David Chart's Blog

Mayuki at Shirahata-san

Today was this year’s First Rabbit Festival at Shirahata-san. Because it is held on the first day of the rabbit in March, I always have to ask when it is. (I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but the animals of the Chinese zodiac are used for days as well as years.) Fortunately, I could attend today, and only had to rearrange one lesson. The weather wasn’t great, so at first I was going to go alone, but then I decided to ask Mayuki if she wanted to come. Her response was an enthusiastic “Yes!”, so we went to together. Yuriko stayed home, and apparently got lots done while Mayuki wasn’t here.

When we got to the shrine, we paid our respects as normal, and then Mayuki was ready to go home, as normal. I had to explain to her that there was a special ceremony today, and that we were going to stay to see it. I convinced her, but then the priest started beating the drum to mark the start of the ceremony, and Mayuki was frightened. I picked her up and held her, but she really didn’t want to go anywhere near the shrine building at that point, so I couldn’t see that part of the ceremony very well. Not that I imagine it was very different from last year, or the year before.

After the main part of the ceremony, they had the part where they shoot arrows at the targets. The two small boys who were supposed to play a major role were not desperately interested in doing so, so it was all done by the ujiko, both the ceremonial bamboo bows, and the rather more usable proper bows. By this time, it had started raining properly again, so Mayuki and I decided to go home.

I rather hope that, by taking her to ceremonies at the shrine, I’ll get her used to it, so that she can enjoy her own three-year ceremony in the autumn. We’ll see whether that works.

Our Child, Shinto | No Comments »

Last Sunday (February 21st, just in case this draft takes longer than anticipated and I forget to edit the beginning) I attended a small symposium at Kokugakuin University on the subject “Shrine Shinto Confronts Internationalisation”. I found out about it because Professor Havens, one of the participants, posted about it on the English-language Shinto mailing list I’m on, and since it was free, local, and very relevant to my interests, I got my wife’s permission to disappear for a day, and went along.

It was extremely interesting. Shrine Shinto as a whole has no unified approach to internationalisation, it would seem, which is hardly surprising, as individual shrines are very independent. However, the speakers told us about their experiences, activities, and research, which shed quite a lot of light on the question.

The first two speakers were the chief priests of shrines in Hawaii. These shrines were founded by Japanese immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and both of the priests had been sent out from Japan to lead the shrines. One has since taken US citizenship, which requires him to renounce his Japanese citizenship according to the laws of both countries, so he is now a non-Japanese Shinto priest; an example of internationalisation all by himself.

The first one to speak was Revd Takizawa, the chief priest of Hawaii Kotohira Jinsha – Hawaii Dazaifu Tenmangu. (I know it’s normally “jinja”, but the shrine spells it “jinsha” on their home page, and it’s their name.) He was born in Nagoya, but apparently worked in Hawaii for a while before training as a priest. He was sent back to Hawaii, to lead the shrine, in 1994.

At that time, very few of the third-generation Japanese Americans were attending the shrine, and the surrounding area was not good, with a lot of crime and drug problems. The shrine was holding three events per year, at New Year and the two main festivals, and about a thousand people attended on New Year’s.

He started work right away on raising the shrine’s profile. He got involved in local community activities, trying to address the local problems, so that people knew there was a shrine there. He also increased the number of events that the shrine held, so that people would be less likely to forget about it. A guiding idea behind this was the desire to introduce Japanese culture to people in Hawaii. Thus, they started serving o-zoni, traditional Japanese New Year food, at the New Year festival. They also got some children’s kimonos, and provided free kimono rental to children attending the seven-five-three festival in November. We saw some photographs of that, and some of the children were clearly not of Japanese descent. If I’m reading my notes correctly, about 400 people did 7-5-3 last year.

In August, to go with the start of the American academic year, the shrine holds a Back to School ceremony, which is appropriate for a Tenmangu, as those are shrines dedicated to Sugawara no Michizane, a kami of scholarship. In June, they hold the summer grand purification, but with a twist: they do purification for pets, as well. That seems to be very popular, judging from the photographs of the people attending.

As a result of this, he said that they now get about 10,000 people on New Year’s, although he also said that the core group of volunteers helping to run the shrine is only ten people. Mind you, that proportion sounds about right to me. He also has a second priest, also sent from Japan, working at the shrine, and training to take over when the Rev Takizawa retires. From the sounds of things, that shrine is thriving.

The second speaker was the chief priest of Hilo Daijingu, Rev Watanabe. He has naturalised as a US citizen, so he is now a non-Japanese Shinto priest. However, he was born in Niigata Prefecture and trained in Japan, and apparently spoke no English when he went over to Hawaii. Apparently, when he applied for his visa, the US immigration department pointed out that the shrine where he was working then and Hilo Daijingu enshrined different kami, and wondered whether he was really the same religion as the shrine he was supposed to work at. He got round that by having two lawyers, one an expert in immigration law and the other an expert on religious law (and one of them the son of the former chief priest of one of the Hawaiian shrines), who convinced immigration that Shinto isn’t divided by kami.

Although the shrine is called Hilo Great Shrine (Daijingu), it’s actually quite a small shrine, the same sort of scale as a neighbourhood shrine in Japan, and that’s the atmosphere that Revd Watanabe says that he aims for. It is, however, the only shrine on Hawaii’s Big Island, which is apparently about half the size of Shikoku, but with a much lower population. He said that, although people are very spread out, there’s a strong community in the sense that everyone knows everyone else, particularly within the Japanese-American community.

Hilo Daijingu gets about 4000 people at New Year’s, and holds Tsukinamisai twice a month, on the first and fifteenth. About 40 families attend on the first, about 10 on the fifteenth. Most of the attendees are older people, but the number hasn’t changed over the ten years he’s been there. Although some people have died, others have retired and started attending. About 90 families come to the Great Purifications, and he does about 20 to 30 petitions per month.

