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Japanese characteristics

February 17, 2015 / John D. / 2 Comments

Respect for tradition is a vital part of Japanese culture

Japan Today ran an article on Japanese characteristics as seen by foreigners, which was notable for being strikingly positive. It helps explain why living and travelling in Japan is such a joy. Everyday interactions are unfailingly polite and pleasant, while efficiency and good service are the hallmarks of business institutions.

It’s tempting to speculate how much of this is the result of ‘Shinto values’. Certainly the cleanliness of Japanese is often tied to the emphasis on purity in the native tradition. Sincerity too could be said to underlie the honesty (and naivity) of Japanese. Similarly the collective nature of Shinto might be connected with the groupism that characterises Japanese society. Other attributes would seem to derive more from Confucianism than Shinto, though one could argue that the two are closely linked.

Just how and why the Japanese have managed to maintain a high level of civilised behaviour has long been a mystery. The missionaries of the sixteenth century were puzzled by the phenomenon to the extent that they wondered how a non-Christian country could possibly be more advanced in many respects than Europe. It seems that the Japanese have internalised values that are passed on from generation to generation in a way many other countries can only look at with envy. Perhaps respect for tradition in the form of honouring the kami plays a part in this…

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Here are the most common adjectives that Westerners chose when characterizing the people of Japan. (For the original article, see here.)

#1. Polite
Weighing in at number one was polite, or in Japanese “reigi tadashii.” Everyone has heard of the traditional Japanese bow used as a greeting during any given exchange. Though handshakes are perfectly common in Japan now, they more often than not come with a bow as well (or two or three). To the Western mindset, this style of address already seems much more polite than a simple handshake, high-five, or shoulder clap. Of course, the term “polite” in and of itself doesn’t only have a positive connotation. It’s possible to remain too polite and distant from a person, even if you’ve known them for quite a while.

#2. Punctual
Japan takes its time management very seriously. The Japan Railway (JR) and other connecting subways and train systems are well-known for their incredibly punctual schedules. As such, when there is a delay of even a minute, the whole system gets thrown off. Trains often issue late slips for passengers to take to their employers if their trains get delayed. After all, it leaves a very bad impression if you’re late to work.

Patience, politeness and kindness are singled out as key Japanese traits

#3. Kind
Unlike polite, which can have its downsides, kind is a genuinely positive word. In Japanese, words with similar connotations to the English phrase are “yasashii” or “omoyari no aru,” meaning “thoughtful of others.” One sterling example of this is the custom of bringing a gift (usually food) when you visit another person’s house in Japan. This praiseworthy adjective was the third-most repeated term in the thread. That’s a winning score on anyone’s report card.

#4. Hard-working
A hard-worker or “hataraki-mono” is definitely a common word that classifies a Japanese mindset. In a culture where your job is supposed to take precedence over even your family at times, it’s unsurprising that foreign nationals would latch on to this particular description. There is even a word for “death by overwork” in Japanese (“karoshi”). It’s not uncommon for people to work several more hours after their contractual quitting time and, if you’re not a contract worker, that means that you aren’t paid for that overtime. Even if you have a “haken” (contracted job), it’s still considered rude to leave right on schedule.

#5. Respectful
Another tie-in with polite, respectful or “tanin ni taishite keii wo hyo suru” to loosely describe it in Japanese, is a mainly positive word. However, it can sometimes be associated with distance. With the epidemic of idolization in Japan, it’s also possible to take respect just a bit too far. Many Westerners find the concept of being so respectful to their elders a bit outside the norm. But in Japan, the older you get, the wiser you are considered and the more respectfully you’re treated. You’ll get in big trouble if you use informal language with a person older than you unless they’re family. Even then, some relatives still expect proper formal language befitting of their senior status.

#6. Shy
An overall impression of the citizens of Japan is that they’re very shy people, or “hazukashigariya”. This might be linked to their focus on politeness and respect. It is true that you don’t always hear a lot of outspoken Japanese people, especially tourists in foreign countries, but this might be for a different reason altogether. Many Japanese people worry about their foreign language skills and fear saying something incorrectly in English when they talk to native speakers. Conversation practice has only recently become a staple of English classes in Japan.

