Matsuri and Religion Complexity, Continuity, and Creativity in Japanese Festivals 9004466525, 9789004466524

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Matsuri and Religion

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Matsuri and Religion Complexity, Continuity, and Creativity in Japanese Festivals

Edited By

Elisabetta Porcu Michael Dylan Foster

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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Originally published as Volume 9, No. 1–3 (2020) of Brill’s journal Journal of Religion in Japan. Cover Illustration: Naka goza mikoshi in front of the o-tabisho during Gion Matsuri, Kyoto (24 July 2014). Photo by Elisabetta Porcu. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Porcu, Elisabetta, editor. | Foster, Michael Dylan, 1965- editor. Title: Matsuri and religion : complexity, continuity, and creativity in Japanese festivals / edited by Elisabetta Porcu, Michael Dylan Foster. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2021] | "Originally published as Volume 9, No. 1-3 (2020) of Brill's journal Journal of Religion in Japan"–Colophon. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021020401 (print) | LCCN 2021020402 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004466524 (paperback) | ISBN 9789004466548 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Festivals–Japan. | Religion and sociology–Japan. Classification: LCC BL2211.F37 M38 2021 (print) | LCC BL2211.F37 (ebook) | DDC 394.2650952–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020401 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020402

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill‑typeface. ISBN 978-90-04-46652-4 (paperback) ISBN 978-90-04-46654-8 (e-book) Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

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Contents Preface vii Notes on Contributors List of Figures xiii

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1

Introduction Matsuri and Religion in Japan 1 Michael Dylan Foster and Elisabetta Porcu

2

Displaying Mythological Characters Changes in the Meanings of Decorations in the Sawara Grand Festival in Chiba, Japan 10 Tsukahara Shinji 塚原伸治

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Gion Matsuri in Kyoto A Multilayered Religious Phenomenon 37 Elisabetta Porcu

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Sannō Matsuri Fabricating Festivals in Modern Japan 78 John Breen

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Eloquent Plasticity Vernacular Religion, Change, and Namahage Michael Dylan Foster

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Kuma Matsuri Bear Hunters as Intermediaries between Humans and Nature 165 Scott Schnell

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Fire, Prayer, and Purification Early Winter Events and Folk Beliefs in Kyoto 195 Yagi Tōru 八木透

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Encounters with the Past Fractals and Atmospheres at Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri 213 Andrea Giolai

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Demographic Change in Contemporary Rural Japan and Its Impact on Ritual Practices 248 Susanne Klien

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Secret Eroticism and Lived Religion The Art of Matsuri Photography 277 Michael Dylan Foster and Ogano Minoru 小賀野実 Index

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Preface When we embarked on this project four years ago, at the beginning of 2017, the world felt very different. We were both living and travelling in Japan (Elisabetta was a Visiting Professor at Kyushu University; Michael was conducting fieldwork in Kagoshima), participating in crowded matsuri and New Year’s festivities. No one could have imagined what was going to happen a few years later as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, and communal gatherings— the backbone of matsuri and other rituals—would be banned as spreaders of the virus. Inspired by our own individual research projects, our goal was to hear from scholars doing similar work so that we could add a new English-language volume to the rich Japanese discourse on matsuri, and thus contribute to a field full of potential but with relatively few publications in English at the time. An important aspect of this project was to combine first-hand ethnographic research, which we felt was fundamental to understanding festivals from a contemporary perspective, with theories and methods from a variety of fields, including but not limited to our own areas of specialization (folkloristics and the study of religions). We were also motivated by the desire to create synergies in the study of matsuri in Japan that would stimulate broader discourses on religion and festival in other parts of the world. With this in mind we started on this volume. Each chapter was originally published in 2020 as part of a special triple issue of the Journal of Religion in Japan (vol. 9, no. 1–3). In that context, we realized, people tend to access essays through a database and read them separately as individual case studies. By publishing the collection now as a standalone book, we hope they will be read together as distinct but connected stories within the broader narrative of religion and matsuri in Japan. We hope scholars will discover, through contrast and comparison and fortuitous juxtaposition, common themes that inform festivals performed in different places throughout the country. There are certainly many such common themes, but when we put these chapters together three broad concepts emerged as critical factors for considering matsuri historically and in contemporary Japanese culture: complexity, continuity and creativity. We chose these words for the subtitle of the current volume because we hope readers will keep them in mind as they explore the essays herein. Complexity may be most evident in the structure and performance of large urban festivals, but even small-scale rural rituals are similarly layered with symbolism, informed by intricate social interactions, and built on nuanced historical interpretations. Continuity, or at least a desire for it, also

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shapes matsuri in complex ways, as participants and visitors alike seek connections with people from the past, and enact events premised on the belief that future generations will do the same. Creativity becomes the engine of such continuity, as individuals and communities respond with innovation and flexibility to changing social, economic, and demographic factors. Not surprisingly, a desire for continuity—and concomitant need for creativity—has perhaps never been felt more powerfully than in 2020, when every matsuri we explore was deeply affected by the pandemic (either severely altered or canceled altogether). Whether intimate ritual, large shrine festival, or staged public performance, matsuri are characterized by communal activity, close cooperation, and deeply felt emotions. They are a time-space in which people come together to work, play, pray, eat, drink, share, celebrate and worship. COVID-19 seems almost willfully to have targeted such times and spaces, and to transform these very human activities into potentially lethal practices. During the disquiet and anxiety of the pandemic, when such social contact and affective nurturing are more essential than ever, it became impossible for community members and visitors to gather together. In some cases, rituals and performances related to the festivals we analyze in this book were creatively replaced by online activities, but the composite range of sensory input that participants and researchers experience during matsuri, and that makes them communally powerful and transformative events, was clearly missing. We also cannot overlook the explicit religious connections between matsuri and disease. Most notably, Kyoto’s famous Gion Matsuri (whose rituals were either canceled altogether or heavily modified in 2020) originally developed as a response to an epidemic. But other matsuri, both large and small, are similarly performed for protection against pestilence and to ward off bad fortune. On New Year’s Eve 2020, in a radically curtailed version of the Namahage ritual in Akita, men in demon costumes ran through village streets roaring “Corona—be gone!” (korona taisan!). As a mode of spiritual communication with deities, gods or other super-empirical powers, matsuri articulate essential human needs—for health, safety and welfare—that have not changed in centuries. Their meanings—in terms of religious life, social relations, community sustenance, and fundamental human connection—come into even starker relief when such events cannot be held as usual. With this in mind, each chapter in this volume takes on a different profundity, raising questions not only about complexity, continuity and creativity, but also about the very foundations of community. Against this backdrop, we offer the book as a multi-author, multi-sited exploration of the ever-changing narrative of matsuri and religion in Japan. We are extremely grateful to Brill, and particularly to Laura Morris, for supporting the

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publication of this standalone version, which includes the original introduction and essays with only minor edits. We hope the book will be read not only by scholars of Japan, but also by anybody broadly interested in festival, ritual, performance, religion and the powerful and diverse ways in which human beings communicate. These essays were shaped through personal interactions and conversations with countless matsuri participants, and it is to them that we dedicate our work. EP and MDF Cape Town and Davis, January 2021

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Notes on Contributors John Breen is emeritus professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto where he edited the journal Japan Review. He has published widely in English and Japanese on the modern Japanese monarchy and on Shinto. Among his publications are A Social History of the Ise Shrines: Divine Capital (Bloomsbury, 2017) and A New History of Shinto (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), both co-authored with Mark Teeuwen. He is author of two books in Japanese, Shintō monogatari: Ise jingū no kingen daishi (Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2015) and Girei to kenryoku: Tennō no Meiji Ishin (Heibonsha, 2011). And he is the editor of several volumes including Henyō suru seichi Ise (Shibunkaku, 2017); Kyoto’s Renaissance (Renaissance Books, 2020) with Takagi Hiroshi and Maruyama Hiroshi; and Beyond Zen (University of Hawai‘i Press, forthcoming) with Yamada Shōji. He is writing a monograph on the making of the modern Japanese monarchy. Michael Dylan Foster is a professor of Japanese and department chair of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of The Book of Yōkai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore (University of California Press, 2015), Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yōkai (University of California Press, 2009), and numerous articles on Japanese folklore, literature, and media. He also co-edited The Folkloresque: Reframing Folklore in a Popular Culture World (Utah State University Press, 2016) and UNESCO on the Ground: Local Perspectives on Intangible Cultural Heritage (Indiana University Press, 2015). His current project explores discourses of tourism and heritage as they relate to local festivals in Japan. Andrea Giolai is a lecturer at Leiden University’s Institute for Area Studies. He holds an MA in Japanese Studies (Ca’ Foscari University), a conservatory Diploma (MA) in European classical music and a PhD in Area Studies (Leiden University). He is interested in Japanese traditional music and dance, the auditory dimension of religious rituals and the reconstruction of ancient performing arts. For several years, he has trained as a member of a Gagaku ensemble in Nara. Using an approach that blends ethnomusicology and apprenticeship-based ethnography, his studies analyze how notions of authenticity and claims to the sonic past emerge out of a network of tangible materials, political actors, perform-

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ers and listeners. His recent articles appeared in Asian Anthropology and the Journal of Religion in Japan. He is one of the contributors to the forthcoming Bloomsbury Handbook of Japanese Religions. Susanne Klien is associate professor at the Modern Japanese Studies Program, Hokkaido University. Her main research interests include the appropriation of local traditions and rituals, demographic decline and alternative forms of living and working in post-growth Japan. She recently published Urban Migrants in Rural Japan: Between Agency and Anomie in a Post-growth Society (State University of New York Press, 2020) which was awarded the 2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title. Ogano Minoru 小賀野実 was born in 1958 and earned a degree in photography from Osaka University of Arts. As Japan’s preeminent photographer of trains, working vehicles (fire trucks, police cruisers, tractors, buses, etc.), airplanes, boats and all sorts of other vehicles, he has published numerous picture books for children. In addition to his professional work, he travels extensively throughout Japan photographing festivals, rituals and other folkloric events. For his long-time documentation and support of the Oga no Namahage tradition in Akita Prefecture—including a recent photo book and exhibition—he was honored in 2019 with an award from Oga City. Elisabetta Porcu is an associate professor of Asian religions in the Department for the Study of Religions at the University of Cape Town. Before coming to South Africa, she worked in Japan (2004–2010) and Germany (2010–2014). She is the Director of the Center for Asian Religions at the University of Cape Town, the founding editor of the Journal of Religion in Japan (Brill), and the Vice-President of the Association for the Study of Religion in Southern Africa. Among her publications are the monograph Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture (Brill, 2008), and numerous articles and book chapters, including “Sacred Spaces Reloaded: New Trends in Shintō” (2013); “Pop Religion in Japan: Buddhist Temples, Icons and Branding” (2014); and “Religion, Second Modernity and Individualization in Japan” (2018). She is currently working on two monographs, one focusing on the Gion Matsuri in Kyoto and one exploring Japanese religions and popular culture.

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notes on contributors

Scott Schnell is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Iowa. His research and teaching interests include environmental anthropology, the anthropology of religion, conceptualizations of nature, human-wildlife interactions, and hunting traditions. His earlier work, The Rousing Drum: Ritual Practice in a Japanese Community (University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999), focused on matsuri as an instrument of social, economic, and political change. He has also written about veiled dissent and fictionalized ethnography in the massive historical novel Yama no tami (The Mountain Folk) by Ema Shū, and about mountaineering as an act of devotion in the Japanese Alps. He is currently researching the matagi—traditional hunters, most famously of bears, in the forested mountains of northeastern Japan. Tsukahara Shinji 塚原伸治 is associate professor of cultural anthropology and folklore in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Ibaraki University. He is the author of Shinise no dentō to “kindai”: Kagyō keiei no esunogurafī (Tradition and “Modernity” of Shinise: Ethnography of Family Businesses; Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2014) and many articles on Japanese folklore. He has written extensively about longestablished merchants called Shinise and their traditional culture. Yagi Tōru 八木透 born (in 1955) and raised in Kyoto, is a true Kyotoite. He earned a PhD from Bukkyō University where he is a professor of folklore studies in the Department of History. Among his many other roles, he is the President of the Sekai Oni Gakkai (World Oni Study Society), Auditor of the Nihon Minzoku Gakkai (Folklore Society of Japan), Director of the Kyōto Minzoku Gakkai (Folklore Society of Kyoto), President of the Gion Festival Ayagasa Hoko Preservation Association, and Member of the Kyoto Prefecture and Kyoto City Committee for the Protection of Cultural Properties. His numerous publications include Kon’in to kazoku no minzokuteki kōzō (The Folk Structure of Marriage and Family; Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2001), Kyōto Atagosan to hibuse no inori (Kyoto Atagosan and Fire Prayers; Showadō, 2006), Shin: Minzokugaku o manabu (New: Learning Folkloristics; Showadō, 2013), Kyō no matsuri to inori: Miyako no shiki o meguru minzoku (Kyoto Festivals and Prayers: Folklore of Kyoto’s Four Seasons; Showadō, 2015).

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List of Figures 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7ab 3.8ab 3.9

Float (dashi) with figure (ningyō) 12 Float with wooden sculptures 22 Number of float figures produced by decade 27 Figure of Ame no Uzume no Mikoto 29 Fan produced by the ward 32 Saki matsuri. Floats start moving (17 July 2014) 39 Ato matsuri. Ōfune Hoko (24 July 2014) 40 Chimaki preparation (15 June 2014) 47 Kippu iri ceremony in my neighborhood (2 July 2014) 49 Goma ritual performed by the Yamabushi (23 July 2014) 54 Departure of mikoshi from Yasaka Shrine (shinkōsai, 17 July 2014) 58 The Yasaka Jinja o-tabisho on Shijō Street (July 2014) 63 The souvenir shop O-tabi Kyoto (2014) 64 Purification ritual in front of the o-tabisho during saki matsuri (17 July 2014) 65 3.10 The kujitori shiki ceremony at Kyoto City Hall (2 July 2014) 71 4.1 The Hiyoshi Taisha precinct 81 4.2 The gentle and violent spirits of Ōyamakui and Tamayorihime in the Ōmandokoro 82 4.3 The Flower Parade 83 4.4 The Tendai chief abbot reciting sutras before Ōnamuchi at the Nishi Hongū 85 4.5 The mikoshi passing under the Great Sannō Gate 86 4.6 Sannō sairei byōbu 93 4.7 Ise sangū meisho zue, 1796 94 4.8abc Hie sairei kozu 96 4.9a The Flower parade 1 (Hie sannō harimaze byōbu) 97 4.9b The Flower parade 2 (Hie sannō harimaze byōbu) 98 4.9c The Ōsakaki parade (Hie sannō harimaze byōbu) 98 4.10ab The Hie precinct, 1874 106 4.11 The Hie precinct, 1913 107 5.1 The decision to inscribe Namahage on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity is announced. 29 November 2018 119 5.2 Putting on the kera in Matsukizawa. 31 December 2018 123 5.3 Red Namahage ready to go. 31 December 2018 124 5.4 Walking up the steps to the shrine before the Namahage set out. 31 December 2018 125 - 978-90-04-46654-8 Downloaded from Brill.com 02/29/2024 11:07:45PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

xiv 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 5.14 5.15 5.16 5.17 5.18 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 7.1 7.2 8.1

8.2

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list of figures Namahage feted in a house (with no children present). 31 December 2018 126 Namahage wrap the kera around the pillar of a torii. 31 December 2018 127 Wrapping the kera around a tree in Anzenji. 31 December 2017 130 Shintō priest blessing the Namahage before the ritual in Ashizawa. 31 December 2015 130 Kamainu (lion dog) at Hoshitsuji Jinja in Yumoto, wrapped in a kera from the night before. 1 January 2016 131 The entrance to Hoshitsuji Shrine; the building to the left is the community center for Yumoto. 1 January 2016 132 Akita Prefecture version of Monopoly, featuring Namahage on the game board. 5 July 2009 139 The blessing of the masks and the young men who will act as Namahage. 9 February 2013 141 Transformation into Namahage. 9 February 2013 142 Crowds gather at the Kagura-den, with the bonfire visible to the left. 9 February 2013 143 Namahage Odori. 14 February 2010 144 Namahage-daiko. 12 February 2012 145 Namahage pose at the top of the hill. 9 February 2013 145 Namahage pose in front of bonfire for souvenir photos. 12 February 2012 146 Contemporary matagi 174 View from the position of the mukaimatte 180 Shrine to the yama no kami in Oguni, Yamagata Prefecture 182 Returning home in the evening after a successful hunt. The bear’s body has been cut up and distributed among the participants 185 Kumajiru, or bear soup 187 O-hitaki at Takenobu Inari Jinja 武信稲荷神社, Kyoto (2015) 198 Daikondaki at Ryōtokuji. 9 December 2016 204 Map of the main events of 15–18 December. The title reads “Route of the Parade and Guide to Various Shintō Celebrations.” Printed at the back of an information pamphlet compiled by the Association for the Preservation of the Ancient Arts of Kasuga and sold every year during the festival 218 A detail of the Watarishiki parade. Citizens and tourists often follow the parade through the streets of Nara, showing support for friends or members of specific sectors (za), such as the dengaku troupe and the horseback archers. 17 December 2013 219 The angū or temporary shrine. Its rustic architectonic structure includes highly symbolic features, such as the white, triangular paper blocks on the

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8.5

8.6

9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 10.7 10.8 10.9 10.10 10.11 10.12 10.13 10.14 10.15 10.16 10.17 10.18 10.19

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walls: the origin of these decorative elements is still unclear. 17 December 2018 220 A moment of the Senkō no Gi procession as depicted in the Edo-period Kasuga Ōmiya Wakamiya gosairei no zu (Nagashima 1985a: 354–355). On the bottom-left corner, priests carrying huge pine torches are visible, while on the top-right side is a depiction of the musicians playing gagaku instruments, including a suspended drum. 227 The area of the otabisho or temporary shrine. Two huge gagaku drums with symbols of the sun and moon frame the performance area. On the left side of the picture, the temporary shrine is clearly visible, enclosed by fences on both sides. 228 Final moments of the dance Rakuson. The crouching posture and upward movement of the hand are hallmarks of this pair dance and have been interpreted as gathering energy from the sky and transferring it to this world. 238 Akakura Kagura Shishi: The main kagura performance in autumn 261 Kazuma-san backstage after kagura performance, September 2007 265 Pre-kagura dinner reception, September 2007 267 Practicing Akakura kagura moves 268 The subject of photography 278 Photographers and other spectators at the Fukagawa Hachiman Matsuri in Tokyo, 12 August 2017 279 Shinzan Shrine, 31 December 2015 281 Ogano with Namahage, 12 February 2012 281 Ogano’s early photos 283 Ogano talking with friends at an exhibition at the Oga Station Gallery, Oga City, Akita, 30 December 2018 286 Ryūda head 289 Ryūda heads 290 Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri 291 Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri 291 Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri 292 Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri 292 Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri 293 Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri 294 Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri 295 Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri 295 Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri 296 Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri 297 Uma-ichi Matsuri 298

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list of figures Manhole cover Postbox 299

298

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chapter 1

Introduction Matsuri and Religion in Japan Michael Dylan Foster University of California, Davis, CA, USA [email protected]

Elisabetta Porcu University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa [email protected]

This book explores matsuri 祭 (festivals) within the broader context of religion. The original idea for the volume reflects a recognition that matsuri are intrinsic to religious, social, cultural, touristic and recreational life in Japan. Thus, a collection of scholarly essays juxtaposing distinct matsuri would not only reveal similarities and differences between them but also shed light on the depth and diversity of the meanings they articulate. As we set out to create the volume, then, our objective was to examine matsuri from different localities, showing their interconnectedness to religious life and ideas, as well as the different disciplinary methods through which they can be interpreted. Most importantly, we wanted to attend to the complexity of matsuri as multidimensional events imbedded in historical, local, national, and even global contexts. The result is a set of chapters born from the intersection of ethnographic research and a variety of fields, including history, the study of religion, folkloristics, and anthropology. Embeddedness in locality is explored through festivals in both urban and rural environments as well as different geographical regions of Japan; in particular, we discuss matsuri in Kansai (Porcu; Breen; Yagi; Giolai), Tōhoku (Foster; Schnell; Foster and Ogano), Kantō (Tsukahara), and Niigata (Klien). Read individually, each chapter contributes to an understanding of a specific matsuri (or several matsuri) and demonstrates the role played by religion and belief in collective ritualized activities. Read as a whole, we hope the volume will serve as a multi-sited ethnographical, historical, and theoretical study, contributing to broader discourses on religion and festival/ritual/performance in Japan and elsewhere. As the disparate essays in this volume came together, we were excited to discover a number of commonalities and emergent themes. These reflect in part

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004466548_002

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the nature of matsuri itself, but also perhaps a shared set of interests among contemporary scholars. The most striking theme is simply the notion of transformation and change: the idea that matsuri and religion as social and historical phenomena are neither static nor immutable. This interpretative concern with change is, of course, not new; the analyses in this volume confirm and build on perspectives already present in previous studies.1 Both implicitly or explicitly, our chapters drill down into the very notion of change, unpacking the reasons behind it—political, ideological, aesthetic, or demographic. Along with the dynamics of transformation, the intrinsic adaptability of matsuri emerges in contrast and complement to the weight of tradition, whether real or perceived. Indeed, despite the value so often placed on continuity with the past, the history of any given matsuri is almost never characterized by linear progression or unified objectives, but rather by innovation, debate, creativity and flexibility. And as each of these chapters shows, every performance of matsuri today is only a snapshot of a moment in the present, imbued with meaning by living participants who look to the past even as they actively shape the future. Another salient theme of our analyses is how matsuri play significant roles in the lives of individuals and communities and often serve as both markers and makers of identity. Some of our chapters focus on urban festivals, such as Gion Matsuri 祗園祭 in Kyoto (Porcu), Sannō Matsuri 山王祭 in Shiga (Breen), the winter rituals of Kyoto (Yagi), and Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri 春日若宮おん 祭 in Nara (Giolai); some on small-town or rural events, such as Sawara no taisai 佐原の大祭 in Chiba (Tsukahara), Akakura kagura 赤倉神楽 in Niigata (Klien), Namahage ナマハゲ in Akita (Foster) or Kuma Matsuri 熊祭 in the mountains of Akita and Yamagata (Schnell). In every case, the matsuri in question is deeply associated with the location where it takes place, often shaped by historical concerns and the religious and economic development of the region. In a sense, matsuri can be thought of as a feature of the landscape itself. This is clear with festivals such as Gion, Sannō, or the Sawara Grand Festival in which residents parade their local deities through the streets of the city or town. But it is true in a different way with rural festivals, such as Kuma Matsuri or Namahage, in which the natural environment—and mountains in particular—inform ritual performances and the narrative and religious structures undergirding them. Regardless of locality, these matsuri reflect and create a sense of community identity for participants. The “community” can be very small: the members of a preservation society, residents of a district within a city, a few families in a rural

1 The list of influences and important previous scholarship is too long and varied to note here. For specific references, please refer to the individual chapters in the volume.

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hamlet. Simultaneously, the same matsuri might also invoke a broader sense of identity—and concomitant feelings of pride, belonging, nostalgia—for residents of entire cities, prefectures, or even Japan as a nation. What comes across in all these chapters is an indelible but complex linkage between participation in matsuri and identity—how people define themselves (often in contrast to others). In many cases, especially on the intimate, small-scale level, this identity is more than just an intellectual or discursive construct—it is embodied, developed through physically relying on one another, dancing and singing, eating and drinking, sweating and crying, growing old together. Indeed, related to identity, another theme emerges in many of the essays: feeling. By this we mean the affective and often embodied engagement with the experience of the matsuri that arises from musical and dance performance (and long hours of dedicated practice), physically strenuous activities such as shouldering heavy floats (e.g., yatai 屋台 or dashi 山車) or trudging through snow, and communal feasting, often late into the night. Such fullbodied immersion in matsuri is associated with emotional engagement on many levels, and articulated through diverse expressions of elation, nostalgia, longing, loss, mourning, exhaustion, discovery, joy, well-being, kinship and belonging. Affect is also tied to the underlying theme of the volume—religion and spiritual engagement. In some cases, the religious associations of the matsuri in question are deeply embedded in Buddhist and Shintō institutional structures, and accordingly subject not only to ritual protocol but also to the vicissitudes of power and politics. Other matsuri follow traditional forms that may be less documented but are nevertheless formalized as procedures for interacting with the gods. And still other matsuri seem to be more about civic or community engagement (or tourism) and, for most participants, only have a vague relationship to “religion” per se. But whatever the case—and of course these positions are not mutually exclusive—we almost always find what we might call “religious feeling” or “spiritual affect,” a sense that the ritualized activities of the matsuri open up a mode of communication between humans and higher, sacred forces. While the examples documented in the pages that follow differ in their particulars, they are similar in that the act of matsuri creates a temporary space-time of heightened emotions, awareness and engagement that transcends the quotidian. In this sense, the experience of matsuri is part and parcel of the feeling of religion. At the same time, most of the chapters collected here also reflect the way the sacred dimension of matsuri is inevitably embedded in a much more profane landscape. By tracing historical changes as well as contemporary manifestations, we see the role of politics—local, national, even global—in shaping

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the development and performance of matsuri. Demographic and economic factors are always a concern, as community members grapple with questions as distinct but intertwined as depopulation and tourism. In some cases, the political dimension extends well beyond the region and even the nation; Gion, Sawara Grand Festival and Namahage, for example, have all been inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In the final analysis, one distinct aspect of matsuri is that they always have one foot in the transcendent realm of the “religious” and another in the mundane realm of the “political.” Yet, such a binary is too simplistic: as the chapters that follow demonstrate, matsuri articulate the exquisite way in which the religious and the political are always symbiotic, intertwined, complementary, and often indistinguishable. The volume opens with two chapters related to float festivals. Based on longterm participant observation, Tsukahara Shinji’s “Displaying Mythological Characters: Changes in the Meanings of Decorations in the Sawara Grand Festival in Chiba, Japan” analyzes this particular matsuri in terms of its close relation to political issues. The figures on the floats represent mythological and historical characters closely associated with nationalism and imperialism. While neither denying the quality of these figures as aesthetic objects nor the work/intentions of their creators (most of whom were not from Sawara itself), the author’s attention is directed to the meanings people ascribe to these figures and to the emotions and actions they inspire among local people in present-day Sawara. Moreover, the chapter explores the role float figures play within the political framework of modern Japan and Shintō nationalism, with an eye to the interplay of traditional culture and politics. Today the figures paraded through town are mostly appreciated for their aesthetic quality which, to some extent, has overwritten their nationalistic origins. Yet at the same time, Tsukahara highlights the danger of considering them as completely disconnected from these “past” ideological associations. “Gion Matsuri in Kyoto: A Multilayered Religious Phenomenon” by Elisabetta Porcu explores this famous festival linked to Yasaka Shrine from a multidimensional perspective. Porcu analyzes the religious aspects of the festival in close connection with the various actors involved in its organization and running. These include the residents of neighborhoods sponsoring floats ( yamahoko-chō), the local government, and Yasaka Shrine. The chapter focuses on the festival’s most recent developments, particularly the reinstatement of the second float procession, or ato matsuri 後祭, in 2014. One critical consideration that emerges from this analysis is a constant negotiation and blurring of religious and secular boundaries, both in tangible geographical spaces (tem-

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porary shrines, governmental buildings, etc.) as well as conceptual spaces such as the constitutional separation of religion and the state. The author further reflects on this festival in terms of “contested zones” where disjunctions as well as resistance to central decisions are in play. Gion Matsuri, Porcu suggests, can be understood as a microcosm or cross-section of society which mirrors clashing interests and problematic territories within Japan today; it thus reveals, more broadly, the complex interplay of religion with the public sphere. The Kansai area remains the locus of the third chapter, “Sannō Matsuri: Fabricating Festivals in Modern Japan,” by John Breen. As the title suggests, the author’s starting point is that festivals reinvent themselves over time, while retaining a perceived continuity with their “mythical” past. The Sannō festival at the Hiyoshi Taisha 日吉大社 complex in Shiga Prefecture exemplifies this dynamic. Breen analyzes the festival through a combination of first-hand observations; secondary historical sources that trace its origins, premodern representations, and developments through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and primary sources through which we can see how the modern festival came into being in the mid-nineteenth century. As in the chapters on Gion Matsuri (Porcu), Namahage (Foster), and Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri (Giolai), Breen takes into account the multivocality of the festival with its “multiple moving parts,” including its physical sites, the identities of the kami 神 worshipped, and its various religious actors—from those with political and institutional power to the “common people” who have played a fundamental role in keeping the festival vibrant. The next chapter takes us to a rural setting in Akita Prefecture. Michael Dylan Foster’s “Eloquent Plasticity: Vernacular Religion, Change, and Namahage” explores this winter matsuri where, on New Year’s Eve, men costumed as demons visit households where they scare and discipline children, and bless the family for the coming year. The author’s analysis of Namahage shows how a festival/tradition can assume different forms to accommodate the changing needs of the communities involved and also sheds light on the dynamics of change itself. Namahage can be understood as: a) a ritual performed on New Year’s Eve within private households; b) a public performance in February oriented toward tourists (i.e., the Namahage Sedo 柴灯 Matsuri at Shinzan 真 山 Shrine); c) and most recently, an example of “intangible cultural heritage” inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List. Foster analyzes these three layers with regard to their differing engagement with religious elements. The chapter concludes with the author’s interpretative model/metaphor of hrönirism, an attempt to conceptualize how these “different” versions of the same tradition can co-exist, mutually informing and constituting one another, and all equally “real.”

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Winter is also the seasonal setting for the next three chapters. In the first, “Kuma Matsuri: Bear Hunters as Intermediaries between Humans and Nature,” Scott Schnell unpacks rituals related to traditional hunters (matagi) who venerate the yama no kami 山の神, a female deity residing in the mountain. In particular, Schnell focuses on the kuma matsuri, or bear hunting rituals where the bear is seen as a gift bestowed by the mountain deity herself and not merely a wild animal to be killed for the sake of sport or recreation. Through connection with the divinity, the matagi can also “absolve themselves of sin for killing animals.” The ritual articulates the matagi’s sense of interdependence with the mountain and veneration of the yama no kami; it also reflects “an ethic of conservation” of the resources and health of the mountain’s ecosystem. Moreover, similar to analyses in other chapters (e.g., Porcu; Foster) a continuous shifting of boundaries is at play here, with the matagi as intermediaries moving back and forth between the cultivated human world and the realm of the yama no kami and her mountain. Yagi Tōru’s chapter, “Fire, Prayer, and Purification: Early Winter Events and Folk Beliefs in Kyoto,” takes us back to an urban setting with an exploration of rituals performed in late autumn and early winter. The author illustrates a series of festivals, including the fire festivals of O-hitaki お火焚き, Niinamesai 新嘗祭, and a variety of rituals related to purification and visiting deities associated with Buddhism, Shintō and folk traditions. Among these, rites such as Kakure nenbutsu かくれ念仏 (hidden nenbutsu) performed at the Rokuharamitsuji 六波羅蜜寺 temple are linked to political issues in premodern Japan and the suppression of certain practices as a way to destabilize powerful and consolidated religious institutions. Yagi demonstrates the long-standing persistence among the people of Kyoto of the idea of cleansing the old year’s impurities as they enter into the new year. The description of these rituals is framed within the concept of a cyclical life that needs to constantly regenerate itself as it passes between binary forces of pollution and purification, death and rebirth. Andrea Giolai’s “Encounters with the Past: Fractals and Atmospheres at Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri” explores Nara’s most important religious festival, Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri, by countering the idea of an unchanged and historically linear tradition. The paper fills a gap in earlier studies of this festival, in which less attention was paid to its transformations over time. To convey the non-linearity of this matsuri and its history, Giolai links his analysis to the idea of “fractals” and “atmospheres.” Fractals evoke the complexity of the partwhole relationship, that is, of the phenomenological parts of the festival and the festival as a whole. The notion of “atmospheres” resonates with the author’s background in music studies and suggests that Onmatsuri’s longevity and pop-

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ularity rest upon the generative and constructive effect of affective relations to its past. This hints at a continuum that reinforces a sense of participation in a coherent whole while, at the same time, distinguishing the festival’s constitutive events and their developments. The multiplicity of the deities related to the matsuri, its material elements, as well as the experiences of the participants, all coalesce to form its multivocal parts. In “Demographic Change in Contemporary Rural Japan and Its Impact on Ritual Practices” Susanne Klien turns her attention to rural areas in Niigata Prefecture and draws on Ono Akira’s notion of “marginal hamlets” (genkai shūraku), communities in which over half of the population is over 65. She illustrates how ritual practices in these areas have been affected by depopulation and demographic change and how participants struggle to perpetuate their traditions while also creatively coping with the problems made by such changes. Klien shows us that even while residents grapple with how to “preserve” their folk performing arts traditions, mobility and hybridization emerge as the result of constant adaptation to socioeconomic circumstances. The chapter focuses in particular on two preservation associations engaged in rituals revolving around chinkon 鎮魂, or the pacifying of spirits: the Buddhist bon 盆 dances of the Nakajō Dai no saka 中条大の坂; and the Shintō shamanic performing arts of Akakura kagura at Jūnisha Jinja 十二社神社. In both cases, participants view their traditions through a veil of nostalgia and think of them as firmly rooted in their geographical location, despite clear evidence of non-local origins. Our volume ends in a somewhat experimental and unusual way for an academic publication. Given the prominence of ethnographic research in our work, we decided to conclude open-endedly with a photographic essay based on the work of a matsuri photographer, Ogano Minoru. In “Secret Eroticism and Lived Religion: The Art of Matsuri Photography” Foster introduces this professional photographer and translates Ogano’s descriptions of his pictures related to mushi-okuri 虫送り in Aomori Prefecture. Ogano explains how his own objective in photographing matsuri is to capture the “affective and emotional” face of festivals as experienced by the participants—a sentiment consistent with the emphasis on “feelings” common to other chapters in this volume. Ogano also describes the religious elements in matsuri as emerging organically from the life and belief of the participants, a view that resonates with observations made throughout the book. The chapters here represent a range of scholars located around the globe, at various different stages of their respective careers, and drawing on different theoretical and disciplinary backgrounds. Two of the chapters (Tsukahara; Yagi) were translated especially for this volume; we are honored to present,

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for the first time in English, the work of these important scholars. Of course, any collection of essays on a subject as diverse and complex as matsuri cannot represent the field, and that is certainly not our intention here; rather, we simply want to emphasize its diversity and complexity. We hope these historical and ethnographic analyses will be helpful to anybody broadly interested in Japanese matsuri, religion, and folklore. Many of the chapters draw on and develop, either explicitly or implicitly, fresh methodologies and theoretical constructs—such as an “agency-of-artifacts approach” (Tsukahara), “contested zones” (Porcu), notions of historical contestation (Breen), hrönirism (Foster), “traditional ecological knowledge” (Schnell) and “fractals and atmospheres” (Giolai). Ideally, readers will engage with these ideas and push them further, applying them to different cases in Japan and, we hope, to other geographical and cultural contexts as well. Finally, we want to acknowledge the strangeness of offering a collection of essays on matsuri in the midst of a global pandemic. As is clear from the chapters, and evident to anybody who has ever attended a festival in Japan, matsuri are characterized by people coming together and transgressing everyday norms of “social distancing,” to say nothing of the particular restrictions necessary during the current crisis. Indeed, matsuri are all about gathering in one place together, sharing with others, being part of something bigger than the self. They are crowded, communal experiences, in which people—often strangers—find themselves clustered together, their bodies jostling and in contact as they sing, dance, pray, eat, and drink, breathing the same air. Not surprisingly, many of the matsuri discussed in this volume were cancelled for 2020. But as mentioned above, one theme shared by every essay here is change. Regardless of how much they may feel like—or portray themselves as— authentic and immutable traditions, matsuri are characterized as much by accommodation to the present as by adherence to the past. They survive through preservation and resilience, but also through flexibility, innovation, and creativity, always inevitably reflecting the needs, agency and invention of people living in the present. 2020 may be a year of devastating rupture and sadness throughout the world, and the matsuri (and communities) presented in this volume will certainly be affected by this experience. But if the past is any guide, in each location documented here (and so many more), people will reemerge from this moment of uncertainty and isolation to reshape their matsuri, to transform it so that it means something for them now, and provides some kind of hope for the future.

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Acknowledgments Our sincere appreciation goes to Emily B. Simpson for her careful and perceptive copyediting, and to Leslie Winston for her thorough and thoughtful indexing. We also want to thank Ugo Dessì and Michiko Suzuki for their constant support, comments (and occasional proofreading), and of course our contributors for their insights, brilliance, and patience as we worked across numerous time zones to put together this volume.

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chapter 2

Displaying Mythological Characters Changes in the Meanings of Decorations in the Sawara Grand Festival in Chiba, Japan Tsukahara Shinji 塚原伸治 Ibaraki University, Mito, Japan [email protected]

Abstract The large figures displayed atop the floats in the Sawara Grand Festival portray characters drawn from mythology and history that have been strongly associated with Japanese nationalism and imperialism. In order to investigate the meanings that these float figures hold for the participants and audience of the festival, this chapter acknowledges the close relations between folklore and politics and interprets the works themselves as agents that enact emotions and responses, rather than focusing on the creative intentions of the producers. The figure subjects were freely chosen by the people of Sawara, mostly during the prewar period, and were based on characters that were popular at the time—namely, the emperors and their mythological ancestors and historical champions. In the present, however, the figures are rarely seen in light of their nationalistic origins. Instead, they are appreciated more for their aesthetic beauty and as mascots of the various wards of Sawara.