They have a garage sale in the shrine every year, which serves two purposes. First, it’s something for the organising committee to do, meaning that the meetings have more substance, and they get to know each other better. Second, it gives people who do not think of themselves as Shinto a reason to visit the shrine, and the feeling that they can enter the grounds. He also holds ceremonies on the US public holidays that aren’t specifically Christian, like Independence Day.

Revd Watanabe says that he tries to talk to anyone who comes into the shrine grounds, to make them feel welcome. Japanese tourists sometimes come, and it’s apparently often the first time they’ve spoken to a Shinto priest. He says that he wants to make people feel that they want to go back to a shrine, whether Hilo Daijingu or one nearer home back in Japan.

This shrine also seems to be doing quite well. However, it was noticeable from the photographs that most of the people seriously involved with the shrines looked to be of Japanese descent. Revd Watanabe explicitly mentioned that Japanese Americans form most of the attendees at ceremonies. These shrines seem to be good examples of religions that have travelled with immigrants, and while both sound like they are very healthy at the moment, I do wonder whether their appeal will spread beyond the Japanese American community, or even whether they want it to.

This has got quite long, so I’ll break here, and post about the other speakers later.

Kokugakuin | 2 Comments »

The back entrance to the shrine

Kamimeguro Hikawa Shrine is a fairly ordinary urban shrine, its precincts sandwiched between high buildings and lacking in old, impressive trees. “Kamimeguro” is the name of the area, and the “kami” just means “upper”; it is, apparently, not connected to the word for Shinto kami, although quite a lot of people have thought it was. (The evidence relies on technical arguments about sound changes in Japanese in the eighth century; apparently the two “kami”s originally had different “i” sounds. Not everyone is completely convinced.)

The main shrine building, with flags for the first visit of the New Year outside.

The Hikawa shrines are only found around Tokyo, and the overwhelming majority are in Tokyo and Saitama prefectures. There are one or two in the other adjacent prefectures, and none further away. This sort of situation is fairly common in Shinto; particular shrine groups tend to be found in a local area. Indeed, about the only shrine group that is truly national is the Hachiman group; even Inari seems to have a significant bias towards eastern Japan. This does mean that you cannot walk around visiting the shrines in one area to get a sense of which types of shrine are important; that will just tell you what is important near you.

The reason I was talking about shrine groups rather than kami is that the main kami of the Hikawa shrines is Susano-o no mikoto, the younger brother of Amaterasu Ōmikami, who is enshrined in many other places as well. For example, he is the main kami of the Gion shrines, which tend to be found in western Japan, and of several shrines in Shimane prefecture, on the Japan Sea coast. Indeed, “Hikawa” is thought to come from the Hi river in Shimane, which is closely associated with Susano-o’s legends. However, traditions and festivals seem to be more often associated with the shrine type than directly with the kami, so it is generally more useful to keep track of the shrine type.

An additional complication is that sometimes the kami is not the same in all shrines of the same type, and even when it is that is sometimes just a result of Meiji period rationalisation. Another result of such rationalisation can be seen at this shrine. As well as Susano-o, the shrine enshrines Amaterasu and Tenjin, Sugawara no Michizane. Now, while Amaterasu is connected to Susano-o, Tenjin is not, and is only here because he was moved from another local shrine, one that was being closed down, in the Meiji period.

The shrine precincts also include an Inari shrine and a Sengen shrine. The Sengen shrines are dedicated to the kami of Mount Fuji, and thus are only common in areas from which Mount Fuji can be seen. The presence of other shrines in the shrine grounds, called sessha (for shrines to kami closely connected to the main kami, in theory) or massha (for other kami), is quite common. The Grand Shrines of Ise cover 125 shrines if you add up all of the sessha and massha, although some have special names in that case. Some sessha and massha are even outside the shrine grounds, sometimes quite a long way away. These days, I think that the key point is that the sessha and massha are not independent religious corporations; they are administered by the corporation of the main shrine.

Because of my route, I entered the shrine through the rear entrance, and left from the front. The stone steps at the front are almost two hundred years old, and lead to and from the Ōyama Kaidō, but as soon as you reach the top of the steps, the fact that you are in the heart of Tokyo is inescapable. There’s something about triple-decker roads that destroys any sense of peaceful isolation.

Little of the traffic visits the shrine these days.

Shrines, Ōyama Kaidō | No Comments »

The first actual shrine that I passed walking along the Ōyama Kaidō was Mitake (mee-ta-kay) Shrine, on Miyamasu Hill in Shibuya. This is the main road on the opposite side of the station from the famous junction with the enormous screens that it almost always used as an establishing shot of Tokyo in foreign films. It is, therefore, about as urban as an area can get, and the shrine is squeezed in between two large buildings, one of which is a main post office. As is often the case, there is a flight of stone steps up from the street to the main precincts of the shrine.

There are three things that struck me as unusual about this shrine, but as the shrine office was closed and, in any case, I couldn’t spend too long there if I was going to get to the end of the day’s route, I wasn’t able to check in detail. At some point I may go back, since it isn’t very far away, and try to find out.

The shrine precincts. Note the buildings to either side, and that the whole surface seems to be paved.

