A towering torii gate at the entrance. (Photo by: かがみ～ )Izumo style shimenawa rice rope (Photo by John Dougill)
The giant straw ropes called shimenawa that resemble anacondas coiled around a tree branch are Izumo Taisha’s most famous feature. They represent the separation between the mortal and supernatural worlds. In fact, the shimenawa at the Kagura Hall at Izumo Taisha are the largest in Japan, measuring 13 meters long and weighing five tons.
What’s with all the rabbits at Izumo Taisha?
Okuninushi and rabbit / hare (photo John Dougill)
The main worship hall, where the Shinto deity Okuninushi is enshrined, is fenced in to divide the sacred from the everyday space. Built in 1744, this hall is the tallest in Japan, at about 24 meters. But it’s what lies behind the cherished building that catches most visitors’ attention.
At the back of the hall, there’s a cluster of cute rabbit statues! The rabbits are important to this shrine because of their connection to Okuninushi. Japan’s sacred text of creation stories, the Kojiki, tells a legend about how the god rescued a white rabbit from being eaten by sharks. Delight in the different personalities, quirks, and poses of each one as you walk through the shrine grounds.
At the nearby museum you’ll find Japan’s largest collection of excavated bronze swords and bronze bells, and learn more about the history of the holy Izumo region.
A shrine dedicated to matchmaking
Pray to find your future mate. (Photo by: Jesse Ramnanansingh)
The ritual for praying at Izumo Taisha is slightly different than at other shrines around Japan. Instead of clapping twice as you usually do at a Shinto shrine, at Izumo, you clap four times—twice for yourself and twice for your current or future partner.
Many young Japanese girls come to the shrine to pray for luck finding a future husband. Okuninushi is the Shinto god of marriage and good relationships, after all.
(Photo by John Dougill)
This
has made the shrine into a very popular wedding destination as well. In
2014, a member of the Japanese royal family, Princess Noriko, tied the
knot here. You may spot a wedding or two during your visit if you’re
lucky!
Close to the shrine is an entire street lined with restaurants and
souvenir shops. Try regional specialties like Izumo soba, which is made
from buckwheat seeds and served with grated daikon, nori (dried seaweed) and spring onions.
Shimane Prefecture has yet to reach tourists’ Japan bucket lists, but it’s well on its way.
Nearby Sacred Beach
Located less than a kilometer and within walking distance from Izumo Taisha Shrine is Inasanohama Beach. The beach is home to a tiny shrine called Bentenjima which rests on a large rock in the ocean. [It is on this beach that the kamiari sai takes place when all the kami of Japan arrive by sea and are taken to be housed in Izumo Taisha.]
See the mysterious Benten-jima shrine on Inasanohama beach. (Photo by mstk east)
For more about the religious significance of Izumo Taisha, please see here or here or here. Please also see the Category for Izumo in the righthand column of this page.
In a paper delivered at the University of Oslo, Aike Rots considered the vexing question of defining Shinto and came up with six different concepts. It is one of the best and clearest overviews that Green Shinto has seen. The following is extracted from his lecture, with added paragraphing and bold font for emphasis. (For those who would like to see the original, please click here.)
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Aike Rots, Shinto researcher (photos by John Dougill)
Aike Rots writes: In some ways, defining Shinto is even more difficult than defining Christianity, Islam or Buddhism. Those three religions all somehow trace their own history back to a legendary historical founder – Jesus, Muhammad or Gautama Buddha – and to the period in which this person lived. But when it comes to Shinto, there is very little consensus about when this religion started.
Famously, Shinto has no single founder, and it is not easy to trace it to one single period in history. Some argue that it is has existed since ‘time immemorial’; according to one of most famous and widely read English-language introductions, it is the Japanese ‘native racial faith which arose in the mystic days of remote antiquity’ (Ono 1962, 1).
Among Shinto intellectuals, there is disagreement over the question whether the tradition goes back to the worship practices of hunter- gatherers in the Jōmon period (30,000 -300 BCE) or to those of Yayoi-period rice farmers (300 BCE-300 CE). Many serious historians think the tradition was shaped much later, under the influence of Chinese ideology and rituals, and of Buddhism: in the Nara period (8th century), according to some; in the late-medieval period, according to others; or even in the 18th or 19th century, as a modern invented tradition (e.g., Kuroda 1981).
In any case, it is important to realise that there is a difference between two things. On the one hand, there is the historical reality of shrine worship, of the worship of local deities (kami) by means of ritual sacrifice and prayers (norito ). These worship practices have always been characterised by great local diversity, constant change, and continuous interaction with Buddhism, Confucianism and Chinese cosmology and ritual. On the other hand, there is the abstract concept ‘Shinto’, conceptualised as a single and singular tra- dition, which symbolically unifies the Japanese people as a nation and which is often seen as intimately connected with the imperial institution.
