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Purity and pollution

April 10, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

In a review of a book on waste management in Japan, Michael Hoffman writes of how traditional notions of purity and pollution affect modern values. It’s a theme close to my heart, though I’m not sure that I follow the reasoning on this occasion. Not one of Hoffman’s better pieces, I feel… (For the full review, click here.)

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What can an anthropologist teach us about waste? That its definition and the responses it calls forth are not universal but in large part culturally determined, Japan’s being rooted in notions of “purity” as old as Japanese civilization itself.

Do traditional notions of purity affect contemporary social values?

What does “purity” mean? An answer would help us answer a related question: What does “pollution” mean? Ancient Shinto beliefs held that purity was violated by sickness, menstruation, childbirth, physical injury. These were the “pollutions” of primitive Japan, seemingly irrelevant today, and yet primeval thinking can be oddly tenacious, as Kirby’s study of what he calls “Azuma Disease” shows.

Azuma is his pseudonym for an otherwise unidentified ward in western Tokyo where, in the mid 1990s, the opening of a new waste processing facility coincided with mysterious symptoms affecting some 10 percent of residents living nearby. Sufferers experienced breathing difficulties, bad coughs, various aches and pains, high blood pressure, insomnia, mental disorientation. What could the cause be?

The new plant was not an incinerator, merely a transfer facility, where waste was compressed prior to removal to landfill sites. It was scarcely visible, screened from view by a nicely landscaped “Forest Park.” Ward permission to build it had brought generous subsidies from the Tokyo Metropolitan government. The 90 percent who suffered no symptoms saw only benefits. When sufferers banded together to form a Group to End Azuma Disease (GEAD), they found themselves ostracized as pariahs, outcasts. Victims of pollution were reviled as polluters, their symptoms scorned as infecting the communal harmony.

When GEAD commissioned a scientific study that showed toxic levels near the plant to be significantly higher than elsewhere, members expected — “naively,” says Kirby — that the Tokyo Metro government would move promptly to protect them, but science, it seems, cuts both ways, depending on who’s manipulating it. The plant’s adamant assertion that there was no scientific basis for the protesters’ claims carried the day.

Cleanliness is next to godliness

The standoff drags on. Most victims have left; some stubbornly remain. As one put it, “Someone’s got to stay! I’ve got to make sure people remember here, right?” Post-3/11 readers will catch a premonitory echo here of the despair of residents of “hot spots” irradiated by Fukushima’s nuclear reactor meltdowns.

“Azuma Disease” is just one item on Kirby’s agenda. He discusses dioxins emitted by laxly regulated incinerators, Tokyo’s war on invading and proliferating jungle crows, and “the world’s most serious nuclear accident since Chernobyl” — not Fukushima, which happened after the book went to press, but its precursor, the 1999 “criticality incident” at Tokaimura — a clear and dire warning of worse bound to come, if only people had heeded it.

That they didn’t highlights the multifaceted anomaly of Japan’s approach to pollution. Shinto “purity” flowed into the “mottainai” (waste not want not) austerity of the 17th and 18th centuries, an ethic — or was it an instinct? — astonishingly ahead of its time in terms of what a later age would call eco-consciousness. This in turn prefigured willing wartime sacrifices under the slogan, “Extravagance is the enemy!”

So it was, and so in a sense it is today, but a modern peacetime economy does not run on austerity, and Japan’s postwar “economic miracle” produced, Kirby notes, “the world’s worst health damage from industrial pollution up until that time,” Minamata Disease being the most famous, though by no means the only, example. So clear was the evidence back then, and so overpowering the effects, that vigorous citizens’ movements arose and were remarkably effective. Pollution was regulated and up to a point cleaned up. The protests faded. A new generation of outbreaks like “Azuma Disease” — fortunately or unfortunately — are less visible, less widespread, and so easier to sweep under the rug. Japanese thinking was never tormented, as Western thinking was early on, by the rift between appearance and reality.

Apparent purity will do, as long as the real impurity doesn’t show.

Purity in the year of the dragon

Origins 1): Jomon and the Polynesian connection

April 9, 2012 / John D. / 7 Comments

Jomon man

Here’s an interesting quote:

“Japanese matsuri (festivals) resemble so much Balinese ones that one could wonder if one was not copied from the other. During cremations in Bali, the dead body is carried on a portable shrine, very much in the way that the Japanese carry their mikoshi. Balinese funerals are joyful and people swinging the portable shrine in the streets are making loud noise to scare the evil spirits.