You may be able to tell from the photograph of the precincts, but, in addition to being squeezed between buildings, the shrine looks rather as though it is on top of a building; the structures to the side seem to be built into the “ground”, not next to it, and all of the surface is paved. This is surprising because, according to one of the lecturers at Kokugakuin a few years ago, the basic rule of the Association of Shinto Shrines is that a shrine must be “On the earth, under the sky”. A shrine on a building or inside is, as far as the Association is concerned, just a glorified kamidana. So, most shrines are built directly on the ground. Now, Mitake Shrine may be, in fact, on a hill. The bits of the hill to either side could have been carved away to make room for the buildings; that’s fairly common in Japanese cities. On the other hand, it might not be recognised by the Association; there is no law requiring shrines to have such recognition, and, indeed, some very famous ones (Meiji Jingū, Fushimi Inari) are not. Either way, the absence of an obvious natural earth surface under foot is unusual.

The images of Fudō Myo-ō enshrined in the precincts.

The second unusual point is the presence of an image of Fudō Myo-ō in the shrine grounds. According to the notice next to it, this image has been worshipped in the area since the late seventeenth century, and it is a Buddhist image. Now, as I have mentioned before, in the late nineteenth century the government required that all Buddhist images be removed from shrines. Unlike Toyokawa Inari, Mitake Shrine is clearly a shrine, which raises the question of why it has a Buddhist image.

One possibility is that it was moved to the shrine after the second world war, as a result of the development of the area around Shibuya station. That sort of thing happens quite a lot; there are a number of religious images noted in the Ōyama Kaidō guidebook as having been moved from their original sites due to building and development.

Another possibility arises from another historical event recorded on a big noticeboard at the shrine. In 1870, the Meiji Emperor made a royal progress from the palace, and on the way out and back he stopped at Mitake Shrine for a rest, paying his respects at the shrine. If the Fudō Myo-ō was near the shrine at that time, and the Emperor paid his respects to it as well, it would be difficult to move it away. So, it might have been just outside the shrine, thus formally within the law, and protected by an imperial association.

Whatever the history, the fact remains that the Buddhist image is now clearly within the shrine precincts, although there is a second torii between the small shrine for the image and the main hall of the shrine. Whether or not this can actually be called Shinto-Buddhist syncretism, given that, as far as I could see, it was just a matter of physical proximity, it is still a reminder of the close links between Shinto and Buddhism.

The open-mouthed koma-inu.

The final point concerns the koma-inu. Although the name means “Korea Dogs”, these statues normally look nothing like dogs. Rather, they look rather like lions, with curly hair and, occasionally, horns. They stand in a pair in front of the shrine buildings, protecting them from evil influences, one with its mouth open and the other with its mouth closed. At Inari shrines, the koma-inu are almost invariably replaced by foxes, and at Hie shrines they are sometimes replaced by monkeys. In both cases, these are the animals particularly associated with kami in question. On the other hand, I’ve never seen a Tenjin shrine that uses cattle, or a Hachiman shrine that uses doves (the animal associated with the kami of scholarship is the cow, that associated with the kami of war is the dove).

As you can see from the photograph, the koma-inu at this shrine look a lot like dogs, or possibly wolves. “Mitake” refers to a sacred mountain, and wolves used to live in Japan’s mountains, so it is possible that the animals associated with the kami of this shrine are wolves, and that the koma-inu are wolves. Alternatively, since there are no formal rules for how they look, the chief priest of this shrine, or the donor, may just have decided to make them look like dogs. In any case, this is definitely unusual.

Shrines, Ōyama Kaidō | 1 Comment »

It's a temple, not a shrine

The first shrine I visited on my walk along the Ōyama Kaidō last month was not, in fact, a shrine at all, at least not strictly speaking. Toyokawa Inari Tokyo Betsuin is formally a Zen Buddhist temple. It is also, very clearly, an Inari establishment, and Inari is almost always a Shinto kami.

Don't be fooled; this is not a shrine

So, what’s going on? From around the eighth century to the nineteenth, the borders between Shinto and Buddhism were extremely ill-defined, with many practices and people shifting from one to the other. A lot of early Shinto theology, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was written by Buddhist monks, for example, and reading Buddhist sutras to held kami achieve nirvana was also very common. The most famous manifestation of this, however, was the doctrine of Honji Suijaku, which said that the kami were local, Japanese manifestations of Buddhist deities. The inverse doctrine, holding that Buddhist deities were different manifestation of the kami, was also popularised by some Shinto priests.

In the late nineteenth century, however, the Meiji government declared that Shinto and Buddhism were clearly separate, issuing a law, the Shinbutsu Bunri Rei, or Law to Separate Kami and Buddhas, which said that all religious institutions and practitioners had to choose to be either Shinto or Buddhist.

The Inari cult started at Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto in the early eighth century, but when Kūkai, the founder of Shingon Buddhism, founded Tōji nearby in the late eighth century, he adopted the kami as a protector of his sect’s temples. As a result, many Inari shrines were founded with strong Buddhist elements. Nevertheless, in the Meiji period almost all chose to become shrines, getting rid of much of the Buddhism.

Toyokawa Inari, in Aichi prefecture, was an exception, and it became a Buddhist temple. The one I visited in Akasaka is technically a part of that temple. Karen Smyers did part of her research for The Fox and the Jewel at the one in Aichi, which she says has few obvious foxes. That is not the case in the Tokyo temple.

The combination of Shinto and Buddhist elements was very interesting. The main building did not have a torii, but it did have two fox statues in front of it, like the koma-inu at a shrine. The shrine building at the end of the path marked by the large red torii was built like a shrine, but the items inside were Buddhist style. Similarly, the dedication on the stone at the centre of the crowd of fox statues was to Dakiniten, the Buddhist deity who was assimilated to Inari, not to Inari directly.

The stone fox looks like it belongs in a shrine, but the incense burner behind it is definitely temple furniture

There were quite a lot of fox statues around, some of them next to distinctively Buddhist items, such as an incense burner. There was also a complete set of statues of the seven gods of good fortune, behind some shrine buildings. The seven gods of good fortune are derived from Shinto, Buddhism, and Hinduism, at least, so they are even more complex than most elements of Japanese religion.