Imperial burial mounds are sacred places
This is different from most insiders’ interpretations, and from most popular introductions to Shinto, which usually assert that Shinto is the indigenous religious tradition of Japan – singular, ancient, uniquely Japanese, and with an unchanging core essence. That is why I call these approaches ‘essentialist’.
In my dissertation, I have distinguished between six different paradigms, according to which Shinto has been conceptualised, defined and shaped in the course of modern history. The first of these was dominant from the second half of the nineteenth century until the end of the Second World War, but it still lingers on. According to this view, Shinto is a national ritual cult focused on the worship of the divine ancestors of the imperial family; it was seen not as a religion defined by belief and personal membership, but as a collective Japanese, non-religious ritual tradition in which all citizens should take part. I have called this the ‘imperial paradigm’.
After the Second World War, this imperial ritual and ideological system (which is often referred to as ‘State Shinto ’) was dismantled; Shinto was subsequently established legally and politically as a religion. Accordingly, it was privatised, and it had to be redefined. According to the dominant post-war view, Shinto is the ancient, singular Way of ‘the’ Japanese people; it is an ethnic, racial faith, shared by all Japanese in the present and the past, by virtue of their nationality. According to this view, Shinto encompasses the realm of religion, but it is much more than that: it is the essence of Japanese culture and mentality. As such, it is public and collective, not private or individual. Ono Sokyō, whom I quoted previously, is a representative of this paradigm. It has long been the view of many shrine priests. I call this the ‘ethnic paradigm’.
There are several alternative views, however. One of these is the ‘local paradigm’. It goes back to the work of the Japanese ethnologist Yanagita Kunio, who wrote most of his works before the war; in recent years, it seems to have acquired new popularity. Proponents of this paradigm challenge the focus on the imperial tradition, and of national unity, that characterises the other two. According to them, the essence of Shinto cannot be found in powerful institutions; but, on the contrary, in local, rural worship traditions and beliefs, which have nearly disappeared. ‘Real Shinto’, according to them, can be found in the shamanistic and animistic traditions of the countryside – accordingly, they profess a nostalgic desire for a nearly-lost rural Japan, characterised by social harmony and harmony with nature. This is the image of the popular film character Totoro, living in a grove near an old farmhouse, in a beautiful rural landscape (satoyama, as it is called in Japanese).
Totoro, from the Miyazaki Hayao film
In all these paradigms, Shinto is intimately connected with the land of Japan. But there is an alternative paradigm, which has also been around since the pre-war period, and which I call the ‘universal paradigm’. According to this view, Shinto may have emerged in Japan, but it is essentially a salvation religion, which has the potential to reach out to – and maybe even save – the rest of the world. This view is characteristic of many membership-based groups, so-called ‘ new religious movements ’ , which define themselves as Shinto. The aforementioned Yamakage Shinto is one of many examples. In recent years, this view has also been advocated by a number of Shinto priests outside of Japan, who have established shrines elsewhere – two well-known non-Japanese shrines are located in the state of Washington (US) and in Amsterdam. The last one, interestingly, was founded by a priest trained in the Yamakage tradition.
Paul de Leeuw at the Yamakage Shinto Saigu in Amsterdam
There is some overlap with the fifth paradigm, which I call the ‘spiritual paradigm’. I think it is worth distinguishing between these two, as not all proponents of the spiritual paradigm have an international agenda; some are downright nationalist. Simply put, according to advocates of this view, Shinto is a religion without doctrine, a primordial worship tradition; it can only be truly grasped intuitively, by means of a mystical experience of the divine, not intellectually. Politics, theology, philosophy – it is all peripheral, according to this view. (So basically this whole story shows that I have never really understood Shinto, because otherwise I would have argued that Shinto does have a core essence, but that this essence cannot be grasped in words.) Similar arguments can be found in other religious traditions, and they are often used as a strategy to discredit criticism – by suggesting that critics are ‘unenlightened’, for instance .
Universal and environmental?
Last but not least, in recent decades, a sixth paradigm has emerged – and it is this paradigm that has constituted the main focus of my dissertation. I have called this ‘the Shinto environmentalist paradigm’. It draws on the previous paradigms – in particular, I would say, the local paradigm, but also on the universal. In addition, it is influenced by the global trend to relate religious worldviews to environmental issues. Put simply, according to this paradigm Shinto is an ancient tradition of nature worship – sometimes called ‘animism’ – characterised by respect for nature and the belief that elements of nature are sacred. This tradition, it is suggested, constitutes the foundation of the social-ecological equilibrium allegedly characteristic of ancient Japanese societies. Proponents of this view typically argue that Japan’s current environmental problems are the consequence of the fact that the Japanese people have ‘forgotten’ this tradition – or so the argument goes. Therefore, in order to solve these problems, they should relearn and re-embrace the nature worship of their ancestors. This is not just important for Japan, some of them add, but may actually serve to teach the world how to live in harmony with nature.
