Japan’s highest mountain, will jointly determine how much to charge and when to commence a fee-based system. An admission fee might be introduced on a trial basis at an early date, he added.

“It’s likely we’ll ask climbers to share certain burdens,” Yokouchi told reporters Saturday, although Shizuoka Gov. Heita Kawakatsu said it’s possible the prefectures will “start by collecting contributions rather than a compulsory charge.”

The move comes at a time when Japan is hoping to have Mount Fuji listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site.

The two prefectures have discussed the introduction of an admission charge for the last 15 years due to the degradation of Mount Fuji’s environment from the volume of visitors and climbers. However, concerns that the plan could cause visitor numbers to tumble have hindered its implementation.

Yokouchi and Kawakatsu were attending an event in Tokyo organized to promote the mountain’s bid for a World Heritage listing.

Animals

February 24, 2013 / John D. / 0 Comments

A pair of foxes at Fushimi Inari

“I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.”
― Abraham Lincoln

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Shishi shrine guardian

Wherever you look in Shinto, there are animals. Komainu and shishi lions stand as guardians at shrines. Horses are messengers of the kami. Dragons and other animals spout at water basins. Amaterasu used a three-legged crow as a messenger. Kasuga Shrine treasures deer.

Like witches with their cats, kami have familiars. Okuninushi has a rodent. Hachiman has doves (or is it pigeons). Benten has snakes. Amaterasu has cockerels. Tenmangu has an ox. Inari, famously, has foxes.

What is it with Shinto and animals? Or rather what is it about animals and spirituality? There’s a feeling that animals are closer to the spirit world than humans, that their instincts are purer than the complexities of the human mind. Animals can sense earthquakes before we can. Perhaps too they can sense the other-worldly.

Yet though we treasure animals for their sensitivity, that does not stop humans abusing animals on a massive and routine scale. Factory farming, vivisection, unnecessary experiments, hunting, and depletion of habitats are banal, daily occurrences, not to mention the wanton cruelty involved in animal sports such as bull-fighting and fox-hunting. Why, oh why, is there such indifference to animal suffering?

It’s sometimes claimed that as a nature religion Shinto is necessarily animal-friendly. Evidence for this is put forward in the form of rituals carried out to console the souls of dead creatures. Yet the argument makes no sense: if you murdered someone and carried out a ritual for their repose, would it mean you were free of blame?

A splendid white horse statue

If Shinto were as green as this blog would like it to be, it would be standing up to condemn the sickening slaughter of dolphins at Taiji. It would be complaining about the condition of animals in Japan’s zoos, which have been condemned by international experts. It would be arguing for tighter laws against animal cruelty in a country where it is not unusual to see dogs tied up in small spaces. And it would be speaking out against the needless killing of whales in the Antarctic, subsidised from taxpayers money to provide food injurious to the health of the children to whom it is served in school meals.

In all these cases the tendency of Shinto authorities is to side with the ruling ethos. The national interest, as decided by the political elite, has long been the guiding principle – ever since the religion was co-opted by Emperor Tenmu in the seventh century to bolster imperial ideology. It explains why for instance there was no Shinto resistance to atrocities committed in World War Two. One of the very worst war crimes was carried out by Unit 731, and when I visited the site where the inhumane experiments were performed I was aghast to find that it had all been sanctioned by a Shinto shrine.

It is the contention of Green Shinto that animals deserve better than being venerated as an ideal while being maltreated in reality. If all life is sacred, then all life deserves respect. Shinto teaches that humans are an integral part of nature. It’s about time we started acting with greater compassion to our fellow creatures.

“The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

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To learn of cruelty at a Shinto festival, click here. Graphic video of the Taiji dolphin slaughter, here. Support and donations for Sea Shepherd, here. The Japan Animal Welfare Society, here. Elizabeth Oliver’s Animal Rescue Kansai, here.

Rat guardian at an Okuninushi shrine