Keywords agency – festival – floats – folklore – materiality – nationalism

1

A Curious Display1

“It’s as if the festival is carrying the nation-state on its shoulders.” This was the impression of my friend and fellow folklorist upon seeing the Sawara Grand

1 This chapter was translated by Jude Pultz. Original title: “Shinwa no kyarakutā o tenji suru:

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004466548_003

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Festival (Sawara no taisai 佐原の大祭) for the first time. By itself, this impression may seem strange, but in fact, it succinctly expresses an important aspect of this festival. Held every July and October in the town known as Sawara in the city of Katori in Chiba Prefecture,2 the Grand Festival is famous for its floats bearing large figures, which are pulled through the streets by hand (Figure 2.1). Under the title “Sawara Float Event” (Sawara no dashi gyōji 佐原の山車行事) the festival was designated an Important Intangible Folk-Cultural Property of the country in 2004. Then, in 2016, it was also inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage as one of 33 examples of “Yama, Hoko, and Yatai float festivals.” It was the figures (ningyō 人形) on the floats in this festival that prompted my friend’s comment about “carrying the nation-state on its shoulders.” Certainly, at first glance, the figures do evoke the specter of nationalism. Even if it is an exaggeration to call the event itself nationalistic, it would be difficult to fully understand the festival without taking into account the nation-state ideology of modern Japan. Many of the large figures atop the floats were produced by professional artists in the early twentieth century and represent the gods regarded as the ancestors of the imperial line in mythological texts such as the Kojiki 古事 記 (Record of Ancient Matters, 712) and Nihon shoki 日本書紀 (Chronicles of Japan, 720). The theme of nationalism is also apparent in several float figures that represent real people, including the military commanders Dai-Nankō 大楠 公 (Kusunoki Masahige 楠木正成, 1294–1336) and Shō-Nankō 小楠公 (Kusunoki Masatsura 楠木正行, 1326–1348), who were regarded as champions of the emperor’s regime and frequently appeared in shūshin 修身 (moral education) textbooks.3 Although these were real people, they have since been mythologized in stories and legends. Other festival figures, such as Kintarō 金 太郎, Urashima Tarō 浦島太郎, and other characters from old folktales, are not deeply connected to imperialism or nationalism, but these represent only a small minority of the floats. Of course, the Sawara Grand Festival is not the only float festival in Japan that reflects a strong nationalist ideology through

Chiba ken no ‘Sawara no taisai’ ni okeru kazari no imi no henka” 神話のキャ ラクター を展 示する–千葉県の「佐原の大祭」における飾りの意味の変化. 2 Referred to simply as “Sawara” for the remainder of this chapter. 3 Shūshin was a subject in elementary schools in Japan following the Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890 and lasting until 1945. Although it literally means “moral education,” shūshin also incorporated material on military training.

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figure 2.1 Float (dashi) with figure (ningyō) Photograph by author

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its choice of motifs. Still, I believe my friend’s impression that this particular festival is “carrying the nation-state on its shoulders,” is no exaggeration. That being said, we must consider that just because the people of Sawara attach great importance to these floats and parade them through the streets each year does not mean that everyone in Sawara is a nationalist, nor does it mean that we should understand the festival solely in nationalistic terms. The residents of each part of the town that participate in the festival are not generally motivated by political beliefs, and even those who are support diverse political parties. Still, on the surface it appears as if the festival is literally parading the emperors, their ancestors, and their champions through the district. How should we interpret this? That is the question of this study.

2

Ethnography of Festival Figures

2.1 What Is a Float? In considering how to approach Japanese festival floats and figures, I would first like to briefly look back on how these subjects have been dealt with in traditional folklore studies. The wooden floats that are pulled in Japanese festivals are generally known as dashi 山車. Depending on the region, however, floats are given different names, including yama 山, hoko 鉾, and yatai 屋台 (Itō 2001).4 According to Murakami (2018), there are as many as 1,300 or even 1,500 festivals in Japan featuring floats, whether they are known as dashi, yama, hoko, or yatai. Academic study regarding these festival floats can be traced back to the earliest days of folklore research, to discussions between Orikuchi Shinobu 折口 信夫 (1887–1953) and Yanagita Kunio 柳田國男 (1875–1962).5 Particularly influential was the idea that the float (dashi) serves as a vessel into which a god descends, as put forth in Orikuchi’s “Higeko no hanashi” 髯籠の話. Orikuchi called these vessels yorishiro 依代. He later added to this concept with his 4 Representing all floats under the term dashi is problematic. As Ueki Yukinobu (2001) states, use of the word dashi, which should not necessarily be the overarching term, began with Orikuchi Shinobu and, due to his considerable influence in the field of folklore, was rapidly generalized into standard Japanese and came to represent floats of all forms. In order to rectify this trend, the festivals were given the title “Yama, Hoko, and Yatai float festivals” when they were officially inscribed as intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO. However, dashi is the term officially used for the floats in Sawara’s festival and, in standard Japanese, use of the word dashi as a general term is still prevalent. 5 Yanagita (1915); Orikuchi (1915). According to Ikeda (1978), these discussions eventually led to animosity between Orikuchi and Yanagita.

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“marebito マレビト theory,” which, in a rather essentialist way, suggests that gods would at times descend to the world of people as an expression of a universal ideal of Japanese godhood. In this regard, the understanding of the float as yorishiro (a place to which gods descend) was an important precursor of the marebito theory. This idea of Orikuchi’s that the dashi functioned as a yorishiro had such a powerful impact on festival research that it became a kind of dogma to interpret all floats ( yama, hoko, and yatai) as yorishiro, preventing other interpretations from being considered (Ueki 2001; Murakami 2018). As a result, little progress was made throughout the twentieth century concerning the folklore of festival floats or their decorations. Finally, toward the end of the twentieth century, scholars began to challenge this received understanding of floats as uniform. For example, in his discussions of Kyoto’s Gion Festival, Yamaji Kōzō emphasized the difference between the sacred procession of portable Shintō shrines and the parading of yamahoko 山鉾 festival floats by townsfolk (Yamaji 1986). In addition, Ueki Yukinobu recognized that yama, hoko, and yatai floats originally had distinct roles and challenged the notion that all floats should be uniformly understood as yorishiro (Ueki 2001). Rather than interpreting floats as mobile places of worship, it is the general understanding of current folklore scholarship that floats should be viewed more as performances intended to add liveliness to the festivals to which they belong (Ito 2000). As a result of these recent trends, the roles and ornamentations of various types of floats have become serious subjects of research in Japanese folklore studies (Ueki and Fukuhara 2016). 2.2 The Figures on the Floats Festival floats exhibit a wide variety of forms (Ueki 2001). There are both twolayer and three-layer floats; in addition, some floats have roofs and others have dancers on top of them. Of these varieties, the present study concerns the type of float on display at the Sawara Grand Festival, a kind which notably carries large human figures. Until now, such float figures have received little attention in Japanese ethnographic research. One obvious reason is that, as mentioned earlier, despite academic interest in the festivals, floats were never properly examined as artifacts due to the stagnating influence of the “float = yorishiro” thesis. Since researchers felt there was nothing more to say regarding the floats themselves, it was only natural that there was no interest in the figures atop the floats. As previously stated, however, trends in the study of floats have also changed, so that analysis of the meaning of various floats is no longer limited to the yorishiro interpretation. As a result, direct study of float decorations, while still in

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its early stages, is becoming possible. In his study of the yamahoko floats in the Gion Festival in Kyoto, for example, Murakami Tadayoshi revealed how the yamahoko figures began as simple attractions to add vibrancy to the festival but, starting from the first half of the eighteenth century, gradually took on a more sacred significance, eventually becoming objects of worship (Murakami 2010). Research regarding figures on festival floats is now entering a new stage in which scholars like Murakami are considering artifacts not from the perspective of the intentions of the producers nor for their value as works of art, but from the ethnographic context of the local people who use them and ascribe meaning to them. 2.3 Methodology for Analysis of Float Figures This paper is also located within the new trend of ethnographic context described here. However, as stated previously, research on ornaments in the festival has recently experienced a major paradigm shift, and it must be recognized that methodologies for analyzing these phenomena are not yet well developed. Here, I present the methodology that my own essay will adopt. Briefly, there are two subjects in this paper for which a methodology is necessary: (1) analysis of the agency of artifacts, and (2) consideration of the modern political context. Although artifacts in Japanese religious ceremonies have been researched extensively, the field is less developed for ceremonial objects that are produced and used simply for the sake of enjoyment, without a strong religious connotation. Recently there has been increasing attention paid to what are known as tsukurimono つくりもの (decorations; crafts; handmade objects). The precise connotation of tsukurimono varies depending on the writer, but within the context of festivals, they can generally be considered temporary objects that are destroyed when the ceremony is over. Another important element of tsukurimono is that the objects constantly adapt to circumstantial changes and trends, such as popular taste and current affairs (Fukuhara and Sasahara 2014). Of course, because the objects appear in festivals, they are infused with the influence of history and tradition; nonetheless, they are also characterized by improvisation and originality. By looking through the lens of tsukurimono, we can see the creativity of the producers and organizers involved in traditional events. Of course, in the case of the Sawara float figures, which were professionally produced more than a century ago and have appeared in festivals every year without undergoing any particular change, the term tsukurimono does not apply. It is probably no coincidence that only tsukurimono and not the many other types of artifacts that appear in ceremonies have accumulated so much

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research in recent years. This is because attempts to interpret tradition from the perspective of “innovation,” “improvisation,” and “creativity” is not limited to Japan—it is a significant trend in folklore studies worldwide (Oring 2012: 224–226). In contrast to tsukurimono, many of the figures on the festival floats in Sawara were made by professional artists living in major cities. Although these artifacts belong to a local ceremony, due to their professional origins, they have so far been analyzed primarily by art historians instead of folklorists and anthropologists. For example, it was an art historian who conducted the first full-scale study of Nezumiya, a company of prominent artisans in Edo (and later Tokyo) who created many of the figures for the Sawara festival floats (Kinoshita 1993).6 It seems that artifacts like these, which are durable, involve no improvisation, and have little to do with the intention of the local people, are incompatible with current directions within folklore studies. Of course, it is not my position that the Sawara float figures should be a subject for study just because they have been largely ignored thus far. Rather, I claim that researching the float figures is an essential step toward understanding the roles that artifacts play in such festivals. There is a reason why temporary, locally produced handcrafts interest scholars, whereas durable, professionally produced goods are not considered worthy of interest. That is because most research on “material culture,” which has occupied the center of ethnographic research on artifacts, tends to place particular emphasis on the producers’ intentions. Henry Glassie, for instance, states that, “beginning necessarily with things, but not ending with them, the study of material culture uses objects to approach human thought and action.” Furthermore, rather than “material culture,” he suggests that “art is a better word.” He goes on to explain that “art embodies, and insistently exhibits, personal and collective identities, aesthetic and instrumental purposes, mundane and spiritual aspirations. Around art—the most human of things—material culture gathers, blending nature and will, and beyond material culture spreads the merely material, the unhuman” (Glassie 1999: 41–42). In other words, material culture research (or art research) is an exercise in reading and understanding the thoughts and meanings embedded within objects. This methodology starts with tracing back the meaning given to an object by returning to the intention of the producer. In addition, Glassie proposes that creativity, interestingly, is a matter of creating new things by customizing and rearranging what already

6 Even at the Gion Festival in Kyoto, perhaps the most famous of the float festivals, recent research on festival ornaments has been primarily conducted by art historians (e.g., Kamada 2016).

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exists (Glassie 1999: 85–86). By extending the range of creativity, Glassie successfully enlarges the scope of material culture research. Even with such an expansion, however, the premise remains that human creativity is emphasized and the human being is seen as the sole “agent” for imparting meaning and value to objects. If we refer to recent anthropological theory, it becomes evident what is missing in the study of traditional material culture.7 According to so-called artifactoriented anthropology (Henare, Holbraad and Wastell 2007) and the anthropology of materiality (Miller 2005), which have been popular since around the year 2000, it is necessary to consider not only meanings assigned to objects by humans but also the inverse—the emotions and actions that objects inspire in humans. In other words, it is necessary to attend to the way in which things work on people. In Art and Agency, Alfred Gell, who has exerted great influence on such research trends, proposes that even inanimate objects have an agency that “causes events to happen” (Gell 1998: 16). Further, he proposes an anthropological theory that views art as a “system of action intended to change the world rather than encode symbolic propositions about it” and that focuses on “the practical mediatory role of art objects in the social process, rather than the interpretation of objects ‘as if’ they were texts” (Gell 1998: 6). Such research trends encourage us not to limit our examination to the meaning of the work or the intentions of its producer, but to think about what is caused by a work or creation.8 With this approach, it becomes possible to consider the Sawara float figures from within a local context. The reason it was considered difficult to study these float figures is because traditional material culture research has tended to focus on the intentions of the producer and the meaning of the work. Given that the figures were created by artists living in Tokyo a century ago and that the works continue to be displayed every year without changing, the intended meanings attributed by the producers are foreign to the local people of Sawara today. If viewed from the perspective of what actions and emotions the artifacts cause or inspire among the local people today, however, the float figures can be subject to ethnographic description. Another important point in analyzing the float figures is the political context of the modern era. As mentioned above, artifacts in recent studies of Japanese festivals are examined from the viewpoint of their ability to entertain and to evoke people’s vernacular creativity. As a result, there is a tendency to depict 7 This deviation from traditional material culture research is in line with Appadurai’s conception of “methodological fetishism,” or “returning our attention to the things themselves” (Appadurai 1986: 5). 8 Henare et al. (2007: 7) call these trends “a quiet revolution in anthropology.”

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the people involved as apolitical. It should be a given, however, that traditional culture and political culture are not unrelated; indeed, as long ago established in the theories of the “invention of tradition” (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983), tradition and politics are closely connected. From this perspective, it is also important to keep in mind that the discipline of folklore itself is easily associated with nationalism and the ideology of the nation-state (e.g., Abrahams 1993; Bendix 2012). Although lagging behind American and German folklore studies, in the Japanese case as well, folklorists are now exploring how folklore has been mobilized in political contexts (e.g., Iwamoto 2008). Even though research into the artifacts in festivals has been depoliticized for the reasons mentioned above, in reality, even attractions within festivals (or artifacts seen as such) are inherently political.9 It must also be understood that many Japanese folk festivals are strongly associated with Shintō shrines. As historical and religious studies from the second half of the twentieth century have revealed, Shintō shrines were strictly controlled by the state from the Meiji era to 1945 and served as the spiritual base of National Shintō and nationalism in general.10 It would be impossible to discuss shrine-related festivals without considering the impact of this period. Based on the issues in the research as described above, I have two objectives in this paper. First, by applying the agency-of-artifacts approach, I examine the actions caused and elicited by festival decorations rather than focus on the intentions of the producers or the “original” meaning of the works. Second, I emphasize and interrogate the modern political context. Additionally, this paper clarifies the relationship between the festival participants and the deities and characters featured on the floats, both historically and currently. As we will see, the way in which local people today perceive and relate to the festival figures has little in common with the strict textual interpretation of what the characters originally represented.

9

10

Take, for example, the Catalan festival Patum de Berga, which features many large figures. According to Dorothy Noyes’s detailed ethnography, although the festival appears at first to be nothing more than a parade of animals, fantasy creatures, and giants, it has for a long time served as a stage for political expression (Noyes 2005). Abundant critical research is available, even for general readers, on the national management and control of Shintō and shrines, from the relatively earlier works of Murakami Shigeyoshi (1970) and Yasumaru (1979), to the more recent works of Shimazono (2010).

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The Festival of Sawara

3.1 What Is the Sawara Grand Festival? The subject of this paper is a rural festival in Katori, Chiba.11 Katori is a city with a population of 77,029 people and 31,086 households,12 and Sawara is located in its central urban area. Sawara faces the Tone River and was a key node of water traffic from the Edo period to the Meiji period.13 Taking full advantage of the area’s geography, many Edo period businesses, such as brewers of sake and soy sauce and wholesalers of rice and other grains, established large-scale enterprises in Sawara. During that time, the town became one of the largest in the Kantō region in terms of both population and economic scale. From around 1900, however, the means of transportation of goods gradually changed from water to land throughout Japan. Despite construction of the Suigo Ohashi Bridge between Sawara and Okishi in 1936, the switch from water to land transport reduced Sawara’s political and economic presence. As a result, many formerly wealthy businesses declined or collapsed, and after World War II Sawara became a town based around small businesses. The Ono River, one of the tributaries of the Tone, flows through the center of Sawara, dividing it into two districts: Honjuku 本宿 on the east bank and Shinjuku 新宿 on the west bank. Honjuku and Shinjuku are divided into 12 and 29 wards (chōnai 町内), respectively. The ward is both the smallest administrative unit and the one that oversees the shrines. The main shrine of Honjuku is Yasaka Shrine (Yasaka Jinja 八坂神社), while in the Shinjuku district, the principle shrine is Suwa Shrine (Suwa Jinja 諏訪神社). Each ward comprises the ujiko 氏子 (parishioners) of its local shrine.14 At the Sawara Grand Festival, the float parades are organized by the wards. There are 10 wards that own floats in Honjuku and 14 in Shinjuku.15 As of 4 April 2018 the smallest of these wards contained 18 households, and the largest comprised 533 households.

11

12 13

14 15

The following description is based on research I have conducted intermittently since 2004. Further information on the Sawara Grand Festival can be found in the Sawara (present-day Katori) Administrative Investigation Report (Chiba-ken Sawara-shi Kyōiku Iinkai 2001). As of 1 December 2018. From the Katori city website (http://www.city.katori.lg.jp, accessed 2 December 2018). With a total length of 322km, the Tone river has the largest watershed in Japan. During the Edo period, it was an essential route for carrying goods to Edo. From 1671 to the end of the Edo period, for example, much of the rice that came from the Tōhoku and Kita-Kantō regions was carried to Edo via the Tone River. Ujiko is a term related to shrine ritual. Those who live in the vicinity of a shrine and worship there are called ujiko. The gods of such a shrine are called ujigami 氏神. To be exact, Shinjuku oversees the floats of 15 wards, but the float of one of these wards

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As mentioned above, the ward is also the unit of shrine ritual. In rural areas and fishing villages, wards participate directly in the local economy, by such means as cooperative labor, and are units of marital and funeral ritual. In contrast, in a town like Sawara, the social relationships at work are not based on religious or family connections.16 For this reason, the community unit known as the ward is essentially an organization that exists exclusively for the festival. Most ward finances involve the Grand Festival and the other annual events of the shrines. Therefore, the most important role of the ward is as ritual organization, and there is no real division between the ward’s administrative duties and the ritual services it offers. In recent years, there has been some concern that, due to increasing numbers of residents migrating to Sawara, the ward as a unit of government should be separated from the ward as a religious institution. However, since those who participate in the festival are still in the majority, there are few wards in which this separation has been realized. Since each ward is a unit of shrine administration, the unit that functions as the ujiko of the shrines is not the family or the individual residents of Sawara but the ward itself. In other words, each ward in Honjuku comprises the ujiko of Yasaka Shrine, and each ward in Shinjuku comprises the ujiko of Suwa Shrine.17 Therefore, any proposals or appeals are made by the wards, not by individuals or families. The financial resources of each shrine are determined by the number of households in the ward and its economic scale.18 Also, meetings of the

16

17 18

is in disrepair and has not been used since the 1960s; hence, that ward is not included in the scope of this paper. For example, professional associations unrelated to the scope of the wards, such as partners and unions, have managed marriages and funerals based on business relationships. Even as early as the Edo period, businesspeople had become responsible for most of that which would typically have been handled by the local village community, such as the mediation of disputes and response to disasters, including earthquakes, fires, and floods (Tsukahara 2008). Sawara is unusual in that individuals and families are not considered ujiko in and of themselves. For example, the annual budget of Yasaka Shrine in Honjuku is approximately 3,000,000 yen. The percentage that each ward is responsible for was originally decided during the Edo period based on economic conditions at the time and has reached the present figures after several minute adjustments. As such, a ward’s percentage does not necessarily conform to its current economic condition. To give a specific example, the ward with the fewest households is responsible for 4.1 % and the ward with the most households is responsible for 14.91 %, about three times as much, despite the fact that the larger ward contains approximately 30 times as many households. This disparity came about in part because after the Second World War, small-scale wards, such as those on the outskirts of town which previously consisted of farming families, became new residential districts, leading to an increase in the number of households.

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entire ujiko body of a ward, which are known as ward conferences (sōchō kaigi 惣町会議),19 are only attended by ward officials, including the district head (kuchō 区長), representatives of the district head (kuchō dairi 区長代理), and the treasurers. The festival is held in Honjuku in July as a summer festival and in Shinjuku in October as an autumn festival.20 Both festivals follow the nenban 年番 system. A nenban is a supervisor who serves for the duration of the year. The ward nenban manages the shrine, and the float nenban oversees the parading of the floats. Together the two nenban manage the festival and the other functions of the shrine for that year. In Honjuku, for example, the ward nenban of the 12 wards (10 of which own floats) serves a one-year shift before a new member takes over. The ward nenban manages all the events held at the shrine, including the transfer of portable shrines (mikoshi 神輿) and review of shrine finances. The float nenban is responsible for the float parades. The office of float nenban rotates to another ward every three years. At the two shrines related to the Sawara Grand Festival, priests have always had a very limited presence since the founding of both shrines in the Edo period. Yasaka Shrine, for example, has had no priests stationed there since the Edo period; the current chief priest oversees ten shrines, of which Yasaka Shrine is but one. Suwa Shrine has one resident priest, but that is still a small presence considering the size of the shrine. The Suwa priest, moreover, is a member of a prominent local family, which goes hand in hand with the fact that the ujiko are the primary caretakers of the shrines. During the Edo period, there was no nenban system, and power was concentrated in the wealthiest wards. The role that the current nenban plays was monopolized by one ward in each festival. Since the end of the Edo period, however, other wards developed financially, and their residents became dissatisfied. As a result, the nenban system was created in 1877 with the aim of redistributing power more equitably. 3.2 The Sawara Festival Floats The Sawara festival floats are vehicles consisting of two wooden layers and four wheels. The floats are 4 meters high, 3.5 meters wide, 4 meters long, and weigh about 4 tons. A prominent decoration, such as a figure of a person, is placed on 19 20

Although sōchō kaigi literally means “town-wide conference,” in this case the term is understood to indicate a conference relating to the ward (chōnai). At Yasaka Shrine, the festival is held over three days starting from the first Friday after 10 July. At Suwa Shrine, the festival is held on the second Saturday of October as well as the day immediately before and the day immediately after.

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figure 2.2 Float with wooden sculptures Photograph by author

top. A rope is attached to the front of the float, which is pulled by young people while musical performers ride in the middle stage section of the float. In addition to the figures set on top of the floats, delicate wooden sculptures are also attached to the middle of the floats (Figure 2.2). These sculptures have little connection to the figures on top. Moreover, while almost all decorations placed on the top part of float contribute to the construction of the single chosen figure, the sculptures that adorn the middle level exhibit a wide variety of motifs, with sculpture subjects including fantastic creatures such as dragons and shishi 獅子 (guardian dogs). Others are centered on medieval war stories, such as Heike monogatari 平家物語 (Tale of the Heike) and Taiheiki 太平記 (Chronicle of Great Peace), or taken from Chinese literary texts, such as Sangokushi 三国志 (Records of the Three Kingdoms) and Suikoden 水滸伝 (Tale of the Marshes, also known as Water Margin). One reason we can find Chinesestyle motifs and fantasy animals such as dragons and shishi is that many of the sculptures were produced during the Edo period and are in fact older than the float figures.21 21

While we cannot know with absolute certainty the reason these Chinese themes were

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These sculptures were produced by professional artists who lived in Edo and Tokyo, and their artistic value is not inferior to that of the figures at the top of the floats. On the contrary, because the sculptures have been preserved longer than the figures and because delicate techniques were used in creating them, the objective value of the sculptures may in fact be higher than that of the figures. On the other hand, the figures give a strong impression, due to their size, and each float is distinguished and identified by the figure it carries. Almost everyone in Sawara can quickly tell which ward a float belongs to based on its figure, but few people can recognize the type or subject matter of the smaller sculptures in the middle section of the float. Let me now explain a little about the figures themselves from a material perspective. As with many Japanese figures and dolls, the faces of the figures in the Sawara Grand Festival are created by applying gofun 胡粉, a pigment made from baked shells, to a sculpture made of wood from a paulownia or similar tree. The other parts of the figure consist of the torso, hands, and feet. The inside of the torso is constructed similar to a lantern so that it is hollow, and contains a single pole for support. Since the face is attached to the top of the pole, it is possible to adjust the figure’s height by raising and lowering the pole. Typically, figures have a height of 4 to 5 meters, which is rather large compared to figures in other float festivals. As the height of the floats themselves is about 4 meters, the total height of the figures measured from the ground can be close to 9 meters. 3.3 Themes of the Figures Currently, there are 24 floats in the Sawara Grand Festival. With the exception of a pair of floats with somewhat unique designs, the other 22 floats bear the original decorations that have been used continuously over a long period of time. The two exceptions are a carp made of wheat straw and a hawk

selected, we do know that most of the Chinese-themed sculptures on the floats were produced during the Edo period. At that time, as illustrated by the fact that the emperor would wear Chinese style clothing during ceremonial events, Chinese associations were not avoided but rather embraced as representing an advanced culture. Only the sculpture associated with Sangokushi was made during the Meiji period (1876; Meiji 9), and in this case it is difficult to explain why it was used. It is worth noting, however, that it was produced during early Meiji, a time when there were still military uprisings throughout the country and the Meiji government had not yet achieved stability. If we consider that the residents who oversaw the selection of statue themes were middle-aged or older, we can understand that it is likely that the local city of Sawara had not yet transcended Edoperiod associations with Chinese culture.

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24 table 1

tsukahara Wards and figures by year of production

Production Ward year 1 2 3 4 5

1804 1875 1879 1879 1882

6 7 8 9

1887 1894 1898 1898

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

1899 1901 1910 1915 1920 1921 1925 1935

Figure name

Figure motif

Hongashi 本川岸 Kitayokojuku 北横宿 Terajuku 寺宿 Shimosanmachi 下新町 Kaminakajuku 上中宿

Ame no Uzume no Mikoto 天鈿女命 Yamato Takeru no Mikoto 日本武尊 Kintoki Yamanba 金時山姥 Urashima Tarō 浦嶋太郎 Chinzei Hachirō Tametomo 鎮西八 郎為朝 Funado 船戸 Emperor Jimmu 神武天皇 Shinhashimoto 新橋本 Ono no Tōfū 小野道風 Nakagashi 仲川岸 Emperor Jimmu 神武天皇 Shitagashi 下川岸 Takehaya Susanoo no Mikoto 建速素 戔嗚尊 Shimojuku 下宿 Minamoto no Yoriyoshi 源頼義 Kaminakachō 上仲町 Ōta Dōkan 太田道灌 Tajuku 田宿 Izanagi no Mikoto 伊弉那岐尊 Shinuwagashi 新上川岸 Ushi Tenjin 牛天神 Araku 荒久 Futsunushi no Mikoto 経津主命 Shimonakachō 下仲町 Sugawara no Michizane 菅原道真 Minamiyokojuku 南横宿 Emperor Nintoku 仁徳天皇 Higashisekido 東関戸 Dai-Nankō 大楠公

18 1935

Shimowake 下分

Shō-Nankō 小楠公

19 20 21 22

Kamishinmachi 上新町 Nishisekido 西関戸 Hamajuku 浜宿 Kamijuku 上宿

Suwa Daijin 諏訪大神 Ninigi no Mikoto 瓊瓊杵尊 Takemikazuchi no Mikoto 建甕槌命 Minamoto no Yoshitsune 源義経

1936 1937 1937 1980

Myth Myth Folktale Folktale Military Commander Emperor Aristocrat Emperor Myth Military Commander Military Commander Myth Aristocrat Myth Aristocrat Emperor Military Commander (Imperial Retainer) Military Commander (Imperial Retainer) Myth Myth Myth Military Commander

Note: In addition to the figures on this table, a hand-made straw carp and hawk are put on two of the ward's floats.

made of rice straw. The carp and hawk are remade approximately every three years, and the old ones are incinerated. Although the two floats have carried the carp and hawk since the Edo period, their actual figures can be redesigned each time they are remade. Table 1 lists the permanent decorations by year of production. The themes of the figures include, as shown in the table, gods from the mythological chronicles of the Kojiki and Nihon shoki. Particularly prominent are gods that appear in the myths as imperial ancestors. For example, there is a figure of Izanagi no Mikoto 伊弉那岐尊, the god known for creating the land of Japan (figure made in 1910). There is also his great-grandson, Ninigi no Mikoto 瓊瓊杵尊, who is said to have descended from Takamagahara 高天

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原 to rule the land (figure made in 1937).22 In addition, Takehaya Susanoo no Mikoto 建速素戔嗚尊 (made in 1898) is the son of Izanagi no Mikoto. There are two figures (made in 1887 and 1898 respectively) of Emperor Jimmu 神 武, the mythical first emperor of Japan and the great-grandson of Ninigi no Mikoto. In addition to Jimmu, there is a figure of the sixteenth emperor of Japan, Nintoku 仁徳 (made in 1925). Moreover, as an ancestor of emperors, there is Yamato Takeru no Mikoto 日本武尊 (made in 1875), who was the son of the twelfth emperor, Keikō 景行, and the father of the fourteenth emperor, Chūai 仲哀. The next most common theme among the figures is military commanders. The attributes of commanders are various but, roughly speaking, there are figures representing legendary generals from oral tradition, such as Chinzei Hachirō Tametomo 鎮西八郎為朝 (1139–1170, figure made in 1882) and Minamoto no Yoshitsune 源義経 (1159–1189, figure made in 1980); and figures representing historical commanders, including Dai-Nankō and Shō-Nankō (both made in 1935), who became popular in the modern era as key supporters of the imperial regime. Finally, there are also figures representing characters from folktales, such as Urashima Tarō (made in 1879), Kintoki Yamauba 金時山姥 (made in 1979), and a renowned calligrapher who is also known as the god of calligraphy, Ono no Tōfū 小野道風 (894–966, figure made in 1894).23

4

Creation of the Figures

4.1 Before the Introduction of Figures At the Sawara Grand Festival today, most of the floats bear large figures produced by specialized artists. When the festival first began, however, it did not include such figures. In the eighteenth century, local people in Sawara decorated the festival floats by hand. The primary materials used were fibers such as straw, cotton, and paper. It is said that the wheat-straw carp and the ricestraw hawk that are still displayed today are made of the same materials and

22 23

In the myths, Takamagahara 高天原 is a realm above the earth where the gods live. In addition to the carp and the hawk, there is another non-human float figure: Suwa Daijin 諏訪大神 (made in 1936). Also known as Takeminakata no Kami 建御名方神, Suwa Daijin is the god of Suwa Shrine, where Sawara’s autumn festival is held. Rather than taking the form of a person, however, the god is represented by a display of a sakaki tree (cleyera japonica) and mirrors. Although it is not exactly a figure, it does represent a god from Japanese mythology, and since the same decoration is used every year, in this paper I treat it in the same way as the other figures.

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have depicted the same subjects since the beginning of the nineteenth century, and they do seem to reflect the styles of that period.24 The subjects selected for the early period float decorations are revealed by documents from that time. The decorations from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century were mostly animals, including cats, elephants, dogs, monkeys, and tigers, in addition to the carp and hawk. There were also depictions of scenes from sumō 相撲 and ningyō jōruri 人形浄 瑠璃 (puppet theater). With the exception of the carp and hawk, these decorations changed every year (Chiba-ken Sawara-shi Kyōiku Iinkai 2001). In any case, until the Edo period, the Sawara floats were much more diverse than they are at present, and they were characterized as being fundamentally handmade by the people of each ward. 4.2 The Transition to Large Figures and New Subjects A major change took place in the nineteenth century, from the end of the Edo period through the Meiji period. At that time, the people of the wards stopped making decorations by hand, and instead ordered figures from first-class artists living in Edo, later Tokyo. At around the same time, the figures grew in size. In Sawara. this is explained as follows: during the era when decorations were handmade, Sekido ward created a handmade figure as tall as 6 meters and put it on top of their float; this, people say, is what inspired the figures in other wards to become larger as well. Artists in Edo/Tokyo also produced float figures for many other areas in the Kantō region, but at 4 to 5 meters tall, the Sawara figures must have been extraordinarily large for the time. Sawara experienced rapid economic growth from the end of the Edo period to the Meiji era, so the wealthy merchants living there could afford to order luxurious figures (Tsukahara 2011, 2014). The figures produced at that time are the ones still used today. Figure 2.3 shows a graph of the figures currently in use according to their year of production. If we view this in terms of decades, we can see two peaks—one in the 1890s and another in the 1930s. Originally the subjects of most of the figures came from old folktales, but gradually figures of the emperors and their ancestors began to be displayed. In particular, the peak in the second half of the graph from the 1920s to the 1930s indicates the time when most of the float

24

It is unknown what materials were used to make these figures of people. In all likelihood, it was something like papier-mâché, as they were handmade and replaced every year. Additionally, in one ward it is said that figures made of wood pulp were produced until the Meiji era.

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figure 2.3 Number of float figures produced by decade

figures were made. Except for the figure representing Sugawara no Michizane 菅原道真 (845–903, figure made in 1921), who is worshipped nationwide as a deity of scholarship, all of the figures from this time represent either gods from Japanese myths or generals who fought to support the empire. At the same time, we no longer see the motifs of animals and Chinese folktales that were popular in the era of handmade decorations. We can probably correlate these two peaks with contemporary events in Shintō and imperialist policy. Regarding the first peak, for example, the Constitution of the Empire of Japan (Dai Nihon teikoku kenpō 大日本帝国憲法) was promulgated in 1889 and entered into force in 1890, the same year in which the Imperial Rescript on Education (Kyōiku chokugo 教育勅語) became official policy. The Constitution declared that the emperor was descended in an unbroken line from the first Emperor Jimmu, and the Imperial Rescript established reverence for the emperor and cultivation of patriotic morals as the primary goals of education. Therefore, it is quite likely that the first peak in new figures is related to the signing of the Imperial Constitution of Japan and the Rescript on Education, which together served as pillars supporting the modern emperor system and national Shintō (see e.g., Murakami 1970; Shimajima 2010). As for the second peak, it overlaps with the Manchurian Incident (1931) and the period of protracted war that followed. Interestingly, there is at least one figure that was made during the Edo period but relabeled as a different character later in that era. “Ame no Uzume no

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Mikoto” 天鈿女命 is considered to be the oldest of the figures still in use today (Figure 2.4). Produced at a time when most figures were still handmade, this figure was the first to be constructed by a professional artist for regular use atop a float. Ame no Uzume no Mikoto is a goddess of entertainment appearing in Japanese mythology, who plays an important part in helping to save the world from darkness. Based on the records, it is certain that this figure was created in 1804, but looking at the festival documents from the time the figure was made, there is no mention of Ame no Uzume no Mikoto. Rather. in these old documents we find only miko mai 巫女舞 and okame おかめ (Seimiya 2003).25 Certainly, the face of the figure which is now called Ame no Uzume no Mikoto exhibits the okame shape and she is dancing in what appears to be a shrine maiden’s costume. We can certainly posit that this figure was called “Miko Mai” or “Okame” throughout the Edo period, but at a later date26 the name was replaced with that of Ame no Uzume no Mikoto of Japanese mythology.27 When considering the connection between these categories of float figures and nation-state ideology, it is important to bear in mind that the choice of subject matter for the figures was not mandated by the government or any other external entity. There was no administrative intervention in the process of choosing subjects, and the theme was chosen irrespective of the intention of the administration. The people in each ward voluntarily chose the subjects and ordered the figures from the artists. The gods, emperors, and faithful vassals of the emperors that were chosen were all characters that appeared in school textbooks during this era. Descriptions in Japanese history textbooks—not only in the textbooks of moral education mentioned in the first section of this paper, but also in textbooks for 25 26 27

Miko mai refers to a shrine maiden’s dance, and okame references the image of a round woman’s face with inflated cheeks. Although the timing cannot be specified, I presume that it was after the middle of the nineteenth century. It is also possible that the artist who made the figure had intended for it to represent Ame no Uzume no Mikoto but that the people of Sawara interpreted it as miko mai or okame at the time. This particular figure is easily the oldest, followed by one made in 1875. This does not mean that no large figures were produced for these seven decades; rather, it seems that as the quality of the figures went up every year, each ward would replace its old one. We cannot be certain why only Hongashi 本川岸, the ward with Ame no Uzume no Mikoto, decided not to exchange its figure even with the advent of the Meiji period, but it may be related to the fact that, alongside Sekido 関戸, the first ward to display a large figure, Hongashi was the most economically well off in the city. The Ame no Uzume no Mikoto figure was crafted by Nezumiya 鼠屋, one of the leading figure artists from Edo, and it was rare for a ward to have the finances to hire an artist of this caliber. In fact, many people feel that this particular figure is a masterpiece among the many displayed in Sawara.

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figure 2.4 Figure of Ame no Uzume no Mikoto Photograph by author

elementary and secondary education—began with mythology, and in order to justify the emperor’s reign, it was claimed that the emperor was descended from the gods. There was also a tendency for military commanders to be valued because of their connections to the imperial family. These were the circumstances of the people living in Sawara who chose the subjects for the figures, and they chose the subjects as desirable in light of their own values. In other words, we might say that the subjects they chose were, at the time, fashionable.

5

Figures in the Postwar Period

5.1 The Figures Take On a Life of Their Own If we limit analysis of the festival decorations to the intentions of the producers or the intentions of the people who chose the subjects, this research could not continue beyond the 1930s, by which time most of the figures were created. Another perspective is necessary in order for the research to proceed. Once again, please refer to Table 1 and Figure 2.3. Although new works were produced

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at a pace of one piece a year for several years during the first half of the twentieth century, after the end of the war in 1945,28 the only figure produced was Minamoto no Yoshitsune (in 1980).29 Other than that, the festival continued to use figures produced during the first half of the twentieth century. After the end of the war, the people of Sawara, who had until then selected new subjects every year based on the trends of the time, chose to continue using the same figures. In order to preserve the figures for as long as possible, Sawara residents have treated them as pieces of fine art. When moving figures, they must never be touched with bare hands and they must be protected with layers of soft cloth when putting them in or taking them out of their boxes. In some cases, elaborate replicas have been created; in order to prevent deterioration, the original figures are used only for important events. The most direct reason for this cautious treatment is that, compared to the earlier amateur works, the professional pieces have a higher value. However, considering the fact that some wards make replicas to ensure that the original figure appears in the festival, expense and high quality cannot be the only reason; from a purely economic standpoint, it costs as much to make an elaborate replica as it does to make a new work. With this in mind, therefore, I believe that the Sawara float figures have moved away from the intentions of the producers and of the people who ordered them, and they have begun their own journey. It may be said that the subjects chosen as “fashionable” at the time of production have now “taken on a life of their own.” Unlike the float figures at the Gion Festival in Kyoto or other similar events, those in the Sawara Grand Festival are not treated as objects of worship, nor are they considered to have any power to grant blessings, despite the fact that

28 29

From 1942 to the summer festival of 1945, festivals were not carried out due to intensification of the war. There are somewhat special circumstances in Kamijuku 上宿 ward, where the Minamoto no Yoshitsune figure is used. Originally, the float in Kamijuku did not feature a figure, but was decorated with numerous paper flowers and mandō 万燈 or 万灯, wood-framed lanterns covered with paper. Even after most other wards started to feature professionally made figures on their floats, Kamijuku was the only ward in which residents continued to display their own handmade decorations. However, because of damage to the float incurred during the 1958 festival, Kamijuku stopped participating altogether for twenty years. When they constructed a new float in 1978, there was momentum for them to feature a figure like the other floats, and so the figure of Minamoto no Yoshitsune was made in 1980. Because of these particular circumstances, then, this figure was made much later than those in the other wards; indeed, Kamijuku is the only ward to have a figure made after the end of World War II.