Formality, order and hierarchy are important to Japanese

#7. Intelligent
There’s a definite stereotype of people from Asian countries being the brainy cream of the crop. Whether this is factually correct or not wasn’t technically relevant to the survey thread, but it certainly was a nice compliment. The Japanese word for intelligent is “kashikoi.” Incidentally, if you tried to say the katakana pronunciation of smart, “sumato,” that actually means to be thin and attractive in Japanese. Not that they’re mutually exclusive adjectives, but be careful of confusing your Japanese friends by trying to call someone intelligent and accidentally calling them slim and sexy.

#8. Grouping
You know how girls are always said to travel in packs? Same goes for Japanese people, apparently. A word of advice to any aspiring English teachers in Japan is to make lots of group activities. Unlike America, where group work is often disliked because sharing the workload with other students inevitably means that it gets divided unequally, Japanese students thrive off of it. They prefer not to have to voice their opinions alone, but would rather share ideas with their peers and make a group decision. In a class of thirty Japanese kids, not many people want to stand up by themselves and read out of an English textbook. But put everyone in groups of three and make them read it in turns and you’ve got yourself an engaged classroom.

#9. Formal
Tying in with polite, Japan has a reputation for being very formal. This manifests itself in both manner and language. Japanese has many different formality levels depending on who you’re addressing. This can be tiresome for people attempting to learn the language, and it can also lead to crossed wires between friends, especially in the case of foreigners and Japanese people. An American might wonder why their friend still calls them “David-san” when they’ve known each other for a few years. Far from wanting to keep distance between them, the Japanese friend might just be waiting for David to mention that they don’t really need to keep titles between them. After all, without checking first, it can be considered rude to suddenly stop using formal language (an act called “yobisute” or “dropping the name honorific”).

#10. Clean
Many Internet users have seen Japanese tourists pick up trash from around campsites and rest stops even when they didn’t make the mess themselves. This habit and others added the description of clean to the list. Did you know that Japanese students clean their schools by themselves? No janitors, just students hauling trash bags, sweeping the steps, and wiping down the halls with washcloths for a good 30 minutes each day. Most storefront owners sweep up the sidewalks and streets outside their stores, too. Making it your business to keep communal space clean is a distinctly different mindset from some Western countries. Just think of all the gum-strewn, littered streets of big cities in America.

Cleanliness is next to godliness

Harmony brings happiness to the Japanese sense of groupism

Valentine’s shrine

February 15, 2015 / John D. / 1 Comment

Namba One Shrine – made entirely of cookies and chocolates

There’s often a lighthearted aspect to Shinto, evidence of which can be seen in ‘a candy shrine’ to Valentine’s Day put up by a shopping centre in Osaka. You could see it as a curious mix of the traditional enmusubi (love connection) aspect of shrines with imported notions about love on Valentine’s Day. The result, as this report from the Japan Times shows, is peculiarly Japanese. (The website for the shrine speaks of Fushimi Inari as ‘a love power spot’, and being able to hang up an ema at the Valentine shrine as a means of gaining romantic fulfilment.)

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Matchmaking Namba One Shrine

Valentine’s Day in Japan is quite a different affair to that of the West. On Feb. 14, it is the women who confess their love to the men, and they do so by giving chocolates to the objects of their affections.

Women don’t take this custom lightly, looking for good chocolates, sometimes even making them. To help them in their love quest, Namba Walk, an underground shopping center in Osaka has set up a Namba One (No. 1) match-making shrine.