Basically, Balinese religion is a form of Hinduism that has incorporated the aborigenal animist religion. Japanese Shintoism is also a variety of animism, and is practised side-by-side with Buddhism, a religion derived from Hinduism (Buddha himslef was born a Hindu). There are lots of other cultural similarities between ancient cultures of Indonesia and Japan.

For example, both Balinese temples and Japanese shrines, as well as traditional Japanese and Balinese houses have a wall surrounding them, originally meant tp prevent evil spirits from penetrating the property. Despite the radical changes that Indonesian culture underwent after the introduction of Islam and Christianity, and the changes that Buddhism brought to Japan, it is still possible to observe clear similarities between the supposed original prehistoric cultures of the two archipelagoes.”

Things get even weirder when one considers the linguistic connection:

“From a linguistic point of view, Bahasa Indonesia/Malaysia and Japanese language share only a few similarities, but nonetheless striking ones. Apart from the very similar pronunciation in both languages, there is the same hierarchical differences in personal pronouns. For example “you” is either anda or kamu with the same meaning and usage as anata and kimi in Japanese. Likewise, the Japanese verb suki (“to like”) translates suka in Bahasa. Such similarities are probably more than mere coincidences, and may reveal a common origin.”

Jomon woman

So how is one to explain this? Well, research in genetics has turned up compelling evidence of migratory links.

“The Paleolithic Jomon people appear to have come from Austronesia during the Ice Age, before Japan was resettled by Bronze-age rice farmers from the continent. The Chinese had previously expanded southward to South-East Asia. The original inhabitants of Indonesia and the Philippines might have been related to Dravidians of Southern India. Y-haplogroup C, which has been associated with the first migration of modern humans out of Africa towards Asia, is relatively frequent in Kerala (southern tip of India) and Borneo. These early Austronesians are thought to have been the ancestors of the Ice Age settlers of Japan.”

So there we have it: Jomon Japanese have a southern Austronesian origin. The Jomon era was roughly from 15,000 BC to 300 BC, so what’s that got to do with modern Japan? Well, Jomons never died out but were assimilated into the immigrant waves from Korea and China that created the Yayoi culture. Research has shown that 43% of modern Japanese men carry a Y-chromosome of Jomon origin.

The Polynesian roots of the Japanese live on. And they’re evident in the form of modern Shinto too.

The style of shrine at Ise is said to have Polynesian influences

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Information draws on the following article:
http://www.wa-pedia.com/history/origins_japanese_people.shtml

Yasurai Festival (Imamiya Jinja)

April 9, 2012 / John D. / 1 Comment

Circling beneath the red umbrella brings protection from disease

A plague on you cherry blossoms!

That’s evidently what some Heian-era folk thought, for when a bout of plague hit Kyoto just over 1000 years ago, they thought it must be caused by the falling cherry blossom. So to pacify the ekishin, kami of pestilence, they started a festival for its entertainment. It’s still going today, and is known as Yasurai matsuri.

In fact there’s a whole group of festivals at cherry blossom time to do with warding off pestilence, known as gechinsai. Kyoto’s version centres on Imamiya Jinja, where on the second Sunday of April processions from two other places converge at the shrine to perform for the kami. The main feature is the dance of the demons.

The procession features large red umbrellas, or canopies. It’s said that if you get under one, you will be safe from disease for the coming year, so onlookers take advantage of the occasion to stand underneath. A large red umbrella is put up at the shrine too, with people circling underneath before paying respects at a temporary shrine.

Five spring branches atop the canopy

On top of the processional canopy is a bundle of five different spring branches – willow; pine; cherry; camelia; mountain rose (yamabuki). The idea behind this apparently is that the kami is thought to be distracted by the cherry blossom and wanders off, infatuated by their beauty. It thus fails to protect the locals. The flowering spring branches draw it to the procession and lead it back to the shrine. They act therefore as a kind of shamanistic vehicle (yorishiro) for drawing down the spirit.

Back at the shrine, the kami is entertained by young demons with red and black wigs dancing with drums. This pleases the kami, which is filled with benevolence towards the neighbourhood. In this way it agrees to protect and watch over the locals for the coming year.

