Tag: COVID-19

Covid crisis

March 21, 2021 / John D. / 0 Comments

The following is adapted from a Japan Times article, which can be accessed here, written by Alex K.T. Martin and dated March 20, 2021. It shows how the crisis is hitting the revenue of both shrines and temples, and the need for new ways of raising revenue.

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In Japan, where there are more temples and shrines than convenience stores, the Covid situation is financially straining Buddhist and Shinto institutions that rely on donations from parishioners. Already burdened by a shrinking and aging population, the pandemic has prompted a reckoning among monks and priests about how to survive in a future where mass infections are a real threat.

“The virus is having a major impact on religious institutions in Japan, with ceremonies being curtailed and funeral rituals being simplified,” says Hidenori Ukai, a journalist and chief priest at Shogakuji temple in Kyoto. Ukai estimates that total revenue for Japan’s temples fell to around ¥270 billion in 2020 compared to ¥530 billion in 2015. If the pandemic continues, he says, the figure could decline further to ¥230 billion this year.

“At the same time, religion offers solace during uncertain times. Once the situation stabilizes, I think we will see worshippers return en masse,” he says. “In the meanwhile, there are new, unique initiatives being rolled out that are changing the way people worship.”

The slump in tourism and the rise of stay-at-home requests have also hit the coffers of the nation’s approximately 81,000 Shinto shrines that primarily rely on cash offering from visitors and ceremonial fees as sources of income. It has also prompted worshippers to seek out alternative means to pay their respect to institutions.

At Kashima Shrine in Kashima, Ibaraki Prefecture, priests have revived an ancient tradition for the first time in 90 years after parishioners asked the shrine to devise a way for them to offer prayers remotely.

Starting this year, a representative known as an oshi has been chosen to visit the shrine on the first of every month to pray on behalf of worshippers.

“The ritual is recorded on video and uploaded to a streaming platform for participants to watch,” says Tomonori Niikura, a spokesperson for the shrine. Those wishing to take part in the service can submit an application with monetary offerings starting at ¥7,000.

Kashima Shrine in Ibaraki Prefecture revived an old tradition for the first time in 90 years in which a representative known as oshi deliver prayers to the shrine on behalf of worshippers. | COURTESY OF KASHIMA SHRINE

Tadashi Matsunobu, a director of the local tourism association whose ancestors were oshi, was selected to assume the role.

“My grandfather used to be an oshi until the early Showa Era (1926-89), when the practice disappeared,” he says. Oshi were essentially missionaries for the shrine that traveled to spread faith and deliver ofuda paper talismans to households.

“I gladly accepted the offer and have been trying my best to convey the wishes of parishioners to the gods,” he says.

With communal gatherings frowned upon, many shrines and temples have been devising ways to appeal to worshippers spending more time at their homes.

Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, for example, accepts online applications for prayers and sells protective amulets and other goods — including face masks and even confectionery — on its website. Enzoji temple in Saitama began airing YouTube clips of comic rakugo raconteur performances and yoga lessons filmed at the temple.

Yumiko Waguri, chief editor of Wagense, a Buddhist quarterly magazine | HIROYUKI TAKAURA

Yumiko Waguri, the chief editor of “Wagense,” a Buddhist quarterly magazine, says the pandemic has seen temples and shrines finding new ways to meet the spiritual and emotional needs of people in the confines of their dwellings.

Her magazine has been featuring stories on how to appreciate Buddhist teachings at home while incorporating some of its practices in daily routines.“Sales of our magazine grew since we focused on the concept of ouchi (home),” she says.

An organization called Terakoya Buddha, for example, hosts online Zoom meetings everyday at 7 a.m. in which monks lead viewers through a 20-minute session involving meditation and mindfulness.

“Those who want to discuss specific issues can chat with the priests to seek advice,” Waguri says.

Meanwhile, temples in graying, rural communities are trying to help older, digitally unsure parishioners who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, she says.

“I know a temple in Shimane Prefecture that lends tablets to older households and offers to set them up so that people can join online services to avoid crowds,” she says.

And while technological innovations are bridging the social distance in an era of self-isolation, Waguri says traditional rituals associated with death are also being forced to change.

Tomonobu Narita, head priest of Zenryoji temple in Yokohama | HIROYUKI TAKAURA

Zen priest Soo Iwayama launched a meditation service called Flying Monk that is available online. | COURTESY OF SOO IWAYAMA

Corona Inari

May 19, 2020 / John D. / 3 Comments

A sign points towards the Main Shrine of Fushimi Inari, with not a single person to be seen.

With the cessation of tourism due to the Corona virus, Kyoto has taken on a very different atmosphere. This is apparent in the closed museums and empty downtown streets, but is nowhere more evident than at Fushimi Inari Taisha.

In recent years the shrine has been acclaimed as the number one tourist sight in the whole of Japan. The approach roads were packed with so many visitors it was hard to push through. Entering into the famous tunnel of torii was not so much a spiritual induction as a physical challenge. Only towards the top of the holy hill was there any sense of serenity.