It is interesting to speculate that, two hundred years ago, most Shinto shrines were like this, with sutras being chanted before the kami and incense burned, while monks went about their business. However, Toyokawa Inari had no miko, and even two hundred years ago a shrine would have had them, so this is no more a relic of pre-Meiji practices than any other location. It does, however, provide evidence that the syncretic practices were not completely suppressed by the Meiji law, and were ready to reappear when, eighty years later, the law was repealed by the occupying Americans.

I can't think why so many people think Inari is a fox

Shinto, Ōyama Kaidō | No Comments »

Here we have another example of a book that does what it says on the cover; a recounting of one year’s festivals and activities at a Shinto shrine, together with comments from various of the priests on matters connected to Shinto, Japan, and the shrine’s operation. The writing is clear and lively, and it gives, I think, a very good idea of what contemporary Shinto is actually like. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to get an insight into the practice of the religion.

However, I do have a few caveats. The book appears to be highly accurate on areas I know about, so I’m inclined to trust his account of the shrine, as he was actually living there and attending the rituals. The biggest error I noticed was in the glossary, where he says that the colour of the hakama worn by priests depends on their rank within the shrine, whether chief priest, senior priest, or whatever. Actually, the colour of the hakama depends on a separate ranking system, but in practice it does seem to correlate closely with rank at the shrine. However, a chief priest at a small shrine might only get the hakama that the assistant chief priests get at his topic shrine. As I said, the book is highly accurate; I think you’d probably have to read the Association of Shinto Shrines regulations to be aware of this distinction, and even then you might elide it in a book.

A larger concern is that the book does not, I think, make it sufficiently clear that his account applies to one shrine, Suwa Shrine in Nagasaki. This is quite a major shrine, associated with one of the largest festivals in Japan, and it has a large staff of priests. To take one example, he refers to the reverence towards Ise as a standard part of rituals. I don’t doubt that it was a standard part of rituals there, but I have never seen it done as part of a ritual. My local shrine doesn’t do it, and I haven’t noticed it in the festivals I’ve attended at other shrines. Maybe it’s a Kyushu custom (Nagasaki is in Kyushu), or maybe it was just the chief priest of that shrine who thought it was a good idea. The rituals and festivals reported in this book are a good example of the sort of thing that happens at a shrine, but the details are not necessarily true of anywhere apart from Suwa Shrine in Nagasaki, and I think that could have been rather more emphasised.

A related concern is Nelson’s attribution of particular interpretations of the rituals to the attendees in general. In some cases, this may be based on interviews with them afterwards, but even so he does seem to generalise more than I’m comfortable with. He quite rightly emphasises that Shinto rituals do not include sermons that specify a particular interpretation, so there is no way to know how most attendees interpret the ritual words and actions.

My criticism is not that the book fails to reflect the diversity of Shinto; that would be asking for the book to be a different book. Rather, I think it fails to make clear that it is only describing one small part of Shinto, and that other shrines are different in many ways. If you read the book bearing that in mind, it is an excellent introduction to Shinto as it is actually practised.

Literature | No Comments »

This book, subtitled “Shared and Private Meanings in Contemporary Japanese Inari Worship”, is the product of extensive research into the Inari cult in contemporary (early 1990s) Japan. The author spent a year at Fushimi Inari Taisha, the oldest Inari shrine and still, in some sense, the centre of the cult, and a further year at Toyokawa Inari, a Buddhist temple.

The choice of research centres highlights the first way in which the Inari cult complicates the standard picture of Japanese religions, because Inari is normally thought of as a Shinto kami. Indeed, I’ve classified this post under Shinto on my blog. However, before the Meiji Restoration, when Shinto and Buddhism were closely intertwined, Inari had very close ties to Shingon Buddhism, and when the Meiji government forced all religious institutions to choose whether they were Shinto or Buddhist, a few Inari centres chose to be Buddhist, although most decided to be Shinto.

The main message of the book, however, is that things are much more complicated and less unified than they look. There is a mountain behind Fushimi Inari Taisha, and the mountain is covered with red torii and small stone shrines. These small shrines started to appear in the mid nineteenth century, and the shrine initially opposed them, before giving in and authorising them. However, the shrine exerts virtually no control over worship at them; they are scattered all over the mountain, so supervising them would be impractical if the shrine even wanted to do it. What’s more, the shrine does not, in fact, own the whole mountain, so some of the small shrines are on land over which the shrine has no authority to start with. The author of the book, Karen Smyers, got to know several of the groups who worshipped on the mountain, and learned quite a lot about their beliefs and practices.

What she discovered was that every group was different. Even though most paid for ceremonies at the main shrine, they generally placed greater importance on the rituals they carried out on the mountain, in front of the minor shrines. These rituals, and the meaning attributed to them, differed significantly from group to group. Even the name of the kami varied, although it usually ended in “Inari”. While this is, in some ways, similar to Western phenomena such as “the Virgin of Lourdes”, it goes deeper, because there is no consensus on which kami Inari actually is. There is a common one, Uganomitama no Kami, but this was largely a Meiji imposition. Fushimi Inari enshrines five kami, including Uganomitama, and different places enshrine other groups. Toyokawa Inari, naturally, enshrines a Buddhist deity instead, Dakiniten. Even if the kami were agreed on, there are few general legends; Inari seems to be a very personalised deity.

One thing that all the priests and monks agree on is that Inari is not a fox. There may be fox images at virtually every Inari shrine, and the fox may be closely associated with the kami, but the kami is not, they insist, a fox. However, popular belief is much less clear about this. Some people agree that the fox is a messenger or servant of Inari, but others believe that Inari him or herself (Inari’s gender is not constant from one group to another) is a fox. Who’s to say which group is “right”, or “orthodox”.

