Religion & Tradition: A Blended Perspective

 
Nestled in a place called Momodani is Miyukimori Shrine, home to the tutelary deity of the area formerly called Ikaino Village. By some accounts, the famous 4th century Emperor Nintoku is also a diety of the shrine, and is an important part of the historical flavoring of Ikaino. A mixed history of native descent, Korean immigration, and bureaucratic re-organizations have changed maps, place names and even moved entire rivers in this place. Today the remnants of Ikaino Village persist as traditions through the Ikaino Preservation Society, and the word Ikaino has since gained multiple meanings from its winding history (course lecture, Dr. J. Hester, Kansai Gaidai).

Miyukimori Shrine

Miyukimori Shrine and the Ikaino Preservation Society have a relationship that blurs the lines of secular and religious¹. To the Western mind these terms are mutually exclusive categories, a tendency that is as problematic as it is helpful. The role of Shinto shrines in Japanese life, however, is integral. Neighborhood solidarity, individual religious needs, record keeping, and annual Shinto rights are but some of the many roles a shrine attends to for Japanese society.

Shichi-go-san:

This annual festival is held throughout Japan celebrating 3, 5, and 7 year olds.

Although performed as Shinto ritual, it is not necessairly consider a religious practice by those who attend.

While the Ikaino Preservation Society concerns itself mostly with tradition, it relies upon the Miyukimori (and other purely secular institutions) for maintaining everyday neighborhood connections, and also utilizes it as the nexus for traditional displays such as the aki matsuri (Fall festival). The shrine complex provides storage for the danjiri (the large portable shrine which itself transports the shrine deity around the neighborhood), space for festival merchants, and priests for religious rights and prayers. The interactions of individuals with the shrine are often transparent, perhaps seen in a hitherto glimpse as someone is seen praying at the offering box during matsuri, or anytime it is appropriate to daily life. Their association with the shrine, however, is far more public as Japanese shrines serve geographically bounded parishes, sometimes including multiple neighborhoods.

The danjiri stops outside the Preservation Society headquarters.

Neighborhood solidarity is displayed prominently through happi coats worn by participants.

Although the Western penchant for separating the secular and religious can often cause difficulty in understanding how the Japanese view their own relationship to the shrine, we ought to recognize parallels. Historically in the US and Europe alike, Christian churches served geographical parishes uniting communities around religious centers. US constitutional doctrine aside, I find it no far reach to imagine Western thought once being very much without these rigid categories. I wonder just how much the US separation from England has influenced this contemporary mode of thinking around the world, and where are we taking it in the future.

1: For more discussion on ritual in everyday life in Japan see Ian Reader, Ceremony and Ritual in Japan.

Indirect Globalization: The Eisa Festival

 
Within Japan each year Okinawans gather to celebrate their Ryukyuan heritage through a series of festivals centered on the Eisa folk dance. These events take place in multiple locations across the country, notably in Okinawa City, Osaka and Tokyo. With them come the dancers, singers, performers and revelers to impart their traditional music, dance, food and hospitality to all who’ll partake.

As other students of visual anthropology have noted^[1][2], the colorful costumes and vibrant dancing is the centerpiece of the festival. The culmination of the festival is a final dance in which the audience is welcomed to participate. Local Japanese, Okinawan descendents and non-Japanese foreigners as well all gather. Smaller parties also take place under the shaded tents of private groups. Here, perhaps, is where the real sharing takes place though. Joyful revelers playing music and dancing may welcome any willing and daring enough to participate in the celebration, and attempt the simple but lively hand movements of the dance. Two of my fellow students shed their inhibitions and joined such a group who invited them, and so a part of not just Japanese culture, but Okinawan culture will be taken home with them.