Advocates of these ideas argue that similar ‘animistic’, pagan traditions have existed all over the world, but unfortunately, most of them have by and large disappeared and given way to monotheistic traditions, which are blamed for justifying the exploitation of the natural environment. So according to proponents of this Shinto environmentalist paradigm, the answer to [the] question would be: most certainly, yes, Shinto does offer a viable model for environmental sustainability.
The Mitarashi Stream flows through Shimogamo Shrine and into the Tadasu no mori woods.
It’s a question that has vexed many a person over the years. Is Shinto a religion or a way of life? It begs a further question: does it matter? At certain times in history it’s been a matter of vital importance, and as can be seen from the article below, it remains a puzzling issue even in the present. (The excerpt below is taken from a longer piece in the Asahi Shimbun about the Chichibu Festival.)
**************** Many Japanese freely mix religions depending on the occasion, visiting a Shinto shrine at New Year’s, holding a Buddhist funeral or getting married in a Christian wedding, a popular option even though only 1% of the population is Christian.
“I don’t know if that means we’re flexible or if we don’t have convictions,” Yamashita said.
Kyoto’s Gion Festival. For most it is more a matter of tradition than religion.
RELIGION SEEN DIFFERENTLY Roaming the streets in the afternoon, a group of high school girls decked out in festival jackets and headbands who later joined in pulling the floats [at Chichibu Festival] said the festival wasn’t religious at all for them. And yet they emphatically said they believed the story about the two gods meeting that evening
“It’s romantic!” said Rea Kobayashi, 17. The girls also said they would celebrate Christmas with a decorated tree and gift-giving and didn’t see any problem mixing religions. “No problem! That’s normal. Most Japanese do that,” said Rio
Nishimiya, 18. “We’re good at that. If it’s fun, that’s all that
matters.”
“Japanese are flexible,” said her friend, Meiri Shimada, also 18. “That’s a good thing!” Such views are shared by many Japanese. Attitudes toward religion are ambiguous. Many would say they aren’t religious–and yet every year millions of Japanese visit Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples across Japan and have little shrines in their homes where they pray.
Religion is viewed differently in Japan, and in some other parts of Asia, than in the West or the Islamic world, where there is an emphasis on individual faith and a set of beliefs, or a creed, based on a sacred text such as the Bible or Koran.
In Japan, religion is more of a cultural, communal and ritualistic thing than a personal faith. Shinto has no sacred text or clearly defined theology, and many Japanese would be hard-pressed to summarize it, including many visitors to this festival.
“It’s a religion of life,” said Sonoda, the chief priest, in an attempt to summarize Shinto. “It’s something inherited from ancestors that provides a spirituality passed on from parent to child. And this isn’t just for humans, but we are also linked to animals and all living things. It’s because of them that we’re alive. Worldview may be a better way to describe it,” he said.
There are no definitive numbers on Shinto believers in Japan simply because there’s nothing definite to count. “We don’t use the phrase ‘believers,’” Sonoda said. There are no weekly services and no missionaries to spread Shinto.
COEXISTENCE Sonoda said other folk religions share traits with Shinto. He recalls visiting a Hopi native American community years ago. They were holding a festival giving thanks to the spirits that lived in a nearby mountain and came down every spring to help the people with the planting season, and in winter would return to the mountain, he said. “That made a big impression on me,” he said.
There are more than 80,000 Shinto shrines across Japan, and nearly as many Buddhist temples, and the two have generally coexisted peacefully after Buddhism’s introduction to Japan in the 6th century, along with Confucian thought from China.
That long history of coexistence is one key reason behind Japanese attitudes toward religion.
“Each religion had a different role, and these three–Shinto, Buddhism and Confucianism–shaped Japanese culture,” said Susumu Shimazono, a professor of religion at Tokyo’s Sophia University, a Jesuit school. “There was some dogma, but none of these religions stressed exclusiveness. This sort of combination of ideas and philosophies is typical of East Asia.”
Experts say interest in Shinto among ordinary Japanese is holding steady or even increasing. As one measure of this, visitors to the Ise Grand Shrine, Japan’s most important shrine, have grown in recent years, running to 8.9 million through November, up from 7.8 million during the same period last year and 8.5 million for all of 2017.
Amaterasu – was her primacy in Meiji times an attempt to replicate Western monotheism?