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they include motifs of gods.30 I have never encountered an informant in Sawara who treated the figures as deities or expressed any desire to receive blessings from them. Ultimately, the figures in Sawara are nothing more than decorations adorning the festival floats. Due to the aforementioned treatment of the figures as fine art, however, the people of Sawara have formed a fetish-like attachment to these objects. Some even say that they are “moved to tears” at the sight of these figures that can only be seen for three days during the entire year. Others, feeling that three days is not enough, decorate their homes with miniature models of the figures, anywhere from one-tenth to one-twentieth in scale. The producers of the original figures and the people of old Sawara who ordered them certainly never anticipated for them to function this way. In a sense, the figures have broken from their original intended purpose and now “enchant” the people of Sawara (Gell 1998). 5.2 Those Who Do Not Understand the Myths Interestingly, many of the people in Sawara, despite being extremely attached to the figures from their wards, are not especially familiar with the stories or the characters behind them. Few people have read the myths, even when translated into modern Japanese; they generally have no interest even in the episodes that feature the gods and emperors that adorn the floats from their own wards. It is the same in wards with military generals as the subject matter, where there is little interest in the generals’ historical accomplishments. During the period when the figures were made, from the end of the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century, both Japanese mythology and the history of the formation of the empire were familiar to the common people. However, after the war, most Japanese no longer felt a sense of closeness with these characters. In Sawara, rather than choosing to pay attention to the themes of the figures and seek detailed knowledge, people demonstrate their attachment in a different form. They offer narratives that have little to do with episodes from Japanese mythology or history, saying for example, “we cherish the figure of the goddess on our ward’s float because she has a gentle, peaceful face,” or “our ward’s float carries a god of battle, so we always maintain our fighting spirit.” It is completely forgotten that, according to the history textbooks of the first half of the twentieth century, these figures were the emperors’ ancestors or performed feats in service of the emperors. Instead, people express their attraction to the characters as “cool,” “beautiful,” or “cute.”

30

Cf. Porcu’s chapter on Gion Matsuri in this volume.

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figure 2.5 Fan produced by the ward Photograph by author

The characters appeal to the locals much like mascots in team sports. The people of a ward may create sets of matching hand towels or fans, for instance, depicting images of the characters from their floats (Figure 2.5). In this way, people “bleach” the traditional content from these mythological figures, turning them into symbols. A similar sort of disconnect can be found when we examine the complex relationship of religion to the festival performance. As mentioned earlier, the presence of priests at the two shrines is rather sparse. Their absence at the Sawara Grand Festival is especially noteworthy; they are essentially not involved with the floats which, from the perspective of shrine rituals, are peripheral. Historically, the presence of the float figures began as a sort of side show (called tsuke matsuri 付け祭り) to liven up the mikoshi procession (Chibaken Sawara-shi Kyōiku Iinkai 2001), but gradually the float figures eclipsed the mikoshi procession altogether. Now, the relationship between the floats and the

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mikoshi is the opposite of what it once was: the parading of mikoshi is now relegated to one corner of the festival activity. In the views of the priests I interviewed, however, even now the rituals and parading of the mikoshi that take place at the main shrine are the core of the festival, and the floats—no matter how extravagant they appear—are peripheral. On the other hand, from the viewpoint of the local people, the floats are unquestionably the heart of the festival. For the most part, they simply are not concerned with the religious meanings of the festival. While Yasaka Shrine and Suwa Shrine say the “official” meaning of the festival is to ward off disease and pray for a good harvest of the five grains, almost none of the residents have this in mind as they participate. And this situation is not something that has only recently occurred; for most, the gods and loyal retainers that sit atop the floats are simply unrelated to the religious meaning of the festival itself. Ultimately, we might say that the religious “bleaching” of the figures as described in this paper emerges from the disparity between the viewpoint of the priests and the festival audience.

6

Conclusion

In this paper, I have analyzed the figures that feature as decorations in the event known as Sawara Grand Festival that takes place every year in a country town. First, by examining the production of the figures from a historical point of view, it becomes clear that even in this “rustic” festival in this rural town, militarism and national ideology exerted a profound influence from the end of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. Moreover, the choice of subjects was not forced by the government or by any other outside party, but rather was decided voluntarily in line with the popular trends of the time. In addition to such superficial conclusions, I engaged in further analysis regarding what occurred after the figures were no longer being made anew. I found that after the floats left the hands of their producers and the people who ordered them, they took on a life of their own. The figures attract people now in a different way than they did in the beginning. Through this process, the meaning of the figures as characters from mythology is attenuated, and it is as something quite different that the figures come to charm the people of the individual wards and of Sawara as a whole.　 Having made this point, however, I am careful to note that I am not arguing that the Sawara Grand Festival or its participants are entirely disconnected from militaristic or nationalistic influence. It is not enough to say that what

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were once symbols of militarism and nationalism have now been superficially stripped of these associations so that they charm people as “cool” or “cute.” This phenomenon itself embodies a kind of danger. There is no doubt that one aspect of the educational efforts of pre-war militarism and nationalism was to foster the worship of the emperor, his ancestors, and loyal retainers through inspiring personal familiarity and affection. And while the attachment the people of Sawara feel to the festival floats today cannot be described as an overt manifestation of militarism or nationalism, it would be dangerous to say that it is completely unconnected. Rather, the danger of these ideologies lies in the possibility that they can be so readily consumed in this bleached form.

Acknowledgments Throughout the writing of this essay, I received pertinent advice from the volume editors, Michael Dylan Foster and Elisabetta Porcu. Additionally, the comments of the anonymous external reviewers helped me productively clarify my argument. Finally, I am grateful to Jude Pultz for translating the essay, with all its elaborate proper names and local terminology, into very accessible English. I want to take this opportunity to express my thanks to them all. This chapter was translated by Jude Pultz

References Abrahams, Roger D. 1993. “Phantoms of Romantic Nationalism in Folkloristics.” Journal of American Folklore 106: 3–37. Appadurai, Arjun. 1986. “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value.” In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3–63. Bendix, Regina F. 2012. “From Volkskunde to the ‘Field of Many Names’: Folklore Studies in German-Speaking Europe Since 1945.” In A Companion to Folklore, eds. Regina F. Bendix and Galit Hasan-Rokem, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 364–390. Chiba-ken Sawara-shi Kyōiku Iinkai 千葉県佐原市教育委員会. 2001. Sawara dashi matsuri chōsa hōkokusho 佐原山車祭調査報告書. Sawara: Kyōiku Iinkai. Fukuhara, Toshio 福原敏男 and Sasahara Ryōji 笹原亮二 (eds). 2014. Tsukurimono no bunka shi: Rekishi, minzoku, tayōsei 造り物の文化史—歴史・民俗・多様性. Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan.

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Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Glassie, Henry. 1999. Material Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Henare, Amiria, Martin Holbraad and Sari Wastell. 2007. “Introduction: Thinking through Things.” In Thinking Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically, eds. Amiria Henare, Martin Holbraad and Sari Wastell, New York: Routledge, 1–31. Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger (eds). 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ikeda, Yasaburō 池田弥三郎. 1978. Nihon minzoku bunka taikei 2: Orikuchi Shinobu 日本 民俗文化大系2　折口信夫. Tokyo: Kōdansha. Itō, Hisayuki 伊藤久之. 2000. “Dashi” 山車. In Nihon minzoku daijiten ge 日本民俗大辞 典下, eds. Fukuta Ajio 福田アジオ, Shintani Takanori 新谷尚紀, Yukawa Yōji 湯川洋 司, Kanda Yoriko 神田より子, Nakagomi Mutsuko 中込睦子, Watanabe Yoshio 渡邊 欣雄, Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 41–43. Iwamoto, Michiya 岩本通弥. 2008. “Kajika sareru shūzoku: Minryoku kan’yō undō ki ni okeru ‘kokumin girei’ no sōshutsu” 可視化される習俗—民力涵養運動期におけ る「国民儀礼」の創出. Kokuritsu rekishi minzoku hakubutsukan kenkyū hōkoku 国立 歴史民俗博物館研究報告 141: 265–322. Kamada, Yumiko 鎌田由美子. 2016. Jūtan ga musubi sekai: Kyōto Gion matsuri Indō jūtan e no michi 絨毯が結ぶ世界—京都祗園祭イン ド絨毯への道. Nagoya: Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai. Kinoshita, Naoyuki 木下直之. 1993. Bijutsu to iu misemono: Aburae chaya no jidai 美術 という見世物—油絵茶屋の時代. Tokyo: Heibonsha. Miller, Daniel, ed. 2005. Materiality. Durham: Duke University Press. Murakami, Shigeyoshi 村上重良. 1970. Kokka shintō 国家神道. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Murakami, Tadayoshi 村上忠喜. 2010. “Shinsei o obiru yamahoko: Kinsei Gion matsuri yamahoko no henka” 神性を帯びる山鉾—近世祇園祭山鉾の変化. In Nenjū gyōji ronsō: “Hinamikiji” kara shuppatsu 年中行事論叢—『日次紀事』 からの出発, ed. Hinamikiji Kenkyūkai 日次紀事研究会, Tokyo: Iwata Shoin, 289–312. Murakami, Tadayoshi 村上忠喜. 2018. “‘Yama, hoko, yatai gyōji’ no imiron/seijiron: Kyōto de kangaeru minzokugaku no katachi” 「山・鉾・屋台行事」 の意味論／政治 論—京都で考える民俗学のかたち. Nihon minzokugaku 日本民俗学 296: 59–65. Noyes, Dorothy. 2005. Fire in the Plaça: Catalan Festival Politics After Franco. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Orikuchi, Shinobu 折口信夫. 1965. “Higeko no hanashi” 髯籠の話. In Orikuchi Shinobu zenshū dainikan 折口信夫全集　第二巻, Tokyo: Chūōkōronsha, 182–211. Oring, Elliott. 2012. Just Folklore: Analysis, Interpretation, Critique. Los Angeles: Cantilever Press. Seimiya, Ryōzō 清宮良造. 2003. Sawara no taisai dashi matsuri 佐原の大祭山車祭り. Sawara: NPO Machi Okoshi Sawara no Taisai Shinkō Kyōkai NPO.

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Shimazono, Susumu 島薗進. 2017. Kokka shintō to nihonjin 国家神道と日本人. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Tsukahara, Shinji 塚原伸治. 2008. “Machi ni okeru ‘uru-kau’ kankei: Akinai o meguru futatsu no en” マチにおける「売る—買う」関係—商いをめぐる二つの縁. Nihon minzokugaku 日本民俗学 254: 57–85. Tsukahara, Shinji 塚原伸治. 2011. “Gōshō no suitai to nenrei soshiki no seiritsu: Kin gendai ni okeru danna no dōtai o megutte” 豪商の衰退と年齢組織の成立—近現代 におけるダンナの動態をめぐって. Shi sakai 史境 62: 54–71. Tsukahara, Shinji 塚原伸治. 2014. Shinise no dentō to “kindai”: Kagyō keiei no esunogurafī 老舗の伝統と〈近代〉—家業経営のエスノグラフィー. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. Ueki, Yukinobu 植木行宣. 2001. Yama, hoko, yatai no matsuri: Fūryū no kaika 山・鉾・屋 台の祭り—風流の開花. Tokyo: Hakusuisha. Ueki, Yukinobu 植木行宣 and Fukuhara Toshio 福原敏男. 2016. Yama, hoko, yatai gyōji: Matsuri o kazaru minzoku zōkei 山・鉾・屋台行事—祭りを飾る民俗造形. Tokyo: Iwata Shoin. Yamaji, Kōzō 山路興造. 1986. “Gion gōryōe no geinō: Bachō warabe, kuze maiguruma, kakko chigo” 祗園御霊会の芸能—馬長童・久世舞車・鞨鼓稚児. Geinōshi kenkyū 芸 能史研究 94: 15–29. Yanagita, Kunio 柳田國男. 1915. “Hashira matsu kō” 柱松考. Kyōdo kenkyū 郷土研究 3(1): 1–10. Yasumaru, Yoshio 安丸良夫. 1979. Kamigami no Meiji ishin: Shinbutsu bunri to haibutsu kishaku 神々の明治維新—神仏分離と廃仏毀釈. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Yoshida, Yukako 吉田ゆか子. 2016. Baritō kamen buyō geki no jinruigaku: Hito to mono no orinasu geinō バリ島仮面舞踊劇の人類学—人とモノの織りなす芸能. Tokyo: Fūkyōsha.

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chapter 3

Gion Matsuri in Kyoto A Multilayered Religious Phenomenon Elisabetta Porcu University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa [email protected]

Abstract In this chapter, I analyze Gion Matsuri in Kyoto as a multilayered phenomenon, and explore its religious aspects in context, with particular attention to interactions between actors, such as its organizing bodies, residents of the neighborhoods that sponsor the yama and hoko floats, the local government, and Yasaka Shrine (Yasaka Jinja 八坂神社). Based on my extended fieldwork, I focus on the festival’s most recent transformations (esp. the reinstatement of ato matsuri in 2014) and the negotiation of religious and secular boundaries, both within and without the festival’s physical spaces. I also reflect on Gion Matsuri as a “contested zone,” an idea that contributes to opening up new perspectives for the study of this and other festivals. More broadly, my analysis aims to shed light not only on the multidimensional character of Gion Matsuri, but also on the interplay of religion with different arenas of contemporary society, including local communities and government, tourism, the economy, and cultural policies.

Keywords Gion Festival – Kyoto – Shintō rituals – Yasaka Shrine – reinstatement of ato matsuri – religious and secular boundaries

1

Introduction

17 July 2014. The day started early in our downtown Kyoto neighborhood and we knew it was going to be very hot and humid. Luckily it was not raining, but we were anticipating it would be over 35 degrees Celsius for the Gion Matsuri yamahoko junkō 祗園祭山鉾巡行, the procession of floats considered the cli-

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max of Gion festival.1 We gathered around 6:00am for final preparations. At 8:30am the floats needed to be in position on Shijō Street in the order decided on 2 July during the kujitori shiki くじ取式 (drawing lots ceremony). The first float is always the Naginata Hoko 長刀鉾. Every year at 9:00am at the intersection of Shijō and Fuyachō streets, the chigo 稚児, or sacred boy on the float, performs the ceremonial cutting of the sacred rope (shimenawa kiri 注連縄切 り), which officially starts the procession. We waited for the completion of this ritual and then slowly started moving. The year 2014 was crucial for Gion Matsuri due to the restoration of the Ōfune Hoko 大船鉾 after 150 years and, above all, the reinstatement of the ato matsuri 後祭 on 24 July after forty-nine years. Some members of the Gion Matsuri Yamahoko Rengōkai 祗園祭山鉾連合会 (Association for the Gion Festival Yamahoko) had worked very hard over the previous years to make it happen.2 Headlines in Japanese newspapers emphasized this “historical” event: “The renewed beauty of the first and second procession after 49 years”; “Tomorrow, the ato matsuri after 49 years and the Ōfune Hoko after 150 years”; and “The reinstatement of the ato matsuri procession on Sanjō Street.” The complementarity of the relationship of the deities with the “artistic, aesthetic and entertaining part” ( furyū) of the Yamahoko procession is expressed in Buddhist terms: “The deities and the Yamahoko parade are ‘neither identical nor separate’ from one another: The procession of Gion ato matsuri after 49 years.”3 The emphasis on a return to the ‘original’ form of the festival (pre-1966) was evident in these articles and the interviews I made, as I will analyze later in the chapter. I had started working on Gion Matsuri years before (see Porcu 2012), but my research stay at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto (Nichibunken) in 2013–2014 was dedicated exclusively to this festival. Being able to undertake one year of research and intense fieldwork exactly during this crucial year in the history of contemporary Gion Matsuri was an extraordinary opportunity, and I experienced both the expectations and tensions within

1 Yamahoko is also read Yamaboko and hoko also boko (e.g., Naginata Boko). Yama and hoko, or “floats and halberds,” are the two types of floats featured in the festival. 2 The Gion Matsuri Yamahoko Rengōkai (hereafter: Yamahoko Rengōkai) is the umbrella organization under which the 34 Preservation Associations (hozonkai) related to the Gion festival float procession operate. 3 The Japanese titles read: “49 nen buri saki ato aratana bi” 49年ぶり前後新たな美 (Kyoto shinbun, 17 July 2014); “Asu ato matsuri 49 nen buri ni / Ōfune hoko 150 nen buri” あす後 祭49年ぶり巡行・大船鉾150年ぶり (Kyoto shinbun, 23 July 2014); “Ato matsuri sanjō dōri junkō fukkatsu” 後祭三条通巡行復活 (Kyoto shinbun, 23 July 2014); “Kami to yamahoko furyū wa fusoku furi: Gion matsuri no ato matsuri, 49 nen buri ni junkō” 神と山鉾風流は不 即不離–祗園祭の後祭、49年ぶりに巡行 (Chūgai nippō, 18 June 2014: 1).

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figure 3.1 Saki matsuri. Floats start moving (17 July 2014) Photo by Author

organizations and among the people involved in the festival that year. The ato matsuri topic drew a great deal of attention in the neighborhoods belonging to the festival ( yamahoko-chō), among their residents, the media, Kyoto administrators, as well as visitors. This chapter provides some of my findings during that year and a period of follow-up fieldwork in July 2018.4 I explore Gion Matsuri as a multilayered phenomenon, rather than a single festival, and analyze its religious aspects in context; that is, through the interactions with different actors, such as its organizing bodies, the yamahoko-chō participants, the local government, and Yasaka Shrine (Yasaka Jinja 八坂神社). In particular, I focus on the festival’s recent transformations; the negotiation of religious and secular boundaries, both in relation to physical ritual spaces (such as the temporary shrine) and ideas (such as the constitutionally sanctioned separation of religion and the state). I also reflect on the idea of Gion Matsuri as a “contested zone” to contribute

4 This chapter is part of my ongoing book project on the Gion festival in contemporary perspective.

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figure 3.2 Ato matsuri. Ōfune Hoko (24 July 2014) Photo by Author

new perspectives for the study of this and other festivals. Through examining these different levels and intermingling aspects, my analysis aims to shed light not only on the multidimensional character of Gion Matsuri, but also more broadly on the interplay of religion with different arenas of contemporary society, including local communities and government, tourism, the economy, and cultural policies.5

5 Some of these aspects have been analyzed in previous ethnographic works on Gion Matsuri (in English, see Roemer 2006, 2007, 2010; Brumann 2012; in Japanese, Yoneyama 1974, 1986; Yagi 2002), and my chapter shares some of their findings. Yet, it differs from them through deepening and broadening the analysis of religious-secular negotiations by focusing on their boundaries, occurring at both sacred and secular geographies (o-tabisho; governmental buildings), and non physical areas where these boundaries blur, such as the constitutional separation of religion and the state—not a focus of previous works. In addition, I explore the role of the local government and its officials in the festival’s rituals within the frame of secularization issues and the reaffirmation of Shintō authority within secular arenas (such as in the case of the kujitori shiki). The religious/secular divide, multilayering, and contestation are analyzed here not only at the individual level of the participants and their organizations (nicely explored by Roemer and Brumann), but also through their implications at a broader

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In what follows, I begin with a brief historical overview of Gion Matsuri in connection to its religious aspects, which will be followed by a section on the crucial “return” of 2014 and the separation of the two float processions. Against the backdrop of my field research during that year, I analyze the dynamics at the local level within the yamahoko neighborhoods and their relation with Yasaka Shrine as well as several facets of the religious/secular divide (or overlap), which is prominent in this festival. In the remainder of this chapter I explore aspects related to tourism and communal self-awareness in the neighborhoods sponsoring the float procession, and conclude with some considerations on the Gion festival as a cross-section of society, which mirrors (more or less pronounced) clashing interests and problematic territories within Japan today.

2

The Transformation of Gion Matsuri into a Shintō Festival

Gion Matsuri, one of the three great festivals (sandai 三大) in Japan, takes place during the whole month of July in Kyoto. It is linked to Yasaka Shrine, which presents it as a symbol of the culture of Kyoto and a ritual that has incorporated, during its long history, a variety of religious elements other than Shintō (Buddhism, mikkyō 密教, Daoism, and even Christianity), yet keeping the kami at its core (Yasaka Jinja 2007).6 The kami in this case are Susanoo no mikoto 素戔嗚神社, his consort Kushi inada hime no mikoto 櫛稲田姫命, and their offspring, Yahashira no mikogami 八柱の御子神. Yet, although the Gion festival as it is performed today is merely known as a Shintō festival, and promoted as such, its origin and development reveal a much more varied history.7 It dates back to the Heian period (794–1185) when the population of the capital increased disproportionately and epidemics and diseases spread (McMullin 1988: 287–288). The festival originated as a goryō-e 御霊会 ritual to placate departed spirits (goryō) and disease-divinities (ekijin 疫神) that traditionally caused calamities and disease through a curse on

meta level related to the role of religion in the public sphere, problematic gendered territories and the creation of hegemonic forms of knowledge. 6 See also Mori (2014: 1); and Gion Matsuri Yamahoko Rengōkai (2014a) that describes it as the “Yasaka Shrine ritual to dispel calamities and epidemics” (Gion matsuri wa ekibyō taisan o kigan suru Yasaka jinja no shinji desu 祗園祭は疫病退散を祈願する八坂神社の神事で す). 7 This is the case of other festivals in Japan (see, for example, the chapters on Sannō Matsuri by John Breen and Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri by Andrea Giolai in this volume).

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the present world (see also McMullin 1988: 272; and Wakita 1999: 2–14).8 It particularly focused on the spirit of the bull-headed Gozū Tennō 牛頭天皇, a disease-divinity probably of Indian or Korean origin that was explicitly identified with Susanoo no mikoto in the Kamakura period (see McMullin 1988: 278; see also Teeuwen and Rambelli 2003: 27). The religious site of the ritual was the Gion-sha 祗園社, at the time a miyadera 宮寺, or a shrine under the administration of Buddhism—in this case, the Enryakuji 延暦寺 complex belonging to Tendai 天台 Buddhism—where the main object of devotion was a kami.9 Despite its combination of Shintō, Buddhist, folk and Daoist practices, following the forced separation of Buddhism and Shintō (shinbutsu bunri 神仏分離) in the Meiji period (1868–1912), the Gion-sha was transformed into a Shintō shrine renamed Yasaka Jinja, and the festival converted into a Shintō festival.10 Since their inception, goryō rituals (including the Gion festival) integrated religious events with an entertaining phase that included music and dance, horse races and archery (McMullin 1988: 290). Moreover, political meaning was attached to such rituals; in the case of goryō-e, the ritual served the ruling elites of the Heian period as a means of control of the population and thus a way to avoid potential threats to their power and well-being (McMullin 1988: 290, 293). The festival as a political stage was not only limited to its premodern history. In far more recent times, for example, it served to support the war efforts. For instance, a slogan displayed on the Niwatori Hoko 鶏鉾 during the 1942 edition 8

9 10

While I am revising my paper, the Covid-19 (coronavirus) pandemic is afflicting the world and constraining us under an unprecedented global lockdown. Under such circumstances, the role of the Gion ritual to dispel calamities was reiterated on 8 April 2020 by the chief priest of Yasaka Jinja when he performed a ritual at the Mata Tabisha 又旅社 on Sanjō street to pray for a prompt end to the pandemic (Mata tabi-sha wa Gion goryōe yukari no ji. Sumiyaka ni ekibyō ga shūsoku suru koto o kinen shita 又 旅社は祗園御霊会ゆかりの地。速やかに疫病が終息することを祈念した), as it was done for cholera (1877) and the Spanish flu (1918). Two further rituals on 20 May (Yasaka Shrine) and 14 June (Shinsen’en 神泉苑) are planned by the shrine in this regard (Ōmura 2020). The Yamahoko Rengōkai, in announcing the decision to cancel the Yamahoko junkō and related events this year due to the pandemic, points to the importance of the Gion festival in dispelling calamities and explains that while they would like to carry out the rituals (shinji) in hopes of dispersing the pandemic, these will not be open to the public (http://www.gionmatsuri.or.jp/uploads/pdf/令和２年度祗園祭山鉾行事につき まして.pdf accessed 2 May 2020). With regard to the emphasis on religious motifs in festivals after the 2011 disaster, see also Kimura (2016) and Porcu (2012). Cf. Teeuwen and Rambelli (2003: 26). For an analysis of the Enryakuji-Kōfukuji conflict over the Gion complex in the Heian period, see McMullin (1987). The focal deity was shifted from Gozū Tennō (of Buddhism-related origins) to Susanoo no mikoto. In 1877, the dates of the shinkōsai and kankōsai were changed too, from 7 June to 17 July (shinkōsai) and from 14 June to 24 July (kankōsai) (see Yagi 2015: 35).

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of the festival expresses a prayer for Japan’s military success: Ukei kōgun bu’un chōkyū 祈皇軍武運長久 (“We pray for the imperial army and eternal good luck in battle.” Kyōtoshi Bunkazai Bukkusu Dai 25 Shū 2011: 48). The political and social significance of festivals has also been pointed out, among others, by Scott Schnell in a different context when he explores matsuri as an opportunity to manifest “social discontent or opposition” and the connection between their performance and the sociopolitical order (Schnell 1999: 15– 16).11 Following this trajectory and considering its long history and complexity, I analyze Gion Matsuri as a “contested zone,” fragmented into different organizing bodies, communities, businesses, stakeholders, and neighborhood nuclei under the umbrella of a single matsuri. In other words, the matsuri becomes “a space of competing realities embedded in power relations” (Moon 2010: 38) and influenced by socioeconomic changes. Matsuri through which deities are summoned and treated as honored guests include entertaining elements in order to appeal to and appease them.12 Since the Muromachi period (1336–1568), the mikoshi togyo 神輿渡御 (procession of portable shrines) of the Gion festival constituted its “religious” part, while the Yamahoko junkō, which started in the fourteenth century, belonged to its furyū, or artistic, aesthetic and entertaining part, which acquired its own independent status centered on the merchant class in Kyoto (chōshū 町衆) from this period onwards (Yagi 2015: 30–31). This kind of “disjunction” is also perceived today and is one of the reasons why Gion Matsuri has been considered not a “single,” homogeneous festival, but rather the sum of different “festivals” (sai 祭) and organizing groups (see Yoneyama 1986: 21–22). I should add, however, that the Yamahoko junkō is not only an aesthetic-related performance, but is also meant to purify and prepare the path for the mikoshi to Yasaka Shrine, during the parade of shinkōsai 神幸祭 and kankōsai 還幸祭 on 17 and 24 July respectively (see also Yasaka Jinja 2007: 168). In this regard, it is no coincidence that members of the floats related to the Yamahoko junkō receive a purification ritual during the procession, performed by a Shintō priest on Shijō street on their path to the Yasaka Shrine.13 During its more than 1,000-year history the festival has undergone various transformations and its performance was also interrupted twice due to wars: in the medieval period at the time of the Ōnin war (1467–1477) until 1500; and during the last years of World War II and soon afterwards (1943–1947). This year, 11 12 13

See also Ashkenazi (1993); Bestor (1989); and Tsukahara (in this volume). For an explanation of the term matsuri in English, see for example Schnell (1999: 14–15); Hardacre (2017: 477–478). See also the discussion on the o-tabisho below.

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2020, the Yamahoko junkō, the mikoshi parade and other events have been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, while Yasaka Shrine rituals take place in the presence of very few people.14 Among the most conspicuous modifications to the festival is the change of dates from June to July of the mikoshi parades in the Meiji period; those related to the location of the o-tabisho 御旅 所, or temporary shrine; the route of the Yamahoko procession and the unification of the two parades in 1966; and, more recently, the reintroduction of the second float parade in 2014.15

3

The 2014 Reinstatement of Ato matsuri

The float procession of Gion Matsuri is organized by 33 neighborhoods linked to Yasaka Shrine within the frame of the ujiko-ujigami 氏子氏神 system, where the ujigami represents a community deity and the ujiko the people under its protection.16 Apart from the connection to Yasaka Shrine, each neighborhood has its own tutelary deities (go-shintai 御神体) and belongs to what is known as the yamahoko-chō 山鉾町 area. This area is in a highly commercialized business district located between Aneyakōji and Matsubara streets on the north and south and Higashinotōin and Aburanokōji streets on the east and west. In 2014, we saw a return to the two-procession pattern, on 17 and 24 July, which had characterized the Gion festival until 1966, when they were merged to create a single parade with all the floats participating in it. From the conversations I had with local people, leaders of the yamahoko neighborhoods, and journalists, there seemed to be two main reasons for the reinstatement of the ato matsuri: 1) tourism, with the city of Kyoto aiming at increasing the number of visitors 14

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Personal email communication with the chairman of a hozonkai (1 May 2020). See also the official announcement of the Yamahoko Rengōkai at http://www.gionmatsuri.or.jp/ news/110 (Accessed 2 May 2020); and an NHK article at https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/ html/20200420/k10012396851000.html (accessed 30 April 2020). With regard to the change of route, until 1955 that of the saki matsuri was as follows: Shijō-Karasuma—Shijō-Teramachi—Teramachi-Matsubara—Matsubara-Higashinotōin; and the Ato matsuri: Sanjō-Karasuma—Sanjō-Teramachi—Shijō-Teramachi—Shijō-Nishinotōin. In 1956 the saki matsuri changed again: Shijō-Karasuma—Shijō-Teramachi— Teramachi-Oike—Oike-Karasuma; and in 1961 it took the form it has today: ShijōKarasuma—Shijō-Kawaramachi—Oike-Kawaramachi—Oike-Karasuma (Oike-Shinmachi since 2014). The route of the ato matsuri since 2014 has been: Oike-Karasuma—OikeKawaramachi—Shijō-Kawaramachi—Shijō-Karasuma. See Nakamaki (2003: 40); and Kawashima (2010: 10–13). A 34th float, Taka Yama 鷹山, is currently under restoration with the aim to participate in the 2022 procession (see also http://www.gionmatsuri.or.jp/yamahoko/takayama.html accessed 3 July 2020).

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by offering a second procession; and 2) a return to its “original” form. Some members of the yamahoko-chō who were in favor of this new “old” pattern also expressed their wish to watch the parade as spectators (cf. also Brumann 2012: 174). One of the staunchest advocates for the return to a two-procession pattern after almost five decades, was the then chairman of the Yamahoko Rengōkai, Yoshida Kōjirō 吉田孝次郎, a member of the Kita Kannon Yama 北観音山. On several occasions, he emphasized the link between the float procession, the kami of Yasaka Jinja, the mikoshi togyo and the role of the furyū for the kami and their importance for the festival: “The furyū of the Yamahoko procession is meaningful exactly because of the existence of the kami. The kami and our procession of floats are inextricably linked” (Yamahoko junkō furyū wa, kami no sonzai ga atta koso, imi ga aru. Kami to watashi tachi no furyū wa fusoku furina mono 山鉾巡行風流は、神の存在があったこそ、意味がある。神と私たち の風流は不即不離なもの. Chūgai nippō 6 June 2014: 1). In this regard, Yoshida confirmed the disappointment of Yasaka Shrine five decades earlier when the two processions were integrated, and its satisfaction now that they have been restored to their proper function (gyōji 行事) through the efforts of the Yamahoko Rengōkai (personal communication, 4 August 2014). Following the official stance of this Association, the idea of the return to the “original” Shintō ritual (shinji 神事) emerged from my interviews with several other chairmen of preservation associations and representatives of the yamahoko-chō. The chief priest of Yasaka Shrine also welcomed the reinstatement of ato matsuri as a return to the “original form” of the festival (honrai no sugata 本来の姿, Mori 2014: 1). A Q&A pamphlet distributed by the Yamahoko Rengōkai in 2014 explains the reasons for the reinstatement of the ato matsuri, emphasizes its importance for the Yasaka Shrine kankōsai, and stresses the need for transmitting the “correct” ritual to future generations (kōsei ni tadashiku tsutaete iku tame desu 後世に正しく伝えていくためです, Gion Matsuri Yamahoko Rengōkai 2014a). In addition, the mayor of Kyoto, Kadokawa Daisaku 門川大作, addressed Kyotoites from the pages of the Kyōto shimin shinbun, pointing out that the reunification of the Yamahoko junkō—thus the return to its “original form”—was crucial. In this context, the mayor mentions its UNESCO mukei bunka isan 無形文化遺産 (Intangible Cultural Heritage) status and suggested that the new pattern would benefit tourists, traditional arts, and business alike.17 17

“Shichi gatsu nijūyokka, Gion matsuri ‘ato matsuri’ ga fukkō” 7月24日、 祗園祭 「後祭」 が復興 (1 July 2014). See also his official website http://www.kyoto‑daisakusen.jp where at the time of writing, out of 9 pictures on the rotating banner, two are related to Gion

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In this regard, it is worth mentioning that in one of the yamahoko-chō, where three new high-rise condominium buildings (manshon) were built about a decade earlier, Gion Matsuri was considered a good selling point (seirusu pointo セイルスポイン ト), as living in these apartments would, in the words of one of the neighborhood’s leading figures, enable residents “to participate in a festival with a 1000 year history!” (sen nen no rekishi ga aru kono matsuri ni sanka dekimasuyo! 1000年の歴史があるこの祭りに参加できますよ！, personal communication Y-san, 27 April 2014).18 According to him, this would appeal to people interested in festivals, such as the hozonkai chairman of this float, who in fact purchased his apartment in the neighborhood also because of his own interest in the matsuri. Numerous residents of this neighborhood actively participate in the Gion festival, as the chairman and another member of the preservation association stressed; they also proudly compared such positive involvement to the problematic lack of interest showed by tenants living in other neighborhoods (personal communication, 27 April 2014).19 Indeed, I was able to experience this difference myself. Among other activities, on a Saturday in June during the FIFA world cup match of Japan against Cote d’Ivoire, I participated in the preparation of chimaki 粽 (charms of bamboo leaves against calamities and epidemics) in this neighborhood, which seemed characterized by a strong sense of community (kyōdōtai 共同体) (Figure 3.3). The atmosphere was jovial and enthusiastic, and the number of people involved considerably higher than in the neighborhood where I was living (which is also less populated), and where I conducted most of my fieldwork, as I will discuss in the following section.

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Matsuri (kuji aratame and mikoshi togyo), while a third one seems clearly that of the kujitori shiki (although it is a partial picture where only the mayor is visible). The Gion festival occupies a prominent position in the image of Kyoto that the mayor and his entourage would like to transmit to the outside world through this website (accessed 9 March 2020). To preserve interviewees’ anonymity, all initials have been changed. I include names for public figures and those who have agreed to disclose their names. The term “tenants” is appropriate here, as these residents were referring in particular to the difference between bunjō manshon (owner-occupied) and chintai manshon (rental) condominiums.

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figure 3.3 Chimaki preparation (15 June 2014) Photo by Author

4

In the Field: One Year Living in a Gion Matsuri Neighborhood20

Soon after I arrived in Kyoto in September 2013 to start my research at Nichibunken, I looked for an apartment in the yamahoko area. After several attempts, I was lucky enough to find one in a yama neighborhood near Shijō-Muromachi, a very central area. This neighborhood is comprised mainly of businesses and shops, a few restaurants, and very few residential buildings (at the time of my follow-up fieldwork in 2018, a new upscale manshon had been built). Soon after moving into the flat, I enquired about the chōnaikai (neighborhood association) and after some consultations among its members, I was admitted to it.21 I was ‘officially’ introduced to the other chōnaikai members at the New Year’s

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Given the limitations of space, the following section only offers a brief account of my experience during that year. A more detailed exploration constitutes part of my ongoing monograph on this festival. This process was different from our previous experience in another neighborhood in downtown Kyoto, where joining the chōnaikai was a prerequisite for renting the apartment (see Porcu 2012).

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party (shinnenkai) and started participating in the activities for the preparation of the festival soon thereafter. The first meeting of the preservation association (hozonkai) took place in January after the Atagokō 愛宕講 ritual at the neighborhood assembly house (chōie 町家), where the float is preserved.22 As part of the Gion Matsuri area, my neighborhood belonged to the Yasaka Shrine ujiko. Despite this affiliation, through interviewing members of the various hozonkai and local residents, and through participating in the events related to the festival, I observed a sort of ‘disjunction’ with the shrine. In many of the yamahoko-chō, the connection between shrine and neighborhood occurs only during the period of the festival and is limited to rituals related to it, such as the kippu iri 吉符入り (opening ceremony, see Figure 3.4) and the purifications rituals, or kiyo harai 清祓, which take place at the beginning of July. Residents and members participating in the float procession do not usually watch other rituals, such as the mikoshi procession, or rituals at Yasaka Shrine, such as the mitama utsushi 御霊遷し when the kami are transferred from the main shrine (honden 本殿) to the mikoshi. They are too busy within their neighborhoods, and their involvement is often limited to the float procession and its related activities. Moreover, there is hardly any collaboration among different float neighborhoods; although they are all under the umbrella of the Yamahoko Rengōkai, they operate rather independently. Yamahoko-chō are independent from each other, perform different rituals (or none at all) during the year and operate in different manners even within Gion Matsuri itself.23 In the neighborhood where I lived, a few rituals are performed during the year and some of them are unrelated to Yasaka Shrine. The Atagokō ritual, for example, takes place three times a year in January, May, and September. This is mostly for protection against fire but is held in relation to Gion Matsuri in May and September, before and after the festival.24 I took part in two of these gatherings, in January and May 2014. About twenty members of the neighborhood association were present at each of these events, which were held at the association’s assembly house. During the ritual, we received religious objects including sacred sake (miki 神酒), rice, and an amulet (mamori fuda 守り札)

22

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The floats are assembled and dismantled for a few days in July. Some are preserved within the chōie of each neighborhood, while others are stored at a site on Maruyama Park, near Yasaka Shrine. The chōie is also called machi-ie in my neighborhood (personal communication with the hozonkai chairman); as well as chōseki 町席, and chōkaisho 町会所 in other neighborhoods (see, for example, Koi Yama Henshū Iinkai 2006). See similar observations in Brumann (2012: Ch. 5). In May to pray for the success of the festival, and in September to show gratitude for its smooth completion.

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figure 3.4 Kippu iri ceremony in my neighborhood (2 July 2014) Photo by Author

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collected from Atago Shrine by the chōnaikai-chō and another male member.25 It was as if we had paid a ritual visit (sanpai 参拝) to the shrine without ever leaving the neighborhood. The chōnaikai-chō and the second member served sake and gave the offerings to the participants. We all stood and performed Shintō-like bowing and clapping of hands while one of the members recited a norito 祝詞 (Shintō prayer). While the January ritual was followed by the customary New Year’s party, after the ritual in May, about fifteen members went to Yasaka Shrine for the sendo mairi 千度参り. This is not related to the hozonkai or Gion Matsuri specifically, but the neighborhood participates in the sendo mairi as ujiko of Yasaka Shrine—with its costs, including those for the ritual within the shrine, covered by the chōnaikai fees (cf. Porcu 2012). Here, we collected the wooden fuda with the name of the neighborhood from the shrine and placed them in one corner outside the main hall, from which the eight-time circumambulation starts. We bowed in front and at the rear of the main hall, prayed for good health, and attended a purification ritual within the main shrine, which included a short kagura 神楽 dance performed by a miko 巫女 (shrine maiden). The chōnaikaichō made a tamagushi 玉串 (sakaki branch with strips of paper) offering, then we all stood and bow-clapped hands. The whole ritual within the shrine lasted about thirty minutes. Afterwards, we had lunch at a nearby restaurant, as is common on these occasions. My participation in the Atago-kō ritual was limited to the event within the circumscribed space of the neighborhood. The date of the May Atago-kō and sendo mairi was decided at a hozonkai meeting on 7 May 2014, attended by eight male participants. During that meeting, my request to take part in the ritual on the Atago mountain and accompany the two men who were in charge for that, made through the rijikaichō 理事会長 (chairman of the board of directors), was firmly denied. I was quite surprised by the language used on that occasion. Rather than the usual polite “muzukashii …” (it’s difficult …) or similar evasive language, much more direct words like “muri” (impossible), and “dekihin” (Kansai dialect for dekinai, “cannot”) were used by some members. This also mirrored the male-oriented organization and management of this and other Shintō-related festivals—with some hozonkai being more progressive and helpful than others.