The blending of cultural elements does not come just from the imparting of Okinawan culture upon Japanese and foreign festival goers though. Looking around evidence of an ebb and flow in both directions can be seen in many forms as well. For instance there's the family that uses a Peanuts inspired picnic placemat from Baskin Robbins blends Japanese kawaii (cute) culture with US cultural references and products. Turn around and you can see Okinawan dancers posing for a picture with a Canadian international student, flashing the quintessential V-sign so popular in Japanese photographs. All of these elements culminate in the Eisa Festival as more than just a celebration of Okinawan culture. In these respects it also shows the many ways in which culture is being shared locally, and internationally.

More information on past Eisa Festival events, and images, can be found courtesy of Okinawa Bunko (in Japanese).

Neighborhood (in) Hirakata

 
The history of Hirakata, Japan in is neither grand, nor well-known. When asked about the area many fellow Japanese students were at odds to think of anything noteworthy. Its history, after all, is a modest story of farming community turned city, often droned verbatim in study abroad brochures^[1][2]:

[Hirakata], which had been previously known as a suburban farming village, has been gradually transformed into a modern residential city. Again, in recent years, six universities have been established in Hirakata and the city aims to create a new image for the 21st century as a "university city". (Hirakata City Website)

An affinity for growing things of all kinds is expressed openly here. Many residents keep small vegetable or flower gardens in their yards. The planters and pots at times overflow the yard and invade the streets. A large swath of rice fields and vegetable gardens cuts between my suburban neighborhood and several primary schools where children spend most of their days. It seems any open space is suitable for a garden, be it a rice paddy in a parking lot, or a back-alley herb garden.

Around my residence the tidy narrow streets are often absent of human activity, save for the occasional aged resident neatly cleaning the area around their home. In the morning and late afternoon college students walk and ride bicycles along common streets to and from classes. Less common, though, is seeing children playing in one of the numerous small playgrounds, each marked with a large metal slide – sometimes the only structure in the entire area. I wonder why so many playgrounds are in this area, if so few are being used.

Although Hirakata is a growing city with its six universities the local residents have not abandoned their modest farming heritage. Indeed, at least one of the local groceries features a section of locally grown rice, reminding me of the “local sustainability” initiatives from my natal home in Portland, Oregon. And so the small streets of my particular neighborhood burst with "life", though it’s not yet the life of a congested hurried city caught up in moving. It is the intersection of an older way of life with an approaching newer way of life, a liminal phase in this area’s history perhaps. Thus the quiescent slumbering atmosphere of my neighborhood still reflects the modest history I’ve been able to uncover thus far.

Early Impressions of Japan

 

First impressions are sometimes difficult to ascertain. Not necessarily because we do not know what we are thinking all the time, but rather, we do not always understand what we are seeing. Can I really tell you when I was first introduced to Japanese culture? Did I even know then what I was seeing? Should I consider only the first time I studied Japan academically, or perhaps the first time I came to study in Japan? Or do I opt for my most recent introduction, to a slightly more familiar, slightly less alien Japan? … Let us go back to my first visit to Japan.

Aesthetics, the conceptions of sensory perception, have rich traditions and histories in Japanese society. These ideas – entombed in such alien terms as shibusa, wabi-sabi, yugen, miyabi, aware, etc. – are at once both cryptic and revealing: Cryptic to the untrained initiate, barely able to recognize more than a pretty scene. Powerfully revealing to the culturally trained, existing as a form of visual haiku that evokes emotion, meaning and connection between viewer and craftsman, of which nature itself is often the greatest such craftsman.

Armed with only my rudimentary understanding of Japanese aesthetics, a smattering of lectures on language, art, history and anthropology, I quickly realized just how little I knew when I first visited Japan to study at Ryukoku University. Although I could see the influences of the past, traditional style houses, historical locations and temple gardens, I found myself lost in the intricate details contained in the ideas so foreign to me. I was not alone, though, as I noted many of my new Japanese friends were also initiates to the subtleties of traditional aesthetics. Japan was alluring with its natural beauty and aesthetic traditions, yet the layers of meaning were not all visible to me, as most were barely even known to me.