Smyers also devotes some space to discussing the strategies used for avoiding conflict between groups of Inari worshippers. In essence, there are a number of ways to avoid talking about the issues over which they are likely to disagree, such as “which kami is Inari?”, “how should one worship Inari?”, or “what is the proper way for a follower of Inari to live?”. Obviously, this leaves conversations between representatives of Inari groups at quite a superficial level; Smyers reports that some of her informants tried to get her to tell them what other of her informants actually believed.

This is entirely consistent with the impression I’ve picked up of Shinto. There’s an emphasis on creating a surface image of unity, with torii at almost all shrines, fixed vestments for the priests, and a standard framework for rituals and festivals. However, underneath that surface, every shrine is different. As Smyer’s research shows, even when the shrines all fall into the same cult, such as Inari, they can all be different, and I suspect that that is true far beyond Inari. I’ve not done the formal research to back that intuition up, but it would be surprising to discover that all shrines were the same. Of course, because shrine priests do not preach, the beliefs and practices of the worshippers are also likely to vary widely.

Smyers suggests that this may, in fact, be a broader feature of Japanese society. The apparent conformity is a mere surface, below which there are countless small groups, all different. That is also consistent with my experience of Japan, but too large a claim to make on the basis of the evidence I have.

In any case, this is a very interesting book, and one I would recommend to anyone with an interest in Japanese culture, particularly if they were interested in religion, or Shinto specifically.

Literature | No Comments »

Today was the last of this year’s Shinto lectures at Kokugakuin. The theme was the origins of Yoshida Shinto, particularly the activities of Kanetomo Yoshida. (Kanetomo is his given name.)

Right at the beginning of the lecture, Professor Okada said that he didn’t generally like to criticise historical figures, because you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but when it came to Kanetomo, there were some things you just wanted to say. Thus, he was probably going to be a bit critical during the lecture. He reflected that this risked Kanetomo cursing him (as Kanetomo was enshrined as a kami after his death), and explained that he’d taken the opportunity of being in Kyoto to visit Yoshida Shrine and pay his respects at Kanetomo’s shrine, explaining what he was going to say and asking permission. With luck, that will have covered him, and hopefully it will also cover me reporting what he said.

So, what is Yoshida Shinto? Professor Okada didn’t go into detail, because he had gone into detail in previous years, and there are a lot of people who are taking the course for the fourth or fifth time. However, there are some new people, so he did give a quick overview. Essentially, it’s a version of Shinto that was created by Kanetomo in the late fifteenth century, and controlled most shrines throughout the Edo period. It lost all its power at the Meiji Restoration, in 1868, and the traditions have now largely died out, although some of the associated buildings still survive.

Anyone who knows Japanese history knows that the late fifteenth century is when the so-called warring states period begins, with the Onin War. The Onin War lasted for ten years, on and off, and was essentially fought in the capital, Kyoto. It did a lot to destroy central government, and virtually all of the imperial Shinto ceremonies were abandoned during this time; the imperial court was too busy trying to survive. This had an effect on Kanetomo.

The Yoshida family was a branch of the Urabe family, which had responsibility for divination from turtle shells in the classical period. By the Heian period they were the second in command at the Ministry of Divinities (Jingikan), and in the early Kamakura period they became known for their studies of the Nihonshoki. Two branches in Kyoto became the hereditary priests of the Hirano and Yoshida shrines, and the branch at Yoshida became known as the Yoshida Urabe. The Urabe reference is normally omitted, so that they are just called the Yoshida.

Thus, Kanetomo was born into a high-ranking priestly family, and until he was about 30 he had a conventional career for such a background, participating in imperial rituals, such as the last Daijosai of the middle ages, as well as presumably helping in the rituals at Yoshida Shrine. This all changed in the Onin era, when the war broke out.

In 1467, the first year of the Onin era, the Yoshida mansion was robbed and set on fire. In the following year, the Yoshida shrine was completely destroyed in a fire caused by a battle, and over a dozen of the people who lived in the area were killed. This seems to have have had a strong effect on Kanetomo, as can be imagined. The war had stopped all the imperial ceremonies, and his home, shrine, and friends had all been destroyed. Essentially, everything he had trained for was gone.

He does not, however, seem to have allowed this to keep him down for long. In 1470, we find what is probably the earliest document about Yoshida Shinto. This refers to it as Sogen Shinto, one of its formal names, and says that it is the orthodox transmission of the Urabe, passed down properly within the Yoshida family. It also says that the secrets should not be passed on to Shinto priests, at least normally, and certainly not to Buddhist monks. Both of these requirements were relaxed over the next two decades, but when we look at the people who were initiated into Yoshida Shinto in the early years, starting in 1471, they are all members of the Kyoto nobility, including the head of the Jingikan and a former regent for the emperor. It seems likely that Kanetomo initially conceived of Sogen Shinto as an aristocratic religion.

Another early activity concerns the Saijosho. This was, I think, originally the place in the palace where the Shinto rituals were performed. Kanetomo is mentioned as being in charge of it in a letter written by the shogun, Yoshimasa Ashikaga, to the Upper Shrine of Suwa Taisha in 1470. The letter is a formal petition to the kami, and was probably actually written by Kanetomo, who seems to have been in high favour with the shogun and his family, and responsible for many kinds of prayer. The reference is a little odd, because the imperial palace had been destroyed by the war, presumably including the Saijosho. Within a few years, Kanetomo had got the Saijosho re-established in the grounds of the Yoshida mansion, near the Yoshida shrine.