25

Atago Shrine is located on Mt. Atago, in the northwest part of Kyoto. This shrine is linked to the deity known as Atago Daigongen 愛宕大権現, or Shōgun Jizō 勝軍地蔵, and it is the site of the well-known sennichi mairi 千日詣り pilgrimage that takes place on the night of 31 July for protection against fire (see Bouchy 1987: 255).

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Gion Matsuri is without doubt an otoko matsuri, a men’s festival. Women are assigned a backstage role and are not allowed to various sites/events. As a hozonkai chairman put it, “fundamentally women do not appear on the main stage” (kihontekini o-matsuri no omotebutai ni wa denai 基本的にお祭りの表舞 台には出ない, H-san, 27 April 2014). Women are involved in all preparatory activities (e.g., preparing chimaki and gohei; helping men and male children to wear the kamishimo),26 but their only “public” role is during the eves of the float procession ( yoiyama), when residents—independently of their gender— welcome visitors and sell the yama and hoko-related items in their neighborhood.27 Women’s roles, however, are seen as fundamental and one of the yama hozonkai members confirmed that the festival would not be possible without such “women’s power” ( josei no pawā ga nakute, matsuri ga yatte dekinai 女性 のパワーがなくて、祭りがやってできない. Y-san, 27 April 2014). It is hard backstage work, uragata no pawā 裏方のパワー that makes many things possible during the festival, as often happens in other fields in Japan. My analysis of the festival is thus informed by and conducted from the perspective of a (foreign) woman scholar operating within an overtly male environment. As such, I had to overcome some gender-related difficulties, including access to sites and people during my work on the field.28 Despite such obstacles, I succeeded in getting permission to attend a large number of meetings and events; in interviewing numerous representatives of the various hozonkai, as well as the Yamahoko Rengōkai; in participating in numerous activities and rituals, including those usually limited to a very small group of insiders; and lastly, in obtaining permission to accompany one of the floats during saki matsuri on 17 July 2014 as a member of the security staff (!). In this instance, however, I was asked to “disguise” my womanhood, tie up my hair, and avoid wearing makeup. I wore a cap, trousers and the happi coat with the crest and the name of the

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Gohei 御幣 is a sacred wand with strips of white paper used in Shintō ceremonies. In the case of Gion Matsuri, these strips are attached to the kamishimo, or the Edo-period formal attire of the warrior class consisting of a sleeveless, winglike vest with stiff shoulders (kataginu) and hakama trousers. The making of gohei was a women’s activity in my neighborhood and we received detailed instructions on how to do it. There are some young women among the hundreds of musicians (hayashikata), but they are very rare exceptions. For gender issues in a historical perspective see Wakita (1999); for women’s participation in another neighborhood and an account of a group of women musicians, see Brumann (2012: 194–202). In this regard see, for example, the observations by Christoph Brumann (2012: 8) during his fieldwork in Kyoto; Brumann did not experience similar gendered difficulties, as he himself pointed out. See also Michael Roemer (2010: 508 fn) who mentions his participation as a puller in the procession of 1995.

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float preservation association.29 Two other Japanese women (a researcher and a photographer) followed the saki procession alongside two other floats. The prohibition of women’s participation in the float procession is included among the detailed instructions of the Yamahoko Rengōkai manual distributed to the various hozonkai (Gion Matsuri Yamahoko Rengōkai 2014b: 193). The underlined sentence politely reads: Women are kindly requested to refrain from accompanying the procession ( josei no kata no zuijū wa go-enryo onegaimasu 女性の方の随従はご遠慮願います). This however, also depends on the hozonkai, and some members in my neighborhood seemed quite conservative and reluctant to allow my participation. I learned that permission was granted only the day prior to the procession. In case of refusal, I had a backup plan to follow another float. Part of the access I obtained on several occasions was clearly due to my affiliation with a renowned research center and the snowball effect of contacts through Japanese colleagues and friends. A few specific interventions were helpful, including a full-page interview in the Kyoto shinbun on my professional profile and research (17 April 2014), coupled with various open lectures I was invited to give in Kyoto during the month of July.30 To walk the full float procession is tiring. “Taihen!” (exhausting, hard, difficult), is one of the words used most frequently by the participants. It is arduous not in terms of kilometers covered (about 3km), but because of the heat, the long waiting pauses under the sun (or rain), wearing kamishimo and other costumes and walking in straw sandals or zōri. Moreover, some tasks are performed by specialized workers under strenuous circumstances. For example, the mantis on the Tōrō Yama 蟷螂山 is a mechanical doll (karakuri ningyō) controlled by a puppeteer who sits inside the narrow space of the noble’s carriage placed on the float. His task has been described by the members of the hozonkai as especially strenuous due to the very limited space and the high temperature reached inside the carriage during the long procession, with a small fan as his only source for alleviating the heat.31 Other specialized jobs considered particularly arduous are the pullers, the kurumakata 車方 who are responsible for controlling the direction of the floats, the yanekata 屋根方 who stand on the roof of floats in order to avoid damage (e.g., to electric wires), and the musicians who sit on the narrow space on top of high floats and play for hours.

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Happi are cotton jackets with wide sleeves, left open in the front. The appearance of an article in the Kyoto shinbun seems to have been useful also in Brumann’s fieldwork for his Tradition, Democracy and the Townscape of Kyoto (2012: 9), which contains a chapter on the Yamahoko junkō. See a similar description of the discomfort felt by the head puppeteer of a chigo doll on another float (Roemer 2010: 500).

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The procession on 17 July advances very slowly from Shijō Street towards Yasaka Shrine without actually reaching it, but turning at the intersection with Kawaramachi Street. Here—and at the other junctions on the route—the spectacular turning of the several ton-heavy hoko floats (tsujimawashi 辻回し) takes place. This technique consists of turning the floats, which have fixed axels, by placing bamboo slats on the street beneath their wooden wheels, pouring buckets of water over them to render them slippery, and pulling the float at 90° angles under the attentive, rhythmic direction of the ondotori 音頭取 people who stand on the front of the float.32 As a whole, the Yamahoko junkō is quite linear, but the tsujimawashi is certainly one of its highlights, together with the 360° turning of the smaller yama floats, which requires strength and coordination but less expertise. Among the other high points are the cutting of the sacred rope by the chigo on the Naginata Hoko, which starts the procession, and the kuji aratame くじ改め ceremony at the beginning of the route, when the mayor, dressed as a medieval magistrate (bugyō 奉行), verifies that the floats are placed in the correct order. During this ceremony, representatives of each float present the lots (kuji) they have drawn to the mayor in a complex, ritualized way, which involves a considerable amount of practice.33 In 2014, the whole procession lasted until approximately 1:30pm, at which time we returned to the neighborhood—welcomed with applause by the residents—and had lunch at a restaurant there.34 The float was dismantled in the chōie by specialized craftsmen and was preserved there until the next year’s festival.35 The float procession, the mikoshi parade, and all the other rituals during Gion Matsuri cannot be fully understood through a “dry” analysis. There is a full range of sensory inputs that a participant experiences and that inform and intermingle with the religious aspects of the festival: the intense heat and humidity of Kyoto in July; a great variety of smells, from street foods during the eve of the procession, to the dense smoke of the goma 護摩 rituals performed by the Yamabushi 山伏 (mountain ascetics) in very narrow streets in a summer afternoon (Figure 3.5); the incense during the ritual tea ceremony; the feeling of clothes clinging to the body with sweat while you walk for hours under the sun, or stand for hours to secure a good spot to observe a ritual, experiences

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Two people control and lead each float, but during tsujimawashi, four people are needed. I am grateful to the hozonkai chairman, Mr. Murabayashi, and members of the Tōrō Yama hozonkai, in particular Mr. Okabe, who invited me to assist at this rehearsal. For the full route and that of the 24 July, see footnote 15 above. Some help was also offered by the male members of the hozonkai, while on the next day (18 July) we gathered at the chōie to complete the task of putting away and preserving the parts of the ningyō and other items.

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figure 3.5 Goma ritual performed by the Yamabushi (23 July 2014) Photo by Author

mitigated by the comradeship among aficionados, researchers, and photographers; the Gion Matsuri sounds, especially the ever-present konchikichin music (Gion bayashi 祗園囃子) that resonates for the whole month of July (even longer if we include the rehearsals in the neighborhoods); the instructions given by the police through megaphones; the massive crowds of people; the festive and exciting atmosphere; the tension of those working to organize the festival smoothly and attract visitors in their neighborhoods (in competition with other neighborhoods, too). The organization of Gion Matsuri occupies a great deal of conceptual space within the sponsoring neighborhoods and among the numerous other parties involved. This is no doubt one of the areas that reflects the multidimensionality of the festival, and thus more detailed discussion is provided below.

5

Gion Matsuri and Its Organization at the Community Level

Neighborhood associations are fundamental to the organization of local festivals and have long been considered the only collectivity in a Japanese urban

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environment that still keeps its “traditional character as a territorially defined community” (Sonoda 1975: 135). In this regard, as one of my informants put it, the neighborhood remains “a village within the city.” The link with the ujigami shrine is clear from a series of activities organized within neighborhoods, and as I explore elsewhere (Porcu 2012), chōnaikai are very often sites of contestation with regard to the separation of state and religion (seikyō bunri 政教 分離) in Japan, often going against postwar legal restrictions of public bodies in religious practices. Thus, neighborhood associations provide excellent examples to observe negotiations of religious and secular spheres at the local level. In the case of the Gion festival, the chōnaikai and the associations for the preservation of the floats, hozonkai, are formally separated, but in practice, they are closely intermingled. As a matter of fact, they overlap to such an extent that I was told by various residents and members of the hozonkai that it is only “tatemae” (a public facade) that they are two different associations, and that people hardly make any distinction between these two bodies.36 Moreover, there are cases in which the president of both organizations is the same person, or the same people serve different roles in different years. For example, the then chōnaikai-chō of my neighborhood was at the same time a member of the board of directors (hozonkai riji), and the vice president was a member of the board of councilors (hyōgikai 評議会) of the hozonkai. Almost all of the hozonkai are Kōeki Zaidan Hōjin 公益財団法人, or Public Interest Incorporated Foundations, and they enjoy certain tax and other benefits as permitted by the Authorization Act, 2008 (see Piper 2012: 129 ff.; Ogawa 2011). The rest of the hozonkai are either applying or considering applying to get this status, with strong encouragement from the Yamahoko Rengōkai.37 Analyzing the Oshiogori festival in Tōhoku, Kimura Toshiaki has spoken of a “polyphonic” event that reflects “the voices of more agents or social conditions” (Kimura 2016: 230). Gion Matsuri can surely be considered in such terms too. Chōnaikai and hozonkai, together with other associations, including those related to the organization of the mikoshi parade, or mikoshi togyo, such as the Miyamoto gumi 宮本組 and Seisei kōsha 清々講社 (see also Yoneyama 1986: 11– 13), are fundamental within the overall management structure of Gion Matsuri.

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The hozonkai became formally independent from chōnaikai as the organizing bodies of the yamahoko procession after World War II, when troubles arose with regard to the authority and responsibility for the creation of the decorative altar within the assembly house (Ochi 2008: 6). Apart from the board of directors and the board of councilors, there are also internal auditors (kanji 監事).

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Yoneyama (1986: 21) considered it not as a “single” festival, but rather the sum of different festivals and organizing groups. This same perspective clearly emerged at the local level in my interviews with people belonging to different yamahoko-chō involved in the organization of the festival; it was also very evident in my participant observation in rituals and events, including hozonkai meetings. For example, the float procession is coordinated by the Yamahoko Rengōkai, but it is also carried out by the individual neighborhoods hosting the floats (cf. Yoneyama 1986: 21–22). These, in turn, are composed of both the hozonkai and the chōnaikai.38 Two other groups, the Miyamoto gumi and Seisei kōsha, related to the Yasaka Jinja, are the organizing bodies (shusai 主催) of the mikoshi parade and other Shintō rituals (shinji), including the mikoshi harai 神輿払 for the purification of the portable shrines on 10 and 28 July. Moreover, the Seisei kōsha, an ujiko institution (ujiko soshiki 氏子組織) created in the Meiji period (1875), is responsible for the organization of the kujitori shiki and kuji aratame (when the order of the floats is confirmed), which see the involvement of the city mayor. The carriers of the mikoshi belong to three other groups, each responsible for one (or group of) kami enshrined at Yasaka Jinja: the Sanwaka Shin’yokai 三若神輿会 (naka goza 中御座: Susanoo no mikoto), Shiwaka Shin’yokai 西若神輿会 (higashi goza 東 御座: Kushi ina dahime no mikoto), and Nishiki Shin’yokai 錦神輿会 (nishi goza 西御座: Yahashira no mikogami). In addition, there are the organizing bodies of art performances, and the tea ceremony schools for the ritual tea ceremony (kencha shiki 献茶式),39 to name just a few of the other entities involved in the production and performance of the matsuri. The festival’s intricate polyphonic and multilayered nature can be seen at the organizational level too.40 Such complexity is further enhanced when looking at the weak boundaries

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As mentioned earlier, the yamahoko-chō are independent units, and the organization of the hozonkai varies greatly: for example, some of them meet only a few times a year, just before the festival to organize it (e.g., Hashibenkei Yama), while others have meetings every month (nomikai) as a form of social activity (e.g., Yamabushi Yama) (personal communications 2014). Usually two Senke schools, Urasenke 裏千家 and Omotesenke 表千家, perform this ritual at Yasaka Shrine. In 2014 this was held by Omotesenke. Funding for each float association/festival comes from the state, the city and the prefecture of Kyoto, chōnaikai fees, and funding collected by the Seisei kōsha. As a general rule, each household and members of the chōnaikai are required to pay monthly/annual fees that are used for all chōnaikai activities. In the case of the neighborhoods within the Gion festival area, a portion of the fees paid by the residents to the chōnaikai is used for the festival, in which residents and people linked to the chōnai actively take part. I discuss activities at the community level and the chōnaikai in more detail in Porcu (2012).

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between religious and secular spheres, both within and without the festival’s physical spaces. It is to these that I now turn.

6

Negotiating Boundaries between the Religious and the Secular

Before the departure of mikoshi from outside the Yasaka Shrine in the afternoon of 17 July 2014, the mayor of Kyoto stood in front of the torii 鳥居 of Yasaka Jinja to deliver his speech. The three mikoshi were already placed at the intersection of Shijō and Higashiōji streets, and their carriers were ready to listen to the mayor and the chief priest before accompanying the deities to the temporary shrine (o-tabisho 御旅所). Around them was a huge crowd of supporters, onlookers, camera people (some of them on the roofs of buildings and shops facing the Yasaka torii), and the ever-present police officers giving instructions through their megaphones—which constantly reverberated and merged with the konchikichin music, and the chanted rhythmical “wasshoi” shouted by the mikoshi bearers and their supporters (Figure 3.6). In his secular capacity, the mayor did not (and could not) give his speech beyond the symbolic and physical boundary between the secular and the sacred space of the city/shrine. This is not only for logistic reasons,41 but also in order to avoid problems related to the separation of state and religion as sanctioned by Article 20 of the postwar constitution. During Gion Matsuri, several such “tricks” are implemented in order to avoid legal suits and other challenges. A key person of the municipality of Kyoto replied to my question as to whether this speech constituted a problem with regard to the separation of state and religion without hesitation: “Of course it’s a problem!” (“mondai aru desu yo!”) and continued saying that the mayor had been advised for several years to cease this activity, as it could lead to possible legal suits, although none had been filed at the time of the interview (K-san interview, August 2014).42 A typical stratagem to circumvent such legal separation is to claim that the mayor is participating in his private capacity—note the similarities with the visits to Yasukuni 靖国 Shrine by Prime Ministers Koizumi Jun’ichirō and Abe Shinzō—which also implies, for example, avoiding the use of his official car to reach the location. Moreover, my informant continued, each year concerned citizens call the municipality asking why the kujitori shiki takes place at the 41 42

At this point, the mikoshi are already out of the shrine compound and the space inside the torii is not sufficient to host all three mikoshi and the crowds of bearers and visitors. He also informed me that this speech was a relatively recent activity, having started about ten years earlier.

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figure 3.6 Departure of mikoshi from Yasaka Shrine (shinkōsai, 17 July 2014) Photo by Author

city hall. A typical answer is that the mayor is only attending and observing (tachiai 立ち会い) the ceremony and is not involved in its organization and performance. All these circumventions are made possible through the ambiguity of the state/religion divide in Japan, which allows for a constant renegotiation of (very) flexible boundaries (cf. Forfar 1996; Porcu 2012). This continuous shifting of boundaries and intermingling between the spheres of the religious and the secular, which do not necessarily have to be opposing forces, can be seen on numerous occasions during the festival.43 Gion Matsuri starts and ends with two religious rituals: the kippu-iri, or the ceremony that officially opens the rituals, performed at the beginning of July (from 1–5); and the nagoshi no harae 夏越の祓, or summer purification ritual, which takes place on 31 July. These serve as a frame for a great number

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With regard to other festivals, it is interesting to mention the refusal of the mayor of Kashimadai, Kano Bunei, to hold the Oshiogori festival in 1991 because the area had “a delicate relationship with other religions (tashūkyō to no kankei de bimyōna bubun ga aru)” (see Kimura 2016: 133). Kano’s decision clearly went to the opposite direction of previous mayors, who two decades earlier actively participated in the ceremonies “to pray for the prosperity of the area” and make offerings to the deity. However, similar to the case of the Gion festival, there was no record of complaints filed in relation to the constitutional separation of religion and the state (Kimura 2016: 133). The Oshiogori festival, which is related to the Kumano Shrine in Miyazaki, Miyagi Prefecture, takes place every 20 years and the go-shintai is transported from the shrine to Hamaichi village, which was severely damaged by the 2011 tsunami (see Kimura 2016).

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of other rituals performed during this month.44 The kippu iri, a Shintō offering and prayer for safety during the festival, takes place in the assembly hall of the various yamahoko neighborhoods (except for the Yamabushi Yama 山伏山, Ennogyōja Yama 役行者山, and Tokusa Yama 木賊山) and is performed by two Shintō priests. During the purification ritual nagoshi no harae, which is held at Eki Jinja 役神社 within the precincts of Yasaka Shrine, visitors pass through a large wreath made of miscanthus reed (chinowa 茅輪), bow and make an offering, take some leaves to make a small chinowa, and buy an amulet for protection from illness and misfortune with the inscription Somin shōrai no shison nari 蘇 民将来の子孫也, or “We are descendants of Somin Shōrai,” to be placed at the entrance of their homes for one year.45 Before opening Eki Jinja to general visitors (ippan sanpaisha 一般参拝者), the chief priest performs a ritual for the representatives of the organizing bodies involved in Gion Matsuri, who then pass through the chinowa and receive sacred sake (o-miki), together with an amulet and mochi against calamities ( yakuyoke awamochi 厄除粟餅), okashi (Japanese sweets) in the form of the Yasaka Jinja crest (mon 紋), and a chinowa amulet. There are numerous religion-related events and rituals (shinji) during the festival, and although they are intermingled with the more cultural and entertaining aspects, they certainly cannot be overlooked. My informants and the other participants speak about the connection with the kami, use the term shinseina 神聖な (sacred) related to the floats and their tutelary deities (go-shintai) and do not deny the connection with Shintō, Buddhism, Shugendō and other forms of religious practices. However, they do not use words such as “religion” but rather “tradition” or “custom” (dentō 伝統, shūkan 習慣) due to the wellknown problems related to the term shūkyō 宗教 as well as the way Shintō and other religious practices are emically described.46 Roemer (2006: 202–203) also indicates the significance of the kami for the participants and tourists he interviewed, as well as “overwhelmingly positive” admissions of the “existence and influence of various superempirical beings at the festival” (Roemer 2006: 212). 44 45

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Yoneyama (1974: 206) has spoken of forty shinji (Shintō-related rituals). This phrase is also included in the chimaki of various neighborhoods, although not in all of them. For the founding myth of Somin Shōrai in relation to the Gion cult, see McMullin (1988: 270–271). An analysis of the term shūkyō goes beyond the scope of my paper, but see, for example, Amstutz (2014); Dessì and Kleine (2019); Isomae (2003, 2012); Josephson (2012); Kleine (2013); Krämer (2013). For a distinction between shinji (Shintō rituals) and shūkyō in the case of Gion Matsuri, see Brumann (2012: 204–205). It is also worth recalling that certain Shintō-related rituals have been considered “non-religious”—and accepted as such— since the creation of State Shintō in the Meiji period.

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What we find here—and in other matsuri—is the (temporary) “presence” or invitation of kami and other deities; one example among many is the bodhisattva Kannon 観音 related to the floats of Kita and Minami Kannon Yama, and the latter’s ritual of Abare Kannon あばれ観音. Bearing in mind my position as a scholar of religion who investigates the observable world and does not assess “non-perceptible realm(s)” (Platvoet 1990: 185), what I consider “religious” here takes its cue from Jan Platvoet’s definition of religion and modifies it slightly. It is a communication process which can have different degrees, and can be direct (“ritual communication”) or indirect (“extra-ritual one: observances for the sake of the relationships to be maintained”) between the participants “as empirical persons” (Platvoet 1999: 262) and “beings whose existence and activity cannot be verified or falsified but whom … [the participants] believe to exist and to be active, directly or indirectly, in their lives and environment” (Platvoet 1990: 195, 204 fn). In the case of Gion Matsuri, the purchasing of chimaki and other amulets for protection, the participation in rituals at Yasaka Shrine, the kiyo harai, or purification rituals, and the Yamabushi goma rituals, can be seen as a few instances where such forms of communication with the deities may occur. Here, it is a rather temporary and “direct” type of interaction, very often limited to the rituals during the festival and not extended to “extra-ritual” observances made to maintain relationships with the kami/deities. Such an engagement with the sacred nonetheless plays a role in the environment and lives of the participants, and is also reflected in the negotiation of sacred and secular spaces.

7

Sacred and Secular Geographies

On the night of 15 July, a very suggestive ritual, the yoimiyasai 宵宮祭, takes place at Yasaka Shrine when the mitama 御霊 of the kami is transferred from the main hall to the maidono 舞殿 (kagura hall; lit. dance hall), where the mikoshi (portable shrines) are placed and hosted until the shinkōsai 神幸祭 on 17 July. On this day, the kami are carried on mikoshi from the Yasaka Shrine to the temporary shrine and rest there until the 24th (kankōsai 還幸祭), when they are taken back to Yasaka Shrine and their abode in the main shrine (mitama utsushi 御霊遷し ritual). Today’s festival takes place in a highly commercialized urban district in downtown Kyoto, which hosts relevant commercial enterprises and is closely linked to tourism. Occupying strategic locations within this area, we can find major department stores (symbols of Japan’s economic growth) such as Taka-

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shimaya and Daimaru, several banks (linked to global flows of currency), and shops (related to local traditions, such as Toraya wagashi for traditional sweets and Fukujuen Kyoto flagship store for green tea; and also globally connected, such as the popular Lipton tea house).47 This part of the city undergoes a transformation during the float procession and the mikoshi parade: the ‘normal’ pace of central Kyoto and its traffic routes are modified, affecting public transportation and private vehicles as well as residents and passersby. A clear example of this temporary transformation is the conversion of one-way streets for pedestrians due to the massive crowds strolling around on the eves of the procession. Some commercial venues are turned into sacred loci, and local businesses get a boost in sales. All this requires precise urban planning and collaboration among the various stakeholders, including the organizers of the festival, the municipality, the police, and the residents of the areas involved. The temporary shrine occupies a strategic position. The Yasaka Jinja otabisho is located in this central area, on Shijō Street. On the occasion of the shinkōsai and kankōsai, a souvenir shop, significantly renamed in September 2013 O-tabi Kyoto,48 is emptied of its year-around products and transformed into a sacred place where the portable shrines (mikoshi) with the deities are hosted for one week, visitors pay homage to the mikoshi and give offerings, and they can also purchase numerous objects related to the festival.49 (Figures 3.7 and 3.8). This arrangement between the religious and the secular is made even more interesting because the space is actually owned by Yasaka Shrine, which rents it to the souvenir shop, Shijō Center which in turn returns it to the shrine during Gion Matsuri.50 This close connection was highlighted several times on the occasion of the renewal of the shop and its renaming. In the magazine of the

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Takashimaya has branches in Singapore and Bangkok, a.o. They opened in New York and Paris in 1958 and 1973 but closed these branches in 2010–2011. https://www.takashimaya .co.jp/corp/english/companyprofile/leader/history.html (accessed 21 April 2019). Its original name is Shijō sentā. Until 1591 there were two o-tabisho, one for the two mikoshi enshrining Susanoo no mikoto and his consort Kushi inada hime no mikoto (naka goza and higashi goza), and another one for that of their children, the Yahashira no mikogami (nishigoza). See, for example, Yagi (2015: 24–25). The two locations were the Daimandokoro o-tabisho 大政所御旅所 on Karasuma (south of its intersection with Bukkōji Street) and the Shōshōi o-tabisho 少将井御旅所 in the Nakagyōku ward, north of the intersection of Kurumayachō and Ebisugawa streets (see also Kyōtoshi Bunkazai Bukkusu Dai 25 Shū 2011: 52). Interview with a Yasaka Shrine priest (18 August 2014). See also, Shijō Han’eikai Shōtengai Shinkō Kumiai (2013). In 2014 the shop was closed from 11 to 27 July.

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Shijō Han’eikai Shōtengai Shinkō Kumiai 四条繁栄会商店街振興組合 (Cooperative for the Promotion of the Shops and Association for the Thriving of Shijō Street), the first page of the article “Close Up Mise vol. 45” dedicated to this renewal shows the picture of the new interior design together with its o-tabisho counterpart. A significant heading reads: Kamisama ni chikai basho no omomi, sono rekishi to dentō o wasurezu ni 神様に近い場所の重み、 その歴史と伝統を 忘れずに (The weight/value of a place near the kami—it’s important not to forget its history and tradition). In the same article, the manager of the shop, Osada Mitsuhiko 長田光彦, expresses his wish that it become a space where customers feel the intervention of the kami and their protection while they shop. Moreover, the choice of the new name is linked not only to the o-tabisho and Kyoto as a symbol of tourism (tabi, or travel), but also bears a touch of Zen 禅 as expressed by the circularity of the letter O (and ensō 円相, the Zen circle).51 Through these brief claims of the kami offering legitimization and protection to the act of buying goods, religion-related aspects are combined with tourism, tradition, and branding. Within this space, the kami as “invisible beings” during the year and “honored guests” during Gion Matsuri are engaged in a form of communication with the buyers/clients and the participants in a relationship through which the religious and the secular are constantly negotiated. Although in the yamahoko-chō a connection with the kami/deities seems limited to the period of the festival, here it is actually more than a “temporary” relationship occurring only during the ten-day (re)conversion of the shop into the o-tabisho. Several factors reinforce the idea that secular and religious boundaries are in flux and merge with one another throughout the year: the display of the mikoshi pictures on the walls of the shop; its new name, which is unequivocally linked to the temporary shrine; and the fact that the space is owned by the Yasaka Shrine, nestled between two of its small shrines at both sides, and rented to a commercial venture. This space goes through a transformative cycle with the secular space of the shop “Otabi Kyoto” regaining religious status through the festival and the presence of the mikoshi for a week. This hints at a continuous and close relationship between the secular space of the shop and the sacred space of the temporary shrine, which is even more relevant if we consider that the o-tabisho is thought to have been the original “true ceremonial” space, while the main shrine was merely used for storing mikoshi (Inoue et al. 1997).

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See “Close Up Mise vol. 45” in Shijō Han’eikai Shōtengai Shinkō Kumiai (2013: 11–13).

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figures 3.7ab The Yasaka Jinja o-tabisho on Shijō Street (July 2014) Photos by Author

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figure 3.8ab The souvenir shop O-tabi Kyoto (2014) Photos by Author

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figure 3.9 Purification ritual in front of the o-tabisho during saki matsuri (17 July 2014) Photo by Author

Various rituals are performed in front of the o-tabisho during the festival. For example, on the evening of 16 and 23 July—that is, on the eves of the two float processions ( yoi yama)—the hayashikata musicians of the yama and hoko floats head towards the o-tabisho to pray for good weather on the procession day and receive a purification ritual blessing from a Shintō priest. On the day of the Yamahoko junkō as well as shinkōsai and kankōsai (17 and 24 July) Shijō Street is closed to traffic during the procession of floats and the mikoshi. During the Yamahoko junkō, a tent is temporarily built in front of the o-tabisho and functions as a sacred space where each float’s representatives, after paying homage in front of the o-tabisho, receive a purification ritual and make a tamagushi offering. During the saki matsuri, this is a necessary step to purify them as they proceed toward the intersection of Shijō and Kawaramachi and the path to the Yasaka Shrine (Figure 3.9).52 The area around Shijō Street, Yasaka Shrine, and the yamahoko neighborhoods is certainly among the most visited spots in Japan. The interaction of religion with tourism—also in connection with the sense of identity of the people residing in the yamahoko-chō—deserves therefore a closer look and constitutes the focus of the following section.

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During ato matsuri (24 July), they still pay homage to the o-tabisho, although the position of the tent is different. Float representatives face east (Yasaka Shrine) on saki matsuri and south during ato matsuri on their way back (see the route in footnote 15 above).

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Tourism, Ujiko, and Sense of Community

In 2009, the float ceremony (gyōji 行事) of Gion Matsuri was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (mukei bunka isan 無形文化遺産).53 It was thus admitted to the circle of UNESCO-recognized events, becoming part of a branded community.54 This has reinforced the festival’s national and global exposure and its inextricable link to tourism, which had already contributed to some crucial changes to its routes and structure. The number of tourists in its recent history has increased exponentially (cf. Yoneyama 1986: 7); nowadays Gion Matsuri attracts over a million tourists a year from Japan and abroad. Tourism has been a driving force for both transforming the structure of festivals (see, for example, Schnell 1999: 267–273) and, even more interestingly, inventing new festivals in Japan. For example, the Namahage Sedo matsuri な まはげ柴灯まつり was created in 1963 at Shinzan 真山 Shrine and merges elements of the Namahage (a New Year’s Eve ritual) with elements of an existing shrine festival (Saidō-sai 柴灯祭) in order to promote winter season tourism in Akita Prefecture (Foster 2013: 316–319; see also in this volume). Invented to attract visitors from outside the community, this new festival has gone a step further through a religion-ification of the Namahage ritual in order to legitimate its performance and “endow it with a gravitas beyond its more sensationalist scare-the-children reputation” (Foster in this volume). In the case of the Namahage Sedo matsuri, religious aspects have been included and emphasized to make it more authoritative and possibly boost the touristic appeal of the region both within and without the boundaries of the Shinzan Shrine. On the contrary, in the case of Gion Matsuri and the UNESCO designation of the float ceremony, religious elements have been downplayed or omitted, in part perhaps to conform to the questions on the application itself55 and also to

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Gion Matsuri was already designated by the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs as an Intangible Folk Cultural Property (mukei minzoku bunkazai 無形民俗文化財, 1959); in 1962, the yama and hoko floats were added to the list of Important Tangible Folk Cultural Property ( jūyō yūkei minzoku bunkazai 重要有形民俗文化財) and in 1979, the float ceremony ( yamahoko gyōji) was selected as an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property ( jūyō mukei minzoku bunkazai 重要無形民俗文化財). The bunkazai designation is an important asset for the Matsuri, in particular with regard to public funding (cf. Brumann 2012: 173). Cf. Foster (2015). For lack of space, the analysis of UNESCO-related aspects goes beyond the scope of my chapter. The boxes to be filled in the Nomination (file n. 00269) are: Identification of the element and its description (1, 2); Contribution to ensuring visibility and awareness and to encour-

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evade the problem of the separation of religion and state in a constitutionally secular society (see Porcu 2012: 95–96). When I returned to Kyoto for follow-up fieldwork in July 2018, the festival— and indeed, the city of Kyoto—had increased their efforts to accommodate the waves of “international” tourists, a process that went perhaps even too far, with separate taxi stands at Kyoto station for Japanese and ‘international’ clients. Much more information was available in English and there were more and more accommodations in the area, from new hotels to guest houses. A quick look at the 2018 English pamphlet of the Yamahoko junkō explicitly reveals the relations between the procession and Yasaka Shrine and its religious elements. These include the kami, the sacredness of the floats, the selling of amulets which are “dedicated to a special god for each float,” the sacred ceremonial rope cutting (shimenawa kiri), and the role of the Yamahoko junkō in purifying the course for the mikoshi parade to and from the Yasaka Shrine. The Japanese pamphlet provides less reference to these elements, which seems in line with the representation of the festival and Shintō rituals as customary acts rather than “religious” or shūkyō-related events, as mentioned above.56 A religion-specific representation of the procession aimed at international visitors is offered in the English version, one which resonates with similar dynamics found at the Namahage Sedo matsuri, as seen above, although the latter is more oriented toward domestic tourism. Residents of the yamahoko-chō are conscious of being part of a spectacular, relevant tourist event closely linked to “tradition.” As the then president of the Yamahoko Rengōkai, Yoshida Kōjirō, claimed, it is not a question of tourism vs. religion/faith (shinkō 信仰) but rather of a balance between the two, and the matsuri is inseparable from its touristic part (personal communication,

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aging dialogue (3); Safeguarding measures (4); Community involvement and consent (5); Inclusion of an inventory and documentation (6, 7). (UNESCO 2009). Cf. Foster (this volume). Apart from the explanation of each float, the map of the saki and ato matsuri, some advertisements, and the warning that Kyoto streets are non-smoking areas, the sections in the English pamphlet read: Features of the Gion Matsuri: Gion Matsuri, Gion Bayashi, Chimaki, Protective charms, Yamahoko Junkō—the Float Procession. This includes Shimenawa-kiri—Ceremonial Rope Cutting, Kujiaratame Lottery Confirmation, TsujimawashiCornering; and After the Procession, where it is explained that the floats, after returning to each Yamahoko-chō, are “soon disassembled to ensure the spirits of disease that have been gathered are not released.” The original Japanese has a section called Gion matsuri no tanoshimi kata 祗園祭の楽しみ方, which is related to its “entertaining” part (Gion bayashi 祗園囃子, and Byōbu matsuri 屏風祭—not mentioned in the English version); Gofu 護符 (amulets) and Chimaki 粽. There is also a section on the mikoshi parade, but this does not mention any connection to the Yamahoko junkō.

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4 August 2014). From my interviews with hozonkai members and residents of various yamahoko neighborhoods, it emerged that Gion Matsuri serves to reinforce a sense of community and the awareness of belonging to an important national and global event; thus, it is seen as an identity marker.57 Similar conclusions have been reached by Roemer in his study of the connection between ritual involvement and self-esteem (cf. also Brumann 2012: 202–203). He notes that participation in the Gion festival is closely associated by his (male) informants with positive self-esteem, well-being, and pride, stemming from their awareness of being part of a “culturally and historically significant” event that constitutes “a key part of their own self-identity” (Roemer 2010: 497, 501). Interesting for our discussion, seven out of eleven of his interviewees indicated that “they felt their involvement in the festival affected them ‘religiously’ (shūkyōteki ni, seishinteki ni)” (Roemer 2010: 498–499) and several of his informants considered “the rites and festivities of the festival as being an important part of their self-identities.” He confirmed the “positive association between self-esteem and ritual involvement” in this case—without, however, denying the secular factors, such as their social status, that contribute to such positive self-perceptions (Roemer 2010: 504, 506). Although organized at the local ujiko level, the yamahoko float procession relies heavily on pullers and bearers as well as specialized workers who come from outside the neighborhoods and without whose support the procession would not be possible. From the beginning, Gion Matsuri was a “contracted” festival; that is, the yamahoko hired pullers and carriers from various agricultural regions or occupational guilds. In the postwar period, due to dramatic changes that included a diminished religious attachment to Gion, the recruitment system needed to be changed. In 1983, a campaign to recruit volunteers began, and in 2007 the association “Kyoto Gion Matsuri Volunteer 21” was responsible for hiring the majority of them.58 Other floats hire college students, while some are paraded by the groups traditionally involved (see Fukami 2008: 7–8); and some pullers and carriers are foreigners who volunteer as a part of their Kyoto experience. In the case of the neighborhood where I lived, the bearers of the float in 2014 were Kyoto Bank employees.59 The inclusiveness of this

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This aspect is common to analyses of other festivals (see, for example, Bestor 1989; Ashkenazi 1993; Nelson 1996). Some of the floats no longer “hire” volunteers from this association, e.g., Kita Kannon Yama, and Tsuki Hoko. In the case of Kita Kannon Yama from 2014, volunteers are recruited from a sort of ‘fan club’ (personal communication with the then president of the Yamahoko Rengōkai, Yoshida Kōjirō, 4 August 2014). See also the case of Sannō Matsuri, which takes place in June in a business area in Tokyo.

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system also due to the lack of sufficient manpower among the ujiko members, differs, for example, from other trends, such as a festival in Tokyo where its leaders refused to let “matsuri aficionados” from outside their neighborhood participate in the festival’s activities despite the lack of adequate participation from within the ujiko (Bestor 1989: 252). The composition of the yamahoko-chō plays a relevant role in the organization of the festival at the community level. Many yamahoko-chō are occupied by businesses and few residential buildings. For example, there are no residents in the neighborhood of probably the most famous float, the Naginata Hoko, which hires part-time college students (baito) to sell their products during the days before the procession; and the chigo-san, or sacred child on this float, does not belong to the neighborhood but is chosen from one of Kyoto’s wealthy families. In my neighborhood, I experienced how the massive participation of “non-ujiko” people as onlookers or volunteers served to reinforce communal awareness of being part of an old tradition, a prestigious ritual recognized at the national and international level. Other contributing factors in this regard were the months-long preparations for the festival, including the preparation of chimaki and gohei as well as the busiest days of the yoiyama, when we welcomed visitors and sold amulets and other yama-related goods, and finally the float parade itself. The Yamahoko junkō was the event of the year and the chōnai activities revolved around it.60

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Concluding Reflections: The Gion Festival as a “Contested Zone”

From the above analysis, it is clear that Gion Matsuri is a complex event and not merely a religious festival; rather, it is a microcosm where interactions, disjunctions as well as conflicts and resistance to central decisions take place. In this concluding section, I would like to offer some additional reflections on the Gion festival as a “contested zone” that is not “unproblematically shared and relatively stable” but rather “in flux … a space of competing realities embedded in power relations with all but the dominant or hegemonic version getting short shrift” (Moon 2010: 38). In this regard, we can think about the role of the most famous floats, such as the Naginata Hoko, that draw the majority of

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Here, the majority of the mikoshi carriers are “volunteers” who work at companies operating there. Some conflicting dynamics occurred in this case, when, for example, a nonJapanese employee declined participation in the festival due to his religious (Catholic) background (Porcu 2013: 290–291). Similar patterns can be seen in other yamahoko-chō (cf. Brumann 2012: Ch. 5).

