Asian Religions, page 26
Notes
1 “Chinese characters” (kanji) can have two pronunciations in Japanese. The “on” (音) pronunciation approximates the original Chinese pronunciation of the kanji, and the “kun” (訓) pronunciation is the native Japanese pronunciation. Shintō and kami-no-michi, therefore, are the on and kun pronunciations of the same kanji.
2 The document can be found here: http://www.trinity.edu/rnadeau/Asian%20Religions/Lecture%20Notes/Shinto%20and%20Zen/Shinto%20state.htm (accessed July 23, 2013).
3 “Mystic Rice Ritual by Emperor Fuels Japanese Outrage” (Reuters, November 23, 1990).
4 Shizuo Tsuji, Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art (New York: Kodansha USA, 25th anniversary edition 2007), p. 299; my italics.
5 See http://web-japan.org/trends00/honbun/tj990708.html, accessed 22 May 2012.
6 Japanese naturalism is highly idealized, masking a less than stellar record of environmentalist protection in the modern era. The Fukushima Nuclear disaster of March 2011 has inspired an anti-nuclear campaign allied with traditional environmentalist concerns.
28
Shrine Shintō
Dimensions of Sacred Time and Space in Japan
Religion – in whatever form and wherever found – divides experience into two kinds of reality: the sacred and the profane. Certain times – whether conceived of linearly, as the course of history, or cyclically, as day and night, as seasons, or as the calendar year – are demarcated as sacred times: times for worship or the remembrance of sacred events. These times are qualitatively different from the ordinary course of time: they are set aside and made “special.” Similarly, certain places are demarcated as sacred places: they are places where the human and the divine meet, and one can pass from one to the other. Sacred places may be natural (a sacred mountain like Mt. Ararat or Mt. Fuji) or artificial (human constructions such as churches or temples). Mircea Eliade, in his book The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, describes such times and places as “hierophanies of the sacred,” where the sacred manifests itself in the material world.1
Shintō is an especially good example of the distinction between sacred time/space and profane time/space, though it differs significantly from the way this distinction is understood in the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). In those religions the notion of a sacred time is grounded in history, in the unfolding of exceptional, unique, even extraordinary events: the founding of a nation, the appearance of God in dreams and visions or in human form, the revelations at Mt. Sinai, the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, and so on. These sacred events are then commemorated daily, weekly, or annually, in the religious rites and holidays of the day, week, or year. Since the focus is on the founding event – the event that is remembered – the Abrahamic traditions emphasize a linear dimension of history over a recurring or cyclical one.
The acts of the kami, by contrast, are repeated and perennial, and the kamis' presence in the here and now is emphasized over their acts in prior times. The creation of the Japanese islands by the ōmi-kami Izanagi and Izanami is not said to have happened at any particular time, but rather in a prehistorical period, “before time.” The great goddess Amaterasu acts on a daily basis, greeting the morning sun and guiding it across the sky with her magic mirror. In Japanese religion, morning is the sacred time of the day, and worshippers in the Gedatsu-kai (解脫會) sect, for example, recite prayers to Amaterasu and conduct daily meditations at dawn.2
The ritual calendar of a Shintō shrine is primarily seasonal, again emphasizing the cyclical and perennial qualities of time. For example, look at the detailed ritual calendar of one Shintō shrine – the Suwa Shrine (諏訪神社) in Nagasaki:
1/1 New Year celebrations
1/5 Chinka-sai (designed to control fires and to protect the local fire department)
1/15 Saiten-sai (coming-of-age rites at 20)
1/19 Kanae-sai (recitation of poems to the kami)
2/3 Setsubun (beans are thrown to drive away demons)
2/11 Kenkoku kinen-sai (commemoration of the mythical founding of the nation)
2/17 Kinen-sai (prayers for a bountiful harvest)
…
10/7 Okunchi matsuri (Suwa Shrine festival)
11/15 Shichi-go-san (girls aged 3 and 7 and boys aged 5 dress in new clothes and pray for a safe and healthy future).3
…
What is emphasized here is not the commemoration of the past, but rather the immediate presence of the kami in acts of sacred renewal through the course of the annual cycle.