As part of the festival the shrine provides bright red hitogata (paper effigy), which act as a substitute for a particular person. You write the name of a person you want to be in good health, then give it to the shrine to be prayed over while retaining the slip in the middle. This is placed at the entrance to the person’s house, ensuring protection from disease.

Red hitogata (effigy) for disease protection

According to Paul Carty, Kyoto scholar, the Yasurai festival launches an annual cycle of anti-plague festivals that runs from cherry blossom time through the summertime Gion Festival and ends with the Kurama Fire Festival on Oct. 22. The season of disease thus runs from spring to autumn through the hottest time of year. Presumably in winter it’s too cold for the germs.

Imamiya shrine parishioners are keen to point out their festival is the oldest in Kyoto, though it’s generally said that the honour belongs to the Aoi Matsuri. True or not, for 1000 years people have been carrying out the Yasurai Festival in cherry blossom time, and you have to say that those centuries of persistence have paid off. Not much sign of the plague or pestilence these days!

Procession heading towards Imamiya Shrine

Demons getting down to some serious dancing and drumming

Demons watching demons

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For more pictures and videos of the dance performance, click here.

Celebrating cherry blossom

April 7, 2012 / John D. / 4 Comments

View along the Takano River in Kyoto

Yes, it’s that time of year again… banks of pinkish cloud covering hillsides; cameras intrusively close to unfurling blossom; parks packed with drunken revellers more interested in karaoke than cherry. Here in Kyoto we have many special cherry blossom sites, and from my window I can gaze along the Takano River lined in pink as it meanders towards the northern hills. Ah, Saigyo…

Let me die in spring under the blossoming trees, let it be around that full moon of the fourth month.

blossoms/ on the withered trunk/like memories

The Japanese have long made a cult of cherry blossom. It used to be plum blossom until Heian times, a custom adopted from China, for the reawakening of nature after the long sleep of winter was marked by the miraculous first flowering of the fruit tree. But the Japanese preference for cherry gradually prevailed, driven by an affinity with the evanescence of its blossom.

The sentiment is usually associated with the Buddhist view of the transience of life, but Shinto shares a similar outlook. It was after all the great Shinto scholar, Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), who came up with the compelling notion of mono no aware (the pathos of things) as an underlying current in the culture. It was Motoori too who wrote the poem: ‘If someone asks about the spirit of a true Japanese, point to the wild cherry blossom shining in the sun.’

One way of looking at Shinto is as a celebration of life, and that includes cherry blossom viewing. Here in Kyoto we have a shrine famed for its cherry connection – Hirano Jinja. The precincts contain 400 cherry trees in all, with 50 different types that bloom successively over a month. Take a look at this page from the shrine’s website to see the loving detail with which the Japanese record these things.

The shrine has held a cherry blossom festival annually since 985. It began during the reign of Emperor Kazan, and is celebrated now on April 10 each year. In the morning at 11.00 there will be a ceremony at Emperor Kazan’s mausoleum, and in the afternoon at 1.00 a procession will head around the neighboring area.

The weather forecast is good. The blossom are coming to their peak. The shrine sure is going to be packed!

800px-Hirano_Shrine_Cherry_Blossoms_April_2010

Crowds flooding into Hirano Shrine (Photo courtesy of Brian Adler)

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For more on Japan’s cherry blossom soul, see Michael Hofmann in the Japan Times
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20120325x1.html

For a firsthand account of Kyoto’s cherry blossom festivals, see
http://www.travelvisionweekly.com/article.php?id=2100

Is Shinto a religion? (again)

April 6, 2012 / John D. / 6 Comments

Michael Saso, professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii, has written simply yet succinctly of the nature of religion in East Asia. Substitute ‘Shinto’ for Daoism in the passage below, and you pretty much have Japan instead of China.

Is Shinto a religion? Well, yes and no… (quote follows)

‘Buddhism and Daoism are cultural systems, not religions, in the sense of that word in Indo-European language usage. Religion, in Semitic, English, Arabic, Latin, Germanic, Turkic, and Hindi languages, means a faith or belief system to which one must subscribe, in order to belong. Thus, in all Indo-European cultures, one must belong to, or believe in only one system. It is unthinkable, for instance, to be Christian, Judaic, and Islamic, all at once.

