The journey from Tsuruoka to Niigata was delightful, at least on the stretch to Murakami, with views of rocky headlands, small islands, and inlets where the incoming sea has carved bites out of the landmass. Here and there were fields peopled by figures wearing traditional mompe clothing and straw hat, interspersed by long tunnels and a reminder that the mountains had not gone away. They never do in Japan.
For much of the way the track runs close to the sea, passing by fishing villages huddled together for comfort. Shinto shrines spoke of sea spirits, and sacred rope was draped between rocks in picturesque fashion. Old women bent double scoured for seaweed, while out at sea their menfolk bobbed up and down in distant boats. Basho had walked this route, and not surprisingly the poems he and his companion wrote focus on the seaside scenery.
The ferry to Sado leaves from Niigata, an industrial port of importance but not noted for scenic sights. The town exemplifies modernisation, when much of Japan’s heritage was jettisoned in favour of industrial catch-up. Will Ferguson, hitchhiking through here in Hokkaido Blues, described it as ‘sullied and soiled and worn-out’. The Rough Guide is more generous, calling it ‘a likeable but unexciting city,’ Lonely Planet dismisses the town altogether, saying ’There is little to see in Niigata.’
In 1879 Isabella Bird had a very different impression. Bird’s Niigata is a ‘handsome, prosperous city’ of beautiful tea houses, excellent theatres, attractive houses and miniature gardens at the back of long narrow buildings. It is an Oriental Venice in which life centres around canals and goods are delivered by boat. The town is picturesque, Bird tells us, but then adds an ominous note: ’The Niigata of the Government, with its signs of progress in a western direction, is quite unattractive-looking as compared with the genuine Japanese Niigata.’ Here we have surely the earliest expression of the ‘Lost Japan’ sentiment, which was to colour the writing of Lafcadio Hearn over a decade later.
This is the second part of a series based around the writings of the remarkable Isabella Bird, who visited Japan in 1878. In Part One she is taken by some Ainu villagers to visit a hill shrine dedicated to Yoshitsune, the medieval warrior. In the passage below, taken from p.274-5 of Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, she discusses nature worship and Ainu gods. (The libations of saké, sprinkled in different directions is the same purification rite as in Siberian shamanism.)
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There cannot be anything more vague and destitute of cohesion than Ainu religious notions. With the exceptions of the hill shrines of Japanese construction dedicated to Yoshitsune, they have no temples, and they have neither priests, sacrifices, nor worship. Apparently though all traditional time their cultus has been the rudest and most primitive form of nature-worship, the attaching of a vague sacredness to trees, rivers, rocks, and mountains, and of vague notions of power for good or evil to the sea, the forest, the fire, and the sun and moon. I cannot make out that they possess a trace of the deification of ancestor, though their rude nature worship may well have been the primitive form of Japanese Shinto. The solitary exception to their adoration of animate and inanimate nature appears to be the reverence paid to Yoshitsune, to whom they believe they are greatly indebted, and, it is supposed by some, will yet interfere on their behalf.
Ainu prayer sticks
Their gods – that is the outward symbols of their religion, corresponding most likely with the Shinto gohei – are wands and posts of peeled wood, whitted nearly to the top, from which the pendent shavings fall down in white curls. These are not only set up in their houses, sometimes to the number of twenty, but on precipices, banks of river and streams, and mountain-passes, and such wands are thrown into the rivers as the boatmen descend rapids and dangerous places.
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I have taken infinite trouble to learn from themselves what their religious notions are, and Shinondi tells me that they have told me all they know, and the whole sum is a few vague fears and hopes, and a suspicion that there are things outside themselves more powerful than themselves, whose good influences may be obtained, or whose evil influences may be averted, by libations of saké.
Ainu garment
The word worship is in itself misleading… it simply means libations of saké, waving bowls and waving hand, without any spiritual act of deprecation or supplication. In such a sense an such alone they worship the sun and moon (but not the stars), the forest, and the sea. the wolf, the black snake, the owl and several other beasts and birds have the kamoi, god, attached to them, as the wolf is ‘the howling god’, the owl ‘the bird of the gods,’ a black snake the ‘raven god’; but none of these things are now ‘worshipped,’ wolf-worship having quite lately died out. Thunder, ‘the voice of the gods,’ inspires some fear. The sun, they say, is their best god, and the fire their next best, obviously the divinities from whom their greatest benefits are received. Some idea of gratitude pervades their rue notions, as in the case of the ‘worship’ paid to Yoshitsune, and it appears in one of the rude recitations chanted at the Saturnalia which in several places conclude the hunting and fishing seasons; –
‘To the sea which nourishes us, to the forest which protects us, we present our grateful thanks. You are two mothers that nourish te same child; do not be angry if we leave one to go to the other.
