"Without a code of morals, or an efficient organization, with little aid from the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture, and with a sacred literature scanty and feeble compared with those of its foreign rivals, Shinto is doomed to extinction." Thus said a London-based expert on Japanese religion in 1921. How wrong can anybody be?
Shinto is Japan's primordial religion. It was in place long before the arrival of Buddhism in the sixth century AD. Its essence is the veneration of the world itself, especially things in it that give rise to awe and wonder. Trees, mountains, rivers, heroes and emperors -- all can become the object of a Shinto shrine. And an extraordinary number of modern Japanese visit these shrines, and for any number of reasons.
It may just be to induce success in exams or a love affair. But Shinto ceremonies also frame the traditional Japanese wedding. Funerals, by contrast, are the province of the more philosophical Buddhism. You might say that Shinto celebrates life, while Buddhism seeks to transcend it.
The bulk of this book involves a close study of a single shrine in northern Kyoto (Buddhism, incidentally, has temples, Shinto has shrines). It's no ordinary shrine. Called Kamo Wake Ikazuchi Jinja -- or more simply Kamigamo Jinja -- it is ranked in the Shinto hierarchy second only to the Grand Shrines of Ise.
Traditional Japanese Shinto is bright and smiling, an inherently optimistic faith in the bright morning of the land of the rising sun. It's a brightness that can no more be erased than that of the yellow of the chrysanthemum, and what the religion venerates is in fact life itself, and everything it touches most memorably, or most enchantingly.
When the author questioned the shrine's visitors, they gave the following as the place's most alluring qualities: its natural environment, its streams, its culture, its colors and color contrasts, and its "brightness." These are very Shinto answers. It's as close to a "religion of Nature" as you can find anywhere.
Of course, to Shinto scholars this is not the point at all. Spirits, called kami, have taken up residence in these places, and it's these the adherents venerate. Nevertheless, when the places these spirits have chosen are recognized by their beauty or uniqueness, the distinction to the outsider is bound to be close to academic.
Foreigners often confuse this ancient animistic religion of Japan with "state Shinto," the cult of the Emperor and military power that fueled the country's aggressive expansionism in the middle of the last century. This is a mistake, writes John Nelson, an assistant professor at the University of Texas, Austin. Most modern Japanese would actually be surprised to know that their emperor still retains the rank of supreme Shinto priest of all the shrines in the country.
The author sees the various rituals as having the cumulative purpose of promoting "a sense of continuity, stability, and the management of uncertainty." But because this particular shrine is so prestigious, it attracts a high proportion of affluent worshipers, and they are encouraged to cement their association by making appropriately generous donations. Freedom from uncertainty is easier come by for some than for others.
There are many rituals within a year -- horse races, sumo displays, prognostications by the priests of the best days to plant rice, even a festival in honor of the hollyhock. In theory they give people a sense of their place in both society and the universe. In practice many of them are accretions that have attached themselves to the shrine over the years. Some console with the feeling that whatever unexpected or terrifying things happen, we are nevertheless part of a pattern that existed long before we were born, and that will continue long after we are gone. Some of the less impressive are just oddities that continue because no one wants to risk suggesting otherwise.
This veneration of places perceived as special is common to folk religions from China to ancient Greece, India and Bali to Western Ireland. Nevertheless, the Shinto phenomenon contrasts strongly with the apparent compulsion of most Japanese workers to exhaust themselves on a daily basis. "When I come to the shrine in the morning," one 47-year-old priest told the author, "I have a secure feeling. I know what I am supposed to do and I know how to do it with a minimum of effort and stress. Not too many Japanese can say that about their jobs! I certainly won't die of overwork!" By and large, this book is a worthy but hardly gripping account of a year in the life of a Shinto shrine. The author tabulates attendance, hands out questionnaires to visitors, refers to the previous academic literature on the subject, and comes to some tentative conclusions. It's no blockbuster, but then a book on this topic is hardly likely to make the best-seller lists.
Even so, in no culture is the gaining of inspiration by contemplating Nature more highly developed than in Japan's. Whether it's in the 13th century journals of Lady Nijo, the 17th century haiku of Basho, or the 19th century prose of the Japan-loving American Lafcadio Hearn, such moments of sudden enlightenment are always found. William Wordsworth's sense of revelation at seeing wild English daffodils shaken by the breeze had, unbeknown to him, a history on the other side of the world, beginning long before he was born.
And this sense of wonder is fundamental to Shinto. Even now, you can ride round on a train in provincial Japan on a Sunday morning in spring and, when the train stops at a junction, look out of the window and see a middle-aged Japanese in his garden simply staring at a clump of irises. Is he pondering on what they mean? Is he priding himself on what he has encouraged the earth to bring forth? Probably neither. In all likelihood, he is simply regarding their beauty, and in so doing finding an incomparable escape from all his woes. As a good adherent of Japan's oldest religion, he is silently conducting his own private Sunday morning service.
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