Shinto is also closely entwined with the Japanese imperial family, holding that the emperor is a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami.
It also has a dark recent past. During World War II, Shinto was elevated to the state religion and the war effort was fought in the name of the emperor, who was considered divine. After the war, the emperor was stripped of his divine stature, and the U.S.-drafted Constitution ensures freedom of religion and the separation of religion and state.
IMPERIAL FAMILY But Shinto’s ties to the imperial family, and some religious rituals performed by the emperor, have generated controversy.
Buildings used in this year’s Daijosai were made open to the public (photo by Green Shinto reader, Esben Andreasen)
Last month, newly enthroned Emperor Naruhito spent the night in a makeshift shrine built (and which will later be demolished) with public funds in a ceremony called Daijosai, or the Great Thanksgiving. According to authorities, in this most important succession rite, he gave thanks for harvests, prayed for the peace and safety of the nation and hosted the imperial family’s ancestral gods.
All told, the event will cost 2.7 billion yen ($25 million) in public money. A group of 200 people filed a lawsuit last year against the government over the expenditure.
Crown Prince Akishino, Naruhito’s younger brother, said last year that he was against using state money for the ritual and raised questions about whether this was permissible under the separation of religion and state.
Visitors to the Chichibu festival were divided over the issue. “It’s a waste of money,” said 27-year-old Naoko Osada, of the ritual. “According to the Constitution, using public money for this is out of bounds,” said Akihiko Suzuki, a 73-year-old retired man. “But as Japanese, we entrust these sorts of things to authorities.”
Others said they believed Naruhito was fulfilling his duties as symbolic head of the country and that spending public money on such rites was acceptable so long as Shinto isn’t imposed on people.
“He’s our symbol, and it’s important to keep this tradition. So I
don’t think it violates the Constitution,” said Nobuyuki Negishi, 44.
“It’s OK for them to use state funds as long as they don’t use too
much.”
SHINTO’S TWO ASPECTS Sophia’s Shimazono said it’s helpful to view Shinto today as having two parts: state Shinto as a lingering political philosophy and the Shinto of the masses who go to shrines at New Year’s.
“State Shinto was rejected as a state religion after the war, but some of that sentiment remains today,” he said. “It has a large influence in politics.”
Rightwing groups such as Nippon Kaigi, which has ties to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is a special adviser to the group, would like to revise Japan’s pacifist Constitution and see Shinto increase its prominence.
That includes official visits to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, where Japan’s war dead, including war criminals, are memorialized. Politicians have avoided visiting Yasukuni because China and South Korea say that doing so glorifies Japan’s wartime leaders and past.
Steps to the Naiku at Ise, open to all who wish to worship at the shrine of the emperor’s ancestor, Amaterasu omikami
Abe drew attention to Shinto by hosting the 2016 Group of Seven summit in Ise-Shima and took fellow leaders to visit the Ise Grand Shrine, dedicated to the sun goddess. He also attended a once-every-20-years event at Ise in 2013, only the second prime minister to do so.
When you combine those political undercurrents with the cultural traditions maintained by millions who visit shrines every year — most of whom likely embrace freedom of religion — Shinto still “has a fairly large role in Japanese society,” Shimazono said.
Such political or even religious convictions, however, were far from the minds of most visitors to the Chichibu Night Festival. None of the two dozen people interviewed wanted a return to state Shinto, and few said the festival held religious significance for them, although some would say it held spiritual meaning.
“It’s so majestic!” exclaimed Tsuyoshi Koyama, a 47-year-old onlooker as all six huge floats with glowing lanterns gathered in the park at the festival’s climax and fireworks filled the sky. “Every day we have these mundane lives, and to see something this grand really stirs my heart.”
Koyama said he doesn’t consider himself devout and “prays only when I need help.” But he does believe that spirits live in the natural world around us, and “feels something spiritual in the atmosphere here.”
“Westerners tend to embrace one religion, but if you reduce it to
one, that can cause conflicts,” he said. “The good part about Japan is
that there are many gods, and they share generously with us.”
An interesting description in the Asahi Shimbun of a traditional festival in Japan run by a priest who is a leading proponent of Shinto’s ‘green credentials’. It’s interesting because it touches on many of the key points in Shinto. Is it primarily animist or ancestral? Is it basically a religion of Japaneseness? Is it even a religion at all?
(It’s worth noting in reference to Sonoda Minoru’s quote below that prominent amongst the kami worshipped at his shrine is the very modern ancestral figure of Prince Chichibu (1902-53), second son of Emperor Taisho. It raises the question of what exactly worshippers are praying to.)