Constructed entirely from cookies, biscuits, macaroons and chocolates, this shrine was designed and created by students from Osaka Cooking and Confectionery College. It’s a sweets version of Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto, which is famous for its god of good fortune and matchmaking. Like any other shrine, visitors will find ema (votive tablets) and omikuji (written fortunes), while special gifts will also be given to visitors looking for romance. (Izumi Iwaki)

The shrine's logo, complete with the Inari konkon mascot

Iceland neo-paganism

February 14, 2015 / John D. / 5 Comments

High priest of the Asatru Association, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, leads a procession at the Pingvellir National Park near Reykjavík. Photograph: Reuters

Neopagan religions like Wicca have been on the rise in the West since the 1970s. Their appeal lies in the reclaiming of an affinity with nature and ancestral spirits, as well as an absence of doctrine and dogma. This has gone along with a desire for spirituality in an age marked by the waning of belief in Christianity, with its patriarchal values.

Now in an article from The Guardian news comes of a revival of the old ways in Iceland, with a strong environmental element underpinning a symbolic and psychological attachment to the gods of old. As such there’s much in common with Shinto, which like other pagan religions is polytheistic and nature oriented. The big difference of course is that Shinto has been sponsored by the state since Meiji times, whereas neo-pagan religions in the West remain minority beliefs at odds with the mainstream.

As the article below points out, paganism can take on elements of nationalism through the glorification of deities particular to a race or people. But modern times are crying out for a new form of borderless environmentalism. Perhaps sometime in the future, when neopaganism has become more established, an international alliance of pagan religions will emerge which embraces Shinto as a fellow faith. Like-minded people guided by the wisdom of the past and reaching out in the spirit of global collaboration – now there’s a vision for the future.

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Back for Thor: how Iceland is reconnecting with its pagan past
by Esther Addley The Guardian, Feb 6, 2015

On Thursday, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, who lives near Reykjavík, flew to the tiny fishing town of Höfn on Iceland’s south-east coast to conduct a marriage ceremony. He is not a churchman or a registrar; in fact, he is a pioneering film composer and musician who has collaborated with Sigur Rós and Björk among others. But thanks to his position as high priest of Iceland’s neo-pagan Ásatrúarfélagið or Asatru Association, he has an authority formally recognised by the Icelandic state to conduct marriages, name children and bury the dead.

The ceremony itself, Hilmarsson said shortly before departing, would be a simple one: after performing a hallowing ritual to sanctify the space, he would read from one of Iceland’s celebrated epic poems and then invoke three ancient Norse gods and, “as a countermeasure”, three goddesses including the fertility deity Freyja. The couple would then grasp a large copper ring and make vows to each other, and that would largely be that. “It’s a short ceremony; there’s no preaching because the idea is it’s the couple who are marrying themselves, and I just sanctify that.”

Hilmarsson has conducted more than 200 weddings during his time as high priest, but he and the Norse pantheon of Thor, Odin, Freyr and Frigg are likely to find themselves even busier in future. In the 12 years since he took over its leadership, membership of the Ásatrúarfélagið, which the Icelandic government recognises as a formal state religion, has increased sixfold. In March, after decades of planning, the group will start building what is almost certainly the first temple to the pagan Norse deities since Iceland was officially converted to Christianity in 1000AD.

Norse deities rise from the dead to capture the imagination of new generations

Not that this is a religion like many others. He may be building a temple to Thor and his fellows, but Hilmarsson says he doesn’t pray to the Norse gods or worship them in any recognisable sense, nor does he believe in the literal truth of the texts – the treasure-trove of 13th century Icelandic “Eddas” recording the mythology of earlier times – on which the religion is based. He cheerfully admits that the rituals and blods or gatherings that the group practises are no more than creative reimaginings of how pre-Christian Norse people related to their deities.

“So yes, it’s partly a ‘romantiquarianism,’” he says of his faith. “But at the same time, we feel that this is a viable way of life and has a meaning and a context. It is a religion you can live and die in, basically.”

Happily for him and the group’s 3,000 members, the Icelandic government agrees, meaning that the organisation is entitled to a share of the religious taxes that each Icelandic citizen is obliged to pay. The result, after more than a decade of careful saving, will be the wooden-clad new temple or hof, built on a quiet section of Reykjavík’s shore with a wall of south-facing glass designed to capture the rising and setting sun on the shortest day of the year.