In order to achieve this, he forged an imperial decree purporting to be from a couple of hundred years earlier, and had it “reaffirmed” by the current emperor. This decree specified the form of the Saijosho, saying that all the kami, all eight million of them, and the 3132 kami listed in the Engi Shiki, all descended to that space every day. That is, all the kami of Japan were to be enshrined in this one place.

This is the point where Professor Okada particularly criticised Kanetomo. First, he forged public documents to create his religion. He also forged a lot of documents that he claimed had been passed down in the Urabe family for generations, but that’s less serious, as the only thing they didn’t have that they claimed was age. Official documents, however, claim to have the force of law, and they don’t.

The second point is more internal to Shinto. As I mentioned in my summaries of earlier lectures, Professor Okada thinks that, originally, each kami was worshipped only by the family claiming descent from it. Thus, only the emperor could worship Amaterasu, but the emperor could not worship Amenokoyane, because he was the ancestor of the Nakatomi. Even in the system of the Engi Shiki, the regional kami were not brought to the capital; instead, the emperor sent ambassadors to the shrines with offerings. Kanetomo, however, just enshrined all the kami in his own shrine.

The shrine was built properly in the 1480s. Kanetomo claimed to have had a dream in which he saw the emperor himself, dressed in ritual robes, worshipping in the shrine, while a woman served, and a monk sat off to the side. The monk introduced himself as Kukai, the founder of Shingon, and said that, in the current chaos, when the imperial house looked likely to fall, Amaterasu had decided to move to Kyoto, and specifically to Kanetomo’s shrine, to protect the emperor.

Professor Okada thinks it is possible that Kanetomo actually had this dream, although he seemed less sure that it was actually a divine message. In any case, the three important points are the need to protect the emperor, the transfer of the Ise shrines, and the presence of Kukai, a Buddhist monk. The first two points are fairly obviously connected to Kanetomo’s desire to establish Yoshida Shinto, but what about the monk? Kukai’s presence is odd, particularly considering that the first document written said that monks should not be initiated into Yoshida Shinto.

Professor Okada speculated that the reason was that Buddhism was still far more powerful than Shinto at this point, so that Kanetomo was trying to get Buddhist support for his new religion. Certainly, he started initiating monks from about this period.

The Saijosho that Kanetomo built is very interesting. At the centre is an octagonal building, the Daigenkyu, which enshrines Kunitokotachi, the first kami mentioned in the Nihonshoki. Octagonal buildings are very rare in Shinto, but apparently they represent circles, and thus universality. In covered walkways around the Daigenkyu, Kanetomo enshrined all of the kami mentioned in the Engi Shiki, while behind it he enshrined the Inner and Outer Shrines of Ise. He didn’t have permission from Ise to do this, and the priests there were definitely not pleased with what he had done, but Kanetomo was in Kyoto and had the ear of the shogun, so there was little they could do about it.

Kanetomo had a Shinto funeral, and while the details are not known, this may have been the first “modern” Shinto funeral. Certainly, Edo-period Shinto funerals were derived from the Yoshida version. As mentioned above, Kanetomo is enshrined within the precincts of Yoshida Shrine. He is also buried underneath his shrine; that is very unusual, since Shinto normally avoids any association with death or corpses.

Overall, Professor Okada said that Yoshida Shinto was genuinely new, created by Kanetomo from many elements, including the earlier traditions of Shinto, but also including Buddhism, Confucianism, and Onmyodo. Indeed, while Professor Okada finds the origins of Shinto around the beginning of the Nara period, some people say that it began as a religion with Kanetomo. He was the first person to give Shinto a set of doctrines, a central place of worship, and a centralised organisation. His influence can be seen today, as Jinja Honcho has a similar relationship to other shrines to that created by Kanetomo. It isn’t, on the other hand, much like that of the Jingikan.

Yoshida Shinto is interesting because it seems to have been completely destroyed after the Meiji Restoration, despite its supreme importance during the Edo period. As far as Professor Okada knows, and this is one of his specialised fields, there is no-one alive who knows how to perform the Yoshida rituals, and even reconstructing their ritual implements is difficult. It also seems to lack much of a modern constituency, unlike Onmyodo and Shugendo. Why did it vanish so completely? I don’t know.

At the end of the lecture, Professor Okada told us what he is planning to do next year. He wants to cover the cults of the top ten kami by number of shrines, starting with number ten, the Kasuga kami, and finishing with Hachiman, the most widespread kami in Japan. That sounds like a really interesting topic to me, so I’m looking forward to it. I’d better start saving up.

Kokugakuin | 2 Comments »

Today was the ninth lecture of the Shinto Controversies course at Kokugakuin University. Today’s topic was Ise Shinto, a variety of Shinto developed at the Grand Shrines of Ise, as you might have guessed. However, it was mainly promoted and developed by the priests of the Outer Shrine, not those of the Inner Shrine. The Inner Shrine enshrines Amaterasu, while the Outer Shrine enshrines Toyoukehime, a food kami, and the kami responsible for Amaterasu’s meals. Ise Shinto dates from the middle ages, at which time the priests of the Inner and Outer Shrines came from different families. The Inner Shrine was served by the Arakida family, while the Outer Shrine was served by the Watarai family. Because the Watarai family were largely responsible for the development of Ise Shinto, it is also known as Watarai Shinto.

Central to Ise Shinto are five texts known collectively as Shinto Gobusho (Shinto Five Texts). These texts all claim to date from the Nara period (eighth century) or even earlier, but they were all written in the medieval period; no-one dates any of them earlier than the twelfth century. I’m not sure whether it’s really accurate to call them “forgeries”; they are just lying about their age.