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Men stand on top of a lantern-covered float as fireworks light up the sky during the Chichibu Night Festival in Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture, on Dec. 3. (AP Photo)
CHICHIBU, Saitama Prefecture–As fireworks light up the winter night, scores of men, women and teenagers crying “washoi, washoi” haul the last of six towering, lantern-covered floats up a small hill and into the town center, the culminating moment of a Shinto festival that has evolved from a harvest thanksgiving into a once-a-year meeting between two local gods.
The Chichibu Night Festival, which has roots stretching more than 1,000 years, is one of three famous Japanese festivals to feature huge floats, which can top 7 meters and weigh up to 15 tons. They are pulled through the streets on large wooden wheels by hundreds of residents in traditional festival garb –headbands, black leggings and thick cotton jackets emblazoned with Japanese characters — to drums, whistles and exuberant chants.
Shinto is Japan’s indigenous religion that goes back centuries. It is an animism that believes there are thousands of kami, or spirits, inhabiting nature, such as forests, rivers and mountains. People are encouraged to live in harmony with the spirits and can ask for their help. Ancestors also become kami and can also help the living.
This two-day festival has its roots in an older tradition of villagers giving thanks to the nearby mountain god for helping them during the planting and harvesting season, said Minoru Sonoda, the chief priest of the Chichibu Shrine and a former Kyoto University professor of religious studies. In 2016, it was designated a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage.
“It’s a time to celebrate the bounty of nature,” Sonoda said. During medieval times, the festival evolved into a celebration of an annual rendezvous between the nearby mountain god and the goddess of the town. The latter is carried in an ornate ark-like box by a group of white-clad men through streets to the central park, where it rests while the six floats slowly converge on the crowded square, each one’s arrival celebrated with a burst of fireworks.
But these days, many Japanese who flock to the festival, which draws about 200,000 every December, don’t know either of those stories and say the event holds no religious meaning for them — but they do want to maintain the tradition. They visit simply for a fun, cultural experience: walking the thronged streets, watching the procession and eating from the hundreds of food stalls selling grilled squid, yakitori chicken skewers and dozens of other snacks.
Some may squeeze in a quick visit to the Chichibu Shrine to offer a prayer, typically done by clapping ones’ hands twice to get the attention of the gods and then bowing with folded hands.
“I like the fireworks and the food. Purely to enjoy. I don’t really think about the religious aspects,” said Mitsuo Yamashita, a 69-year-old retiree who has come to the festival for the past 15 years. “Japanese aren’t very religious, and in other ways we’re all over the place religiously.”
The Dutch academic, Aike Rots, is a world authority on the greenness of Shinto, so it’s worth paying close attention when he posts an article entitled ‘Does Shinto Offer a Viable Model for Environmental Sustainability?’.
In a carefully constructed survey of the pros and cons, he comes to much the same conclusion as suggested by previous articles in this blog, namely that while there is a lot of ‘green-washing’ there remains the potential for genuine commitment in future.
Over the centuries ‘Shinto’ has radically changed in composition, and what shape it will take in the coming years remains uncertain. It is possible to identify different forces at play. Inside Japan nationalism overshadows nature worship, whereas outside Japan animism has eclipsed ancestral ties. Which will prove more persuasive is still to be decided.
The following extract is taken from a much longer piece by Rots which can be found here. It is the text of his PhD trial lecture, which he gave on February 27, 2014, at the University of Oslo. Please note that the paragraphing has been altered and is not that of the original (all photos by John Dougill).
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Meiji Jingu is claimed as Tokyo’s power spot owing to its energising trees and greenery.
Does Shinto Offer a Viable Model for Environmental Sustainability?
I have to apologise: my answer to this lecture ’s main question is neither a wholehearted ‘yes’, nor an absolute ‘no’. Shinto may not offer a complete ‘model’ for environmental sustainability – not yet. Yet within this social field that we call ‘Shinto’, there are certain ideas and practices, which may not have been fully developed yet, but which possibly contain the seeds for such a model.
The Shinto environmentalist movement is growing up, and some of the criticisms which I have discussed today are taken seriously by actors within this movement. For instance, there is one very promising development, which has really only happened in the last two or three years, as a result of Japan’s nuclear crisis. That is, some shrine priests have interpreted the shrine grove’s role as ‘community centre’ in a whole new way, using it as a place where renewable energy is produced for the neighbourhood or village. For instance, two years ago, I read a short article in the Shinto weekly newspaper about a shrine in Hokkaido devoted to the sun goddess Amaterasu. This shrine had placed solar panels on its roof in order to get electricity from the sun. The head priest said that Amaterasu gives us her light, is a life-giving goddess – so why not use this divine gift to produce sustainable electricity? And he is not the only one: I have heard of some other cases like this.