Sacred Space
The notion of sacred space is especially emphasized in Shintō. The separation between the sacred and the profane is experienced as the separation between religious purity and religious pollution, which have opposing natures and characteristics:
Sacred Profane
Clean Unclean
Pure Polluted
Secure Threatening
Bright Dark
Good Evil
With such a powerful existential distinction, any transition between sacred space and profane space – and especially the movement or passage from the profane to the sacred – is potentially threatening. Two characteristics are always found where the sacred–profane distinction is felt: first, boundaries are emphasized, and physical or symbolic boundary markers demarcate the sacred space, ritually guarding its entrance; second, the movement from profane to sacred requires ritual acts of purification, to prevent ritual pollution from being carried into the sacred realm. Both boundary markers and purification rituals are readily found in Shrine Shintō.
In Shintō, the division between sacred space and profane space is relative, not absolute. Depending on one's frame of reference, the same place can be either sacred or profane: vis-à-vis the world as a whole, for example, all of Japan is sacred space – in contrast with foreign lands, which are dark and threatening. But, from another point of view, one's own community or village is sacralized by the presence of the kami of the local shrine, while places outside that community are profane, though they are still in Japan. The religious cosmos of Shintō, then, can be represented as a series of concentric circles, like in Figure 28.1.
Figure 28.1 The centrality of sacred space. Diagram by the author.
For each dimension of the sacred–profane dichotomy, what is within any given circle is sacred and what is outside is profane. And, for each dimension, we can discover boundary markers that separate sacred space from profane space and rituals of purification for the passage from one into the other.
The nation/natural world: kokoku (故国, native land) – boundary: the sea
The largest circle is the whole of Japan: this is regarded as sacred, the outside world as profane. As we saw in Chapter 27, in the eighteenth century and up until the twentieth, the emperor was the primary symbol of the nation in State Shintō, and his divine status represented the divinity of the nation as a whole. Kami associated with nature – with the natural landscape of Japan – are found in Japan and only in Japan, sacralizing the nation and its people. There are kami of winds, kami of storms, kami of constellations arching above the known (Japanese) world, kami of trees and forests, kami of streams and springs, kami of rice and rice paddies, kami of stones and mountains. These natural objects are felt to be especially sacred when they have some distinguishing or unusual characteristics; but in a broader sense all of the natural environment of Japan is imbued with sacred power.
Modern Shintō, arising in a period of Japanese isolationism (the Tokugawa shogunate, 1600–1868), emphasizes the sacred quality of Japan and the profane nature of the outside world, which is inherently dark, threatening, and impure. In its recent history, then, Japanese culture has shown characteristics of xenophobia – a fear of the foreign – and Shintō provided a religious justification for an isolationist tendency that survives to the present day. With the sea as a natural boundary between sacred and profane space, Japan was slow to develop maritime technologies, and this contributed to its humiliating defeats in the American and Russian naval battles of the late imperial period. In turn, these defeats led to the “catch-up” industrialization of the Meiji Period (1868–1912) and ultimately to the emergence of Japan as a formidable naval power in the early twentieth century.
A “fear of the foreign,” partly inspired by the Shintō sacred–profane dichotomy, remains a Japanese predisposition in the modern era. A few years ago I was living in Japan during trade negotiations with the United States concerning the importation of Texas long-grain rice. When the tariffs were lifted and American rice came into the Japanese market in large volume, an unexpected development frustrated American exporters: shoppers refused to buy their rice. In my local grocery store, the 50-pound bags of Texas rice were piled from floor to ceiling, still sitting there long after the local rice had sold out. On television I was watching interviews with people in the street: one housewife remarked that American rice “tasted strange,” and an elderly lady complained that it was dirty and polluted – at a time when local farmers regularly sprayed their paddies with noxious chemicals. This is not to say that Japanese “worship” their rice, but it is clear from this example that home-grown rice has special qualities, characteristic of sacred things: it is pure, clean, safe, right, and wholesome. Following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami (東日本大震災, Higashi nihon daishin-sai), the Japanese government was slow to accept foreign advisors and aid. Japan's self-reliance and reluctance to rely upon foreign assistance remain strong cultural values, bolstered by Shintō's emphasis on the purity of Japan and the pollution of the outside world.