‘The Ainus will always be the pride of the forest and of the sea.
The solitary act of sacrifice which they perform is the placing of a worthless, dead bird, something like a sparrow, near one of their peeled wands, where it is left till it reaches an advanced stage of putrefaction. ‘To drink for the god’ is the chief act of “worship,” and thus drunkenness and religion are inseparably connected, as the more saké the Ainus drink the more devout they are, and the better pleased are the gods. It does not appear that anything but saké is of sufficient value to please the gods. The libations to the fire and the peeled post are never omitted, and are always accompanied by the inward waving of the saké bowls.
Ainu housing with thatched roof and walls of woven reed over a timber frame
The Ainu religion dates back further than Shinto and has much in common. Indeed, it’s sometimes said that it was the basis from which Shinto developed. The similarities are at once apparent for the Ainu worshipped kamuy, invisible spirits that equate to kami.
Due to suppression by the Wajiin or Yamato Japanese, the Ainu religion is no longer practised in the way it once was, but we can get a feel of the traditional way of life thanks to the amazing Isabella Bird (1831-1904). This extraordinary adventurer made a journey in 1878 to Japan, during which she travelled with a Japanese attendant into Ainu-occupied Hokkaido.
She visited several villagers, stayed in Ainu houses, and took part in the Ainu way of life, including their religious rites. These are written up in a detailed account of her visit, which begins with the introduction below to an Ainu hillside place of worship. (pages 251-2 in the Doverbook paperback edition). Remarkably it’s for Yoshitsune, a Japanese warrior of the twelfth century. How extraordinary, one might think, but it turns out Isabella Bird was quite mistaken as shown by the passage by John Batchelor which follows hers. In fact she might well have been the victim of a piece of misinformation by the Ainu designed to deceive the Wajin (Yamato Japanese). Please be sure to read both passages….
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Chris Willson/Alamy Stock Photo
On the very edge of the cliff, at the top of the zigzag, stands a wooden temple or shrine, such as one sees in any grove, or on any high place on the main island [Honshu], obviously of Japanese construction, but concerning which Ainu tradition is silent. No European had ever stood where I stood, and there was a solemnity in the knowledge. The sub-chief drew back the sliding door, and all bowed with much reverence. It was a simple shrine of unlacquered wood, with a broad shelf at the back, on which there was a small shrine containing a figure of the historical hero, Yoshitsune, in a suit of tarnished brass candlesticks, and a coloured Chinese picture representing a junk. Here, then, I was introduced to the great god of the mountain Ainus. There is something very pathetic about these people keeping alive the memory of Yoshtsune, not on account of his martial exploits, but simply because their tradition tells them that he was very kind to them. They pulled the bell three times to attract his attention, bowed three times, and made six libations of saké, without which ceremony he cannot be approached. They asked me to worship their god, but when I declined on the ground that I could only worship my own God, the Lord of Heaven and Earth and Heaven, of the dead and of the living, they were too courteous to press their request. As to Ito [her Japanese servant], it did not signify to him whether or not he added another god to his already crowded Pantheon, and he ‘worshipped’ i.e. bowed down, most willingly before the great hero of his own, conquering race.
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Later in a footnote, Bird explains that Yoshitsune was a hero of the Gempei War in the twelfth century and brother of Yoritomo, the barbarian quelling great general, and that he was forced into committing suicide by his brother suspicious of his popular appeal. “Many believe that he escaped to Yezo [Hokkaido], she continues, “and lived among the Ainu for many years, dying among them at the close of the twelfth century. None believe this more firmly than the Ainus themselves, who assert that he taught their fathers the arts of civilisation, with letters and numbers, and gave them righteous laws, and he is worshipped by many of them under a name which signifies Master of the Law’.