There is one scientist in particular who is actively involved with the chinju no mori preservation movement, and he has spread this idea of shrines as community centres both socially and in terms of the local production and distribution of renewable energy (Hiroi 2011; 2012). This is very recent, so I am not sure to what extent his ideas will materialise – but I think it is quite an interesting development.
Conclusion: the story of a thousand-year forest
I would like to conclude this lecture optimistically, by telling you a story. It is not a model , but it may be considered an interesting example nonetheless. This is the story of Mr. Sakurai Takashi, who is the priest of a fairly small rural shrine called Gosho Komataki Jinja. It is located on the north side of Mount Tsukuba in Ibaraki prefecture, about two to three hours north of Tokyo. This is an old shrine: this year, they celebrated their one thousandth anniversary. It has some old, pretty wooden buildings; some small sub-shrines for different deities; it has graves on the shrine precincts, which is fairly uncommon as these are usually near Buddhist temples; and it is surrounded by lush, abundant green forest, moss, ferns, and a small stream.
Near the forest is a rice paddy. What is also quite interesting is that there are several stone statues around the shrine, some small, some big. The area is known for its stone craft; one local stonemason has donated a small wooden statue that immediately reminds one of a creature from a Miyazaki movie. It is quite a magical place. But it was not always like this. When Sakurai become shrine priest, in the 1970s, the shrine was surrounded mainly by pine trees, many of which died because of pollution. Sakurai believed that the forest is the dwelling place of the deities, and he started studying forest management. Meanwhile, he also worked at the nearby rice paddy. He came to realise that, ecologically speaking, the rice paddy and the forest are interconnected; together, they are part of a larger ecosystem, as well as a single hybrid nature-culture landscape. Sakurai then developed several activities for forest replanting and conservation, rice cultivation, and nature education, in which local volunteers and school children participated. In 1991, he founded the Sennen no Mori no Kai: the ‘thousand -year forest association’.
Sakurai told me that twenty, thirty years ago, his activities were frowned upon by other priests. Shrine priests should perform rituals and ceremonies instead of going out into the forest for pruning and weeding, or so they argued. They even called him ‘a communist’ – which is not a compliment in those circles. But things have changed. In 1997, Sakurai took part in a large international conference on ‘Shinto and Ecology’ at Harvard University – together with some famous Japanese and foreign scholars (and, interestingly, Tanaka Tsunekiyo, who is the current president of Jinja Honchō ). Since that time, Sakurai’s activities have received positive feedback in Japan, and people started seeing him as a pioneer. He gives lectures, he sometimes appears on TV, and young shrine priests look at him as an example. According to Sakurai, there has been an important shift in the shrine world, as young priests are increasingly aware of, and concerned with, environmental issues. He applauds this development.
There are three things that make the Sennen no Mori no Kai different from activities employed by other shrines. First, Sakurai actually appears to be knowledgeable when it comes to forest ecology, and knows what sort of things do and do not work; he is not only interested in the shrine forest as a symbol , but as a living ecosystem . Most other older shrine priests simply do not have such knowledge. Importantly, Sakurai also shares this knowledge with children who come to participate in the activities of the Sennen no Mori no Kai.
Second, unlike most other shrine priests, Sakurai is fully aware of the fact that his shrine forest is part of, and dependent upon, a much larger ecosystem – including the rice paddy, the mountain, the houses and their gardens, and the surrounding fields. He criticises other projects for being too local, for only focusing on the trees surrounding the shrine; by contrast, he tries to contribute to the preservation of the forest as part of a wider landscape.
And third, interestingly, contrary to many of his colleagues he actually does have a very holistic approach – not in an abstract, philosophical sense, but by displaying something that we might call place-based practical holism: practical knowledge of the interconnectedness of environmental, social, economic and religious problems at a particular locality. For example, he talks about environmental degradation, growing unemployment, a lack of social cohesion and cultural activities, rural depopulation and, significantly, a lack of reverence for and faith in the local gods of the forest – and he sees them in their mutual interaction. This may actually be something that we, scholars specialised in our own narrow fields with our own fragmented knowledge, can learn from.
So, is the Sennen no Mori no Kai representative of Shinto shrines in general? Most certainly not. Not yet, at least. But who knows, this may be one of those best practices that will be followed by others, and that serves as the basis for a future model – a model for environmental sustainability, informed and inspired by Shinto. It may not have fully developed yet, but the seeds have been sown.
By Krista Rogers, first published in SoraNews24. (For Green Shinto reports on the religious heritage of the island of Miyakojima, see here and here.)