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tourists and media attention and make conspicuous revenue from amulets and other items as compared to other, ‘minor’ floats. It became clear from my interviews that members of the yamahoko-chō sponsoring these less famous floats at times lament this situation; they position themselves in comparison to the ‘major’ floats, highlighting their (unachievable) wish to be at the same level with regard to revenue and number of visitors. Festivals also offer opportunities to demonstrate and “display … individual or group power and prestige” (Ashkenazi 1993: 147). In various instances we find a constant shifting and “contestation” of power in the process of presenting and representing Gion Matsuri, such as on the occasion of the reinstatement of the ato matsuri, after almost five decades, a move that was strongly advocated by some leaders of the Yamahoko Rengōkai, the umbrella organization of the preservation associations related to the float procession. This was not a linear, “unproblematically shared” or smooth transition, but seems to have originated from above rather than as a general wish of all parties involved, a point highlighted by several of my informants. With regard to disputes and controversies, especially in relation to tourism and changed patterns, it is noteworthy that as early as 1955, in conjunction with the proposal to change the route of the saki matsuri (which was followed by protests from the local residents and shrine priests), there was discussion about whether the festival was still related to belief (shinkō) or whether tourism (kankō 観光) dictated its developments. This led to the well-known “shinkō ka kankō ka,” or “faith or tourism?” controversy.61 In 2014, after six decades, controversies surfaced again with the return to the two-procession pattern. I heard several voices arguing against the reinstatement of the ato matsuri, especially because of organizational issues (e.g. security, which involves quite a lot of work and coordination with the police), and the feeling that there was no real need to go back to the ‘origins.’ Those in favor of the ato matsuri stressed it as a return to the “real” Shintō ritual (shinji) and “original” form of the festival. Those against it highlighted tourism-oriented policies in Kyoto aimed at profit and increasing the number of visitors. The old controversy “shinkō ka kankō ka” was therefore clearly still in play. On the other hand, those in favor of reinstating the ato matsuri thought of tourism and “faith” as being integrated rather than conflicting forces. Yoshida Kōjirō, the influential former president of the Yamahoko Rengōkai, was one of them. According to him, the matsuri in Kyoto was inseparable from its touristic part. It was meant for both “matsuru” and “miru”; that is, it was an event both

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Yoneyama (1986: 7). See also Shijō Han’eikai Shōtengai Shinkō Kumiai (2010: 12–14).

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figure 3.10

The kujitori shiki ceremony at Kyoto City Hall (2 July 2014) Photo by Author

to propitiate the deities and also to view. Thus, it was a question of balance (as he put it, “50–50”) between these two aspects rather than an issue of separation (“shinkō ka kankō ka” to iu wakarete mono de wa naku, mi nagara kami o o-mukae suru 「信仰か観光か」 という別れてものではなく、 見ながら神をお迎え する). (Personal communication, 4 August 2014). Another example that can be considered a “contested zone” subject to negotiations between secular and religious actors/spaces is the kujitori shiki on 2 July (Figure 3.10). This ceremony takes place at Kyoto City Hall under the supervision of the mayor to determine the order of the floats during the Yamahoko junkō. It started in 1500 (see Yagi 2015: 32), was temporarily held at Yasaka Shrine after World War II, and since 1953 has been performed at its present location.62 The main object of the ceremony are the floats: sacred spaces that enshrine one or more tutelary deities (go-shintai) and, as we have seen above, are considered sacred by the members of the hozonkai and residents I interviewed. Another significant aspect comes after the kujitori shiki, when the hozonkai represen-

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See also the information pamphlet distributed to the participants, 2 July 2014.

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tatives make a ritual visit to Yasaka Shrine to pray and receive blessings for a safe festival. The presence and active involvement in the kujitori shiki of the chief priest of Yasaka Jinja, and representatives of the Seisei kōsha (a shrinerelated association partially responsible for the organization of this ceremony) reaffirm the authority of religion/Shintō in two respects: spatially, within the secular boundaries of the City Hall; and politically, under the (formal) supervision of the representative of a government that constitutionally warrants the separation of religion and the state. In this regard, as mentioned above, every year concerned citizens ask the municipality why this ceremony (linked to a Shintō festival) takes place in a secular space such as City Hall, thus hinting at a concern among private citizens of the constitutionally sanctioned secular/religious divide. This ceremony, therefore, is far from being unproblematic territory. Finally, we have seen that the Gion festival is an “otoko matsuri,” a men’s festival. Gender discrimination issues, such as the exclusion of women from participating “on the stage” and their marginalization to backstage roles in line with a thousand-year old “tradition” to be preserved; the prohibition to partake in rituals or have access to certain sites (e.g., stepping into the Naginata Hoko and other floats) related to Shintō—but not only—also suggest other ways in which the matsuri is a contested site for a variety of needs and interests. In this case, a hegemonic male component clearly dominates power relations and not only dictates the trajectory of rituals and other aspects of the matsuri, but also poses barriers to field research conducted by women scholars, thus hindering the production of “polyphonic,” multilayered forms of knowledge that would better suit the complexity and multicolored nuances of this fascinating festival. These different sites of contestation are among the many constitutive parts of Gion Matsuri. The red thread that runs through these zones and the different layers of my analysis is a constant shifting of boundaries between the religious and the secular—two spheres that are not necessarily in opposition (thus not necessarily contested areas). These negotiations are revealed in a variety of contexts discussed above: local and national politics, as in the case of ceremonies held within governmental spaces and issues related to the constitutional separation of religion and the state within and without the neighborhoods; urban spaces, such as the shifting boundaries of the temporary shrine and the prominent role played by the kami in both the secular shop and the o-tabisho; tourism and everything that revolves around it, including economic aspects, controversies related to the change of routes and patterns of the festival, as well as the self-identity of yamahoko-chō residents; and forms of discrimination based on both religious and non-religious grounds. These are only

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a few examples that demonstrate the way such negotiations are not only significant, but perhaps even necessary to keep a more than thousand-year old festival alive and thriving.

Acknowledgments A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 14th European Association of Japanese Studies International Conference in Ljubljana (2014). I would like to thank Fabio Rambelli for his insightful comments on that earlier draft. This research was made possible through the generous fellowship of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto (Nichibunken, 2013– 2014. Project: “The Gion Matsuri in Kyoto: Culture, Religion and Community”). I would like to express my sincere thanks to my host, Isomae Jun’ichi, and other colleagues and staff who greatly supported me during my research stay, in particular Sano Mayuko, John Breen, Patricia Fister, and Hosokawa Shūhei; as well as Yagi Tōru from Bukkyō University, who provided invaluable support for my research; the members of Kyōto Minzoku Gakkai; Murakami Tadayoshi; and Nakamaki Hirochika. The list of people who deserve my gratitude during my fieldwork is long and I can only mention them generally here: the president and the other members of the hozonkai as well as the chōnaikai and the women residents in my neighborhood, who will remain anonymous to preserve their privacy; Yoshida Kōjirō, the representatives of the other hozonkai and the Yamahoko Rengōkai, who kindly agreed to be interviewed and gave me access to their floats and materials; the various participants with whom I shared experiences within the life of Gion Matsuri; and my friend Yasumi Chieko. My appreciation goes also to the president and members of the Tōrō Yama hozonkai, who welcomed me on several occasions. My July 2018 stay was financially sponsored by the NRF (South Africa’s National Research Foundation) funding for rated researchers. I would like to thank my colleague and then Head of Department of Religious Studies, Sa’diyya Shaikh, for graciously granting permission for this research leave. I was able to work on this paper during the first term of 2019 thanks to the University of Cape Town Teaching Relief Funds. Lastly, my special thanks go to Michael Dylan Foster, Ugo Dessì, and Christoph Brumann for their invaluable comments.

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chapter 4

Sannō Matsuri Fabricating Festivals in Modern Japan John Breen International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto, Japan [email protected]

Abstract This study of the Sannō Festival at Hiyoshi Taisha in Shiga Prefecture starts from the premise that all festivals reproduce and reinvent themselves over time, obfuscating their origins, typically claiming specious roots in the ancient or mythical past. Firstly, I analyze the Sannō Festival as performed today, drawing on my own festival fieldwork. I then adopt a historical approach, deploying historical sources to recreate the festival in its premodern guise. Finally, I use an array of primary sources to analyze the contested process of making the modern festival. Throughout, I keep within my purview multiple moving parts: the seven kami and the seven shrines that make up the Hiyoshi Taisha complex; the priests and monks who have venerated them, shaping and reshaping the Sannō Festival; and the common people, too, whose participation is key to the modern festival’s vibrancy and success.

Keywords Hiyoshi Taisha – Hie Jinja – Ōyamakui – Kunitokotoachi – Kojiki – Kageyama Haruki

1

Introduction1

Hiyoshi Taisha 日吉大社 is a cluster of seven shrines located in the town of Sakamoto in Ōtsu City, Shiga Prefecture. The shrine complex, nestled at the foot of Mt. Hiei (Hieizan 比叡山) overlooking Lake Biwa, has a long and fraught 1 This chapter is an updated and refined version of “Jinja to sairei no kindai: Kanpei Taisha Hie jinja no baai” (Breen 2011). The author would like to thank Ellen Van Goethem, Nick Breen and the editors of this book for insightful comments on an earlier draft of the English version.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004466548_005

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history. Its main kami, Ōyamakui 大山咋, appears in the Kojiki 古事記 mythhistory (712), which suggests that, already by the eighth century, the site was of significance to the early Japanese state. In the tenth-century compendium of laws and customs known as the Engishiki 延喜式 (927), the shrines are designated myōjin taisha 名神大社 or “Great shrines venerating kami of renown.” Written now as Hie 日枝, they feature in the inventory of those twenty-two shrines (nijūnisha 二十二社) most favored by the late Heian period Emperor Gosuzaku 後朱雀 (r. 1036–1045). After the revolution of 1868, the shrines retained their elite status, but only after they were first stripped of all their Buddhist associations, and rendered a “Shintō” site. The new Meiji government designated them Kanpei Taisha Hie Jinja 官幣大社日吉神社 (Great Hie State Shrines). After the Pacific War the Association of Shinto Shrines (Jinja Honchō 神社本庁) revised the modern shrine ranking system, and confirmed the taisha or “Great shrines” status for Hie, which it restyled Hiyoshi Taisha. (“Hiyoshi” is an alternative reading of the two kanji for “Hie.”) The shrines’ contemporary fame is almost entirely due to their annual festival, the Sannō matsuri 山王祭, one of the Three Great Biwa Lake Festivals. The festival takes place from the 12–15 April every year and is without doubt the shrines’ lifeblood. This chapter is a critical historical study of the origins and development of the modern Sannō Festival, but it is of course not the first. Kageyama Haruki’s essay “Hiesha no shintaizan shinkō” 日吉社の神体大山信仰 is the classic piece, which shaped much subsequent research (Kageyama 2001). Notable examples include an essay by Kimura Yoshihiro “Hiyoshi Taisha”; “Jinja to sairei” 神 社と祭礼 by Sasaki Takamasa; Murayama Shūichi’s Hieizanshi 比叡山史, and Okada Seishi’s “Hie sannō gongen no saishi” 日吉山王権現の祭祀 (Kimura 2000; Sasaki 1981; Murayama 1994; Okada 2003). The present chapter too is informed by Kageyama, but it finds methodological problems in his work. As we shall see, he seeks out and duly finds in the modern Sannō Festival an essentially “ancient and primitive” quality.2 For all its appeal, Kageyama’s research is more emotive than it is empirical, and we should be wary of its conclusions.3 This author starts from the assumption that festivals constantly reproduce and reinvent themselves, always obfuscating their true origins, typically claiming specious roots in the ancient or even mythical past. The modern Sannō Festival certainly appears to partake of those ancient, primitive qualities isolated by Kageyama and others, but it proves, in fact, to be a creation of the

2 On this, see especially Kageyama (2001: 27, 34–35, 60, 68–69). 3 Kageyama Haruki (1916–1985) was born and bred in Sakamoto.

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nineteenth century. This chapter sets out to explore the dynamics of its creation, and its subsequent evolution through the nineteenth century into the twentieth. In the first section, I analyze the Sannō Festival as it is performed today, drawing on Kageyama’s writings, but also on my own festival fieldwork, which I carried out first in 2008 and latterly in 2019. In the second section, I adopt a more historical approach, deploying primary sources in an attempt to recreate the Sannō Festival in its premodern guise. Almost all extant sources postdate 1571. This was the year in which the warlord Oda Nobunaga 織田信長 (1534–1582) destroyed the Hie shrines, and also the entire Enryakuji 延暦寺 temple complex that sits atop Mt. Hiei. In the third section, I use an array of historical sources, textual and visual, held in the Shiga Prefecture archives and at Hiyoshi Taisha (Hie Jinja) to analyze the fraught and contested process whereby the modern Sannō Festival came into being in the mid-nineteenth century. Throughout, I keep within my purview multiple moving parts: the seven kami and the seven shrines that make up the Hiyoshi Taisha complex; the priests and monks who have venerated them, shaping and reshaping the Sannō Festival over time; and the common people, too, whose participation is key to the modern festival’s vibrancy and success.

2

Festival Dynamics

The Hiyoshi Taisha complex accommodates seven shrines for seven kami, and we need to identify the shrines at the outset (Figure 4.1). Nishi Hongū 西本 宮, Usanomiya 宇佐宮, and Shirayamanomiya 白山宮 comprise what is known today as the Nishi Hongū cluster, where Nishi Hongū means “western mainshrine.” There is also an adjacent Higashi Hongū 東本宮 or “eastern mainshrine” cluster, consisting of four shrines: Higashi Hongū and Jugenomiya 樹 下宮, as well as Ushionomiya 牛尾宮 and Sannomiya 三宮, two shrines which sit atop Mt. Hachiōji 八王子. Note that the designation Sannō or “mountain king,” which gives its name to the festival, is used sometimes to refer to the Nishi Hongū and its kami Ōnamuchi 大己貴; sometimes, though, it refers indiscriminately to all seven shrines and their kami. The Hiyoshi kami make their first move on the night of 12 April. The two mountain top kami, Ōyamakui of Ushionomiya and Tamayorihime 玉依姫 of Sannomiya, are transferred to mikoshi 神輿 palanquins, which young men from Sakamoto carry down the slopes of Mt. Hachiōji. Huge crowds gather to watch their truly perilous descent to the worship hall (haiden 拝殿) of the Higashi Hongū. There the kami spend the night. They do so because Ōyamakui and Tamayorihime are betrothed; they are respectively the “groom kami” and “bride

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figure 4.1 The Hiyoshi Taisha precinct

kami.” Their intimacy finds physical expression in the fact that the palanquins are so placed that the palanquin-poles cross. This pole-crossing is known today as shiri-tsunagi 尻繋ぎ (hip-tying).4 The sexual implication is echoed in the shiri-tsunagi no norito 祝詞, the prayer intoned by the Hiyoshi Taisha chief priest, and in the offerings presented to the seven kami, styled shiri-tsunagi no goku 御供. As Kageyama Haruki explains, it is on the night of 12 April that Tamayorihime conceives her divine child, the kami Kamo Wakeikazuchi 加茂 別雷神 (Kageyama 2001: 51–52).5 Kageyama identifies a second, discrete dynamic in the kami descent of Mt. Hachiōji, for it is in fact the violent spirits (aramitama 荒魂) of Ōyamakui and Tamayorihime which descend the mountain. All kami have both a violent and 4 See Kageyama (2001: 51) for a photo of the shiri-tsunagi. 5 Kamo Wakeikazuchi is, incidentally, the kami venerated at the Upper Kamo Shrine in Kyoto. Meanwhile, Tamayorihime is one of the kami venerated at the Lower Kamo Shrine.

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figure 4.2 The gentle and violent spirits of Ōyamakui and Tamayorihime in the Ōmandokoro photo by author

a more gentle spirit (nigimitama 和魂), and the gentle spirits of Ōyamakui and Tamayorihime are enshrined at Higashi Hongū and Jugenomiya respectively. Kageyama writes, “[The Sannō Festival sees] the violent spirits descend the mountain to become gentle spirits, and thus they are reinvigorated … They brim with the life force … Here, we can see the Shinto religion in its primal” form (Kageyama 2001: 60). On the following morning, 13 April, the mikoshi bearing both the violent and the gentle spirits of Ōyamakui and Tamayorihime, four kami in all, set off from the Higashi Hongū to the building known variously as Ōmandokoro 大政所 (Great office) and Yoinomiya 宵宮 (Night shrine) (Figure 4.2). There, after dark falls, the extraordinary birth rite is performed. The birth rite can only begin once multiple offerings have been placed before the four kami. Shrine priests first offer tea from the Sakamoto tea garden “in order to ensure a safe birth.”6 Next, bouquets of flowers in abundance are presented. A highlight of the Sannō Festival is, indeed, the flamboyant flower

6 For the history of the Sakamoto tea garden, see Kageyama (2001: 61–62).

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figure 4.3 The Flower Parade photo by author

parade (hanawatari 花渡り) of 13 April. It is watched by large crowds, and features men and boys young and old from Sakamoto and surrounding villages bearing extravagant displays of flowers (Figure 4.3). The parade wends its way up the Banba 馬場 Path—which is lined on both sides with stalls selling food and drink—to the Ōmandokoro, where the offerings are made. Then come the hitsuji no goku 未の御供 or “offerings for the day of the sheep,” presented by officials of the Sannō district of Kyoto. These are gifts for the newborn kami, and comprise not only rice, but a mirror, a doll, coloring pencils, a model of a torii shrine gate, and flowers (Kageyama 2001: 58–59). Throughout the offering sequence, a shrine priest is seated in the “birth hut” (ubuya 産屋), directly opposite the Ōmandokoro. The priest offers rice wine to the kami, and then with a dramatic flourish throws the wine cup high up into the air. The flying cup is said to represent the soaring heavenward of the soon-to-be-born kami.

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The festival’s most dramatic moment happens once night has fallen. It involves the young men of Sakamoto rocking the four mikoshi repeatedly and violently back and forth on the stage of the Ōmandokoro. Viewing pavilions are erected in front of the Ōmandokoro, and the crowds are typically huge. It is the relentless rough-rocking which Kageyama and others identify as the birth pangs of Tamayorihime. In Japanese, this act in the festival drama is known as mikoshi buri 神輿振 or “mikoshi shaking.” All four mikoshi are then dropped to the ground from the Ōmandokoro platform, in what is the very moment of divine birth (Kageyama 2001: 68). The young men lift the mikoshi up onto their shoulders, and hurtle across the shrine precinct to the worship hall (haiden) of the Nishi Hongū with large numbers of spectators in pursuit. There, for the first time, all seven of Hiyoshi Taisha’s mikoshi-borne kami line up, and there they spend the night, in readiness for the drama of the next day. The dramatic focus of 14 April shifts from the Higashi Hongū kami cluster to the three Nishi Hongū kami: Ōnamuchi, Tagorihime and Kukurihime. These kami are, incidentally, not linked organically one to the other like the Higashi Hongū kami are; they are a diverse group, among whom Ōnamuchi is supreme. The events of the morning of 14 April are the most solemn in the entire Sannō Festival. The solemnity owes much to the colorful appearance of the chief abbot (zasu 座主) of the Enryakuji monastery, and a bevy of monks, who have descended from the summit of Mt. Hiei especially for this event. The Hiyoshi Taisha chief priest first presents offerings of katsura tree branches to the Higashi Hongū kami, then to the Nishi Hongū kami. The chief abbot then assumes charge. He proceeds first to the Nishi Hongū where he recites the Heart Sutra (Hannya shingyō 般若心経) to Ōnamuchi, and then prays in turn before Tagorihime and Kukurihime, the kami of Usanomiya and Shirayamanomiya respectively (Figure 4.4). The abbot does not approach the Higashi Hongū cluster, but the active ritual presence of Enryakuji monks nonetheless recalls the shrine complex as it was before the Shintō-Buddhist clarification edicts of 1868, when it was Buddhist through and through. There is one final ritual moment before all seven mikoshi can set off down the Banba Path for Lake Biwa. A huge branch of the sakaki 榊 tree, kept overnight in the Tenson Shrine (Tenson Jinja 天孫神社) in Ōtsu City, is brought to Sakamoto and dragged up the Banba Path, through the shrine precinct, and into the Nishi Hongū compound. This Ōsakaki parade recreates the moment at which, in the ancient past, the kami Ōnamuchi supposedly arrived in Hie from Mt. Miwa 三輪 in Yamato Province. The seven mikoshi then line up outside the Nishi Hongū in preparation for their progress down the Banba Path. They pause

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figure 4.4 The Tendai chief abbot reciting sutras before Ōnamuchi at the Nishi Hongū photo by author

for the recitation of prayers and a performance of kagura dance, before passing under the distinctive Great Sannō Gate (Figure 4.5). They leave behind the Hiyoshi Taisha compound and descend the Banba path, where seven trucks wait to transport the seven palanquins down to the shores of Lake Biwa. There they are loaded onto barges known as gozasen 御座船. The kami-bearing barges then set off south across the lake towards Karasaki, where the kami are feted once more with offerings of millet. The seven palanquins return to the Hiyoshi Taisha compound later that same day. Such, in the roughest outline, are the dynamics of the contemporary Sannō Festival, as seen from the perspective of the seven kami of Hiyoshi Taisha, their shrines, the priests and monks who fete them, and the people, who are both participants and spectators. In the next section, I start to explore the Sannō Festival in history.

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figure 4.5 The mikoshi passing under the Great Sannō Gate photo by author

3

The Sannō Festival in History

3.1 Festival Sources The great kami Ōyamakui appeared in the eighth-century myth-history Kojiki, which has this to say: Next there was born the child Ōyamakui no kami, also named as Yamasue no Ōnushi no kami. This deity dwells on Hie mountain in the land of Chikatsu Ōmi, and also dwells at Matsuo no o in Kazuno. He is the deity who holds the humming arrow.7 This citation suggests that Ōyamakui was one of the first kami to be venerated at the Hie site. At some very early date, perhaps during the brief reign of Emperor Tenji 天智 (r. 668–672), the kami Ōnamuchi too was summoned to Hie from the Miwa Shrine in Yamato Province. The Sannō Festival in its earliest

7 Adapted from Philippi (1967: 118). For another rendering of this passage, see Heldt (2014: 40).

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form may have featured the two kami, but nothing survives from the early years to explicate the roles they played, or the form the earliest festival took. Yōtenki 耀天記 (A Record of the Resplendent Heavens), a selection of sources on the Sannō cult compiled by an unknown author in 1232, sheds little light on festival performance. What is clear, however, is that in all matters the Ōmiya Shrine and its kami Ōnamuchi are supreme. The Yōtenki author merely asserts that the festival began in 791 when Emperor Kanmu 桓武 (r. 781–806) ordered the construction of mikoshi palanquins for the shrines’ kami (Yōtenki: 70, 72). The dearth of extant material on the early period is due to the devastation wrought by Oda Nobunaga’s armies on the seven Hie shrines in 1571. The details we have of the premodern festival come from sources that postdate 1571. The following are especially informative: 1) Two texts by Hie shrine priest, Shōgenji Yukimaru 生源寺行丸 (1512– 1592): Hiesha Shintō himitsuki 日吉社神道秘密記 (A Secret Record of Shintō at the Hie Shrines, 1577), and Hiesha shin’eki nenjū gyōji 日吉社神 役年中行事 (Annual Ceremonies Overseen by Priests at the Hie Shrines, 1588) 2) Hie sannō sairei shinki 日吉山王祭礼新記 (New Record of the Hie Shrines’ Sannō Festival, 1688) by the Enryakuji monk Kakushin 覚深 (dates unknown) 3) A variety of visual sources dating from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 3.2 Shōgenji Yukimaru and the Early Modern Festival Shōgenji Yukimaru escaped death by the skin of his teeth during Nobunaga’s onslaught. His task thereafter was to leave for posterity sufficient knowledge for a faithful recreation of the Hie shrine complex at some future date.8 Yukimaru devotes much energy to recording the design, the location and the meaning of the seven shrines and their kami, and the Sannō Festival was for him very much a secondary concern. Nowhere does he record for posterity a festival program, detailing different festival acts, for example. There is, however, some telling detail here and there. In Hiesha shintō himitsuki, Yukimaru writes that Ōnamuchi was the kami most deserving of the title Sannō or Mountain King. This kami’s shrine was—he notes—the first of all the permanent shrines to be constructed on the site.

8 For the best study of Shōgenji Yukimaru and his activities, see Sagai (1992: 22–53).

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table 1

The Evolution of the Hie kami

Early Modern (pre-1869)

Modern (post-1869)

Kami name Shrine name

Kami name Shrine name

Kunitokotachi Ninomiya Kuni no Satsuchi Hachiōji Ninigi Jūzenji Kashikone Sannomiya Ōnamuchi Ōmiya Masakatsu Akatsu Kachihaya Hiame no Homimi Shōshinshi Izanagi Marōdo

Ōyamakui (benign spirit) Hongū→ Higashi Hongū Ōyamakui (violent spirit) Ushionomiya Tamayorihime (benign spirit) Jugenomiya Tamayori (violent spirit) Sannomiya Ōnamuchi Ōmiwa → Nishi Hongū Tagorihime Usanomiya Kukurihime Shirayamanomiya

When Ōnamuchi arrived, however, there were already two other kami there in temporary abodes: Kobiezan Daimyōjin 小比叡山大明神, and Hachiōji.9 The former was originally worshipped on a local mountain, Hamoyama 波母 山; the latter first made his home nearby on the Great Golden Rock (kogane no ōiwa 金大巌). Thereafter, four other kami joined them: Shōshinshi 聖真子, Jūzenji 十禅師, Sannomiya 三宮, and Marōdo 客人. For each of these kami dedicated shrines were duly built (Shōgenji 1983a: 331). The striking thing about Yukimaru’s discussion, from a contemporary perspective, is the lack of familiarity. With the sole exception of Sannomiya, the names of all shrines are unrecognizable today.10 All kami, too, except Ōnamuchi are unfamiliar. Ōnamuchi is for Yukimaru of especial significance: Ōnamuchi is Ōmiya, avatar and lord of the country of Japan (Ōmiya gongen Nihonkoku no

9 10

In parts, Yukimaru is clearly informed by the aforementioned Yōtenki. For a comparison of kami and shrine names in premodern and modern times, see Table 1.

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onnushi 大宮権現日本国之御主), and he is the Great Shining Protector kami of the imperial capital (Teito no chinju daimyōjin 帝都鎮守大明神). The “original Buddha” (honji butsu 本地仏) of this kami is Shaka Nyorai 釈迦如来, the Buddha Śākyamuni. All kami have an original Buddha, since they are all “traces” (suijaku 垂迹) or “avatars” (gongen 権現)—Japanese manifestations, that is— of Buddhas. Thus, for Yukimaru, the Hie complex of the seven shrines is an essentially Buddhist site. It is especially striking that Yukimaru has no knowledge of Ōyamakui. Rather, he knows the kami of Ninomiya (that is, today’s Higashi Hongū where Ōyamakui is enshrined) as Kobiezan Daimyōjin. The kami Kobiezan in his true form, he tells us, is none other than Kunitokotachi no mikoto 国常立尊. This is the kami who appears at the dawn of time in the eight-century myth-history, Nihon shoki 日本書紀 (Chronicles of Japan). This kami for Yukimaru is “the first of the heavenly kami,” “the kami [attendant at] the beginning of heaven and earth,” and “the great ancestor kami for all kami.” He is, moreover, the ancestral kami of the Shōgenji family of hereditary priests (Shōgenji 1983a: 317, 366). By contrast, Ōyamakui, the main protagonist in the drama of the modern Sannō Festival, appears nowhere in the writings of Shōgenji Yukimaru. We also learn that the kami of Jūzenji—today’s Jugenomiya—is not Tamayorihime, but Ninigi no mikoto 瓊瓊杵尊, the grandson of the sun goddess, Amaterasu Ōmikami 天照大神 (Shōgenji 1983a: 368). In brief, in the late sixteenth century when Yukimaru was active, there was no sense of any of the Hie kami being betrothed or, indeed, of their being linked organically as “gentle” and “violent” spirits. Yukimaru understood, rather, that Kunitokotachi and Ōnamuchi were connected as yin is to yang. The inter-working of the two great kami forces had, indeed, given birth to Shōshinshi, who was none other than the sun goddess’s first born, his full name Masakatsu Akatsu Kachihaya Hiame no Oshihomimi 正勝吾勝勝速日天之忍 穂耳 (Shōgenji 1983a: 358 and 377). What interventions may account for the transformations of these premodern kami and their shrines into what we have to day? Where, after all, lie the origins of the modern Sannō Festival? It is unclear when and how memory of Ōyamakui was lost, and under what circumstances Kunitokotachi usurped his place. It is quite clear, however, that the Sannō Festival in Yukimaru’s day can have had nothing to do with the betrothal of Ōyamakui to Tamayorihime, and the birth of their divine child. What then can we know of the festival and its dynamics in premodern times? Yukimaru writes, “The true meaning of the Hie Shrine Festival is to celebrate [the kami],” and he identifies multiple celebratory moments (Shōgenji 1983b: 175). The kami of the Hachiōji and Sannomiya shrines, Kuni no Satsuchi

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and Kashikone, appear on the first festival day of the horse and are celebrated. On the following day, all seven kami take to their mikoshi, and leave though the Ōmiya Gate, where they are celebrated. Yukimaru makes a striking association here between the seven kami passing under the Ōmiya Gate and the sun goddess’s emergence from the heavenly rock cave in mythical times (Shōgenji 1983b: 175). He notes, too, that the open space outside the Ōmiya Gate is Kasugaoka 春日岡 or Kasuga Slope, and explains that it was so named after Amenokoyane, the god of Kasuga Shrine in Nara. It was, of course, this kami who offered prayers to the sun goddess after her emergence from the rock cave. Yukimaru then writes of the seven mikoshi-borne kami pausing on Kasuga Slope before heading down to Lake Biwa: When the sun god and the moon god withdrew into the heavenly cave, the myriad kami of heaven and earth all performed a kagura dance [to entice them out again]. The great kami of the Kasuga Shrine recited celebratory prayers. That is why, nowadays, the seven mikoshi pause at the Kasuga slope: to be celebrated. Their departure through the Ōmiya Gate, and the emergence of the [sun god] from the heavenly cave, are of equivalent ritual significance. Shōgenji 1983a: 349–350

Yukimaru refers to just one other aspect of the Sannō Festival, namely the procession of the seven mikoshi along the Banba Path through the Great Sannō Gate, with its distinctive triangular roof, then the Middle Gate, and finally the Great Sacred Gate. He observes, “The true essence of Shintō is to be found in the [passage of the kami through] these sacred gates” (Shōgenji 1983a: 333). Each gate, he tells us, has its own mystical significance: the Great Sacred Gate represents the Taizō mandala 胎蔵曼荼羅, the Middle Gate is the Konkō mandala 金 光曼荼羅, and the Great Sannō Gate sees “Shintō and the two mandala merge as one.”11 This is to be celebrated. In brief, Yukimaru understands the dynamics of the Sannō Festival as bearing witness to an essential truth, that all kami are Japanese manifestations of the Buddha. 3.3 The Monk Kakushin and the Sannō Festival Shōgenji Yukimaru was active in the late sixteenth century, and his writings can be taken to reflect accurately enough the seven shrines of Hie and the

11

Shōgenji (1983a: 333 and 349). Shōgenji phrases this merging as Shintō taikon gattai 神道 胎金合体.

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Sannō Festival before the site was overrun by Nobunaga’s armies. Yukimaru was regarded as an authority on Hie and the Sannō Festival long after his death, too. This much is clear from his appearance in Hie sannō sairei shinki (New Record of the Hie Sannō Festival) written by the Enryakuji monk, Kakushin 覚深 in 1688. Yukimaru referred only occasionally to the festival, but Kakushin offers considerable ritual detail. Kakushin’s text itself remained authoritative till the end of the early modern period. We can confirm from the Hie sannō sairei shinki that shrine names and kami identities were unchanged one hundred years on from Yukimaru’s time. Similarly, the flow of the festival as Kakushin describes it was broadly as it was during Yukimaru’s time; it is to some degree familiar today, too. It commenced atop Mt. Hachiōji, and concluded three days later with the ritual feting of all seven Hie kami on Lake Biwa. But much is missing when seen from a contemporary perspective. Kakushin, for example, refers to the events of the day of the sheep, day two, as the Ninomiya sairei or Ninomiya Festival, as if it were isolated from other ritual activity (Kakushin 1983: 211). It is clear, moreover, that the flower parade—one of the main attractions of the modern festival—did not exist in Kakushin’s time. Kakushin does, however, describe the offerings presented to the kami on the day of the sheep: tea, a mirror, writing brushes, and dolls (Kakushin 1983: 211). He writes of the four mikoshi-borne kami lining up in the Ōmandokoro, where lion dances and dengaku and kyōgen are performed for their pleasure, but he makes no reference to the relentless rocking of the mikoshi, the main festival attraction today. Kakushin does refer, however, to the mikoshi race from the Ōmandokoro to Ōmiya Shrine, where all seven kami spend the night (Kakushin 1983: 213). The early modern Hie Shrine and the Sannō Festival were underwritten by the monks of the Enryakuji Temple, and the festival was planned and run by low-ranking monks known as kunin 公人. Kakushin notes that, although the kunin were a constant presence on each day of the festival—they were tasked with overall organization and security, for example—the Enryakuji chief abbot and senior monks only appeared on the third day of the monkey. Kakushin refers to the events of this day as the “Ōmiya gongen sairei” 大宮権現祭礼 or the Ōmiya Avatar Festival. He notes that a highlight was the morning presentation of offerings by the chief abbot to Ōnamuchi, the Ōmiya kami and avatar of Shaka Nyorai.12 Later in the day, we learn, the abbot and senior monks situated themselves in the viewing pavilions known as sajiki 桟敷 along either side

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For a discussion of the abbot’s role and his offerings, see Okada (2003: 17–19).

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of the Banba Path.13 They enjoyed the best possible views of both the parade that headed up the Banba Path dragging the huge branch of the sakaki tree, and then the grand parade of seven mikoshi that later descended it on their way to the shores of Lake Biwa. The kunin waited on the abbot and senior prelates in the pavilions. Kakushin’s Hie sannō sairei shinki serves as useful confirmation that the Sannō Festival in his time, too, had nothing at all to do with Ōyamakui, Tamayorihime, and their betrothal, or with the birth of a divine child. 3.4 Visual Sources and Popular Participation The writings of Shōgenji Yukimaru and Kakushin point to the main dynamics of the early modern Sannō Festival. But so long as we rely on the written record, there remains a serious blind spot in our understanding. That is because neither shrine priest Yukimaru nor monk Kakushin pays any heed to the place of the people. The visual record is, by contrast, highly suggestive in this regard; it helps us understand the festival’s evolution from matsuri to sairei. Both words translate into English as “festival,” but the latter, the festival-assairei, is defined by the presence of the spectator; it is an event performed to be seen. It was, of course, Yanagita Kunio 柳田国男 (1875–1962), who proposed this critical distinction between matsuri and sairei. Kurushima Hiroshi 久留島浩, in his studies of urban festivals, has subsequently extended Yanagita’s insights.14 Spectators are typically drawn not to the sacred mikoshi, but to the “elegance” ( furyū 風流) of elaborately decorated floats and other forms of pageant. Also, the common people are not merely passive spectators; rather, they engage actively in the creation of elegance. Kurushima has also observed that competition between different groups of festival participants leads to ever greater refinement of elegance, attracting ever greater crowds. What can we learn from visual sources about the Sannō Festival, its spectators and the production of elegance? Figure 4.6 shows scenes from the Sannō sairei byōbu 山王祭礼屏風 (Sannō Festival Screen), a mid-seventeenth century folding screen in the possession of Konchi’in 金地院 Temple in Kyoto. It is of unknown authorship. The artist’s focus here is on the third festival day, the day of the monkey, and the progress of the seven mikoshi down the Banba Path towards Lake Biwa. There are extant some twenty screens depicting the early modern Sannō Festival, and

13 14

Kakushin (1983: 214–217). The sajiki pavilions can be seen clearly in Figures 6 and 7. See for example Yanagita (1969: 176–192), and Kurushima (1986 and 1989). There is ample scope for confusion here, since many early-modern and modern commentators use sairei not in Yanagita’s refined sense, but as an exact synonym for matsuri.

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figure 4.6 Sannō sairei byōbu KONCHI’IN

almost all feature the mikoshi descending the Banba Path or the barge-borne mikoshi on the waters of Lake Biwa.15 On the bottom right side of Figure 4.6, the eye is drawn to the massive mikoshi as it passes under the Middle Gate, and the physicality of the porters who shoulder its immense weight. In the seventeenth century, the kayochō 駕輿丁, as the palanquin porters were known, hailed not from Sakamoto, but from the counties of Shiga 滋賀 and Otagi 愛宕 northeast of Kyoto. The men with shaved heads, wearing armor, darting about the mikoshi and brandishing swords and sticks, are the aforementioned kunin monks. On the left side of Figure 4.6, it is just possible to make out the Buddhist monks in the sajiki pavilions either side of the Banba. The people seated along the Banba Path, clapping their hands and chatting away, are presumably farmers, merchants and others from Sakamoto and nearby villages. They are the festival spectators. This Sannō sairei byōbu is typical of the genre in suggesting the common people were an entirely passive presence. Their passivity may, of course, merely

15

On the genre of Sannō festival screens, see Sanekata (1999).

