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
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
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.