The community/Shintō shrine: jingu 神宮 (marked by the torii 鳥居, gate) – ritual demarcation: the matsuri (まつり) festival
A second dimension of the spatial sacred–profane distinction is represented by the village or neighborhood community, as symbolized by the Shintō shrine. After the disestablishment of State Shintō in 1945, this was the most evident form of Shintō practice; and it remains so today. The Shintō shrine is a place where families come to pray when they have special needs and where community gatherings take place according to the festival calendar. The largest scale festival is the annual or semi-annual matsuri (まつり), a multi-day event featuring public performances of song and dance, displays of local handicrafts, and religious processions involving the whole community. Symbolizing the protection of the community by the local kami is a procession where dozens, even scores of residents carry a large palanquin or shrine chair representing the territorial inspection of the local god. The circular route of the procession defines the village or neighborhood as a sacred space.
Physically, the placement of Shintō shrines within the community also serves to demarcate the boundary between sacred space and profane space. Unlike the model of the European church or Chinese Taoist temple, which are situated at the town center, Shintō shrines are often on the outskirts of the community and, ideally, in places where natural forms meet – especially where a river basin meets a mountain. As one enters the shrine, one leaves the plain and ascends the mountain, and the various pathways and structures of the shrine complex carry one both upward and inward (into the sacred space). The innermost temple of the shrine is ritually inaccessible to all but the Shintō priest, who alone is permitted to enter it.
The shrine, as well as the various structures within it, is easily recognized by the torii (鳥居) – the gate at its entrance. The English word “gate” is deceptive, because there is no physical wall or fence to which the torii gives entrance, nor is there a hinge or clasp of the kind we normally associate with gates or doors. Nevertheless, the torii represents a symbolic gate, inviting passage from the profane space of the outside world into the sacred space of the shrine. The torii is the most ubiquitous and representative of all the sacred objects associated with Shrine Shintō. Passage through the gate, and the corresponding movement from sacred to profane, also require a ritual of purification, so that spiritual pollution may not be carried from the profane outside world into the kami-blessed shrine space. Adjoining the torii is a basin of water, ideally fed by a bubbling spring that is set with ladles made of bamboo. Before entering the shrine, one rinses one's hands and sips the water, being careful not to allow any that has touched one's hands or mouth to re-enter the basin. This water is called kuchi-susuru mizu (口啜る水 [くちすするみず]), “water that purifies the mouth.” Most prominent at Shintō shrines, a water basin (水屋 [みずや], mizuya, see Figure 28.2) of this kind can also be found at the entrance to homes and restaurants – a symbol of cleanliness, purity, and refreshment.
Figure 28.2 Mizuya at the entrance to a Shintō shrine. Photo by the author.
Some communities feature more than one shrine. For example, the mountain town of Toyakushi, in the “Japan Alps” of central Honshu, is marked by three Shintō shrines, which symbolically encircle the town and demarcate the whole of the village as a sacred space. The upper and middle shrines are located in elevated places, or at the boundary between the river basin and the surrounding hills, rising above the town below.
The enclosure/homestead – demarcation: the fence and torii
The third dimension of Shintō's spatially constructed sacred–profane distinction is the traditional farmstead, reflecting a dimension of Japanese culture – its pastoral or agricultural roots – that is now much more observable symbolically than it is in the actual lives of most Japanese. In some ways, Shintō represents the nostalgic reminder of an agrarian past, as well as the government's ongoing efforts – through subsidies and land use policies – to preserve domestic food production in a country that has for many years depended almost entirely upon manufacturing and financial services for its economic well-being.