There, the group will gather for weekly study and for the five main feasts of the year when, under the leadership of a robe-clad Hilmarsson, they will gather around a central fire, recite the poems, make sacrificial drink offerings to the gods – unlike some pagan groups they do not practise animal sacrifice – and feast on sacred horsemeat.

Honouring the mystery of life is a universal trait

By the time the Icelandic Eddas were written down in the 13th century, an active belief in the pantheon of historic gods they describe was already archaic. For centuries, however, the Viking world from Iceland to the Black Sea had been shaped by belief in the central world-tree of Yggdrasil, the hammer-wielding god Thor, the one-eyed, raven-attended Odin and a host of elves, trolls and nature spirits.

Rosa Thorsteinsdóttir, a folklorist at the University of Iceland’s Institute of Icelandic Studies who has been collecting and archiving the country’s oral legends, says it is impossible to know whether the pre-Christian stories survived in the oral folklore after the country’s conversion, but even after a millennium of Christianity, nature beliefs never quite died out. “People tell fairy stories of the hidden people; there are nature spirits that walk over the country and you should not disturb them. These stories are alive.”

Her own name, she notes, is derived from Thor’s stone – “there are many, many names in Iceland linked with Thor”. Interest in the Norse myths revived, as elsewhere, in the late 19th century, and again in the spiritually conscious 1960s and early 1970s, when the Edda manuscripts were returned to Iceland from Denmark.

The reason for the recent flowering in neo-paganism among Iceland’s young is less easily explained, however. On a mild Wednesday evening in central Reykjavík, a group of a dozen or so members have gathered for the organisation’s weekly reading group, to pore over the elder Edda. Several of those present are in their 50s, but more than half are twentysomethings. The atmosphere is less that of a ritualised session or religious prayer meeting than a lively Chaucerian study group with beer and biscuits, in which members interrupt a lively debate to share their delight in a favourite image or metaphor.

Thor has a hammer, Daikoku has a mallet. Commonalities between pagan religions are the norm rather than the exception.

Linus Orri, a thoughtful 25-year-old environmental activist, says he thinks the group’s appeal lies in the fact that “in a world that is quite artificial, here there seems to be an interest in the real, something authentic – whether that’s searching for some older wisdom or the truth about how society was, or whether it’s [our] commitment to nature, I can’t really say”.

“Also, the group is so incredibly inclusive. You get a really unpretentious group of people for some reason. Nobody would pretend to be having a conversation with Thor, for example.”

Unlike some neo-pagan societies across the world, the group has been careful to permit no space for far-right ideology and has severed all ties with outside organisations (“Some of them are really pissed off that a stupid hippy nation should have the sources in their own language,” says Hilmarsson.)

For Sólveig Anna Bóasdóttir, a professor of theology and ethics at the University of Iceland, the growth of paganism may be explained by the country’s complicated relationship with Christianity – in one sense, Iceland is a highly secular society, but she says 90% of 14-year-olds still undergo confirmation in the state Lutheran church, which remains rich and powerful thanks to the country’s religious taxation.

Though equal marriage, for example, is now accepted in the state church, she believes many were disillusioned by the long debate over the issue, and by a more recent spat (“I think it was simply racist,” says Bóasdóttir) over whether to permit Iceland’s first mosque to be built near Reykjavík.

“In Iceland we don’t really have this situation with the evangelical churches on the rise. Rather, it would be these alternatives that are quite moderate, like the Ásatrúarfélagið, that hold the appeal. People respect them.”

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For a guide to the Viking deities, see here:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/04/thor-odin-norse-gods-guide-iceland-temple-vikings-deities

For a discussion of paganism and Shinto, see the series on Pagan Pasts beginning with this one here.