What a difference a virus makes! Visiting the shrine yesterday was a reminder of how things must have been in prewar times when visitors were few and far between. The wide open spaces provided ample opportunity for contemplation of the shrine’s rich array of sacred sites. In this way one could sense the shrine had truly regained its spiritual allure.

An empty torii tunnel beckons the visitor to enter into the sacred realm.

With fewer humans around wildlife is apparently encroaching onto the precincts.

Cats too seemed to be enjoying the lack of human intrusion.

Sadly the water basin was out of action, replaced by alcohol sanitisers.

The once bustling tourist shops now stand empty…

…though some of the Japanese visitors still seemed to be enjoying themselves.

One of the large bilingual information boards, erected in recent times on the grounds of Fushimi Inari and a reminder of former days when the hillside was teeming with tourists.

Responses to COVID-19

May 3, 2020 / John D. / 0 Comments

The following piece concerns Shinto and Shugendo responses to the Corona crisis. It is extracted from a longer article by Levi McLaughlin entitled Japanese Religious Responses to Covid-19. (Photos from the original article.)

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Ritual expulsion of COVID-19 is widespread across Japan. On April 8, Shinto priests at Matatabisha, a branch shrine of the famed Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto, performed a Gion goryōe, or “assembly at Gion for angry spirits,” specifically aimed at quelling malevolent powers for the quick elimination of coronavirus.

This ritual was, in a sense, business as usual for the shrine. An annual spring festival at Gion began in the year 869. The Gion Festival is a huge event that now attracts tens of thousands of participants from all over the world. Worship in the district, which comprised part of the capital Heian-kyō (now Kyoto), still centers on reverence for “disease divinities” (ekijin), which are understood to cause pestilence, earthquakes, and other disasters.

The spectacular annual Gion festival—sadly, and perhaps ironically, canceled for 2020—began as one of many rituals to quell powerful personages that manifested as goryō, spirits of deceased members of the ruling class whose anger at political events was credited as the cause of epidemi

Shinto priests informed me that Jinja Honchō, the Association for Shinto Shrines that oversees 80,000 ritual sites, has sent their clergy newly-composed norito (prayers to the kami) that include wording aimed at ridding Japan of COVID-19. The priests have been enjoined by their Association to perform these prayers daily.

Across Japan, Shinto shrines are highlighting their historical contributions as providers of solace and healing from epidemics. In western Tokyo, for example, Seta Tamagawa Shrine priest Takahashi Tomoaki has turned public attention to the role his shrine has played in invoking the power of Japan’s deities to counter epidemics.

In a series of guest blog posts for a website that serves his neighborhood, Takahashi guides readers on a virtual pilgrimage to Kasamori Inari Jinja, one of several branch shrines that lie within the territory consecrated for Seta Tamagawa; worship at the small outdoor facility does not require the presence of a priest, and social distancing residents can walk over there to pray.²⁹

Kasamori Inari Jinja, disease protector in Futago Tamagawa, western Tokyo

This branch shrine was founded in the Tokugawa era (1603-1867), when it was sited near the fifty-third station of the Tōkaidō, the highway that ran from Edo (now Tokyo) to the historic capital Kyoto. Tradesmen, pilgrims, and other travelers would avail themselves of the worldly pleasures that awaited them at the stop, thus necessitating a specific deity for the treatment of kasa, skin lesions resulting from syphilis. The shrine’s syphilis-relieving deity has since been patronized during epidemics of all sorts, and it now hosts an annual festival every April 15—sadly, like the Gion festival, canceled in 2020 thanks to understanding of viral contagion.

Reverend Takahashi is an experienced disaster responder. He oversees Seta Tamagawa in Tokyo, but his birth family’s shrine is in a region of coastal Iwate prefecture that was devastated by the 11 March 2011 tsunami. Takahashi’s family shrine and home housed hundreds of refugees for months after the disaster, an experience that inspired him to found dynamic reconstruction efforts, including an NGO that combines reverence for the kami of land and sea with expertise from participating scientists to encourage large-scale replacement of old growth forests in the devastated region.

For Takahashi, responding to COVID-19 is contiguous with other revitalization efforts. The current crisis calls for pragmatic use of the most effective means to generate care for people and tradition. It demands cutting-edge scientific research in concert with cultivating public reverence for the kami.

Ritual Crises, Online Adaptations, and Technical Difficulties
Innovation in the face of emergency is nothing new for Japanese religions. However, online access now allows practitioners unprecedented chances to innovate across physical divides. Striking examples of this can be found in Shugendō, a combinatory mountain asceticism tradition that maintains institutional bonds with Shingon Buddhism and includes kami worship, challenging bodily austerities, secret teachings and initiations, and other distinctive elements for worship at remote mountain sites.

Major Shugendō affiliate temples have been responding to the pandemic in ancient ways. For example, the Shingon temple Daigoji in Kyoto on April 15 dedicated the centerpiece of its three-week-long sakurae (cherry blossom assembly), a goma kuyō (fire pūjā) and performance of kyōgen (comic ritual plays), to eliminating the disease.