The farmstead is marked as sacred space by the presence of walls and fences; it is an enclosure. Traditionally, farms consist of various buildings (barn, granary, stable, well, outhouse, and so on) along with the main house, and each of these buildings hosts a protective deity. The whole of the farm, therefore, is sacred space, in contrast to the profane space outside the fence. The entrance – which can be barred or bolted – is adjoined by a torii.
Though farmsteads of this kind are now rarely found in urbanized Japan, there are two symbolic remnants of Japan's agrarian past. First, Shintō shrines are modeled upon traditional farms, and the primary symbolism of the shrine is distinctively agricultural. For example, every shrine complex includes a “granary” as well as a storage building for rice wine (さけ, sake), and Shintō shrines are ritually connected to growth, harvesting, and plenty. Second, many Japanese homes, even in the most cramped urban neighborhoods, feature ornamental walls or fences, less for purposes of protection or security (crime rates have always been very low in Japan) and more for their aesthetic and religiously symbolic meaning. These enclosures are both an aesthetically pleasing architectural feature of Japanese domestic construction and a reminder of the sacred–profane dichotomy that differentiates between interior and exterior space in Japanese culture.
The home: ie (家) – demarcation: the genkan (玄関)
The fourth dimension of spatial concentricity in Japanese culture is represented by the home itself, ritually separated from the outside world by an entryway – genkan (玄関) – immediately inside the outer door and immediately outside the inner door. The genkan is a transitional space between the home's exterior and its interior, and it is physically distinct from the house itself; for one thing, the genkan floor is composed of dirt or concrete, as opposed to the wood or tatami (rice-straw) flooring of the home. The “ritual act” that one performs upon entering the genkan is to remove one's shoes – it is highly inappropriate to wear shoes in a Japanese home. Certainly shoes are dirty in a physical sense – one wouldn't want to carry the dirt into one's home any more than to put one's shoes on the bed or pillow – but they are also dirty in a symbolic sense, as they have been in direct and continuous contact with the profane space of the outside world. Though few Japanese would regard removing their shoes as a religious act, it is undeniable that this daily, even unconscious habit has Shintō roots.
There are kami associated with the home: kami of the bedroom, of the bath, of the kitchen stove, and so on. But the most important household kami are the mitama (み霊), the souls of the family dead; these are revered in a kamidana (神棚) or household shrine, where daily offerings are made. These kami mark the home as a sacred space, in contrast to the profane space of the outside world.
One cultural consequence of conceiving of the home as a “sacred space” is that Japanese do not customarily invite outsiders into the home. It is unusual, except in Westernized households, to “have people over” – that is, to invite guests into one's home; if one wishes to treat one's guests, one does so in an inn or restaurant. Japanese will often say that their homes are too small for entertaining, and in a highly urbanized island country this may indeed be true, but the reluctance to invite outsiders into the home is also a reflection of Japan's Shintō roots and of the traditional sacred–profane distinction.
The self (heart and belly): kokoro (心) and hara (腹) – ritual purification: the mizuya (水屋) and the omamori (おまもり)
The most personal dimension of the sacred–profane dichotomy is the inner–outer distinction as it applies to the human body. What is inside the body – especially the heart (the seat of thinking, what we would normally think of as “the mind”) and the stomach – is sacred, and what is outside is profane. And so, Japanese are careful about what they express from the heart (they are culturally predisposed to speak briefly and to employ implicit or non-verbal forms of expression), and they are careful about what they bring into the body: food and drink should be clean, pure, and aesthetically pleasing. In fact the art of Japanese cooking is as much related to appearance as it is to taste, and it incorporates color and texture as key elements of food preparation and presentation. Sushi and raw vegetables and fruits, for example, must be pure and fresh, in order to be both tasty and healthy.