Yoshitsune shrine at the supposed place of his death in Hiraizumi (photo Dougill)
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In a revealing extract from his book on Ainu worship, the Anglican missionary John Batchelor provides a very different story from Isabella Bird’s account. Batchelor lived from 1877 to 1941 among the Ainu, and as such must be considered the leading authority on their spirituality. Fluent in Ainu, he was a fierce critic of Japanese cruelty to the people. (Thanks to Green Shinto reader, Joseph Cronin, for pointing out the passage below.)
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In the first place, it must be clearly understood that, when persons say the Ainu worship Yoshitsune, they mean not that people as a nation, but merely a few individuals resident in the Saru district. Again, it is not even asserted that all the Saru Ainu worship him, but only those of Piratori. Now, there are two Piratoris, viz. Piratori the upper, and Piratori the lower. These two villages were once united, but now are situated from a quarter to half a mile apart. The shrine of Yoshitsune (and there is but one shrine in Yezo) is at the upper Piratori, and the inhabitants of the lower village will tell an inquirer that it is the people of the upper Piratori who worship the person in question. Now, the upper village contains only thirty-two huts, and we find that not even ten persons out of these families really worship Yoshitsune. It is clear, then, that the Ainu, considered as a race or nation, do not at the present day deify that hero.Then, again, it should be noted that the present shrine is decidedly of Japanese make and pattern: in all respects it is like the general wayside shrines one may see anywhere in Japan. It was built about ten years ago by a Japanese carpenter resident at a place called Sarabuto (Ainu, San-o-butu). Previous to this there was also a Japanese-made shrine on the same spot, but a much smaller one. The idol in the shrine is both small and ugly; it is a representation not so much of a god as of a warrior, for it is dressed in armour and is furnished with a pair of fierce-looking, staring eyes, and has a horribly broad grin. It is just such an idol as one might expect in this case, seeing that Yoshitsune was a warrior. Besides this, the Ainus have treated the image to an inao or two. There is nothing more, and the shrine is too small for a person now, according to Ainu ideas and usages, it is necessary to turn to the east in worshipping God, the goddess of fire alone excepted. Hence the custom of building all huts with the principal end facing the east. But the shrine of Yoshitsune is placed in such a position that the worshippers would have to sit or stand with their backs to the east. The image of Yoshitsune is looked upon from the east; hence, speaking from analogy, it would appear that it is not the Ainu worshipping Yoshitsune, but either Yoshitsune worshipping the Ainu, or the Ainu insulting the Yoshitsune. Such a conclusion may appear far-fetched; but, in any case, the position of the shrine of Yoshitsune does not come up to the acknowledged requirements of the Ainu ideas of deity worship.
Again, the Ainu say that they would not worship an idol because it would be directly against the expressed command of Aioina Kamui, their reputed ancestor. The Ainu are, in many things, a very conservative people, and in the matter of religion particularly so. Note the following incident. In the days of the Tokugawa regime so runs the tale the Ainu were ordered by the Government, or rather by the authorities of Matsumai, to cut their hair in the Japanese fashion. The result was a great meeting of the Yezo chiefs, which ended in sending a deputation to beg that the order might be countermanded, or at least suffered to lapse. ‘For,’ say the Ainu,’ we could not go contrary to the customs of our ancestors without bringing down upon us the wrath of the gods.’ And though a few Ainu, particularly those at Mori, did cut their hair as ordered, the people as a whole were let off. If, then, a mere change in the fashion of cutting the hair was resisted, what would have been done to prevent the institution of idol-worship? Notwithstanding all this, there is still the fact to be accounted for that some Ainu state that Yoshitsune is worshipped by a few of their number, though very seldom. What is the explanation ?
An Ainu himself shall answer the first question. You know,’ says he, ‘we have for a long time been subject to the Japanese Tono Sama and Yakunin, and it has been to our interest that we should try to please them as much as possible, so as not to bring down trouble upon ourselves. As we know that Yoshitsune did come among our ancestors, it was thought that nothing would please the officials more than for them to think that we really worship Yoshitsune, who was himself a Japanese. And so it came to pass that the shrine was asked for and obtained.’
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The above is taken from The Ainu of Japan (1892) and the extract can be accessed here. For an alternative version of the Yoshitsune story, see this Hokkaido Prefecture site which claims the warrior-deity was in fact foisted on the Ainu by Japanese newcomers. (With thanks to Joseph Cronin for pointing out this reference too.)