In East and Southeast Asia, on the other hand, wherever religion is defined as the celebration of “rites of passage” (sacraments) and “annual festivals”, at least three (and sometimes more) religious systems provide rituals, moral ideals, and festivals. In China, for instance, Confucian social values, Buddhist rites for the deceased, and Daoist annual festivals, are all celebrated as essential elements in a healthily functioning society. One must be Confucian for human encounter, Buddhist for burial services, and Daoist when harmonizing with the great seasonal changes in nature. Confucian mind, Buddhist heart, and Daoist belly, is another way of expressing the “Three teachings, one culture” proverb that defines Asian religious culture.’

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For an earlier take on this question, see here.

Religion by another name...

Nukes into shrines

April 6, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

Fukushima no. 1 nuclear power plant reenvisaged as Shinto shrines

Here’s an odd but intriguing idea: a plan to convert the failed nuclear power stations of Fukushima into Shinto shrines!! And no, it’s not an April 1 joke, for the article was posted on March 18 in the Japan Times. (Click here.)

The proposal to convert nuclear power into spiritual power is the brainchild of an architect called Katsuhiro Miyamoto…

The 51-year-old who, in 1996, represented Japan at the “Olympics of architecture” — as the Venice Biennale is known — has suggested erecting giant shrine-style thatched roofs over each of the crippled reactor buildings — and so creating what he dubs “The Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant Shrine.” This, he tells The Japan Times, will “pacify a malevolent god.”

As yet, no long-term strategy for dealing with the now highly radioactive plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. has been developed. Far from it, in fact, since work is still ongoing to stabilize the leaking reactors. Ultimately, however, Miyamoto believes the key issue will be what to do with the highly radioactive nuclear fuel that either remains in or has melted through the reactors’ containment vessels.

“They won’t be able to bury it on the site because the land there is not geologically stable enough, and I doubt they will be able to take it off the site because no other local government will agree to take it,” Miyamoto observes. “That means they will have to stabilize it somehow and more or less leave it where it is.”

That done, the next task as he sees it would be one he believes architects are uniquely positioned to address: the creation of some kind of structure above and around the reactors that will convey to future generations — possibly for 10,000 years — the danger of what lies within.

In this respect he points out that, “Whereas the original blue confetti-like pattern painted on the reactor buildings seems like a device to conceal danger, a shrine-like structure will do the opposite.”

As to the choice of a shrine-like appearance — rather than, say, giant skull-and-crossbones graphics adorning the buildings — Miyamoto concedes that “not all Japanese would describe themselves as ‘believers’ in Shinto.” Nonetheless, he thinks “most would agree that when they visit a shrine they sense a kind of inexplicable power there. Shrines have been conveying that impression for many generations already, and they are likely to do so in the future, too.”

The architect notes that with thatched roofs topping each of the six reactor buildings at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, the site will come to resemble Uesugi Ancestral Hall in the city of Yonezawa, Yamagata Prefecture, where 12 small shrines laid out in a line commemorate 12 successive generations of the Uesugi clan’s feudal lords, whose lives spanned more than 250 years from 1623-1876.

And like that ancestral hall, the architect believes the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant Shrine “will respectfully serve as an icon to enshrine the souls of the departed” — but unlike it, “it will also deter anyone from approaching.”

Ise oracle

April 5, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

I’ve come across information on a website that is far from authoritative, so am wondering whether it’s true or not. The information seems startling, yet I’ve never seen it mentioned elsewhere. The website in question is full of errors and politically repugnant, so I’m not inclined to trust it. Perhaps readers could help out here…

According to the website, an official delegation was sent to Ise in 1941 to ask whether the country should go to war with the US. The answer given by the priests, on the presumption that it derived from Amaterasu, was in the affirmative. As a result on Dec. 7, 1941 – ‘a date which will live in infamy’ – Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

Similarly in 1945, with Japan facing defeat, another delegation was sent to Ise following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The question posed this time was whether the nation should die fighting to the last man, or whether the country should surrender so as to be able to fight again in future. The answer this time was that the nation should surrender, because the kami loved the people.

I can’t find any other reference to this on the internet. Does anyone know whether there’s any truth to the claims?