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figure 4.7 Ise sangū meisho zue, 1796

reflect the prejudices of the artists, and their patrons. We need to turn to somewhat later visual sources for a different perspective. Figure 4.7 is taken from the Ise sangū meisho zue 伊勢参宮名所図会, a late eighteenth century illustrated guide for pilgrims headed to the Ise Shrines. This section of the guide encourages the Ise pilgrim to detour to the Sannō Festival. Depicted here is the Ōsakaki procession, as it heads up the Banba Path in front of a viewing pavilion. Two comments are in order on the place of the people here. First, local people are clearly participating. Some are at the head of the procession, bearing the great spear of good fortune (sachi no hoko 幸の矛); another group drags along the huge sakaki branch. The social status of these participants is unclear, but we know that, by the early decades of the nineteenth century, over 200 villagers, from elders to laborers, were participating in this parade.16 However, there is no suggestion, at least in this late eighteenth century image, of the sort of elegance that Yanagita and Kurushima refer to as marks of the modern festival.

16

Shun’ei (1983: 224). The monk Shun’ei wrote his commentary on the Sannō Festival in 1837.

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Secondly, on either side of the Banba Path are spectators aplenty, all seated. To the upper right and lower left of Figure 4.7, kunin can be seen wielding sticks of split bamboo, and striking spectators; other kunin strut about projecting an air of menace. This is clearly a disciplined passivity. The author of the Ise sangū meisho zue refers to the beating of spectators by kunin as “one aspect of the entertainment offered by the Sannō Festival” (Akisato 1944: 192). Other commentators thought otherwise. This is the view of Samukawa Tatsukiyo, the author of the mid-eighteenth century Ōmi yochi shiryaku 近江輿地 志略 (A Brief Account of Ōmi and Environs, 1734): The Sakamoto monks curse, and claim the Hie mikoshi cannot pass by until they have seen the shedding of blood. Is it possible to imagine a greater slight [to the Hie kami] than this? Hie is a sacred site. Why would the kami delight to see people cut and wounded? If there is any rejoicing here, it can only be that of evil spirits, not of the Hie kami. If it is the case that the mikoshi cannot pass without seeing bloodshed, then [someone] needs to take the monks and one by one inflict wounds on them. Samukawa 1915: 216–217

In brief, it is clear that neither the ōsakaki procession up the Banba Path nor the mikoshi procession down it allowed for the active, creative participation of the common people. The visual record suggests that the situation began to change in the early nineteenth century, however. Figures 4.8a, 4.8b and 4.8c depict scenes from the Hie sairei kozu 日吉祭礼 古図 (Old Map of the Sannō Festival), produced in 1822 ahead of that year’s festival.17 The scenes highlight a parade of flowers. Sprays of flowers are held high by children; other flowers are artistically arranged on platform-like structures, that are evidently festival floats of a very primitive kind. On one is a rabbit; on another, a man stands beneath a willow tree; on a third, a rope co-joins two rocks. They are individualistic and creative, and no doubt represent the interests and aspirations of different communities in Sakamoto. Armor-clad kunin head the parade, but they cannot obscure the new “elegance” that is evident here. What we see is an early form of the modern festival’s flower parade, though exactly when it was introduced is unclear. It may be that the flower parade was an innovation of 1822, and that the Hie sairei kozu was composed to inform kunin how best to supervise it. In any case, this author has found no evidence of such a parade existing prior to 1822; and yet it features in all

17

The Hie sairei kozu of unknown authorship is kept in the archive of Hiyoshi Taisha.

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figure 4.8abc Hie sairei kozu Ōtsu City Historical Museum (Ōtsu-shi rekishi hakubutsukan)

festival accounts, textual and visual, hereafter.18 The first two decades of the nineteenth century were a time of radical change in the power structure of Sakamoto. The influence of the kunin over Sakamoto affairs had been in decline for a generation, and the vigor of village communities was newly in the ascendance.19 The 1822 Hie sairei kozu fails to convey any sense of “event”; the figures are lifeless. However, the Hie sannō hari-maze byōbu 日吉山王貼り雑ぜ屛風 (A 18 19

Shun’ei, for example, in his Hie onsairei no shidai (The Program of the Hie Festival) of 1837, provides good detail of the flower parade (Shun’ei 1983: 228). On the fortunes of the Sakamoto kunin, see Takashima (1978) and Yoshida (1995).

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figure 4.9a

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The Flower parade 1 (Hie sannō harimaze byōbu) Ōtsu City Historical Museum (Ōtsu-shi rekishi hakubutsukan)

Screen Collage of Hie Sannō), probably composed around 1840 by an unknown artist, succeeds admirably in this regard (Figures 4.9a, b, c).20 In Figure 4.9a, we see Sakamoto villagers preparing their flower-floats for the parade. Figure 4.9b shows the flower parade as it heads up the Banba Path, through the second torii gate in Lower Sakamoto. Eight different flower-floats are identifiable here, each with a different design and different decoration. Note the crowds of people surrounding the floats. Visible, too, are town elders carrying metal rods which they scrape on the ground. The grating sound of metal on stone announces their arrival and asserts their authority. The armor-clad kunin are present but keep their distance from the floats; they neither brandish sticks nor strike at people. The spectators are of interest, too. None are seated; all are standing two or three deep, on either side of the Banba Path. Some are stationary, watching the parade as it passes; many more, though, walk with it up the Banba to the Ōmandokoro where the four mikoshi-borne kami await them. The Hie sannō hari-maze byōbu, seen as a whole, suggests other changes had begun to impact the Sannō Festival in the 1840s. Large crowds are gathering for festival events on all three days of the horse, the sheep and the monkey. In Fig-

20

I follow here the dating suggested by local Sakamoto historian, Yamaguchi Kōji 山口幸次.

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figure 4.9b

The Flower parade 2 (Hie sannō harimaze byōbu) Ōtsu City Historical Museum (Ōtsu-shi rekishi hakubutsukan)

figure 4.9c

The Ōsakaki parade (Hie sannō harimaze byōbu) Ōtsu City Historical Museum (Ōtsu-shi rekishi hakubutsukan)

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ure 4.9c, people have set up stalls and are selling refreshments to spectators for the ōsakaki parade. The viewing pavilions are barely visible here, for the artist is directing our attention to the crowds and the festive mood. The scroll conveys the impression that the people of Sakamoto have claimed the entire Sannō Festival for themselves. There is one important caveat to this observation, however. Bordering Sakamoto were two villages, Yagiyama 八木山 and Gokenchō 五軒丁, whose populations were subjected to state-sanctioned discrimination. Villagers from Yagiyama worked principally in the transport of goods, those from Gokenchō in the slaughter of animals and the curing of skins. Both were deemed “much-defiled” (eta 穢多), and their residents were denied any part in either the flower-parade or the ōsakaki parade. Nor could they serve as palanquin porters. We need to ask when, how and to what extent these communities came to engage with the modern Sannō Festival.

4

Meiji and the Making of the Modern Sannō Festival

4.1 The “Clarification” Edicts It is the Meiji Revolution of 1868 that best explains why the Sannō Festival is so different today from pre-modern times. The revolution struck the seven shrines of Hie with force on 23 April 1868. At around noon, Juge Shigekuni 樹下茂国 (1822–1884), Shōgenji Kiyo 生源寺希璵 (dates unknown), and other members of Hie’s hereditary priesthood gathered at the entrance to the shrine precinct. They were joined by members of the Shin’itai 神威隊 or Band of Divine Dignity, a group of men comprising priests and activists from across central Japan. Several score villagers from Sakamoto were there too. Their purpose? To strip from the seven shrines each and every Buddhist object that had adorned them, and accorded them meaning for centuries. The men swiftly set about their task. An inventory of the treasures they destroyed at the Ōmiya Shrine alone reads as follows: a Śākyamuni statue; a bronze bell; fourteen boxes containing Buddhist sutras and commentaries; the Heart Sutra in five boxes; the Lotus Sutra in ten volumes; Buddhist ritual implements of gold; a Dainichi statue, and an altar used in a Buddhist fire rite. It was a similar story at Ninomiya and the five other Hie shrines. All in all, over 1,000 treasures were lost in the April frenzy in Sakamoto.21

21

Much useful detail is provided by the official shrine chronology, Issha hennen ryakuki 一 社編年略紀 in the Hiyoshi Taisha archive.

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Juge Shigekuni was, in fact, presently employed in the Jingikan 神祇官, the revolutionary government’s office for shrine affairs in Kyoto. His actions were authorized by legislation drafted in the Jingikan and published just three days before. The legislation targeted all shrines in the realm where kami were venerated “as though they were in origin Buddhas.” Priests at these shrines—almost every shrine in the land—were to remove immediately all statues of the Buddha, all bells and other Buddhist accoutrements.22 The Hie shrines were the first in Japan to be subject to such a stripping. Quickly, though, the legislation reverberated across the land. At Hie and elsewhere, state-authorized “clarification” marked out new, exclusive time-spaces for shrines, their kami and their priests, separating them off from temples, Buddhas and monks. In the process, it laid the foundations for Shintō as we know it today, an autonomous cult, entirely independent from Buddhism.23 The actions of Juge Shigekuni and his colleagues freed the Hie Shrines from the control of Enryakuji monks, and made possible the first ever entirely Buddha-free Sannō Festival on 10 May 1868. We know far too little about this event, but on 9 May the kunin were told that their participation was conditional upon them renouncing Buddhism, which they all did (Issha hennen ryakuki, 10 May 1868). Juge’s clarification fervor was by no means sated. He was offended now by the Great Sannō Gate. The triangular structure set atop the crossbar, distinguishing it from all other shrine gates in the land, symbolized the one-ness of the kami and the Buddhas. And so, with the permission of the Ōtsu prefectural authorities, Juge had it removed.24 He also took offence at the names of three of the seven Hie shrines. To him, Hachiōji, Shōshinshi and Jūzenji all smacked of Buddhism; he duly renamed them the Ushionomiya, Usanomiya and Jugenomiya shrines respectively (Issha hennen ryakuki, 4 December 1868). The actions that Juge took against Hie’s seven shrines in the name of clarification prompted a rebuke from the government: “Shrine priests must not of a sudden behave with arrogance, and claim to follow the emperor’s commands, when in truth their aim is to vent private frustrations” (Miyachi 1988: 425). Indeed, Ōtsu Prefecture’s investigations eventually led to the arrest of Juge Shigekuni and five others. They were convicted of vandalism and spent a full year in prison from 1869 through 1870 (Kanpei Taisha Hie Jinja Shamusho 1942: 304–306). 22 23 24

This was one of three pieces of legislation, known collectively at the time as shinbutsu hanzenrei 神仏判然令 or the kami-Buddha clarification edicts. See Miyachi (1988: 425). On the historical impact of the “clarification edicts,” see Breen (2000: 230–251). Issha hennen ryakuki (22 July 1868). Ōtsu Prefecture became Shiga Prefecture in 1871.

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This did not mean, however, that the government was in retreat; far from it. Clarification was essential to the process of priming shrines across the land for their new state role as carriers of the imperial myth. The myth held that the emperor was descended from the sun goddess, and that his line was unbroken since its founding by Emperor Jinmu 神武 in 660BC. In 1871, the government designated all shrines in the land “sites for the performance of state rites” (Miyachi 1988: 437). In 1873, it published a preliminary cycle of state rites to be performed; all of them bearing ritual witness to aspects of the myth (Miyachi 1988: 450). The same year Katano Tokitsumu 交野時万, erstwhile priest at the Hikawa Shrine in Saitama, became the Hie Shrine’s first non-hereditary chief priest. He was a state appointee, whose principal task was to perform the new ritual cycle. The seven shrines of Hie, stripped now of their Buddhist accoutrements, were declared the Great Hie State Shrines or, in Japanese, Kanpei Taisha Hie Jinja 官幣大社日吉神社. 4.2 The Sannō Festival and Hie’s Modern Kami Sometime in August 1868, Juge Shigekuni submitted to Ōtsu Prefecture a short memorandum, styled simply Tōshinsho 答申書 or “Report.” In it he wrote, “It is evident from the Kojiki and the Nihon shoki that the kami first worshipped at Hie in the age of the gods was Ōyamakui.”25 Ōyamakui, in fact, is mentioned nowhere in the Nihon shoki, but Juge was betting that the Ōtsu prefectural authorities would take his word for it. He was bringing to bear sources, true and false, to argue that the kami which he and his ancestors had worshipped for generations was not after all Kunitokotachi, but Ōyamakui. The original cause for Juge’s sudden, and obviously urgent, referencing of Ōyamakui is to be found a generation earlier. In 1798, Motoori Norinaga 本居宣長 (1730–1801) completed his monumental study of the Kojiki, the Kojikiden 古事記伝 (On the Kojiki). Published posthumously in 1822, this work allowed the Kojiki to usurp the Nihon shoki as the most authoritative text on the ages of the kami. It seems that the priests of the Hie shrines first encountered the Kojikiden, and the Kojiki itself, in the 1830s. Anyway, it was in 1835 that Shōgenji Kiyo wrote a short but explosive pamphlet, called Ōyamakuiden 大山咋伝 (On the kami Ōyamakui); this was an “abridged biography” of Ōyamakui.26 He cites the short passage on Ōyamakui that appears in the Kojiki and marshals other references from the medieval Shaku nihongi 釈日本紀, the Yamashiro no kuni fudoki 山城風土記 (Records

25 26

Tōshinsho (Shigaken rekishiteki monjo, Mei-su-280 滋賀県歴史的文書、明-す-280). The pamphlet is held in the Eizan Bunko 叡山文庫.

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of Yamashiro Province) and other texts. Ōyamakuiden is, to the best of this author’s knowledge, the first text ever written by any Hie priest that references Ōyamakui. Shōgenji Kiyo was clearly captivated by Norinaga’s Kojikiden commentary, as well he might have been. Norinaga wrote, It is a real travesty (itaku higakoto いたくひがこと) to refer to the kami of the Ninomiya Shrine—otherwise known as Kobie—as Kunitokotachi no mikoto. Sources of a later age, such as the Kuji kongen 公事根源, record that the kami of Mt. Hiei is one with the kami of Matsuo Shrine 松尾の社, and [other] ancient records demonstrate this to be fact.27 The kami of the Matsuo shrine was, as everyone knew, Ōyamakui, but Norinaga is asserting here that the same kami was originally worshipped on the Hie site at Ninomiya. He blames Enryakuji monks for concealing the kami’s true identity. “Everything to do with the Hie shrines has acquired a Buddhist hue. Such is the legacy of the Enryakuji Temple; it is pitiful” (Motoori 1968: 30). To explicate the true nature of Ōyamakui, Norinaga cites the well-known legend of Tamayorihime, as it appeared in the Yamashiro no kuni fudoki.28 Tamayorihime was playing by the Kamo River in Kyoto one day, when a vermilioncolored humming arrow floated by. She picked it up and took it home. She left the arrow by her bed, and woke in the morning to discover that overnight she had miraculously become pregnant. Later, she gave birth to a boy whom she named Kamo Wakeikazuchi. The Kojiki passage on Ōyamakui says he holds a humming arrow, but Norinaga insists that Ōyamakui is the vermilion-colored arrow (Motoori 1968: 32).29 Norinaga’s conclusion is that Ōyamakui and Tamayorihime are betrothed, and that they are father and mother to the divine child, Kamo Wakeikazuchi. This new knowledge, in the possession of the Hie Shrine priests from the 1830s, had dramatic implications for the Hie Shrine complex. It is unsurprising that the new generation of priests, freed now from their ties to the Enryakuji monks, were anxious to set the record straight and, at the very least, re-enshrine Ōyamakui.

27

28 29

Motoori (1968: 30). The shrine referred to by Norinaga as Ninomiya is known today as Higashi Hongū. The Kuji kongen is a medieval work by Ichijō Kaneyoshi (Kanera)一条兼 良 (1402–1481), published in 1423. This by the way is not a Kojiki legend. Tamayorihime appears in the Kojiki as the sister of Toyotamabime, not as the bride of Ōyamakui. See Phillippi (1977: 156–159). It is worth noting that the afore-mentioned Yōtenki cites this legend, but in the context of the Ōmiya kami, Ōnamuchi (Yōtenki 46).

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The afore-mentioned Tōshinsho report was a first stage in this endeavor. Sometime in 1869, several months before his arrest, Juge wrote a second, more substantial report for Ōtsu Prefecture, which he styled Saijin oyobi kanjō nenki unnun 祭神および勧請年記云々, or “On the Hie kami, the dating of their enshrinement, and other matters” (Shigaken rekishiteki monjo, Mei-su-280). It is the first historical document to list all seven Hie kami as they are found at Hiyoshi Taisha today. The kami enshrined in Ninomiya, writes Juge, is the “gentle spirit” of Ōyamakui. Tamayorihime’s gentle spirit is enshrined in the (recently re-styled) Jugenomiya. Ushionomiya venerates the “violent spirit” of Ōyamakui, and Sannomiya venerates Tamayorihime’s violent spirit. The shrines Ōmiya, Usanomiya and Marōdo enshrine respectively the kami Ōnamuchi, Tagorihime and Kukurihime. It is worth noting that Norinaga himself made no mention at all of Tagorihime or Kukurihime; nor do these kami appear in the Kojiki. Saijin oyobi kanjō nenki unnun is striking, too, for its references to gentle and violent spirits. Norinaga certainly discusses these binary qualities of the kami in the Kojikiden, but not in the context of the Hie shrines. Here Juge’s imagination is working overtime. He learned, he says, that the Ninomiya kami was Ōyamakui’s gentle spirit after consulting a rescript from the reign of Emperor Sujin 崇神天皇, but he offers no evidence. Nor does he cite sources for his claim that Tamayorihime’s gentle and violent spirits were both worshipped in ancient times at the Jugenomiya and Sannomiya shrines.30 It is, of course, easy to dismiss Saijin oyobi kanjō nenki unnun as a brazen fabrication. But it is also possible to see here the outcomes of Juge imagining what the Hie shrines, their kami and, indeed, the Sannō Festival may have been like in the ancient past. Why did two kami descend the mountain at the start of the Sannō Festival? Why were their mikoshi palanquins placed side by side over night? Why, indeed, did all four kami come together in the Ōmandokoro the next day? Saijin oyobi kanjō nenki unnun is Juge’s bold claim to the truth: essentially, all is to be explained by the fact that the kami are betrothed. His claims did not amount to historical evidence, however. In the absence of such evidence, he and his fellows set about fabricating it. What they fabricated next was a document styled Hiesha negi kuden shō 日吉社禰宜口伝抄 or “The Secret Transmissions of a Hie Shrine Priest: Abridged.” The document bears the signature Kamo no Agatanushi Motochika 賀茂県主元親, and is dated October 1047. A note is appended to the effect that the Hie priest, Yukimaru, transcribed the document in May 1589 (Juge 1983).

30

Saijin oyobi kanjō nenki unnun (Shigaken rekishiteki monjo, Mei-su-280).

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Hiesha negi kuden shō was first published in 1983, in the Hie volume of the Shintō taikei 神道体系, an authoritative collection of primary sources. The editors, one of whom was Kageyama Haruki, accepted it as genuine.31 However, in 1989 the religious historian Satō Masato demonstrated that it could not have been written in the eleventh century or indeed copied in the sixteenth (Satō 1989). Satō proposed that it could only be a modern fabrication.32 If he is right—and it seems to this author that he is—it is safe to assume it was the work of Juge Shigekuni sometime in 1869 before his incarceration. The fabrication was, anyway, a remarkable success. Those priests, folklorists, and Shintō scholars who had access to it before it was published in 1983 all believed it to be a genuine product of the early medieval period, until Satō deconstructed it.33 Saijin oyobi kanjō nenki unnun set out the seven kami and their shrines as if they had been in Hie for centuries. The document authorized Juge and his fellow priests to shuffle the Hie kami and the seven shrines, so that Ōyamakui and Tamayorihime emerged dominant. This duly happened in 1869. This shuffling in turn made possible—indeed it demanded—the creation of an entirely new Sannō Festival. 4.3 Making the Modern Sannō Festival The ritual space of the Hie shrines was dramatically transformed in the wake of the clarification edicts. There was the stripping of Buddhist accoutrements, the violence to the Great Sannō Gate, the renaming of select shrines, and the switching of their kami. However, this was but the beginning. In 1874, Nishikawa Yoshisuke 西川吉輔 (1816–1880) arrived in Sakamoto as Hie’s third chief priest of the modern era. He was born and raised not far from Sakamoto, and was a one-time disciple of the great nativists, Hirata Atsutane 平田篤胤 (1776–1843) and Ōkuni Takamasa 大国隆正 (1793–1871). Nishikawa left an enduring mark on Hie’s modern history. No sooner had he taken up his post than he launched a new round of rearranging and re-assigning. Figure 4.10a highlights one aspect of his endeavor. The shrine formerly known as Ninomiya, dedicated since 1869 to Ōyamakui, is here styled Hongū 31 32

33

Kageyama cites this document as evidence of the ancient origins of Hiyoshi Taisha’s eastern main-shrine cluster (Kageyama 2001: 27–28; 30–31). Satō notes, for example, that Yukimaru does not refer to this document in any of the sources he wrote after 1589; and that, indeed, there is no record by anyone in the Edo period that refers to Hiesha negi kuden shō. Moreover, the kami referred to in Hiesha negi kuden shō appear in no other documentation before this time. For the details of Satō’s argument, see especially Satō (1989: 6–11, 30–36). Needless to say, Kageyama Haruki’s postwar Sannō Festival theory draws heavily on Juge’s 1869 fabrication.

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or “main shrine.” Figure 4.10b shows that the Ōmiya Shrine too is restyled as Ōmiwa 大神. This latter change reflects the fact that its kami, Ōnamuchi, was believed to hail originally from Ōmiwa Shrine in Nara. But this was also a demotion for a kami that had once been the most prominent of the Hie seven. Ōmiya means “great shrine,” and greatness was now reserved for Ōyamakui. Marōdo Shrine is also restyled Shirayamahime Shrine. In brief, by 1874, all Hie shrines with the sole exception of Sannomiya—perched atop Mt. Hachiōji—had surrendered their pre-Meiji identities. Subsequently, Nishikawa Yoshisuke went further, and re-designated all shrines as “subsidiaries” or sessha 摂社 to the Hongū. He then relegated Ōmiwa to the lowly status of a village shrine or gōsha 郷社 (Issha hennen ryakuki 21 March 1879). From this point on, Kanpei Taisha Hie Jinja refers uniquely to the Hongū and its kami Ōyamakui.34 But still, Chief Priest Nishikawa could not rest. The Hongū building was less spacious than the Ōmiwa building, and considerably less dignified. So, in 1875 he obtained permission from the Edification Ministry (Kyōbushō 教部省) in Tokyo to effect a switch. In the presence of the Shiga Prefecture governor, Nishikawa oversaw a solemn rite of re-enshrinement. Ōyamakui and Tamayorihime were taken out of Hongū and Jugenomiya, and carried in procession to Ōmiwa and Usanomiya, where they swapped places with the now very much subordinate kami, Ōnamuchi and Tagorihime. Shrine names were exchanged as well. Figure 4.11 is an early twentieth century image, but it shows well the outcomes of Nishikawa’s endeavor.35 Hie’s modern ritual space remained volatile. In 1915, the chief priest received Home Ministry approval to restore the triangular roof to the Great Sannō Gate (Kanpei taisha Hie jinja nenpyō: 332). The move was meant to celebrate the enthronement of Emperor Taishō 大正 (r. 1912–1926) in that year. In 1928, Shiga Prefecture sanctioned another round of re-naming, this time to mark the enthronement of Emperor Shōwa 昭和 (r. 1926–1989). The virtues of the two kami, Ōyamakui and Ōnamuchi, were after all equivalent, claimed the chief priest, so the Hongū was now restyled Higashi Hongū, and Ōmiwa was restyled Nishi Hongū, and rescued from decades of oblivion as a mere village shrine (Ōsaka Asahi shinbun [Kyōto furoku], 11 October 1928). This new equivalence made a nonsense of the switch that Nishikawa Yoshisuke had effected back in 1875, and so in 1942, Ōyamakui and Tamayorihime swapped places once more

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Onsha honmatsu no junjo o aratame (Shigaken rekishiteki monjo, Mei-a-238 明-あ-238). Gishiki 儀式 (Shigaken rekishiteki monjo, Taishō-ka-21大正-か-21).

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The Hie precinct, 1874 Shigaken rekishiteki monjo, Shigaken chō

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figure 4.11

The Hie precinct, 1913 Shigaken rekishiteki monjo, Shigaken chō

with Ōnamuchi and Tagorihime (Kanpei taisha Hie jinja nenpyō: 332). And this is how things have stood ever since. In 1873, following the introduction of the solar calendar, the Sannō Festival was realigned so that the events on the days of the horse, sheep and monkey were performed on 12, 13, 14 April. The central government enforced a new distinction between “state rites” or kansai 官祭 and “private rites” or shisai 私祭. As applied to the Sannō Festival, “state rites” referred exclusively to the offerings made by the Shiga prefectural governor before Ōyamakui at the Hongū on the morning of 14 April. This ritual moment was funded by the state, but all other acts in the festival drama were now deemed private, and the financial burden for them fell on the residents and entrepreneurs of Sakamoto and surrounding villages. The earliest document relating to the conduct of the modern festival known to this author dates from 1875, and is styled Meiji hachinen Hie jinja korei saishiki 明治八年日吉神社古例祭式 (Eighth Year of the Meiji Era: Hie Shrine’s Traditional Rites).36 The events described here took place after Nishikawa Yoshisuke

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The author is unknown. The document is held in the Shiga prefectural archive.

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had renamed select shrines in 1874, but before he had effected the switch of the kami in 1875. On 12 April 1875, we learn, the violent spirits of Ōyamakui and Tamayorihime duly descended Mt. Hachiōji, and spent the night in the Hongū. There is no indication, though, of the suggestive crossing of mikoshi-poles, known today as shiri-tsunagi. The next day, Ōyamakui and Tamayorihime— spirits both gentle and violent—moved to the Ōmandokoro, where they were feted with offerings of tea, flowers, and other gifts. The ubuya hut, which today stands opposite the Ōmandokoro, is not mentioned, nor is the throwing skyward of the wine cup. In the evening of 13 April, the four mikoshi-borne kami were entertained with lion-dancing, but there was evidently no rough-rocking of the mikoshi. On 14 April, there was the Ōsakaki parade up the Banba Path, and then all seven kami lined up in their mikoshi outside the Ōmiwa Shrine, leaving through the Sakura Gate. They stopped on the Kasuga Slope for the reading of prayers and the performance of kagura before setting off down the Banba Path to Lake Biwa. The festival was, of course, performed entirely without Buddhist involvement of any sort. In the early Meiji period, the Sannō Festival was a rapidly evolving event. What is interesting about the Shisai tetsuzuki sho 私祭手続書 (Procedures for the Conduct of the Private Festival), dated to 1879, is that it is the first document to feature the ubuya birth hut.37 This was presumably introduced by Nishikawa Yoshisuke in what proved to be the last year of his tenure as chief priest.38 The document states that five shrine priests stand guard at the ubuya after the four mikoshi have been transported to the Ōmandokoro platform. The priests watch while the kami are feted with offerings of tea and flowers, before they “throw the wine cup.” A document from 1892 gives a more detailed reference to this innovation. After offerings of wine have been made to the mikoshi-borne kami in the Ōmandokoro, a priest (singular) takes the wine cup and throws it in to the air. This represents, we learn “the flight of Kamo no Wakeikazuchi up into the heavens.” The 1892 document in question is styled Genkon shikkō Hie jinja korei saishiki 現今執行日吉神社古例祭式 (The Contemporary Staging of Hie’s Ancient Festival). Shōgenji Kitoku 生源寺希徳, the new chief priest of Hie, wrote it for submission to Shiga Prefecture. Here we find a description of the modern Sannō Festival more substantial than any that preceded it. Shōgenji offers the following interpretation for the descent of Mt. Hachiōji by Ōyamakui and Tamayorihime on 12 April 1892: “It is a 37 38

The author is unknown. The document is held in the Shiga prefectural archive. Nishikawa Yoshisuke retired in autumn of 1879, and was replaced as chief priest by Shōgenji Kitoku. This marked the return of the Shōgenji family to the Hie site after a gap of ten years.

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sacred moment dating back millennia, recreating the descent to the foot of the mountain by Ōyamakui, who had [in mythical times] alighted on the mountain top.” Regarding the four mikoshi abiding in the Ōmandokoro on 13 April, Shōgenji Kitoku writes that it, too, is a sacred moment dating back millennia, which serves to recreate the birth of the divine child, Kamo no Wakeikazuchi, and his subsequent flight to heaven. “This is why the gentle and violent spirts of Ōyamakui and Tamayorihime all assemble in the Ōmandokoro.” As for the seven mikoshi heading down the Banba Path on 14 April, we learn, “It recreates the Great Miwa kami being [first] venerated at the foot Mt. Hiei in the reign of Emperor Tenji.” Genkon shikkō Hie jinja korei saishiki has the distinction of being the first historical source to cite as its authority the aforementioned fabrication, Hiesha negi kuden shō. From a contemporary perspective, it is noteworthy that even this most detailed of modern sources makes no reference to either the shiri-tsunagi polecrossing or the relentless mikoshi rocking that are definitive features of the festival drama today. There is some suggestion that the mikoshi-rocking was introduced in the early twentieth century. More research is needed, but the first reference seen by this author is a newspaper article carried in the Ōsaka Mainichi shinbun in April 1909. I saw the mikoshi-rocking! It was truly exciting and thrilling. Can there be another festival so ancient in style? “Gotto-n! Gara-n! Gara-n, gara-n, gotto-n!” This is the sound that reverberates from deep [within the Ōmandokoro], as hundreds of vigorous, naked young men throw themselves into shaking the four mikoshi.39 Here there is great enthusiasm, but no suggestion that the mikoshi rocking is understood by anyone as birth pangs. The most detailed of all prewar sources, Hie koshiki saishi 日吉古式祭祀 (Hie Shrine’s Traditional Rites) of 1943, makes no such suggestion either. Nor does it refer to mikoshi pole-crossing. We must conclude, it seems, that these are embellishments of the postwar era. Even so, it was only after the revolution of 1868 that Hie’s sacred spaces were ordered in a way recognizable today, and that the Kageyama interpretation of the Sannō Festival became possible.

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Ōsaka Mainichi shinbun (Kyōto furoku), 16 April 1909. Yoimiya-otoshi 宵宮落とし is the expression used here for the rocking; it is still used to this day.

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4.4 Festival Fights It remains now to shift the focus to the common people and their relationship to the modern festival, to see the evolution of the festival as “event,” or sairei, to use Yanagita’s term. A landmark in this regard was perhaps the festival of 1878, for this was apparently the first in the Meiji period attended by huge crowds. The Yomiuri shinbun 読売新聞 newspaper (16 April 1879) reported that the inns in Sakamoto and nearby Karasaki—on the coast of Lake Biwa where offerings of millet are made to the kami on the barge-borne mikoshi—were filled to capacity. The Lake Biwa steamship company ferried in large crowds from hither and yon, causing a new surge in spectator numbers in 1887. This latter information is carried in the 16 April 1887 edition of Chūgai denpō 中外電報, which also reported on “an extraordinarily huge fight” that erupted when the four mikoshi were being dropped from the Ōmandokoro platform. “Sixty men sustained injuries. The Sannō Festival may be known for the letting of blood, but this level of violent behavior should be stopped,” protested the reporter (Chūgai denpō 16 April 1887). Two years later, the Chūgai denpō carried an article headed “Chi matsuri” 血祭 (blood-fest). It described how this year, too, mikoshi carriers and spectators pelted each other with stones and sticks. “Three men received wounds to the head. Students from a middle school in Kyoto exchanged blows with others from Ōtsu, until the police intervened and restored order” (Chūgai denpō, 17 April 1889). In truth, there had been fights before, and it seems that for some spectators, fighting was one of the festival’s attractions. Fighting was not unknown in other festivals too, but Sannō Festival fights were distinctive, since they came to involve villagers from the discriminated communities of Yagiyama and Gokenchō. These villagers were denied a role in the premodern festival. Under the liberation edict of September 1871, however, they became imperial subjects in the new Japan, legally the equal of others in every way. The liberation edict was published in Shiga Prefecture in December 1871, but no one relayed it to Yagiyama or Gokenchō. It was not until a Yagiyama village headman filed a complaint that he received official notice that he and his fellows were after all “liberated” (Mahara 1984: 695). The villagers’ first aim was to register as parishioners of the local Kurasono Jinja 倉園神社. Only when registered as shrine parishioners might they enter the new national census. The Sakamoto village headman objected, however, declaring he would give no work to any villager who registered there. This threat was “tantamount to the annihilation of Yagiyama,” so villagers perforce registered with an entirely different shrine outside Sakamoto (Mahara 1984: 697). Then in 1873, Yagiyama and Gokenchō villagers sought full participation in the Sannō Festival.

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The Sakamoto headman, responsible for apportioning festival roles, refused Gokenchō villagers any role, but allowed Yagiyama limited participation. Yagiyama villagers might carry the heavy iron spear and the boxes of offerings in the sakaki procession from Tenson Shrine in Ōtsu to Sakamoto on 14 April. He also approved their request to carry a mikoshi. Yagiyama villagers responded to this joyous news by making or buying formal wear for the occasion, but at the last minute, permission was denied (Mahara 1984: 700). Their protests to Shiga prefectural authorities bore fruit in 1874, when they were allowed to carry the Sannomiya mikoshi but only from the Kasuga slope down the Banba Path to Lake Biwa on the last day of the festival (Mahara 1984: 708). Their request to carry the same mikoshi down from Mt. Hachiōji on 12 April was refused. In 1876, Shiga Prefectural Governor Koteda Yasusada 籠手田安定 (1840–1899) was forced to deny that discrimination explained why some villagers participated in the festival and others did not (Mahara 1984: 704). Yet, in 1879, a new plea by Gokenchō villagers for some form of admission to the festival was once more flatly refused (Mahara 1984: 705). Against this backdrop, the huge fights of 1887 began, it seems, with youths from Yagiyama, Gokenchō and other Sakamoto communities taunting each other. Much remains obscure, but the taunting and fighting continued until 1903, when the Sakamoto village head banned all Yagiyama involvement: In recent years [Yagiyama youths] refuse to obey the instructions of the Sakamoto village head; they have been the cause of much disobedience and unrest, obstructing the [smooth] conduct of this ancient festival. Mahara 1984: 707

The Sannō Festival resumed in 1906 after the Russo-Japanese war, but pleas for permission to participate from Yagiyama and Gokenchō were all summarily rejected. They now resorted to direct action. The mikoshi of the violent spirits of Ōyamakui and Tamayorihime are carried up Mt. Hachiōji every year on 1 March in preparation for the start of the festival six weeks later. On this day in 1906, villagers from Yagiyama and Gokenchō ambushed the mikoshi porters, and caused a “riot.” Then on 8 March, a group of over 500 men attacked the residence of the Sakamoto headman, bombarding it with rocks. 180 policemen were eventually deployed, and they made forty-three arrests (Ōsaka Asahi shinbun [Kyōto furoku], 15 March 1906). Nonetheless, the villagers’ direct action bore fruit. The prefectural governor became involved, and on the condition of “no disturbances or fights or argumentation of any sort,” granted “a special concession,” allowing Yagiyama and Gokenchō involvement (Kirokuchō, in Mahara 1983: 13–14). Yagiyama villagers

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now secured the right to bear the Sannomiya mikoshi on all three days of the festival, but it was not for another generation—in 1939, to be precise—that they gained admission to the flower parade.40 And it was only, now, it seems that the fighting ended. The Asahi newspaper in April 1939 reported that the thousands of spectators who had gathered in anticipation of fights—the “flower of the festival”—between Yagiyama and other villagers were disappointed (Ōsaka Asahi shinbun [Kyōto furoku], 16 April 1939). All passed off peacefully. The only bloodshed was that of a man called Yamada Kazusuke 山田和介, who was crushed to death by a mikoshi. One could make the case for 1939 as the year in which the modern Sannō Festival truly began. In 1939 Japan was at war with China, of course, and strong young men were in short supply. In the Sannō Festivals of the war years, the seven kami of Hie were carried on sakaki branches, not on mikoshi. War meant new meanings attached to the festival, too. In 1942, the festival was conducted with the specific aim of praying for victory in the Great East Asian war, and promoting the warrior spirit. In 1943, the Asahi newspaper reported that the festival was “a tremendous success, as spectators young and old thronged to the Hie shrines to pray for the annihilation of the British and Americans” (Ōsaka Asahi shinbun [Shiga ban], 10 April 1942). During these war years, there was one other development of particular note. In 1937, Enryakuji monks celebrated the 1500th anniversary of the founding of Mt. Hiei. Umetani Kōei 梅谷孝永, the Tendai chief abbot, descended Mt. Hiei, and for the first time since the clarification edicts of seventy years earlier, performed a Buddhist rite at the Hie shrines. Then, in 1938, the chief abbot participated for the first time in the modern Sannō Festival. Having undergone a purification before the Nishi Hongū, he proceeded to the shrine sanctum and made an offering of sakaki to Ōnamuchi, before paying his respects to all the Hie kami. These developments did not mean Hie was retreating from the “clarification” with which its modern era had begun, but they did mark the establishment of a new “civility” in relations between Hie shrine priests and Enryakuji temple monks. It is a civility which endures to the present day.

5

Conclusion

Let me sum up here what we can know of the historical evolution of the great Sannō Festival. Our knowledge is best reprised from a multiplicity of perspec-

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1939 is the year given in Kirokuchō (Mahara 1984: 17) for this development.