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There are dozens of “power spots” scattered throughout Japan. Often found in the form of Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, rocky formations, waterfalls, and other natural locations of veneration, these spiritual spots are said to imbue an added vitality upon those who visit and are consequently popular destinations for Japanese travelers. Within that list of power spots is Ogami Island (大神島 / “Island of the Great Gods”), a little known and off the beaten path locale within the Ryukyu Islands group administered by Okinawa Prefecture. Eager to find out if the island lived up to its sacred name, we [Sora News] sent our Japanese-language reporter Kouhey to check it out.
To get to Ogami Island one must first arrive at Miyako Airport on the
nearby Miyako Island (宮古島), which is worth a visit for its
terrifying-to-children annual Paantu Festival alone. It’s then a
30-minute car ride from the airport to Shimajiri Port where the ferry to
Ogami Island awaits. Once on board, the ferry takes only about 15
minutes to arrive. Kouhey was coming from Tokyo by plane. While the
travel time to Miyako Island took about three hours, after factoring in
layover and other wait time, he recommends allotting about five hours in
total to go from the country’s capital to this particular power spot.
▼ “Ogami ⇔ Shimajiri”
Take note that from October through March the ferry runs four times per day as opposed to fives during the rest of the year. In the event of bad weather it runs even fewer times. In addition, since this is, after all, the Island of the Great Gods, there may be certain days when the gods descend upon its shores in great numbers and certain areas become restricted for people to enter.
Visitors to the island must also abide by a certain set of rules put forth by the island’s few remaining permanent residents. For example, there are some places that only locals are allowed to enter, and visitors must absolutely not leave any trash or other items they brought with them on the island. Other places in the Ryukyu Islands may have similar yet slightly different rules, so always take care to find out the local rules at each new destination.
When Kouhey exited the ferry, he made a beeline to the island map and decided to visit the route tracing the western coastline first (circled in red on the map below). As the map indicates, the entire island is only 2.753 kilometers in circumference and 0.24 square kilometers so it wouldn’t be hard for him to cover the entire island by foot if he wanted.
He felt an inexplicable sense of excitement at stepping foot on the soil of Ogami Island, which was said to be infused with sacred power over its entire surface, and started walking down the road that wasn’t really a road.
After about 10 minutes of walking from the port a scenery that he had never before gazed upon emerged before his eyes.
Picturesque scenes of natural beauty met him at each and every turn. It definitely seemed like a place where gods could be living in any little nook or cranny–and also where Instagram influencers would have a field day.
These strangely shaped rocks materializing out of the shallow waters are popularly known as nocchi. The portions of rock below the water surface have been eroded by swift sea currents over the centuries and today appear as a fantastical forest of bizarre mushrooms within the sea.
After a while Kouhey decided to turn away from the sea road towards the center of the island in order to climb up the observation platform. However, getting there proved trickier than it seemed. First he had to climb up a steep slope.
From there, he climbed up a further slope. Though small, the island’s center was definitely its highest point. In just under 10 minutes of walking he finally arrived at the steps leading up to the viewing platform.
However, climbing the steps was no easy task, either. There were about 200 of them and they were at times extraordinarily precipitous.
Kouhey finally managed to reach the platform and was greeted by a
spectacular, panoramic scene. How wonderful it felt to look down upon
the island as a whole.
Soon it was time to get moving again. Upon descending the steps, he decided to now visit the spot on the island where the divine power was said to be the strongest: Kamikakisu, which was written using an unusual combination of Japanese katakana (circled in red on the map below). In fact, he’s still not entirely sure how to pronounce it.
Ten more minutes of walking. Before he had fully reached the bottom again, the mysterious and divine Kamikakisu came into view.
He was impressed by the majestic nature of the ring of rocks as he approached.
The visibility of the sea in the distance coupled with the
strange nocchi formations balanced each other out nicely. It was a true
masterpiece of interwoven natural elements, undoubtedly painted by the
resident gods themselves. He could only walk on speechlessly for another
few minutes as he took in the view.
Having spent some time reflecting on the scenery, he then begrudgingly headed back to the port.
While Kouhey had only spent about two hours on the island, the flow of time seemed to have slowed down for him. It felt like half a day had passed to his body and senses. Out of all of the outlying islands throughout the Ryukyu Islands that he had visited, Ogami Island definitely had the biggest divine presence. It truly was aptly named “Island of the Great Gods.”
Kouhey encourages interested parties to visit, but also cautions that there are plenty of tales of visitors who didn’t respect the rules and supposedly had terrible things befall upon them. He encourages visitors once again to double-check the rules as soon as they set foot on the island.