Another goma kuyō was performed at noon daily at the Shugendō-affiliate temple Kinpusenji in Nara’s Yoshino district to drive away the virus. On March 6, fifty shugenja (Shugendō renunciants) gathered at a daikitōe, a “great prayer assembly,” a goma kuyō put on jointly by Kinpusenji and the temple Ōminesanji. This was the first ritual collaboration between these sites since they were separated in the Meiji era (1868-1912). The event was broadcast over social media and received hundreds of supportive messages.³³

The Daikitoe (great prayer assembly) held at Kinpunsen-ji to expunge COVID-19

Shugendō followers who have been going online are confronting a particular COVID-19 challenge: how can a pilgrimage tradition persist if practitioners must stay home? Caleb Carter, Assistant Professor of Japanese Religions at Kyushu University who is a Shugendō expert, kindly shared a write-up of his engagement with a ritual led online in early April by a pilgrimage leader:

The service was organized by a Shugendō priest (ordained through the Yoshino lineage) who leads a confraternity (kō) he established some years ago. He’s very charismatic and personable. He and most of the members are based in the Tokyo area. Their main activity is to meet monthly in the city and play the horagai (conch shell trumpet) together in a ritual/prayer/training atmosphere. They also regularly go to mountains together on trips he organizes and charges a fee for, where they circuit the temples and shrines, pray to the deities, and play the horagai.
He communicates with the group through a Facebook group he set up (about 100 members). Under the current circumstances, he decided to begin 90-minute services over Zoom with members in their homes. There were eight of us, including him and me. In front of an altar of Tibetan thangka (paintings of sacred images) and other Buddhist objects in his friend’s home, he led prayers to end the virus, chanted the Heart Sutra, performed mudra (esoteric hand gestures), chanted a number of mantra devoted to various Shugendō and Buddhist divinities, and played the horagai.
He then led us in some light self-massage techniques and an Indian-based chakra dhyāna (meditation focused on the seven chakras). We finished with responses from each member. Despite a few technical hiccups, I thought it went smoothly and successfully. Everyone’s reactions were very positive. I think it was effective in bringing the group together for a sense of community, sharing how everyone is coping and advice on how to stay well, mentally and physically. He plans to continue with these services, twice a month. I think he also hopes attendance will pick up over time.

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For more about the Gion Festival, please click here or here or here.

The Plague

April 11, 2020 / John D. / 4 Comments

Cherry blossom viewing with social distancing

Ema on sale at Shirakumo Shrine in Kyoto

The Corona crisis has caused disruption around the world and dominated the global media. The effect has been drastic in terms of medical resources and made for grim viewing. In Japan the emergency has coincided with the flowering of cherry blossom, symbolic of life’s brief beauty. The mix of Covid-19, cherry blossom and Easter Sunday (tomorrow) inevitably bring to mind thoughts of death and rebirth.

Historically there has been a link between cherry blossom and the plague, perhaps because falling petals were suggestive of the many people falling ill or dying. In Kyoto the association is reinforced each year in a festival at Imamiya Jinja, in which appeasement is sought of a kami spreading disease.

In the Yasurai Festival performers dressed as demons (oni) dance around at the head of a procession of people in Heian robes. Red umbrellas are twirled around, said to bestow good health for a year on those who pass under them. (Red being the colour of blood is often used as a sign of vitality.)

This 5 min video features the Yasurai Festival in which red-haired demons put on a dance show to appease the kami of Imamiya Jinja in Kyoto.

Irony of ironies, the Yasurai Festival has had to be called off this year because of Covid-19. It is not the only casualty of the present crisis, for one of Kyoto’s Big Three Festivals has also had to be cancelled – the Aoi Matsuri in May. It too originated as an antidote to natural disaster, which very probably included pestilence.

The festival is claimed as one of the oldest in Japan, with its roots in the sixth century according to the Nihon shoki (720). It may have been that an epidemic had spread through the country at a time of famine and earthquake. The cause was identified by soothsayers as anger by the deities of the Kamo shrines (Kamigamo and Shimogamo), and in response the Emperor sent an envoy with offerings to appease the kami and pray for a bountiful harvest.

The Aoi Festival showcases the aristocratic robes of the Heian Period. Only those with high status get to ride on horseback

At first the festival was held sporadically whenever there was a major disaster, but with the establishment of Heian-kyo in 794 it became an annual event. At various times the practice ceased altogether, but was subsequently revived, the last such occasions being in 1885 when it was seen as a means of boosting Kyoto following the relocation of the emperor to Tokyo, and in 1953 after the festival was terminated during WW2.

But why is the festival named after the aoi plant? According to Wikipedia, “During the Heian Period, these leaves were once believed to protect against natural disasters such as earthquakes and thunder, and were often hung under the roofs of homes for protection.”

Aoi is often mistranslated as hollyhock, though it is from a different family and closer to wild ginger. The plant has become so rare in recent years that a substitute has had to be used, and the Kamo shrines are presently engaged in projects to replant it. (Look at the pictures below, and you’ll be able to spot a leaf pinned onto participants.)

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For a complete overview of Japan’s religious response to plague and pestilence, see this article in the Japan Times. To learn about Yasaka Jinja and the ties of Gozu Tenno and the Gion Festival with disease, see here.