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tives: the seven kami and their identities, the fortunes of the seven shrines, the activities of the shrine priests and temple monks, and the place of the common people. Ōnamuchi is the one kami who remained constant throughout the recorded history of the Hie shrine complex, known today as Hiyoshi Taisha. All six other kami were either first enshrined there or, as in the case of Ōyamakui, reenshrined there, after the revolution of 1868. Their enshrinement completely transformed the nature of the festival. The earliest Sannō Festival presumably engaged both Ōnamuchi and Ōyamakui, but in ways that are no longer knowable. At least, the earliest festival records we have date from a time when memory of Ōyamakui had long since been lost. The early modern festival featured Ōnamuchi and Kunitokotachi (that is, Ōyamakui’s substitute). Shōgenji Yukimaru, perhaps our most reliable festival guide in late medieval and early modern times, found meaning in the mystical movement of all seven kami. For him, the emergence of the kami from the shrine precinct on day three of the festival was as dramatic as the sun goddess’s emergence from the rock cave in mythical times. Yet, for Yukimaru, the festival was not a “Shintō” event; nor, indeed, was the Hie complex a Shintō site. Rather, Yukimaru understood the world in Buddhist terms: all of the Hie kami were traces of original Buddhas, and the festival was ultimately a manifestation of Buddhist truth. The festival dynamic familiar today can be traced back to premodern times: the mountain descent of the kami on mikoshi on day one of the festival; the feting of all seven kami on day two; and the departure of the same mikoshi-borne kami down the Banba Path to Lake Biwa on day three have remained a constant. But the identities of the kami were quite different in premodern times, and the festival’s meanings were consequently distinct. The premodern festival was striking, too, for the role of Buddhist monks, and for the very different place of the people. Just as the entire Hie shrine complex was underwritten by the Enryakuji temple, so was the festival organized, financed and patronized by Enryakuji monks. The chief abbot’s presence gave special meaning to day three of the festival, when he made offerings to Ōnamuchi. He and his prelates then occupied places of privilege in the viewing pavilions along the Banba Path to watch the ōsakaki branch—representing Ōnamuchi—be dragged up the Banba. They then enjoyed the best possible views of the seven massive, ornately decorated mikoshi as they headed down the Banba to the shores of Lake Biwa. The presence of kunin monks on each of the three festival days directly impacted on the place of the people in the early modern Sannō festival. The kunin were responsible for spectator discipline, a task they set about with menace and violence. Common people were actively involved in the ōsakaki parade, it is true, but the kunin presence ensured that the people never owned the

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parade, and it never acquired the “elegance” that is the hallmark of modern spectator-oriented festivals. But as the power of the kunin waned in Sakamoto in the first decades of the nineteenth century, so there opened up a new space for people—some people—to engage creatively with the festival; this took the form of the flower parade. There were, of course, two villages within Sakamoto whose residents were denied all participation in the early modern festival: Yagiyama and Gokenchō. It was only with the revolution of 1868 that the Sannō Festival began its transformation into the event familiar today. The critical first move was the stripping of the seven Hie shrines of Buddhism, its objects, practices and theories. Hie’s seven kami were no longer traces or avatars of Buddhas; no more did the Sannō Festival bear witness to Buddhist truths. Buddhist monks were banished. The impact of the 1868 clarification edicts was seismic. The edicts gave legal footing to the nineteenth century nativist theory that kami and Buddhas, shrines and temples, priests and monks constituted the two quite distinct cults of Shintō and Buddhism. “Clarification” is indeed one of the great legacies of the 1868 revolution; it removed Buddhism from shrines and shrine festivals across Japan. But in Hie, at least, there was a reconciliation of sorts in the 1930s and, ever since, chief abbots of the Enryakuji have made annual offerings to Ōnamuchi. For them, and them alone, Ōnamuchi remains the avatar of Shaka Nyorai. Another intervention here shaped the fortunes of the modern Sannō Festival. I refer to the great nativist, Motoori Norinaga, and his insights. In his monumental work, Kojikiden, Norinaga made a critical link between the Hie shrine complex and the kami Ōyamakui; he connected Ōyamakui to Tamayorihime, and so to the divine child Kamo no Wakeikazuchi. Juge Shigekuni and his fellow priests, freed from the control of the Enryakuji temple in 1868, used this knowledge to re-imagine the shrines and their festival. Calling on nativist kami theories, they enshrined anew Ōyamakui and Tamayorihime in both gentle and violent guises. They shuffled both kami and shrines to “center” Ōyamakui and his bride, and in the process banished Kunitokotachi and a total of five other kami. They imposed on the Sannō Festival an entirely novel reading—which they supposed to be its original form—of divine betrothal and divine birth. Key to the success of their endeavor was the fabrication of historical documents, which retain to this day their authority amongst shrine priests, festival organizers and the people of Sakamoto. More research is needed to sharpen our focus on the people in the Sannō Festival. After 1868, residents of different Sakamoto villages assumed the role of porters for the seven mikoshi; there is evidence of a new and intense sense of competition emerging between them. The relentless rocking of the palanquins definitely acquired a competitive edge; the flower parade, created in the early

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nineteenth century, became ever more “elegant” and extravagant as different wards competed; and crowds in ever greater numbers assembled from far and wide. But, from the people’s perspective, the Sannō Festival’s modern history needs to be seen as one of contestation. The key dynamic was the struggle for inclusion by the villagers of Yagiyama and Gokenchō. Their struggle began with the liberation edict of 1871 and the end to state-sanctioned discrimination, but it was not for another two generations, in the 1930s, that the several aims of the struggle came to fruition, and the modern Sannō Festival in all its dynamism was born.

References Akisato, Ritō 秋里籬島 and Shitomi Kangetsu 蔀関月. 1944. Ise sangū meisho zue 伊勢 参宮名所図絵. Tokyo: Tōyōdō. Breen, John. 2000. “Ideologues, Bureaucrats and Priests: On Buddhism and Shintō in Early Meiji Japan.” In Shintō in History: Ways of the Kami, eds. John Breen and Mark Teeuwen, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 230–251. Breen, John. 2011. “Jinja to matsuri no kindai: Kanpei Taisha Hie jinja no baai” 神社と祭 りの近代—官幣大社日吉神社の場合. In Girei to kenryoku: Tennō no Meiji ishin 儀礼 と権力—天皇の明治維新, Tokyo: Heibonsha, 206–262. Heldt, Gustav (trans.). 2014. The Kojiki: An Account of Ancient Matters (Translations from the Asian Classics). New York: Columbia University Press. Kanpei Taisha Hie Jinja Shamusho 官幣大社日吉神社社務所 (ed.). 1942. Kanpei taisha Hie jinja nenpyō 官幣大社日吉神社年表. Ōtsushi: Kanpei Taisha Hie Jinja Shamusho. Juge, Shigekuni 樹下茂国. 1983. Hie sha negi kudenshō 日吉社禰宜口伝抄. In Shintō Taikei Jinja-hen 29 Hie 神道大系神社編２９日吉, ed. Shintō Taikei Hensankai 神道大 系編纂会. Tokyo: Shintō Taikei Hensankai. Kageyama, Haruki 景山春樹. 2001. “Hiesha no shintaizan shinkō” 日吉社の神体山信 仰. In Shintaizan: Nihon no genshi shinkō o saguru. 神体山—日本の原始信仰を探る, Tokyo: Gakuseisha, 19–69. Kakushin 覚深. 1983. Hie sannō sairei shinki 日吉山王祭礼新記. In Shintō Taikei Jinjahen 29 Hie 神道大系神社編２９日吉, ed. Shintō Taikei Hensankai 神道大系編纂会, Tokyo: Shintō Taikei Hensankai. Kimura, Yoshihiro 木村至宏. 2000. “Hiyoshi Taisha” 日吉大社. In Nihon no kamigami jinja to seichi 5: Yamashiro Ōmi 日本の神々 神社と聖地5—山城近江, ed. Tanigawa Ken’ichi 谷川健一, Tokyo: Hakusuisha, 289–309. Kurushima, Hiroshi 久留島浩. 1986. “Kinsei ni okeru matsuri no shūhen” 近世における 祭りの周辺. Rekishi hyōron 歴史評論 11: 12–24.

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Kurushima, Hiroshi 久留島浩. 1989. “Sairei no kūkan kōzō” 祭礼の空間構造. In Nihon toshishi nyūmon: Kūkan 日本都市史入門空間. Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 107–130. Mahara, Tetsuo 馬原鉄男. 1984. “Kami Sakamoto eitai kirokuchō kaidai” 上坂本永代 記録帳解題. Nihon shomin seikatsu shiryō shūsei 日本庶民生活資料集成 26. Tokyo: San’ichi Shobō. Miyachi, Masato 宮地正人. 1988. “Shūkyō kankei hōrei ichiran” 宗教関係法令一覧. In Yasumaru Yoshio 安丸良夫 and Miyachi Masato eds. Nihon kindai shisō taikei 5: Shūkyō to kokka 日本近代思想体系5—宗教と国家, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 425– 488. Motoori, Norinaga 本居宣長. 1968. Kojikiden 古事記伝. In Motoori Norinaga zenshū 本 居宣長全集 10. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. Murayama, Shūichi 村山修一. 1994. Hieizanshi: Tatakai to inori no seiiki 比叡山史—闘 いと祈りの聖域. Tokyo: Tōkyō Bijutsu. Okada, Seishi 岡田精司. 2003. “Hie sannō gongen no saishi” 日吉山王権現の祭祀. In Fugeki mōsō no denshō sekai. 巫覡・盲僧の伝承世界, eds. Fukuda Akira 福田晃 and Yamashita Kin’ichi 山下欣一, Ōsaka: Miyai Shoten, 5–23. Philippi, Donald. 1977. Kojiki. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. Sagai, Tatsuru 嵯峨井建. 1992. Hiyoshi Taisha to Sannō gongen日吉大社と山王権現. Kyoto: Jinbun Shoin. Samukawa, Tatsukiyo 寒川辰清. 1915 Ōmi yochi shiryaku 近江輿地志略. Nagoya: Seinō Insatsu Kabushiki Kaisha. Sanekata, Yōko 実方葉子. 1999. “Hie Sannō saireizu byōbu o yomu” 日吉山王祭礼図屏 風を読む. Sen’oku Hakukokan kiyō 泉屋博古館紀要 16: 103–130. Sasaki, Takamasa 佐々木孝正. 1981 “Jinja to sairei” 神社と祭礼. In Shinshū Ōtsushishi 4: Kinsei kōki 新修大津市史4—近世後期, Ōtushi: Ōtsu Yakusho, 198–204. Satō, Masato 佐藤真人. 1989. “‘Hie sha negi kudenshō’ no seiritsu” 『日吉社禰宜口伝抄』 の成立. Ōkurayama ronshū 大倉山論集 25: 1–49. Shōgenji, Yukimaru 生源寺行丸. 1983a. Hiesha Shintō himitsuki 日吉社神道秘密記. In Shintō Taikei Jinja-hen 29 Hie 神道大系神社編29日吉, ed. Shintō Taikei Hensankai 神道大系編纂会, Tokyo: Shintō Taikei Hensankai. Shōgenji, Yukimaru 生源寺行丸. 1983b. Hiesha shin’eki nenjū gyōji 日吉社神役年中行 事. In Shintō Taikei Jinja-hen 29 Hie 神道大系神社編29日吉, ed. Shintō Taikei Hensankai 神道大系編纂会, Tokyo: Shintō Taikei Hensankai. Shun’ei 俊栄. 1983. “Hie onsairei no shidai” 日吉御祭礼之次第. In Shintō Taikei Jinja-hen 29 Hie 神道大系神社編29日吉, ed. Shintō Taikei Hensankai 神道大系編纂会, Tokyo: Shintō Taikei Hensankai. Takashima, Kōji 高島幸次. 1978. “Edo jidai no sanmon kuninshū: Kageyama ke kyūmonjo o chūshin ni 江戸時代の山門公人衆—影山家旧文書を中心に. Kokushigaku kenkyū 国史学研究 4: 1–28.

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Yanagita, Kunio 柳田国男. 1969. Nihon no matsuri 日本の祭り. In Teihon Yanagita Kunio shū 10 定本柳田国男集 10. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. Yoshida, Yuriko 吉田ゆりこ. 1995. “Kunin to ken’i” 公人と権威. In Kinsei no shakai shūdan 近世の社会集団, eds. Kurushima Hiroshi 久留島浩 and Yoshida Nobuyuki 吉 田伸之, Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha. Yōtenki 耀天記. In Shintō Taikei Jinja-hen 29 Hie 神道大系神社編２９日吉, ed. Shintō Taikei Hensankai 神道大系編纂会, Tokyo: Shintō Taikei Hensankai.

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chapter 5

Eloquent Plasticity Vernacular Religion, Change, and Namahage Michael Dylan Foster University of California, Davis, CA, USA [email protected]

Abstract This paper explores Namahage of Akita Prefecture as it assumes three different instantiations: 1) enactment as a private ritual within individual households on New Year’s Eve; 2) performance as a public festival at a shrine in mid-February; and 3) celebration as an “element” inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. I argue that in the first instance, Namahage is part of a vernacular religious “structure of feeling” in which religious elements are inseparable from community life; in the second instantiation, religion is more explicit and codified; and in the third iteration, religion is only vaguely articulated. Tracing the “same” tradition through different forms provides insight into the changing needs of communities and into the dynamics of change itself. With this in mind, I propose a model called hrönirism through which to broadly conceptualize notions of change and difference within traditions such as matsuri.

Keywords matsuri – ritual – festival – Namahage – hrönir – UNESCO

1

Akita in the World and the World in Akita

Late in the afternoon of 29 November 2018, an unusual scene unfolds in the small city of Oga 男鹿 in Akita 秋田 Prefecture. Some 120 people are gathered in Oga City Hall for a “public viewing” of a live feed of bureaucratic proceedings occurring in Port Louis, Mauritius, more than 10,000 kilometers away. The assembled crowd is a mixture of residents dressed in business attire or working clothes, with Oga city officials outfitted in celebratory red or blue happi 法被

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figure 5.1 The decision to inscribe Namahage on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity is announced. 29 November 2018 Photo by Ogano MINORU

coats. Sitting among them is a small coterie of demons holding wooden staffs and large threatening knives. Everybody watches the monitors intently, and when the decision is announced in Mauritius, the crowd in Oga cheers and applauds. The demons leap to their feet, roaring and raising their knives in victory.1 The event in Mauritius was a meeting of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, better known as UNESCO. Specifically, it was the 13th Session of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, a decision-making body charged with overseeing the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Intangible Cultural Heritage, or ICH as it has come to be known, is an increasingly common umbrella term for a wide range of traditions, beliefs and practices, including annual events such as rituals and festivals. As its name implies, the 2003 Convention is a legal instrument that promotes the “safeguarding” of intangible cultural heritage around the world. One conspicuous artifact of the Convention is a Representative List of several hundred

1 For an article with embedded video, see “Oga no Namahage, mukei bunkaisan tōroku kettei, Yunesuko” (2018).

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traditions—or “elements” in UNESCO parlance—from 127 nations around the world. These are nominated by States Parties, essentially the individual countries that have accepted the Convention, and approved by the Intergovernmental Committee. In 2018, as the group in Oga watched, the Committee voted to inscribe a new element from Japan on the Representative List. The element, called “Raihoshin, ritual visits of deities in masks and costumes,” is actually a group of ten individual rituals from eight prefectures, each one structured around a visit to the community by godlike figures broadly labeled raihōshin 来訪神, or “visiting deities.”2 The demon figures in Oga—who raised their knives in a threateningly triumphant roar—are known as Namahage. And “Oga no Namahage” 男鹿のナ マハゲ is one of the ten rituals in the new inscription.

2

Oga no Namahage

In fact, Oga no Namahage is by far the most widely known of the ten traditions. It has long been famous in Japan as a quirky ritual in which men costumed as demon-deities tramp from house to house on New Year’s Eve scaring and scolding children. The 2018 UNESCO inscription became a point of pride and celebration throughout Akita Prefecture and in Oga it was greeted with great fanfare—numerous Namahage events were held on the day of New Year’s Eve itself and in the months before and after.3 In national coverage of the “Raihoshin” inscription, Namahage was almost always given primary position, with newspapers characterizing the inscription as that of “Namahage and others.”4 2 “Raiho-shin, ritual visits of deities in masks and costumes” is the official English “name of the element” as noted on the nomination file. In Japanese it is Raihōshin: kamen, kasō no kami-gami 来訪神： 仮面・仮装の神々 (see UNESCO 2018). For an overview and video of the traditions included in the UNESCO inscription, see https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/raiho ‑shin‑ritual‑visits‑of‑deities‑in‑masks‑and‑costumes‑01271 (accessed 30 December 2019). For analysis of Koshikijima no Toshidon 甑島のトシドン, another tradition included in this file, see Foster (2011). 3 On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, for example, a special procession of fourteen Namahage trudged through downtown Oga, where they greeted incoming trains at Oga station and joined the mayor and other Oga City officials on a makeshift stage to fling mochi 餅 (rice cakes) to crowds of residents and visitors. There have also been other events, such as a photography exhibit in various local venues and a workshop for foreign visitors to make costumes. See “Namahage ichi chūshinbu o neri-aruku, Oga-shi kankōkyakura de nigiwau” (2018); “Namahage gyōji, gaikokujin kyaku gaisōzukuri, Oga-shi de taiken tsuaa” (2018); “Songen to ifu … dokutoku no sekai toraeru, tonai, Namahage daizai no shashinten” (2018). 4 See for example, “UNESCO mukei bunkaisan ni Namahage nado 8 ken no ‘Raihōshin’”; Sankei

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Over the last two decades, I have researched and undertaken fieldwork on two of the traditions included in the “Raiho-shin” inscription: Oga no Namahage and Koshikijima no Toshidon 甑島のトシドン. In the current essay, I focus on the former—“Namahage” as it is generally called.5 I begin with this scene of local officials watching a faraway UNESCO meeting because it emphasizes the fact that even in a community as small as Oga, individuals and their traditions are embedded within a broader global context, and a single matsuri can mean many different things to many different people. With this polysemy in mind, I particularly want to explore the role of religion or religious elements within three different but related instantiations of Namahage: 1) its enactment as a private ritual within individual households on New Year’s Eve; 2) its performance as a public festival (explicitly called “matsuri”) at a shrine in mid-February; and 3) its celebration as an “element” of ICH inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List. I will argue that in the first instance, as a private ritual, we find religious elements embedded into the practice in such a way that they are all but inseparable from everyday, civic life. In the second instantiation, the public festival, religious elements become more explicit and codified—though arguably less meaningful in terms of community life. Finally, in the official UNESCO documentation recognizing Namahage as an example of ICH, religion is alluded to only in a very general, vague sense. Tracing how the “same” tradition assumes different forms and different meanings provides insight into the changing needs of the communities involved and, more abstractly, into the dynamics of change itself. By examining these different versions of Namahage, I propose a model I am calling hrönirism through which to broadly conceptualize notions of change and difference within traditions such as matsuri.

3

Namahage as Private Ritual

First, let me begin with a brief description of Namahage, focusing on the household version of the ritual. Namahage is associated with the Oga Peninsula, or more precisely with Oga-shi 男鹿市 (pop. approx. 28,000). Despite being designated as a “city” (shi) for administrative purposes, Oga is extremely rural, shinbun, 11/29/2018. This is just one example of many—the phrase “Namahage nado” [Namahage and others] was almost ubiquitous in the national coverage at the time, clearly indicating Namahage’s comparative prominence in the popular imagination. 5 I have spent time in Oga intermittently since 1998, and specifically observed Namahage in different communities on New Year’s Eve of 1998, 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2019.

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made up of numerous small hamlets on the west coast of Akita Prefecture.6 Surrounded on three sides by the Sea of Japan, the land is verdant and mountainous, and residents have traditionally made a living through farming and fishing, though today tourism is a major factor in the economy. Historically, Namahage took place in seventy or eighty different hamlets in the region. Today it is difficult to enumerate the number of communities in which it is still a living tradition, and such enumeration also depends on how community units are defined. However, there is no doubt that participation in Namahage has declined due to depopulation and other factors, including lack of interest and the fact that there are fewer and fewer residents of appropriate age. In many cases these communities—often referred to as shūraku 集落 (hamlet) or sometimes mura 村 (village)—are sometimes no more than a cluster of a few dozen houses. Namahage is performed differently in each of these communities, with distinct masks and costumes, and varied procedures, meanings, and interpretations.7 By way of illustration, I describe here a recent visit to the small shūraku of Matsukizawa 松木沢, in the northeast sector of the Oga peninsula. Though not quite snowing, it was blustery and cold when I arrived with two companions at about 5:10PM on the last day of 2018. By arrangement made with the assistance of friends, we were welcomed into the tatami sitting room of Naitō-san, a Matsukizawa community leader and a member of the Oga City Council.8 Naitōsan is a tall, distinguished, gray-haired man in his sixties, dressed formally in kimono and haori. We were later joined by his wife and four grandchildren, aged 4, 6, 8 and 10. The children were cheerful and rambunctious, but according to their grandmother, the younger ones had already been crying in anticipation of Namahage that evening.

6 Although the official designation of a city (shi) in Japan technically requires a municipality to have a population of at least 30,000 or 50,000 people (depending on certain circumstances), cities generally do not lose their status even if their population falls below these marks. Oga became a city in 1954 through the merger of a number of small administrative units on the Oga Peninsula. In 2005, Wakami-machi was also absorbed into Oga City (Oga-shi). For details and recent population statistics, see Oga-shi Sōmu Kikakubu Kikaku Seisaku Ka (2018). 7 For brief summaries with photographs of various versions, see Nihon kaiiki bunka kenkyūjo (2016). For an earlier study in English, see Yamamoto (1978). The descriptions of Namahage in the following pages are based primarily on my own ethnographic research. I have of course also drawn on Japanese scholarship, as cited in the pages that follow. 8 The visitors were myself, my friend and collaborator Ogano Minoru (who has photographed Namahage for almost forty years), and an acquaintance visiting from Germany. Naitō-san is a pseudonym. For more on Ogano and his work, see Foster and Ogano (in this volume).

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figure 5.2 Putting on the kera in Matsukizawa. 31 December 2018 Photo by author

After a brief discussion over a cup of green tea, Naitō-san took us down the street to the Matsukizawa chōnai kaikan 松木沢町内会館 (Matsukizawa neighborhood hall), a small building positioned next to a steep stone stairway leading up to a small shrine (Hie Jinja 日枝神社) built into the hillside. Inside we met nine men—the youngest in his twenties and the oldest in his fifties. In many communities there are two or more pairs of Namahage, but Matsukizawa only has a single pair, and therefore only two masks, one red and the other bluegreen. The masks in Matsukizawa are made of clay (nendo 粘土) and reinforced with fiberglass.9 The Namahage’s straw coat, known locally as a kera (also kede or kende) had been woven earlier that day from rice straw supplied by Naitō-san from his family fields. Each Namahage also had a large knife made of wood.

9 According to Ogano, who has photographed hundreds of Namahage masks, these may be the only nendo masks currently in use. They are probably about forty years old. Other Namahage

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figure 5.3 Red Namahage ready to go. 31 December 2018 Photo by author

At about 6PM, when the Namahage were dressed and ready, we walked next door to the bottom of the steps leading up to the shrine. The two men costumed as Namahage marched through the torii 鳥居 and up the steep stairway to the shrine building, where they bowed their heads in prayer (see fig. 5.4). Then they descended to the street and together we all walked to the “top” of the hamlet. Matsukizawa is built along a single through road with houses on either side; the Namahage begin their rounds at the top and work their way back down to the shrine at the lower end. There are approximately thirty-five houses in the shūraku, but currently only about twenty-five are occupied. In addition, there had been a number of funerals in the village that year and those families would not be receiving the Namahage.10

10

masks are carved from wood or made of papier-mâché and similar materials molded around a large round bamboo basket (zaru). In most if not all communities, it is customary for the Namahage to avoid any households

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figure 5.4 Walking up the steps to the shrine before the Namahage set out. 31 December 2018 Photo by author

At each house, one man from our small entourage would scout ahead and inquire whether they wanted to receive the Namahage. When the answer was in the affirmative, the two Namahage would start to roar loudly, and tramp through the snow to the house, banging energetically on the door and the walls. They would burst into the household and, with the encouragement of the other men, rage and rampage through the room, grabbing family members, roughhousing and acting wildly (abareru 暴れる)—but not actually causing any injury or (intentional) damage. After a few minutes, they would settle down at a low table on which was a simple spread of food, sometimes including local specialties such as a fish called hata-hata. The Namahage generally did not eat the food, but would lift their masks slightly to sip the offered drink (usually sake, sometimes beer), and remaining in character, make jocular conversation with the householders (see fig. 5.5). If children were present, which was the case in about half of the homes, the Namahage would act particularly rough and blustery. Often they would in which there had been misfortune ( fukō 不幸) in the previous year—which is cognate with, for example, the common practice in Japan of not sending out nengajō 年賀状 (New Year’s greeting cards) when a family has experienced a death.

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figure 5.5 Namahage feted in a house (with no children present). 31 December 2018 Photo by author

interrogate each child about whether they had been studying hard, behaving themselves, and helping out at home. The Namahage explained that they were watching all year round from on top of the mountains nearby. Of course, each child responded differently to this attention—the younger ones often scampering into another room or fighting back tears—but all of them agreed readily to behave themselves. One unusual element of the ritual in Matsukizawa is that the Namahage would end their conversation by rubbing the flat of the wooden knife on the head of the children or older family members as a form of blessing and good fortune.11 After three houses, the entourage ducked into a small garage, where the Namahage traded their kera and masks with two other men who assumed the role for the next three houses. All together, we visited six houses and, having

11

Ogano confirmed that he has not seen this performed elsewhere. I have also been unable to find any written records of this practice.

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figure 5.6 Namahage wrap the kera around the pillar of a torii. 31 December 2018 Photo by author

walked the length of the small hamlet along the one main road, arrived back at the entrance to the neighborhood hall. Before going inside, the two Namahage ascended to the shrine, where they removed their masks and placed them inside. There was some confusion as to which mask should be on which side, with the more experienced men down below shouting up instructions. Eventually, they bowed to the shrine and the masks, and descended to the first torii at the bottom of the stairs. There they removed their kera and wrapped each one around a pillar of the torii just above the supporting crossbar (see fig. 5.6).12 After this rather complex procedure was completed, we all went into the neigh-

12

Although in many shūraku, kera are wrapped around a torii, komainu or trees after the house visitations, the procedures in Matsukizawa are unusual, requiring the kera to be wrapped in a very specific way and very high up on the pillar. I am told that the kera will stay in place until the Obon holiday in the summer, when they will be burned with other sacred objects. For the sake of simplicity I have excluded from my description the fact that in Matsukizawa the Namahage are gendered—red is male, blue-green is female— with the kera tied slightly differently. This gendering does not affect the performance in any discernible way, and all participants are male. Assigning gender to Namahage like this is not unique to Matsukizawa; other shūraku (including Yumoto and Anzenji) also have Namahage designated as male or female but, as far as I know, this is only indicated by mask coloration and does not extend to the way the kera is worn, as in Matsukizawa.

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borhood hall where, with very little ceremony, everybody began to drink beer and sake, eat snacks, and talk about the evening’s events. It was 7:30 pm—the whole experience had only taken an hour and a half.

4

Namahage and Religion

In each of the dozens of shūraku where the ritual is performed (simultaneously) on New Year’s Eve, procedures, costumes, and narratives differ; the Matsukizawa version described here is only one of many examples. But with that caveat—and using Matsukizawa as a referential touchstone—I want to explore how Namahage might be understood within a religious context. Firstly, it is a given within Japanese religious discourses that the boundaries between Buddhism and Shintō practice are porous, to say the least. Historically, the worship of buddhas and bodhisattvas along with local kami 神 overlaps, intertwines and combines; as Mark Teeuwen and Fabio Rambelli note about the “combinatory paradigm” known as honji suijaku 本地垂跡 (which they translate as “original forms of deities and their local traces”), “originals and traces were not one-to-one associations, but complex combinations of several deities based on sophisticated semiotic operations, myths, legends, and so on” (Teeuwen and Rambelli 2003: 1–2). Similarly, Allan Grapard explains that “the various elements of the combination retained some of their pristine identity, their fundamental characteristics, but also gained by accretion and interplay (it is tempting to say, by dialectic), a mass of meaning that they did not have as independent entities” (Grapard 1992: 75; see also Andreeva 2017). Within and beyond the formal paradigm of honji suijaku, combination, creation, recreation and mutual influence were certainly part of the development of religious life in Oga. In particularly, mikkyō 密教 (esoteric Buddhism) and Shugendō 修験道 (mountain asceticism) were historically present in the region and no doubt influenced the performance and interpretation of Namahage. One of several origin legends, for example, posits that the image and actions of the Namahage are derived from the rough appearance of Yamabushi 山 伏 undertaking their mountain austerities (Ine 2005: 18). Even today, masks used in the hamlet of Takigawa 滝川 famously feature a gold-colored circle on the forehead, a mark thought to represent a tokin 頭襟, the small round hat-like accoutrement traditionally worn by Yamabushi.13 While mountains are indeed central to the geographical and psychic landscape of Oga, the direct 13

For photos see, Nihon Kaiiki Bunka Kenkyūjo (2016: 50–51), where it is explained that “in the old days, [the Namahage in Takigawa] would visit a shrine before making the rounds,

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relationship of mountain religious beliefs to Namahage is murky at best, and made all the more complex by the tangled regional history of mikkyō itself, with the Tendai 天台 and Shingon 真言 sects dominant at different times.14 Ogano Minoru 小賀野実, a professional photographer who has been researching Namahage for almost four decades, sums up the muddled nature of these connections: “I guess Namahage is just not all that neatly organized” (Namahage wa, soko made seiri saretenainjanai kanaa なまはげは、 そこまで整理され てないんじゃないかなあ) (email communication, 19 May 2020). Without delving deeper into historical complexities, I want to stress here that within common discourse in Oga today (and for at least the last century), Namahage is rarely described in terms of institutional religion. It is neither performed as a shrine festival nor as an annual rite associated with a specific temple or religious institution. Even in Matsukizawa, where institutional religious elements are evident (i.e., the shrine visits), Namahage is not characterized as a shrine matsuri per se. This differs from, for example, matsuri that feature mikoshi 神輿 (portable shrines), or dashi 山車 or yatai 屋台 with putative religious purposes. Neither, however, is Namahage explicitly separate from institutionalized religious practices. In the case of Matsukizawa, for example, it begins and ends with a visit to a shrine, framing it as a kami-endorsed ritual procedure. That is, the men visit the shrine in order to inform the deities of the event and receive their blessings for safety and success. And though every shūraku differs, the ritual is often similarly bookended by visits to a local shrine or temple. In the hamlet of Anzenji 安全寺, for example, the Namahage pay respects to a small shrine (Hie Jinja; also called Anzenji Jinja) at the beginning of the evening, and at the end of the ritual they wrap their straw kera on trees located near other buildings affiliated with Shintō and Buddhism (see fig. 5.7). In Ashizawa 芦沢, just before the Namahage begin their rounds, a Shintō priest blesses the masks, the costumes and the participants (see fig. 5.8). And in many communities, when the ritual is complete, the used kera are wrapped around a torii or around the kamainu 狛犬 (lion-dog statues) at the front of a shrine (see fig. 5.9). In this way, religious institutions and the authority they project frame the activities of the Namahage as sacred behavior—validating the transformation of men into temporary deities in service to the community. These institutional

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but they have abbreviated this because the shrine is some distance from the hamlet; now they visit a temple to purify mind and body before setting out” (2016: 50). For a brief summary of the history of these interactions in Oga, see Ine (2005: 29–32); also Ōtsuki (2004).

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figure 5.7 Wrapping the kera around a tree in Anzenji. 31 December 2017 Photo by author

figure 5.8 Shintō priest blessing the Namahage before the ritual in Ashizawa. 31 December 2015 Photo by author

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figure 5.9 Kamainu (lion dog) at Hoshitsuji Jinja in Yumoto, wrapped in a kera from the night before. 1 January 2016 Photo by author

signifiers of religion also serve as meaning-intensifiers that infuse the Namahage with sacred authority and add gravitas and value to their actions within the household.15 But if the local discourse is not about Shintō or Buddhism or even Shugendō, and the ritual is not directed by a religious practitioner, how then do we characterize Namahage? The most prominent discourses are about community and family, about tradition, and about learning how to be part of society. Discursively, then, the ritual is positioned as a civic and civil undertaking, performed not as an obligation to the kami but out of a sense of responsibility to fellow shūraku residents. In other words, I think most Oga residents would characterize Namahage as a community event, a civic activity at the level of the shūraku, and not as a religious custom connected with a shrine or temple. Of course, such distinctions are often fuzzy in Japan, where the relationship of secularization and religiosity has long been a subject of debate amongst religious studies scholars.16 It is no coincidence that many community centers or 15

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Although procedures differ from community to community, in most cases economic support for Namahage comes directly from the householders they visit, who pass an envelope with several thousand yen to a member of the Namahage’s entourage. See, for example, Fujiwara (2016); Reader (2012).

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figure 5.10

The entrance to Hoshitsuji Shrine; the building to the left is the community center for Yumoto. 1 January 2016 Photo by author

other public gathering places are geographically adjacent to Shintō shrines, as in Matsukizawa and also, for example, in Yumoto 湯本 (see fig. 5.10). This physical proximity concretely reflects an abstract “blurring” (Porcu 2012) of boundaries between civic and religious functions, and between community and spiritual responsibilities.17 Whether such binaries, and even for that matter the concept of religion (shūkyō 宗教) itself, are etic (and Western) constructs imposed by scholars and theologians (and governments) is a debate too large to broach here.18 Suffice it to say, however, that for Oga residents involved in Namahage, such questions rarely emerge in on-the-ground settings. Like many annual events in Japan, Namahage occupies a place that is difficult to label within the tangled cultural forces and feelings through which human beings interact in a social context. As a practice, and as a set of ideas and images associated with this practice, Namahage is simply embedded in a habitus that encompasses, with little or no distinction, both the sacred and the mundane.19 17

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Although Porcu (2012) is discussing urban chōnaikai 町内会, many of her observations are equally applicable to communities in Oga (and elsewhere in rural Japan). See also Kawano (2005: 9) who describes “the intertwined nature of religion and social conventions.” See for example Josephson (2012); Kleine (2013); Krämer (2013); Amstutz (2014). Such casual religious activities are pithily summed up by Ian Reader as “popular prac-

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Namahage as Vernacular Religion

One way to characterize this habitus is to consider activities such as Namahage in terms of vernacular religion. By “vernacular religion,” I do not simply mean folk or popular religion in contrast to institutional or official religion; rather, I draw here on the work of Leonard Primiano who problematizes what he sees as a “two-tiered model … which creates distinct categories separating ‘folk’ or ‘popular’ religion of the faithful from ‘official’ or institutional religion administered by hierarchical elites through revealed or inspired oral and written texts” (Primiano 1995: 39). Primiano suggests that “vernacular” does not replace “folk” or “popular” but emphasizes “religion as it is lived: as human beings encounter, understand, interpret, and practice it” (Primiano 1995: 44). In this sense, vernacularity demands a focus on local, native and popularly accessible manifestations of expression. Explaining what they pointedly label “vernacular Buddhism,” Keller Kimbrough and Hank Glassman, for example, observe that vernacular “suggests a kind of translation into local language, a transformation of the foreign into the familiar for purposes of communication” (Kimbrough and Glassman 2009: 204). They note that “the term ‘vernacular Buddhism’ furthermore implies a kind of storehouse of Buddhist concepts, figures, and images available for use to a wide variety of authors, artists, and performers across the centuries” (Kimbrough and Glassman 2009: 204).20 While Kimbrough and Glassman are speaking here about “authors, artists, and performers” of medieval Japanese literature, art and drama, we can also think of contemporary practitioners of Namahage (i.e., individuals within the shūraku) drawing from a rich storehouse

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tices, customs and household religion,” which he characterizes as “not necessarily tied in to expressed faith or membership of organised religions … activities from acquiring amulets and talismans, to praying for good luck and worldly benefits, to taking part in cyclical events such as visiting the graves of the deceased at festival times such as o-bon お盆 in summer and at the spring and autumn equinoxes …” (Reader 2012: 21). Reader suggests that these forms of practice are declining in Japan. I would add here that even when dealing explicitly with visits to a religious institution such as a Shintō shrine, we must be wary of positing religious intentionality—such visits can be, as John Nelson suggests, “a thoroughly syncretic blend” that is at once “spiritual, habitual [and] recreational”; importance is often placed “on action, custom, and etiquette as opposed to belief and structure” (Nelson 1996: 121). See also Kawano’s nuanced discussion of these issues (2005: 21–37). Kimbrough and Glassman (2009: 204) also distinguish their use of “vernacular Buddhism” from “common Buddhism,” which, they explain, “typically refers to Buddhist practices and beliefs that are commonly shared throughout society, among elites, commoners, monastics, and laity alike.”

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of imagery, ritual practices, narrative, and language to shape their own yearly performances. Thinking in terms of vernacular religion allows us to highlight not only local or native interpretations but also the individual, personal and the private; it “involves various negotiations of belief and practice including, but not limited to, original invention, unintentional innovation, and intentional adaptation” (Primiano 1995: 43). Indeed, by shifting the emphasis away from religion in the abstract or religion as represented by institutions or doctrines, and focusing instead on the everyday behaviors of people in local communities, we appreciate the individual agency necessary for perpetuating a practice such as Namahage. Certainly each individual brings to the ritual a particular perspective, level of engagement, set of concerns, and understanding of what Namahage means. Similarly, communal agency is articulated as individuals work together within each shūraku, developing their own distinct Namahage practice, drawing on the same principles and iconography as others in Oga perhaps, but enacting something slightly different from neighboring shūraku. That is to say, the vernacular religious practice of Namahage entails both individual and communal interpretations of ideas and actions, and a creative engagement with material objects, ritual procedures and their meanings.21 Writing of China, Richard von Glahn (2004: 12) characterizes vernacular religion as “rooted in local and regional history,” but also adds that “Buddhism, Daoism, and state religion were all integrally related to vernacular religion.” Such broader engagement also pertains to Namahage: even as it is intensely local, it draws on or references more canonical religious forms—be they Buddhist, Shintō, Shugendō—and represents a constant interpretation, negotiation, and creation both on the level of the individual as well as the shūraku. As Faure suggests, “symbolic associations between two or more deities can be triggered by practically anything” and “the resources of analogical thought are truly mind-boggling” (Faure 2016a: 30). Significantly, I would add, such symbolic associations and analogical thought are not limited to religious ideas or iconography: popular imagery about Namahage—or demons (oni 鬼) more generally—inevitably bleeds back into the community from anime, film, and

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For more on ambiguity, creativity and artistry inherent in the concept of vernacular religion, see Primiano (2012). In my discussion of vernacular religion, I am not suggesting that local expressions of Namahage are a degraded form of something else or somehow inferior to rituals with more institutional content. My point is that even while the heart of belief/religion is within the household/community, vernacular religious expressions can skillfully draw on institutions (and their architectural manifestations) such as local shrines and temples for their allusive and authorizing powers.

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manga. The broader world, even a global awareness, is always present in the shūraku: in Matsukizawa, the men in the entourage implored the Namahage to act rougher and wilder by jokingly yelling that they had to live up to their new UNESCO status! Such ideas dovetail with the concept of lived religion. As Robert A. Orsi notes: “The study of lived religion is not about practice rather than ideas, but about ideas, gestures, imaginings, all as media of engagement with the world. Lived religion cannot be separated from other practices of everyday life, from the ways that humans do other necessary and important things, or from other cultural structures and discourses” (Orsi 2003: 172). Helena Kupari further explains that “lived religion refers to religion as something that is continuously being made and remade by individuals engaging in religious activities and using religious idioms—laymen, religious specialists, and policy-makers alike” (Kupari 2016: 10). In the case of Namahage, such practices of making and remaking occur regardless of whether the people involved think of their traditions through the lens of religion, civic duty, family tradition, personal interest or community engagement.22 Without quibbling about definitions and distinctions between vernacular religion and lived religion, I have taken this slight detour in an attempt to explore the ambiguous position of Namahage within discourse and practice in Oga. While I have never heard a resident refer to Namahage specifically as a Buddhist or Shintō ritual, I have often heard Namahage referred to as kamisama, and, as already noted, temples or shrines do often feature in the events of New Year’s Eve. Moreover, it is commonly (though not universally) explained that on New Year’s Eve the Namahage descend into the villages from one of several large, sacred mountains on the peninsula. Namahage, like many festival activities in Japan, simply fits into a belief structure that reflects the reality of living in Oga. I use the word “belief” (and its Japanese equivalent shinkō 信仰) with caution here because I do not want to suggest a binary between belief and non-belief, nor even a continuum between these two poles. Rather, belief is a part of a 22

I am discussing concepts in English here, but similar terminological questions also arise within Japanese discourse. In exploring the distinction between minkan shinkō 民間 信仰 (folk beliefs) and minzoku shūkyō 民俗宗教 (folk religion), for example, Shinno Toshikazu explains: “Minkan shinkō studies always perceive minkan shinkō—the commonly shared, customary beliefs and notions rooted within a specific place and cultural setting—in opposition to ‘established religion,’ a religious tradition with a founder, and which is ideologically and doctrinally constructed. Minzoku-shūkyō studies, on the other hand, try to perceive phenomena in terms of their mutual influence” (Shinno 1993: 188– 189).