Pagan cloth offerings on a pathway to Mt Fuji – a coming together of East and West

An optimistic religion

February 11, 2015 / John D. / 1 Comment

There’s an interesting interpretation of Shinto as a folk religion on the Japan News website (owned by the conservative-leaning Yomiuri Shimbun). The article is notable for stressing the communal nature of the religion, in contrast to the personal belief systems of such faiths as Buddhism and Christianity. The professor’s views on the benevolent nature of kami, however, stand in opposition to the notion that early worship arose from the placation of angry deities. As is well-known, deities have a ‘rough spirit’ as well as a calm or kind one, and nature’s bountifulness is often offset by the infliction of disasters. The notion that ‘Japanese gods are gods that cannot do bad things’ seems completely at odds with Susanoo no mikoto and the changeable character of the deities. It is after all their human-like nature that makes people feel close to them.

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Japan’s Traditional Culture of Folk Beliefs
Hiroyuki Torigoe, Professor, Faculty of Human Sciences, Waseda University

Hioryuki Tomogoe, professor at Waseda

Many people in Japan visited Shinto shrines at the beginning of the new year. Long lines formed at even the small local shrine near my home, snaking out of the grounds and down the road. Rather than consisting of just elderly people, these lines reflected an even distribution of age, from children to young couples, the middle-aged and the elderly. As evident in this scene, there are no signs of a decline in Japanese folk religion.

At New Year’s, people read fortune slips to check their fortunes for the coming year. The slips are popular among young women. People burn wooden prayer sticks to pray for the safety of their families and the prosperity of their businesses. Both are New Year events.

During hatsumōde (the first visit to a shrine of the new year), people pray for their happiness over the coming year. Naturally, some make specific requests for things like passing an entrance exam. Very small amounts of money (50 yen on average) are tossed into the donation box for such “big favors.” As this cannot be regarded as a fair exchange by any stretch of the imagination, no rationally-thinking person would conclude that the gods will take the request seriously.

Yet we still join our hands in prayer at shrines for the safety of our families and the happiness of our friends and feel like we’ve done something good. And we optimistically wonder if the gods might possibly grant our requests. This “doing something good” and “optimism” are keys to understanding Japanese folk religion.

Japanese folk religion has traditionally been more of a communal religion than a personal one. Even today, the Emperor of Japan plants rice at the Imperial Palace—a ritual in which the Emperor prays for a bountiful rice harvest as the head of the community (the “community” in this case being Japan). Speaking of rice, long ago when there were not enough irrigation systems, the Emperor would send a messenger to a place like Mount Yoshino to pray for rain when it seemed the people would be unable to secure the water needed that year.

'Let me go out with Nakamura san' asks this ema prayer board, optimistically

As you may know from Japanese history, there have been several Emperors since ancient times who were devout followers of Buddhism. These Buddhist Emperors faithfully held community events like rainmaking rituals and the Autumn Harvest Festival (Niiname-sai). There was no sense of contradiction in this for either the Emperors or the people around them. This was because Buddhism was a personal religion while folk religion was a communal one.

If the head of the community does not hold these events as its head, his title loses its meaning. This is different, however, from a personal religious belief. On the other hand, one cannot be both a Buddhist and a Christian since both Buddhism and Christianity are personal religions.

Thus, Japanese folk religion is a communal religion in which, essentially, “everyone” in the community prays for the happiness (good harvest and long life) of “everyone.” At some stage, specialized Shinto priests emerged and took charge of the events (in a way, the Emperor also possesses the attributes of a Shinto priest). At any rate, “everyone” prayed to the gods on behalf of “everyone” in principle. And this was “something good.”

In fact, while there are nature gods like the god of fire and the god of water, Japanese gods (kami) are primarily ancestral gods, or what are called “tutelary gods” (ujigami). When a grandfather or grandmother dies, the entire family prays, believing that the soul of the deceased will be purified through prayer and transform into a god over time. The more the family prays, the purer the ancestor becomes and the closer he or she gets to godhood. Thus, even if the spirit of the deceased tries to do bad things, it will be transformed from a demon or a ghost into a god through prayer.

Sugawara no Michizane, whose malevolent spirit was appeased by being deified and worshipped at shrines

This tenet gives ancestral gods a very distinct feature: they never do anything bad to their descendants. When a high school student about to take the college entrance exam and her parents pray to a god (they could go to the memorial tablet of a grandfather who had died not that long ago), the god (grandfather) will never respond, “Ha! That’s a good one. I never really liked this kid, so I’m going to make her fail.” From the god’s perspective, being an ancestral god is inconvenient in a way—his vector only moves in the direction of good because the family is always praying to him. He doesn’t have the ability to do bad things.