The oldest of the five texts is probably the Hokihongi, which seems to have been written in the early thirteenth century. This one may have been written by priests at the Inner Shrine, because two thirds of it is concerned with the details of the Shikinen Sengu, the rebuilding of the shrines carried out every twenty years, and it does not privilege the Outer Shrine in any way. However, it does show the influence of Ryobu Shinto, in that it puts the Inner and Outer Shrines on the same level. Each is assigned an Onmyodo correspondence, for example, but the two (fire for the Inner Shrine and water for the Outer) are not superior or inferior to each other.

This text contains a significant amount of information about the Shin no Mihasira, the most sacred point of the Grand Shrines. This is a wooden pillar, about fifteen centimetres in diameter, under the floor of the main shrine building. The floor of the building is raised about two metres off the floor, and the Shin no Mihashira is roughly in the centre (judging from the diagrams). It is permanently covered by a small wooden shed. Indeed, even when the shrine is not on one of its two sites, the Shin no Mihashira site is still covered; if you see aerial photographs of the Ise Shrines, you can see a small shed on the empty site. This is what it is covering.

Provided I understood him correctly, Professor Okada said that Ise Jingu will not let people look at the section about Shin no Mihashira in their copy of the Hokihongi, although you can read it in the copies in other libraries, because it tells too much. Until the Meiji Restoration, the offerings at the shrines were made under the buildings, in front of the Shin no Mihashira, and it is said that the column shows cracks and damage when there is a major threat to the state. Of course, as virtually no-one is allowed to see it, it’s a bit hard to confirm such stories.

Anyway, returning to the Gobusho, the second one was the Yamato Hime no Mikoto Seiki, which is thought to have been written around the middle of the thirteenth century, and the final three, known collectively as Jingu Sanbusho were probably written in the late thirteenth century.

The Jingu Sanbusho were almost certainly written by Watarai Yukitada, a priest of the Outer Shrine. He was a major figure in the development of Ise Shinto, and the first person to talk about these texts. In addition, a late-thirteenth century copy owned by Shinpukuji, a temple in Nagoya, has proved to have been signed by Yukitada on the scroll stick. Given the dates, there is a strong possibility that this is the original fair copy of the book, although it is, of course, impossible to be certain. Professor Okada was involved in the project to study this document, and others held by the same temple, over the last five years, and by tracing its likely route to Shinpukuji we can say that it was probably written in Kyoto, and from its content it was completed shortly after one of the secondary shrines at Ise was destroyed in a storm, in January 1287. This is a period when Yukitada is known to have been in Kyoto, and other known dates narrow the likely dates of composition of the work to between April and July 1287.

The Jingu Sanbusho have warnings on them that they are not to be read by anyone under the age of sixty. Remarkably, Yukitada seems to have written them just as he was turning sixty. I suspect this wasn’t actually to give himself special privileges; it was to provide him with an explanation for why he’d never mentioned these supposedly ancient documents before. Obviously, if he’d only just been allowed to see them, he couldn’t have talked about them earlier. (And, equally obviously, he could hardly talk about them before he’d finished writing them.)

So, what about the content of the texts? There are a few significant features of them, particularly of the later four, the ones most closely associated with the Outer Shrine.

First, the kami of the Outer Shrine is said to be the same as the first kami mentioned in the Kojiki, Amenominakanushinomikoto, or the first mentioned in the Nihonshoki, Kunitokotachinomikoto. Thus, the Outer Shrine enshrines a more ancient kami than Amaterasu. Further, there was a secret pact between Amaterasu and the Outer Shrine kami, before the beginning of the world, to jointly support the Japanese emperors and state. Thus, the Outer Shrine is just as much an imperial ancestral shrine as the Inner Shrine, and should be called an imperial shrine.

This is significant because, just about the time the books were written, the Inner and Outer Shrines were engaged in a debate over whether the Outer Shrine should use the character meaning “Imperial” in the shrine name. One reason for producing these texts, then, was to argue that it should.

The second point is an emphasis on Shinto’s support for the state and the emperor. Japan was not terribly stable in the thirteenth century; the central government was weak, and the Mongols tried to invade towards the end of it. (They were prevented by the Divine Wind, Kamikaze, a storm that scattered the invasion fleet.) Thus, these books made a point of Japan being the country of the kami, and that the kami would protect the state if the state properly honoured the kami. This is the period where the concept of Japan as the country of the kami first emerged, possibly within Ise Shinto.

A third point is a distancing of Shinto from Buddhism. The Gobusho say that Buddhist theories should be avoided or hidden when expounding Shinto. Obviously, there are still many visible influences from Ryobu Shinto, and thus Buddhism, but at this point Shinto priests started trying to put some clear distance between the two religions.

Finally, the texts from Yamato Hime no Mikoto Seiki onwards emphasise purity and honesty of heart, saying that this is what the kami truly value, more so than the rituals. The idea of revering the kami and honouring the ancestors is made explicit in them, as is the importance of continuing to do things as they were originally done, going back to the source. All of these ideas were very influential in later versions of Shinto, including current Shrine Shinto.

In fact, apart from the parochial debates between the Outer and Inner Shrines, all of the main ideas of Ise Shinto were extremely influential on later Shinto. Thus, it could be (and has been) argued that what we know as modern Shinto started in the thirteenth century, with Ise Shinto. I still tend to think that it’s better to see Ise Shinto as another important transformation of a living tradition, but its importance certainly cannot be denied.

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The author of this book on Shinto is primarily a philosopher of religion, not a historian, and thus he approaches Shinto from a philosophical perspective. One result is that this book is not really a very good introduction to Shinto. It is easy to read, and assumes no background knowledge (as far as I can tell), but it is concerned with interpreting and analysing Shinto, not laying out the basics. However, once you know a bit about Shinto, I think it is a very interesting book, one I found insightful and thought-provoking.