An article in the Japan Times went into such depth in its research into Shinto’s saké connections that one could say they got to the very bottom of the barrel. An interesting place to be. Take a read for yourself…
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Displays of saké barrels are often found at shrines (all photos by John Dougill)
When displayed near a Shinto shrine, barrels [of sake] are called kazaridaru, which means “decoration barrels.” As [can be] surmised, the barrels on display are empty, at least in physical terms. Spiritually, they’re chock full of significance.
“In Japan, sake has always been a way of bringing our gods and people together,” Tetsuo Hasuo of the Japan Sake Brewers Association explained when I brought the question to him. “In some of this country’s oldest texts the word used for sake is miki, written with the characters for ‘god’ and ‘wine.’ People would go a shrine festival and be given rice wine to drink, and they would feel happy and closer to the gods.”
A priest serving omiki (saké) to particiapants. Always a nice way to finish off a ritual…
These days, the word miki (or o-miki when given its honorific prefix) is reserved for rice wine used in Shinto rites and festivals. Sipping a cup is still a prayerful act of symbolic unification with the gods. Shinto shrines and sake manufacturers maintain a symbiotic relationship, in which the shrines conduct rites to ask the gods for the prosperity of the brewers, and — this is where the barrels come in — the brewers donate the grog that shrines need for ceremonies and festivals. There is no particular season for donations, according to Hasuo.
“Shrines need more sake when they have festivals, the timing of which varies by shrine,” he said. “But festivals are most often held in the spring and fall, so those are the busiest season for donations.”
Smaller shrines usually get their o-miki from local sake companies, but two shrines, Meiji Jingu in Tokyo and Ise Jingu in Mie Prefecture, look after the entire national product by accepting donations from every rice-wine brewer in the country.
Given that there are about 1,800 sake manufacturers in Japan, that’s quite an undertaking. The logistics are handled by a special committee at each shrine called the shuzokeishinkai (brewer reverence committee), which works out who sends what.
Miko administering omiki
When it comes to barrels, the committee will ask for only as many full ones as the shrine actually needs for festivals and ceremonies.
“Generally, a brewer provides just one bottle, or an empty barrel for display. It’s the kimochi (gesture) that’s important,” Hasuo said, “because asking for or giving more sake than is actually needed would be mottainai (wasteful).”
This strikes me as an example of traditional Japanese values: Shinto gods don’t make unreasonable demands of people, and people show respect for the natural world inhabited by Shinto gods by avoiding waste.
At many shrines, including Meiji Jingu, empty barrels received as donations are stacked and bound together, then fixed with rope to a simple frame to keep them from falling over.
Other shrines, including the Hachiman Shrine in Kamakura, have a permanent wooden structure that looks like a gigantic bookcase on which the barrels are neatly shelved. Smaller shrines line up their casks on a dais or simply display them wherever it’s convenient.
A few shrines don’t have to rely on donations to get their o-miki because they brew their own. The number of shrines doing so, however, is extremely limited. Rice-wine production has been regulated in Japan since the eighth century and even shrines making sake for onsite consumption are required to have a government license. This is true for individuals too, which is why you don’t hear about home sake brewing as a hobby in Japan.
A Haiden (Worship Hall) filled with donations of saké, which can be seem as a purifying agent that breaks down barriers between the world of humans and that of the kami
In any case, there are only four shrines in all of Japan licensed to make sake. One of them, Okazaki Hachiman Shrine in Yamaguchi Prefecture, makes an unusual white sake called shiroki that can be sampled during the shrine’s fall festival, held on the third Saturday in October. Another 40 shrines are licensed to make an unrefined rice wine called doburoku, also served at festivals.
Rice wine is not normally stored in barrels because it picks up too much of the taste and smell of the wood. But a short stay gives the sake a pleasant woody aroma, so upon request brewers fill barrels (from a steel tank) a few days in advance of festivals and other special occasions.
You don’t have to be connected with a shrine to get your hands on one of those sake barrels, which are called komodaru. (Komo is the woven straw wrapped around the staves.) You can buy an empty barrel if you really want to, or you can order a full one for a wedding or party. A standard komodaru holds four to (an old measure), or 72 liters, and will set you back about ¥100,000. If that’s too much sake for your party but you still want the impact of a big barrel, you can request an agezoku (false bottom) that reduces the fill to as little as one to (18 liters).
It’s a custom at New Year’s parties, weddings and consecrations of new buildings to break open a barrel of sake in a ceremony called kagamibiraki. Kagami usually means “mirror,” but in this case it refers to the wooden lid on the top of the barrel. A favored few are armed with wooden mallets, and after appropriate wishes for health, happiness and prosperity, the hammer holders give a cry and smash open the top of the barrel. Cups of the sake are distributed to all and a toast is made.
Wine barrels are proudly displayed at the entrance to Meiji Shrine, a donation from France.