To take a well-known example from history, after the death of Sugawara no Michizane, his political opponents became sick and died and natural disasters occurred, leading people to believe that these events were caused by his wrath.

As a result, the government of the time built the Tenmangū shrine in Dazaifu dedicated to Michizane. Once the shrine was built, people prayed to Michizane continuously; his will changed, and he became a god who only did good things.

In other words, Japanese gods (kami) are gods that cannot do bad things and are not to be feared. They are easy to get along with, compared to gods in other countries. You could say this is a very optimistic way of thinking.

With their openness to nature and gratitude for the blessings of life, Shinto shrines project an aura of optimism

National Foundation Day

February 11, 2015 / John D. / 0 Comments

Shrines today are decked out with flags for the supposed establishment of the nation by Emperor Jimmu

Today being February 11 it’s a public holiday known as Foundation Day. Flags are flying, and people are out enjoying themselves on a crisp sunny day in Kyoto. At various shrines around the country there are special events to mark the occasion – martial arts, displays of bonsai, even some football (or kemari as the Heian-era kick-ball is known).

The national holiday was first held in 1967 as a day to reflect on the establishment of the nation and to nurture a love for the country. It’s basically a resurrected piece of State Shinto celebrating the Yamato imperial lineage that is said to have presided over Japan from the seventh century onwards. From 1872 to 1948, February 11 was known as Kigen-setsu, a holiday commemorating the ascension of Emperor Jimmu to the throne in 660 BC according to the Nihon Shoki (720).

Emperor Jimmu is a mythical figure thought to have been a later invention, and the dating of 660 BC is acknowledged as fanciful. Like King Arthur, he may have been a composite figure around whom legend accrued and to whom heroic tales were attached. We therefore have the fascinating situation in which ‘modern democratic’ Japan celebrates the mythical founding of the country by an imperial lineage which remains the country’s symbolic representative.

None of this would matter very much if it did not contain the nucleus of a resurgent nationalism based on retrogressive nostalgia for State Shinto. It’s why at certain shrines today rightwing extremists will be gathering to display their patriotic fervour. It’s an occasion when particularism gains the upper hand over universalism.

For its part Green Shinto will be looking forward to the Vernal Equinox (Shunbun no hi), a national holiday established in the heady postwar days of 1948 as a day for the admiration of nature and living things. Now there’s something worth celebrating!

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An article in Japan Today on Feb 12 points out that 8 out of 10 Japanese have no awareness of the significance of the public holiday on Feb 11. This was immediately seized on by the rightwing who declared it a source of national shame and a need to install a correct understanding of history. ‘“In an ever-more globalized society, it will be necessary to provide well rounded education in national history, including a nation’s founding, at the compulsory education level,” said Hirofumi Munehisa, speaker of the Japan Jaycee Assembly on National History. Mythology as history apparently lives on in the minds of some.

Rightwing extremists will be taking their trucks to gather at certain shrines across the country, including Yasukuni and Kashihara Jingu, supposedly built on the site of the palace of Emperor Jimmu

What are kami?

February 9, 2015 / John D. / 0 Comments

It's often said Japanese kami are formless and unseen, yet Mt Miwa, pictured here, is worshipped directly as a kami in itself.

The nippon.com site has some useful introductory essays on Japanese culture as a whole, and on Shinto in particular. In the passage below light is shed on the nature of the Japanese concept of kami by contrasting the term with the Western idea of God and Chinese notions of ‘shen’ (etymologically, Shinto derives from the Chinese ‘shen dao’, way of the spirits).

The passage concludes with the contentious issue of kami no kuni (country of kami). This could be interpreted to mean that the land of Japan is imbued with a numinous quality, since it is where the kami live. But by extension it also means that Japan is special. This is the way Hideyoshi used it in the sixteenth century when he expelled the Christian missionaries from the country. It’s the way it was used too in the days before WW2, when a nationalistic Japan sought to justify expansionism and rule over other countries.