The book starts and finishes with a discussion of contemporary Shinto practice, something that is often skimped and that makes it a valuable supplement to a more standard introductory text. In between, there is a philosophical history of Shinto; that is, a history that concentrates on its development as seen through the categories Kasulis is using.

Kasulis argues that Shinto, as currently practised by tens of millions of Japanese who claim to have no religion, is not concerned with explanations or doctrine, but with a sense of belonging, and a sense of contentment with mystery and wonder. The main distinction he develops, however, is between what he calls “essentialist Shinto” and “existentialist Shinto”.

Essentialist Shinto claims that there is a necessary core to Shinto, that it is a well-defined religion in distinction to other religions. Someone who subscribes to essentialist Shinto does things because he (or she) is Shinto. Existentialist Shinto, on the other hand, looks at practices, and says that someone is Shinto if they do certain things. The definition is very vague, and there is no necessary incompatibility between Shinto and other religions. Existentialist Shinto would see no problem with someone being both Shinto and Christian, although the Christian side might be less happy.

The main version of essentialist Shinto, Kasulis argues, is the nationalistic religion of emperor worship that dominated Japan from the Meiji period to the end of the second world war. We can find elements of it earlier in Shinto’s history, and, in so far as there is an essentialist version of Shinto, it seems to be the only one. Kasulis believes that the existentialist version of Shinto was dominant throughout most of history, up to the nineteenth century, and it is also clear that he favours the existentialist version. Indeed, in the final chapter he considers how existentialist Shinto could reclaim Shinto practice from the remnants of the essentialist version. His conclusion is that you need a neo-essentialist Shinto, with something like a sense of the kami as the essential element.

This is where I think he goes wrong. He argues that a completely undefined existentialist Shinto cannot stand up against an essentialist version, because an existentialist version has nothing to argue with. It is so fluid and tolerant that it cannot say that the essentialist Shinto is wrong, and thus cannot try to move away from it.

However, I think that it is possible to formulate an existentialist Shinto that can oppose certain elements of essentialist Shinto.

Let’s take a step back. The core difference between essentialist Shinto and existentialist Shinto is that the former requires something of anyone who is Shinto, while the latter doesn’t. On an essentialist conception of Shinto, if you know that someone is Shinto you can make some definite statements about them; they believe that Japan is the land of the kami, they revere the emperor as the descendent and representative of Amaterasu, they visit shrines on certain days, and so on. On an existentialist conception, however, two people who are Shinto might have nothing at all in common. However, an existentialist Shinto is not supposed to be a completely empty idea, applying to everyone. The Pope is not Shinto, not even existentialist Shinto. True, you could come up with a definition of Shinto that included the Pope, but it wouldn’t be very useful.

So, what would an existentialist conception of Shinto actually be? I want to suggest that it should be a collection of actions and beliefs that are Shinto. So, visiting a shrine, having a kamidana, having a Shinto wedding, believing the Kiki myths, revering the emperor as the descendent and representative of Amaterasu, and feeling the presence of something wonderful in nature might all be on the list. When deciding whether someone is Shinto, you look at what they do, and compare it to the list. The Pope does none of them, so he isn’t Shinto. Hillary Clinton might have visited Meiji Jingu, but that’s it, and that doesn’t make her Shinto. A priest at a Shinto shrine, on the other hand, does lots of them, so he is. The borderline cases might be difficult, and in those cases you can rely on what the person says. (You can’t always do that; “if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. Even if it claims to be a wolf.” People are not authoritative about their identities, even when honest. Simply saying “I’m not racist” does not guarantee that you are not, even if you believe it.)

However, nothing on the list is necessary. Thus, you could be Shinto without ever visiting a shrine. Suppose you live in Tennessee. Visiting a shrine is going to be rather difficult, because the closest one is in Washington State. However, you might have a kamidana, and engage in ritual purification derived from various Shinto beliefs. That might be enough to make you Shinto. Similarly, you could be Shinto without believing that the kami exist. If you have a kamidana, visit shrines frequently, and have Shinto rituals performed to mark life transitions (Shinto wedding, Hatsumiyamairi, and so on), then you are still Shinto, even if you think the kami are made up.

Another feature of the list is that doing something that is not on it is not directly relevant to whether you are Shinto. The practices of other religions are not on the list. There might be a couple of things on the list that are inconsistent with other religions, but they aren’t necessary. Thus, you could be Shinto while still counting as a follower of another religion, such as Buddhism. This means that this form of Shinto has the inclusivity that Kasulis identifies as a feature of existentialist Shinto.

A final feature is that we don’t have to approve of everything on the list. Because we can be Shinto without doing or believing everything on the list, we can think that some things on the list are false or evil, while still acknowledging that they belong on the list, because they have been an important part of Shinto in the past, at least. An example might be “believing that the myths in the Kojiki are literally true”. I’m sure they’re not, and the Shinto priests at Kokugakuin seem to agree, but it would be very strange to deny that someone who did believe them was Shinto. Motoori Norinaga was Shinto, after all, and he believed them.

So, how can this existentialist Shinto stand up to the imperialist essentialist Shinto? First, it cannot deny that people who follow this religion are Shinto. They do lots of things that are on the list, and self-identify as Shinto. This is, I think, the right answer. We might want to disapprove of this form of Shinto, but I think it is unreasonable to deny that it is a form of Shinto. However, this existentialist Shinto can take a strong stand against the claims of exclusivity. Revering the emperor might be on the list, but you don’t have to do that to be Shinto. Being Japanese might be on the list, but you don’t have to be Japanese to be Shinto. This account of Shinto allows us to say that imperialist Shinto is not the only form of Shinto, and frees us to criticise it.

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