Recognition of kami outside Japan therefore becomes a complex issue. Are Japanese kami extending their spiritual realm abroad, or are they kami independent of Japanese sovereignty? Rather than a kami no kuni, it would be preferable in these global times to promote the idea of a kami no sekai (world of kami).

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The following comes from the nippon.com site:

Representations of a pair of ancestral kami on display at Kokugakuin musuem, contradicting the notion that Japanese kami are all animist in origin

God ≠ Kami
When the English word God is translated into Japanese, it is generally represented by the kanji (Chinese character) 神 and pronounced kami. However, to avoid misunderstanding, it would be better to think of God, 神, and kami as three separate concepts.

“God” is the supreme being of monotheism and is customarily capitalized to indicate the unique nature of the deity and draw a distinction with the multiple gods of polytheism.

The written Japanese form, 神, is influenced by the Chinese meaning of the character. Common words in both languages using this character, such as 精神 (pronounced seishin in Japanese), meaning “spirit” or “mind,” and 神経 (shinkei), meaning “nerves,” are related to human mental qualities. Pronounced shen in Chinese, the character 神 carries some divine attributes, but they are of a decidedly low rank and far below those of the highest power in Chinese theology, termed 天 (tian) or 上帝 (shangdi) in Chinese.

Japan’s kami were traditionally thought of as anthropomorphized natural phenomena. They included the kami that appear in the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) and the Nihon shoki (Chronicles of Japan), Japan’s ancient records of myth and history, kami that were worshiped in shrines, and everything possessing extraordinary qualities, including the sun, the moon, the wind, the rain, the sea, large rocks and trees, and even some smaller plants, animals, and people. This is how they were defined by the eighteenth-century scholar of Japanese classics Motoori Norinaga. According to Motoori, anything that inspired awe and sensitivity to ephemeral beauty (aware) was a kami.

For Japanese people who believe this, their country is a rich natural landscape with kami to be found wherever they turn — in short a kami no kuni or “country of kami.” If this phrase is translated into English as “God’s country,” it can be misunderstood as a fanatically nationalistic expression, but this is not what the phrase actually means.

Kami are associated with places that have 'extraordinary qualities'.

Anime ema

February 9, 2015 / John D. / 0 Comments

A miko at Kashihara Jingu poses with one of the Beyond the Boundary ema

Ema tablets featuring ‘Beyond the Boundary’ heroine sell out at Nara shrine

Asahi Shimbun, February 07, 2015 By SHOTARO HAMADA/ Staff Writer

KASHIHARA, Nara Prefecture–Five hundred small tablets featuring images of the protagonist of the popular anime series “Beyond the Boundary” (Kyokai no Kanata) sold out in just three days at Kashihara Jingu shrine in Nara Prefecture.

With a full-length feature film adaptation set for release in March, distributor Shochiku Co. came up with the idea to promote the film by creating wooden picture panels that resemble “ema” (votive tablets) and selling them at the shrine in Kashihara in early January.

The anime and film feature scenery in Nara around Kashiharajingu-mae Station on the Kintetsu Kashihara Line, as well as Fukadaike pond on the shrine’s premises.

“Beyond the Boundary” fans began gathering at the shrine on New Year’s Eve. By midnight, when the tablets went on sale, there were reportedly about 200 eager people lined up. The tablet paintings are 14.5 by 20.5 centimeters and feature the images of Mirai Kuriyama, the teenage red-haired heroine of the story.

“We were surprised they sold out so fast,” said Yoshitsugu Nakakuma, the 63-year-old head of the shrine’s general affairs department. “Drawing young people here is meaningful.”

The tablets sold for 2,000 yen ($17) a piece. Plans are in the works to ramp up a second production as soon as possible.

Kashihara Jingu, which supposedly stands on the mythical palace of founding Yamato Emperor Jimmu, is a guardian of tradition but like other shrines is constantly looking for ways of reaching out to the young.