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much more complex “structure of feeling” (Williams 1977) that includes all manner of customs, rituals, etc., but also encompasses quotidian activities such as fishing and farming, working in an office or store, shopping, gift exchange, reciprocity and all the interpersonal relations and obligations that come with living in a small rural community. Namahage is one element in all of this. Raymond Williams’ famous phrase “structure of feeling” appropriately conveys the vagueness and lack of materiality of the religious “feelings” tied to Namahage but at the same time does not deny the coherent way in which Namahage is a real part of life experience. As Williams (1977: 133–134) explains, “structures of feeling can be defined as social experiences in solution, as distinct from other social semantic formations which have been precipitated and are more evidently and more immediately available.”23 Ontologically, then, where do the Namahage themselves fit in? Are they kami, envoys of kami, demons (oni), or something else entirely? In fact, depending on who in Oga you ask, they are any or all of these. Because they are not explicitly part of doctrinal tradition, their status is open to discussion and, ultimately, does not seem to be a major concern of local residents. Whether characterized as deity, demon, servant of the gods, or some sort of hybrid, there is ontological fluidity between such identities: Namahage do not fit into “the official or explicit pantheon” but rather “the latent or implicit pantheon” (Faure 2016a: 25), local spirits associated with the community and the landscape rather than a hierarchical order of religious entities. In this sense too, they are part of vernacular religion—popular, elusively vague, and resistant to formal 23

Williams (1977: 132) explains that “ ‘feeling’ is chosen to emphasize a distinction from more formal concepts of ‘world-view’ or ‘ideology’. It is not only that we must go beyond formally held and systematic beliefs, though of course we have always to include them. It is that we are concerned with meanings and values as they are actively lived and felt, and the relations between these and formal or systematic beliefs are in practice variable (including historically variable), over a range from formal assent with private dissent to the more nuanced interaction between selected and interpreted beliefs and acted and justified experiences.” Although Williams himself does not use the word feeling explicitly in terms of emotion or affect, these nuances are certainly part of the lived experiences he is concerned with (see Ngai 2005: 36). I would argue that such emergent, vague, and changing structures are very much a part of the “solution” that is vernacular religion—a way of being that is neither explicitly part of discourse, nor even of practice, but that exists in the interstitial zone between institutional/doctrinal/architectural religious structures and the daily work of being part of a community. For similar ideas, drawing especially on Italian examples, see Roberto Cipriani’s concept of “diffused religion,” described “as a set of values, practices, beliefs, symbols, attitudes and modes of behavior which do not conform to official church-religion models, [and which] is typical, if not entirely, at least in large part, of substantial sectors of civil society” (Cipriani 2011: 199). See also, Cipriani (2017).

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structure and system. But even as the Namahage’s taxonomical label remains fluid, they are clearly associated with the sacred. The straw scattered across the floor after they have rampaged through a household is said to have magical properties—when tied around the head, for example, it can cure headaches or make one more intelligent. And indeed, the visit itself is a sacred blessing for the New Year. If we consider the Namahage within a vernacular religious context, we can moreover observe the ways in which belief and ontology are negotiated through practice on individual levels. To a young child, presumably, Namahage are threatening transgressors from another world. An older child who has experienced the event for several years may understand that they are really just neighbors dressed in costumes, but still feel real fear and apprehension. And to adult householders who may or may not know which neighbor is behind which mask, the practice entails a mutual performance/ritual and a form of role playing, acting, and make-believe. For the men who “act” as Namahage there is an immersion in character that, in some cases at least, goes beyond mere play. While they are masked, these men are Namahage. Between each household visit they may remove their masks and become human again for a moment, chatting or smoking a cigarette, but when they put on their masks again and enter a home, they are Namahage. Many individuals have expressed to me a feeling of awe when they play the role. In Matsukizawa, for example, one man in his early twenties, who lives in Tokyo now but returns to Oga for the end-of-year holidays, explained that when he puts on his mask, he feels as if a kami enters him; when he roars and speaks as the Namahage, he is voicing this kami. To this participant, at least, the role of Namahage entails a sense of sacredness and power, catalyzed by the physical object of the mask as it transforms the human into something else. But the mask itself is just this—a catalyst that ties the wearer into an existing belief system. Interestingly, this same man in Matsukizawa casually handed me his own mask to try on as if there was nothing special about it; he simply pointed out its weight and how difficult it is to see through the eyeholes. Because, unlike him, I am not embedded in the local belief system, the mask is nothing more than an object—there is no reason I should transform into a Namahage just by wearing it. My overarching point here is simply that Namahage may not fit clearly into explicitly established forms of religious practice or institutionalized frameworks, but it is very much a part of a broader, substantial vernacular religious structure of feeling—religion in “solution,” as Williams might put it—that informs everyday life in the local community. I would further emphasize the notion of “feeling” here as a deeply meaningful aspect of Namahage, and of vernacular religion in general. No matter how

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much we delineate structures, find connections or ask questions of belief, at the core of people’s relationships with Namahage—and with each other and with their communities—are emotions. Ultimately, Namahage is a meaningful experience for its participants not because of quantifiable structures or levels of belief but because of personal affective engagement.

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The Objectification of Namahage

With that in mind, I also want to stress the intimacy of Namahage as a ritual. It is an intensely small-scale, private affair, literally taking place within the confines of individual households. On a superficial level, at least, the general contours of the undertaking have not significantly changed since Namahage was first described in 1811 (Sugae 2000: 146–164) and more thoroughly documented in the 1930s (Yoshida 1935). But even as the household ritual continues to be performed every year, the Namahage image has also become a public icon of the Oga Peninsula, and indeed, more broadly of Akita Prefecture. This iconicization is a long process involving a complex set of interests and stakeholders. These include the folklorists who early on identified Namahage as exemplary of raihōshin and marebito まれびと concepts. And it also includes hotel owners and community business interests, tourist agencies, government funding for mura okoshi 村おこし (village revitalization), and the proactive agency of Oga locals in developing the region. One effect of this touristic development is an objectification of the Namahage image—that is, the frightening face of the Namahage has literally been shaped into commodified objects that can be purchased as souvenirs or omiyage. You can buy hand-carved masks, all manner of amulets, keychains and other trinkets, cell phone straps, T-shirts, noren 暖簾 to hang over a door, manjū 饅頭 bean cakes and bobble-heads; there is even an Akita version of Monopoly which features red and blue Namahage (see fig. 5.11). And the objectification of Namahage goes beyond just image. The ritual itself has become a kind of artifact sharable outside the context of New Year’s Eve: visitors to Oga today can “know, see, and experience” Namahage in a museum-like setting.24 The Oga Shinzan Denshō-kan (Oga Shinzan Folklore Museum) was created in 1996; from April through November, performers

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I borrow the language of the website here: Namahage o shiru, miru, taikan suru ナマハゲ を知る、 見る、 体感する. See “Oga Shinzan denshōkan”; https://www.namahage.co.jp/ namahagekan/denshokan.php (accessed 29 December 2019).

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figure 5.11 Akita Prefecture version of Monopoly, featuring Namahage on the game board. 5 July 2009 Photo by author

dressed as Namahage reenact the New Year’s Eve ritual so that “anybody can have the experience” (Nihon Kaiiki Bunka Kenkyūjo 2016: 5; also Kamata 2007). And right next door, in 1999 the city of Oga built the Namahage-kan (Namahage Museum), which displays over one hundred masks from communities throughout Oga, shows film clips of the household ritual, and provides historical data. Visitors can even try on a Namahage costume or watch a mask-maker at work. In this setting, Namahage becomes an artifact extracted from its New Year’s Eve context to be shared with visitors from outside the community. Like many other traditions in Japan, Namahage exists as a vernacular ritual with sacred dimensions for the local community, and simultaneously as a commodified public-facing touristic resource.25

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For a fascinating analogous discussion of how demonic figures were deployed for their “place-making” potential during the Edo Period in Shinano (current-day Nagano), see Carter (2019).

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Namahage as Public Festival

In Oga, however, this process of objectification/touristification also includes the conscious development of a distinct but affiliated tradition called the Namahage Sedo Matsuri なまはげ柴灯まつり. This is the second instantiation of Namahage that I would like to explore: a new festival that allows visitors from outside the community to participate in the Namahage experience. I suggest that unlike the New Year’s Eve ritual, this version is not (or at least not yet) embedded into the vernacular religious structure of the community and therefore makes very conscious, specific use of religious elements to add weight and authority to its performance. The Namahage Sedo Matsuri was started in 1963 when community leaders— especially merchants and hotel owners—wanted to develop an event to share Namahage with visitors from outside Oga that would not require tourists to come to the New Year’s Eve ritual. This matsuri has expanded and developed in the last half century, and today it takes place over three consecutive evenings in the middle of February (the second Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the month) on the grounds of the Shinzan Shrine (Shinzan Jinja 真山神社, adjacent to the Namahage museums discussed above). It is now advertised as one of the “big five” snow festivals of the Michinoku region.26 For the small, relatively isolated community of Oga, the Namahage Sedo Matsuri is a large, public event: on each of the three consecutive nights, there are (in recent years) one thousand or more visitors. Each evening follows the same schedule of events, but every night is distinct because of the make-up of the audience and differing weather conditions. Festivities commence at 6:00PM. Buses and cars fill the parking lot for the shrine and adjacent Namahage Museum. Many people come from local hotels (particularly in the Oga Onsen area) which run special buses for the occasion, while some come from Akita City, about an hour’s drive or train ride. The visitors proceed through the torii, up a long set of stone steps to the grounds of the shrine, where a large

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For the first three years, the Namahage Sedo Matsuri was held at a smaller shrine, Hoshitsuji Jinja in Yumoto, a location of many of the hotels and onsen 温泉 (hot spring baths) in the Oga region, and therefore a prime destination for tourists. As the festival became increasingly popular, it was moved to its current venue at Shinzan Shrine, where there is much more space. Although the driving force behind the creation of the Matsuri was the tourist industry, shrines were chosen as the most appropriate venues because of the space they provided, their convenience, and presumably the fact that they add a sense of depth and history to the event. For the big five festivals of Michinoku, see http://www .michinokugodai.com/ (accessed 30 December 2019).

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figure 5.12

The blessing of the masks and the young men who will act as Namahage. 9 February 2013 Photo by author

bonfire crackles and lights up the night. Around the perimeter of the grounds, small yatai stands sell sake, beer, and various matsuri foods. In the opening nyūkon 入魂 ceremony, fifteen young men stand solemnly, dressed in straw kera; they are barefaced, with black hoods, holding their masks at their sides. The gūji 宮司 from the Shinzan Shrine (Takeuchi Nobuhiko 武内 信彦) purifies the young men and then, together, they don their masks—and with them, the spirit of the Namahage (see figs. 5.12 and 5.13). It is a striking visual moment, as the human faces of these young men suddenly become demonic, and they begin to stamp and roar—while visitors cheer and snap photos. The Namahage then march up the hillside into the woods, disappearing into a bluff above the grounds. Meanwhile, constant narration over loudspeakers directs the crowd to the other side of the grounds to the kagura-den 神楽殿, an outdoor stage set up to replicate the inside of a household. There, a different set of Namahage (dressed in masks from the Shinzan hamlet) perform a Namahage gyōji saigen なまはげ 行事再現, a staged reenactment of the New Year’s Eve ritual (see fig. 5.14). In

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figure 5.13

Transformation into Namahage. 9 February 2013 Photo by author

some years, I have seen this followed by a parade around the kagura-den of Namahage wearing masks of the different shūraku.27 The next event is Namahage Odori ナマハゲ踊り, a dance performed by two Namahage holding knives, buckets, and staffs, in front of the raging bonfire (see fig. 5.15).28 Returning to the kagura-den stage, visitors gather to watch and listen to Namahage Daiko なまはげ太鼓, a powerful taiko-drumming concert with performers dressed as Namahage, who roar and gesture threateningly as they play (see fig. 5.16). At about 7:30PM the narrator announces the Namahage gesan なまはげ下山, the descent of the Namahage, considered the “climax” of the festival. The fifteen Namahage who had earlier ascended the hill above the

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Festival procedures and the order of performances differ slightly from year to year; my description is a composite based on visits in 2000, 2010, 2012 and 2013. I have also discussed the festival with numerous participants and visitors, and most recently consulted the program for the 2020 event: https://oganavi.com/sedo/program/ (accessed 30 December 2019). For more on the Namahage Sedo Matsuri, see Nihon kaiiki bunka kenkyūjo (2016: 18–21); Saitō (1998: 63–84); Taira (2008); Kamata (2007). For an analysis of the New Year’s Eve ritual and the festival version, see Foster (2013). The dance was choreographed in 1961 by Akita native Ishii Baku 石井漠 (1886–1962); the music was composed by his son, Ishii Kan 石井歓 (1921–2009).

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figure 5.14

Crowds gather at the Kagura-den, with the bonfire visible to the left. 9 February 2013 Photo by author

grounds are now visible at the top of the ridge, each one holding a fiery torch (see fig. 5.17). They march slowly, stamping their feet and raising their torches against the (often snowy) night sky—posing for photos by the tourists down below. Then they charge, roaring down the slope to emerge onto the grounds near the kagura-den, where they proceed to march through the crowd and chase members of the audience. Eventually the Namahage arrive at the other side of the grounds, near the shrine, where the priest provides them with goma mochi, rice cakes roasted on the sedo fire which, according to the announcements over the loudspeaker and the program website, are imbued with divine power ( jinriki 神力) to prevent misfortune.29 The festival concludes with the Namahage distributing pieces of this mochi to the visitors and posing with them for souvenir photos (kinen shashin 記念写真) (see fig. 5.18). By about 8:30 pm, visitors drift off to their buses or cars, and the Namahage themselves gather at the home of the shrine priest, where they change into their street clothes and sit down for a hearty dinner and lively discussion of the night’s events.

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See https://oganavi.com/sedo/program/ (accessed 10 May 2020).

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Namahage Odori. 14 February 2010 Photo by author

My description here is necessarily abbreviated, but I hope it shows that this is a dynamic tourist-oriented event featuring numerous rituals embedded within a highly orchestrated program. While visual aspects may be the most easily described in words or captured in photographs or video, like most festivals, the Matsuri is a profoundly multi-sensory experience. It is a potpourri of sounds: live narrative commentary, along with a recording of the distinctive roaring of the Namahage, are blasted continuously over loudspeakers. There is also the powerful rhythms of the Namahage Daiko, the atonal music accompanying the dance performance, the crackling of the bonfire, the crunch of snow underfoot, the constant chatter of visitors, and the excited shrieking (and

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figure 5.16

Namahage-daiko. 12 February 2012 Photo by author

figure 5.17

Namahage pose at the top of the hill. 9 February 2013 Photo by author

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figure 5.18

Namahage pose in front of bonfire for souvenir photos. 12 February 2012 Photo by author

sometimes crying) of children when they see the Namahage. One experiences a haptic, embodied immersion—the chill of cold air, the wetness of falling snow, a gradual numbing of the fingers, a tensing of muscles when walking across slick ice. And of course, other senses are also engaged: the aroma of food at the stalls, the smell of the bonfire (and stinging eyes from the wood smoke), and the taste of warm, sweet sake. The Namahage Sedo Matsuri is explicitly a modern construct, a spectacle, an unapologetically “invented tradition” produced by community members for external consumption by visitors from outside the community.30 Although it is not unrelated to the household ritual performed on New Year’s Eve, participants are very conscious that it is a “separate” event. On several occasions, in fact, I have heard festival organizers reiterate this point to the young men employed as Namahage, reminding them that the Matsuri is kankō muki 観光向 き (tourist-oriented). As a cooperative effort of individuals from different shūraku, the Matsuri attenuates specific differences between locales, effectively creating a generic or hybrid public face of Namahage.31 30 31

This does not mean that Oga residents do not also participate and enjoy the event; the third night in particular tends to attract many local residents. The most obvious expression of the distinctions between shūraku is the great diversity

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In addition, the event itself, with its scary costumes and lively performances—dancing, drumming, demons roaring down into the crowd—is consciously constructed to delight visitors with an exhilarating, thrill-a-minute show. At the risk of being crass, it is worth asking what distinguishes a tourist’s experience of the Matsuri from, for example, a lighthearted visit to an amusement park. What gives the Matsuri a sense of depth and meaning that transcends the superficial “fun” of playing with demons? Of course, the answer to this question is complex, tied up with attitudes toward tradition and community and rural Japan, and concomitant nostalgic desires for an idealized “hometown” space or furusato 故郷. But ultimately, one way the community adds depth to the Matsuri is through connecting it explicitly with religious institutions, language, and symbols. In fact, even though the Matsuri itself has no express religious purpose, it is fortified with religious elements that authenticate it as a significant annual event. For starters, of course, it takes place at a shrine (Shinzan Jinja) with the opening ritual officiated by the gūji. But more subtly, the festival is pervasively infused with the language and symbolism of belief: Namahage are described as kami, some of them carry with them gohei 御幣 (wooden staff with white paper streamers), the mochi has divine powers, and visitors are told that (just as on New Year’s Eve) the rice straw that falls from the kera possesses sacred properties. These religious allusions, as consciously presented as they are, are more than mere adornments; they are a natural way to ground an explicitly touristoriented event in existing vernacular religious structures, and to imbue it with gravitas as a yearly undertaking with meaning beyond simple commercialism. Many, though not all, of these elements are part of some versions of the New Year’s Eve ritual as well, such as the rhetoric of Namahage-as-kami and the sacred properties of the straw. What is significant is that in the Matsuri, they are codified: literally explained through the live exegesis of loudspeaker announcements, the official voice of shrine and community authority, leaving little room for independent interpretation. These religious meanings may already exist in the vernacular religious forms of Namahage discussed above, or as part of a of the masks used on New Year’s Eve. This is in contrast to those worn by the Namahage in the Matsuri; these were designed by mask-maker Ishikawa Taikō 石川泰行, and although Ishikawa himself was from the Nyūdōzaki shūraku, his masks are very much his own design and not based on Nyūdōzaki masks. In many ways, Ishikawa’s masks have become the generic, commonly seen red and blue oni masks associated with Namahage. (Ishikawa’s son, Ishikawa Senshū 石川千秋, has followed in his father’s footsteps and continues to hand carve masks of this style.) Ironically, over the last several decades, some shūraku, rather than fixing their old, distinctive masks, have used Ishikawa masks for their New Year’s Eve ritual.

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more general storehouse of religious symbolism. However, within the context of the festival, they are pinpointed, explained, and therefore elevated in importance. In the language of Williams, we might say they are no longer part of the “solution” but consciously “precipitated” and therefore “more immediately available” (Williams 1977: 134). Furthermore, it is worth noting here that in its very inception, the Matsuri alludes to pre-existing religious traditions. The received explanation for its origins, as noted on the Matsuri website, is that it is a “tourist event” which “combines the ‘Namahage’ folk event” with the Sedo-sai (also Saidō-sai 柴灯祭), a different festival that has taken place at Shinzan Shrine for more than 900 years (https://oganavi.com/sedo/about/). This Sedo-sai is a form of the goma (also homa) fire ritual, presumably influenced by Shugendō and esoteric Buddhism associated with Shinzan 真山 (Mt. Shin).32 On the third day of the new year, mochi is roasted over a purifying fire built on the shrine grounds, and the ritual entails offering these toasted rice cakes to the kami of the mountains. The original festival is still practiced in January, and although it has no explicit relationship to Namahage, some explanations work to link the two, suggesting for example that the Namahage are an incarnation of the servants of the kami of the mountain to whom the offering of mochi is made (Nihon Kaiiki Bunka Kenkyūjo 2016: 19). My point here is simply that in developing the February festival for tourists, community leaders consciously and imaginatively borrowed and adapted elements of this preexisting festival—particularly the bonfire and the roasted mochi—to create a new matsuri for the consumption of tourists, but one “authenticated” with allusions to existing religious practices. In a sense, then, it is ironic that the explicitly tourist-oriented “invented tradition” of the Namahage Sedo Matsuri actually highlights the sacred and religious dimensions of its practice more fully than does the New Year’s Eve ritual—the version that ostensibly evokes real spiritual resonance among its practitioners. But of course, such intentionality is fundamental to the invention of tradition. Eric Hobsbawm noted long ago in his seminal introduction to the concept that when people endeavor to invent tradition, “they normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past” (Hobsbawm 1983: 1). In this case, continuity is established with the past, to be sure, but also more pertinently, with suitable religious associations. 32

Shinzan Shrine has had a complex historical relationship to Shugendō, Tendai and later Shingon (Ine 2005: 30–32). For more on the saitō goma ritual and similar homa rituals in esoteric Buddhist practice, see Payne (2016, 1992); Kolhatkar and Tachikawa (2012). For more on fire rituals, see Yagi (in this volume).

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8

Namahage as Intangible Cultural Heritage

Finally, the third instantiation of Namahage is the very recent designation of intangible cultural heritage (mukei bunka isan 無形文化遺産). While the awkward English phrasing may have been directly influenced by Japanese language discourses of intangibility and cultural preservation (Kurin 2014: 327–328), during the early part of the current century, it rapidly developed as a resonant form of bureaucratese (UNESCO-speak) and has now morphed into a generalized and somewhat sterile umbrella term for all sorts of things that used to be called folklore, folklife and tradition. Strictly speaking, the inscription of Namahage on the Representative List is not a new manifestation of the event but really just a form of public recognition and labeling.33 However, I would argue that this form of institutional labeling also substantially redefines Namahage as something of global noteworthiness, branded with the UNESCO insignia. The new designation recontextualizes Namahage, linking it forever with nine other traditions in Japan and inserting it into a metacultural rubric where it is now (whether appropriately or not) associated with “similar” elements throughout the world. It is perhaps somewhat ironic that a tradition such as Namahage that has so successfully maintained its local nature and vernacularity, evading the net of institutionalized religion, has now become enmeshed in another sort of institutionalized structure, and one with such global reach.34 One aspect of the rebranding of Namahage as intangible cultural heritage, or ICH as it is commonly labeled in the English-language discourse, seems to be an erasure—or at least a genericization and generalization—of its religious elements. In the official Nomination Form submitted to UNESCO, reference to religion is only expressed through vague invocations of deities or folk beliefs, as in: “Such rituals stem from folk beliefs that deities from the outer world— Raiho-shin—visit communities and usher in the new year or new season with happiness and good luck” (UNESCO 2018: 4). The ambiguity of these references is perhaps fitting with the fact that the inscription is not just for Namahage but includes a total of ten traditions. But it is also significant that words such as “Buddhism,” “Shintō,” “temple,” “shrine,” even “religion,” are nowhere in the document. In one sense, perhaps, this vague description is closer to the ver33

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I am simplifying here, but we should also note Namahage’s 1978 designation by Bunkachō (Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs) as an “important intangible folk cultural property,” or jūyō mukei minzoku bunkazai 重要無形民俗文化財, which placed it in a position to be nominated for the UNESCO inscription some four decades later. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for bringing this cogent point to my attention.

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nacular religious understanding of Namahage, where such associations are not overtly highlighted. At the same time, the fuzziness of the ICH version effectively makes Namahage and the other traditions in the Raiho-shin nomination into somewhat generic signifiers of a mystical folk heritage—appropriate perhaps as a unique Japanese element on a global list.35 It is possible that the lack of explicit religious terminology in the ICH nomination file reflects the official separation of state and religion (seikyō bunri 政 教分離) as promulgated in Article 20 of the Japanese Constitution (see Porcu 2012). But I think a stronger bureaucratic influence on this characterization can be found in the nomination form itself. Unlike the Matsuri, with its codification of religious aspects, the ICH version inspires a more functional, bureaucratic and academic description of the rituals. In fact, the first step in nominating an element entails “identification and definition,” in which nominators are asked to “tick one or more boxes to identify the domain(s) of intangible cultural heritage manifested by the element.” Appropriately, the domain selected for the Raiho-shin nomination is “social practices, rituals and festive events” (UNESCO 2018: 3). But it is revealing that on the form itself, none of the offered domains explicitly reference religion.36 Moreover, in submitting the application, the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkachō) and, by extension, members of the local communities, had to respond to such questions as: “What social functions and cultural meanings does the element have today for its community?” and “Is there any part of the element that is not compatible with existing international human rights instruments or with the requirement of mutual respect among communi-

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Significantly, the Nomination Form explains the ritual performed on New Year’s Eve and makes no mention of the Namahage Sedo Matsuri. Presumably this is in part because, as a group nomination, the particular details of individual traditions are elided. I would also argue that there is a latent privileging of age and “authenticity” in both Bunkachō and UNESCO designations; it is not surprising that a relatively new and explicitly tourist oriented event would be elided from the official documentation. Choices are: 1) oral traditions and expressions, including language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage; 2) performing arts; 3) social practices, rituals and festive events; 4) knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe; 5) traditional craftsmanship; and 6) other(s). See UNESCO 2018: 3. A glance at other recent nomination forms is useful for comparison. In 2012, “Nachi no Dengaku, a religious performing art held at the Nachi fire festival” was inscribed on the list; the title of the element explicitly refers to religion and there is mention in the file of shrines and priests (UNESCO 2012). In contrast, the group submission of thirty-three traditions under the rubric “Yama, Hoko, Yatai, float festivals in Japan” (see also chapters by Tsukahara and Porcu in this volume) makes no mention of religion in its description, despite the fact that a number of the sponsoring entities are associated with shrines (UNESCO 2016).

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ties, groups and individuals, or with sustainable development?” (UNESCO 2018: 5). In responding appropriately to these prompts, of course, participants are forced to objectify their traditions and practices into something that can be summarized on paper and that conforms to the particularities of contemporary global bureaucratic structures. Such summary and generalization elides the local particularities that make a ritual like Namahage, with its different performance in each shūraku, such a deeply embedded part of community life.37 I am not necessarily expressing criticism of the ICH formulation. I simply want to highlight the fact that each distinct iteration of Namahage necessarily draws on, creates, or emphasizes aspects compatible with the particular form of presentation. In the case of the February Matsuri, the practice is phrased in terms of its religious associations. In the case of ICH, it is described in ways that conform to the requirements of the documentation itself, which in turn reflects the interests of national and international cultural policy-making bodies.

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The Terms of Matsuri: Ritual, Festival, ICH

I hope I have clearly delineated these three manifestations of something called Namahage. But how do we theorize the differences here: the way in which an intensely private household ritual can simultaneously exist as a public festival and also as a documented ICH on a global listing? In previous work (Foster 2013), I explored ways to conceive of different versions of Namahage not through questions of “authenticity” or origins but simply in terms of orientation—either inward toward the community/family, or outward toward visitors from beyond the boundaries of the community. With the advent of the ICH designation, this external orientation becomes even more outwardly focused to a varied and distant global constituency. It also becomes virtual, as most of that global constituency will never actually visit Oga but simply read about Namahage on a website, watch a video, or glance at its name on a list somewhere. So 37

While the current chapter is not the appropriate place for a sustained comparison, I note that in the case of Japanese World Heritage Sites (i.e., tangible rather than intangible forms designated in accordance with the 1972 UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World and Natural Heritage), religion is often overtly indicated in the nomination files. I would suggest that this may be because: 1) the 1972 Convention itself has different, and much more detailed, nomination procedures and requirements, and 2) many of the designated architectural structures and natural sites are explicitly affiliated with religious institutions. For the often problematic relationship of UNESCO World Heritage inscription to sacred sites in Japan, see for example, Blair (2011); DeWitt (2017); Rots (2019).

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within this context, then, what do people mean when they say “Namahage”? Before attempting a model for understanding difference and change, I first want to briefly explore how we can characterize these three different instantiations on the level of language, in English and Japanese. 9.1 Ritual The first version, embedded within a vernacular religious context, is what I have been describing as the “household ritual.” In English the word ritual, of course, carries baggage and confusion: as Catherine Bell succinctly notes, “it becomes quickly evident that there is no clear and widely shared explanation of what constitutes ritual or how to understand it” (Bell 1997: x). Accepting this uncertainty, then, I invoke the word here to simply suggest a relatively brief and self-contained “performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances” (Rappaport 1992: 249) but one with real power to construct, alter or confirm social categories. That is, the symbolic actions within the practice of ritual are also instrumental—ritual is, as Jack Santino puts it, “instrumental symbolic behavior” (Santino 2017: 5). The interaction between family members and the Namahage, the offering of food, the pouring of drinks, the admonishment of children: all of these acts and utterances are similar (though not identical) from house to house. Framed within the temporal and spatial parameters of the event, they take on heightened significance, meaning, affect and effect.38 Strictly speaking, this household ritual might actually be called matsuri in Japanese, because it is a means through which humans communicate with gods; whether the Namahage themselves are deities or the envoys of deities, the performance within the household enacts an interaction between the human world and an otherworld. Without going into greater depth about the origins of the term matsuri, I would mention simply that folklorist Yanagita Kunio 柳田國男 (1875–1962) long ago correlated matsuri with the verb matsurau ま つらう, meaning to serve and obey the gods; matsuri, he explains, is the act of “summoning and receiving [ yobimukae よび迎え] the deities and spirits in order to make an offering [kyōken shisa 供献侍座] to appease and pacify them.” Moreover, he goes on, “it is the polite offering of food and drink that forms the core of the matsuri” (see Yanagita 1966 [1951]: 539). Orikuchi Shinobu 折口信夫 (1887–1953) similarly emphasizes this fêting of the deities. At least to early twentieth-century Japanese folklorists and those influenced by their scholarship, therefore, matsuri is characterized by a respectful reception

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For a relevant discussion of ritual practice in Japan, see also Kawano (2005: 3–8).

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of the gods and the proffering of refreshments (Hoshino and Haga 2006: 27). Or as Komatsu Kazuhiko (b. 1947) explains, “the basic structure of Japanese matsuri entails welcoming (mukae) gods, providing hospitality (motenashi), and then sending them off (okuru)” (Komatsu 1997: 10). The Namahage ritual performed within the household certainly fits this rubric, as the Namahage are welcomed and entertained by each family, and then sent off until the next year.39 Having said that, in common parlance today, and even in historical documents from the early part of the twentieth century, I have rarely seen the New Year’s Eve Namahage referred to as a matsuri. Generally it is described vaguely as nenjū gyōji 年中行事, which might be translated simply as “annual event.” Nenjū gyōji itself is a term of art, as it were, within Japanese folkloristics and— perhaps because of its useful vagueness—is also commonly heard in vernacular parlance. Although nenjū gyōji too has a complex history dating back to the Heian period (794–1185) and has also been theorized by the likes of Yanagita and Orikuchi, we can think of it as a catchall phrase for all manner of calendrically determined and annually (or periodically) repeated events that serve to distinguish a particular day (or days) from the quotidian flow of time.40 In the case of Namahage, I have often heard Oga residents refer to the household ritual as ōmisoka no gyōji 大晦日の行事, or the “New Year’s Eve event/undertaking,” which locates it within a temporal framework and also sets it apart from the event held in February. 9.2 Festival Indeed, the ōmisoka no gyōji label is often used to articulate a distinction from the Namahage Sedo Matsuri held at Shinzan Shrine, which I have described as the second instantiation of Namahage. Significantly, the February event is

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There has been much discussion of terminology related to the concept of matsuri, including sairei 祭礼 (rite), saishi 祭祀 (ritual/rite), gyōji 行事 (event/function), hōe 法会 (Buddhist service), gishiki 儀式 (ceremony/ritual) and more recently such academic constructions as minzoku geinō 民俗芸能 (folk performing arts) and mukei bunkazai 無形 文化財 (intangible cultural properties). For more, see Hoshino and Haga (2006: 24–39); Hashimoto (2015); Lancashire (2011). My own definition here is loosely derived from a discussion by Ichijō (2018: 28–32), whose general readership “primer” provides insight into the variety of events and associated customs considered standard nenjū gyōji in the contemporary Japanese imagination. These include everything from setsubun 節分 and obon お盆 to Mother’s Day and Halloween. Yanagita says of the relationship between nenjū gyōji and matsuri that the “small household matsuri form the main part of what is called the nenjū gyōji” (Yanagita 1951 [1966]: 539). See also Hoshino and Haga (2006); Komatsu (1997).

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actually commonly referred to as the matsuri, although I have also heard participants, including the priest of the shrine, call it kankō no gyōji 観光の行事, literally the “tourism event.” In one sense, this use of the word matsuri fits with contemporary popular usages of the term in Japan, which often closely approximates the English word festival. That is, a Japanese festival, whether held at a shrine, temple, or as a parade through the streets of a city, often consists of numerous rituals structured together into a complex publicly staged multi-vocal event. Beverly J. Stoeltje’s general description of festivals as “public in nature, participatory in ethos, complex in structure, and multiple in voice, scene, and purpose” (Stoeltje 1992: 261), seems an appropriate characterization of the February version of Namahage. Often too, as with the word festival in English, a newer event or “invented tradition” such as the Namahage Sedo Matsuri, will actually include the word matsuri (or sometimes the katakana for “festival” フェスティバル) as part of its name.41 9.3 ICH The designation as ICH also brings another element of terminology into the mix. As noted, this is essentially a bureaucratic phrase and acronym, but in Japan mukei bunka isan also has resonance with the related but older notion of “intangible cultural properties” (mukei bunka zai 無形文化財) as well as the more commonly known UNESCO term for World Heritage, sekai isan 世界 遺産. Although all these terms are somewhat clumsy and bureaucratic, they are now commonly used in public discourse—newspapers, public announcements, advertisements and official documents discussing Namahage, as well as in Japanese academic writing (e.g., Hyōki 2018). They are also beginning to trickle into discussions of Namahage within a local context, as communities are very much aware that their local nenjū gyōji may be recorded as a mukei bunka isan. Of course, the long term effects of such labeling remains to be seen, but already I have heard people in Oga refer to Namahage not as gyōji or matsuri, but as mukei bunka isan; for better or for worse, Namahage seems to have been indelibly colored by its association with UNESCO.42 41

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There is in fact an Oga Namahage Rock Festival (Oga Namahage rokku fesutibaru 男鹿 ナマハゲロッ クフェ スティ バル) held every Summer in Oga. In this case, it seems, the organizers have borrowed the Namahage name for its association with the region, but the festival does not have any other direct connection to the tradition. See https://onrf.jp/ (accessed 22 January 2020). During my most recent visit to Oga from December 2019 to January 2020, I heard several individuals refer to Namahage as “sekai isan,” the Japanese translation of “World Heritage.” Technically Namahage is not sekai isan but mukei bunka isan (intangible cultural heritage), but it may be that in vernacular on-the-ground discourse the latter will be sub-

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Creative Continuity

So how do we grapple with this sort of change, with one Namahage that assumes three (or more) different forms and simultaneously means so many different things? How do we theorize variation, difference and change? In Japan and elsewhere, folkloric discourse is very often colored by a rhetoric of loss, or at least of the fear of loss. Nostalgia—a longing for those aspects of the past (real or imagined) that have disappeared or are on the verge of disappearing— was a driving force in the emergence of the study of folklore and tradition. In Japan, the desire for preservation and for continuity with the past is reflected even in the concept of the hozonkai 保存会, the “preservation society” or “safeguarding association,” made up of community members who actively maintain a given tradition (or, these days, an ICH).43 More recently, nostalgia itself is emerging as a critical lens for folkloric analysis (see Cashman 2006; Foster 2009; Bula 2016), and it is helpful to think of Namahage in its various manifestations through this optic. With this in mind, then, I want to suggest that with the different iterations of Namahage, we are actually witnessing not loss, but rather a sort of generation or proliferation of new forms, or at least new contexts in which old forms can mutate, expand, and evolve. A ritual like Namahage is subject to creative continuity, by which I simply mean that any tradition—whether religious, secular, communal, or individual—has to respond to the needs of the moment in order to persist as a tradition. Rather than place agency in the tradition itself, it is more accurate to say that the people involved with a given practice keep it relevant, and such relevance often means change. A nostalgic desire for continuity with the past does not prohibit creative change in the present. On a

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sumed by the former, which is older and more familiar. Unlike the English-language “ICH,” there has yet to develop a similarly pithy Japanese abbreviation for intangible cultural heritage. On the power of the words mukei bunka isan in another local Japanese case, see Suga (2017). To a certain extent, these activities are part of an intellectual project congruent with the famous notion of “salvage ethnography,” in which there is an “assumption that with rapid change something essential (‘culture’), a coherent differential identity, vanishes” (Clifford 1986: 113). In the case of the “preservation societies,” the culture in question is not saved (only) in textual form but also through the semi-institutionalization of its practice. Although I do not explore it thoroughly in the present chapter, such practices, along with labels such as “ICH,” can lead to a crystallization of traditional forms and orthodoxy of practice. The case of Namahage—characterized in part by its flexibility— is just one of many possibilities. For analysis of a different kind of flexibility, see Foster (2011).

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practical level, we see this with the household performance of Namahage: in Yumoto, Ashizawa, and Anzenji (and other shūraku as well), the masks are built around baseball catcher’s masks and are therefore relatively easy to wear. Similarly, rather than trudge all the way through the snow and ice to reach more distant houses, Namahage often ride in small trucks. A strict “preservation” of past practices would not allow for basic technological updates like these, but of course such changes are only natural for a tradition to maintain its practicability in the present. Year-to-year upgrades and modifications are hardly considered “changes” by the residents. Even the fact that Namahage is performed on New Year’s Eve has not always been the case; in many communities it was performed on koshōgatsu 小正月, a date in the middle of January. However, with postwar industrialization and the fact that many people have to return to work by early January, all shūraku in Oga have now changed the date to December 31, when relatives are home for the New Year’s holiday. This sort of creative continuity encapsulates the very notion of tradition itself, as something always recreated in response to present circumstances but premised on continuity with the past as well as the future. In short, community members exhibit flexibility and innovation to extend the reach and meaning of a given practice. The Namahage of 2020 is not the “same” as the Namahage of the past, nor is it “different.” The creation of the Namahage Sedo Matsuri clearly, therefore, reflects creative continuity with a powerful riff on the Namahage theme. But something more is going on here. As we see, the Matsuri is in many ways fundamentally distinct from the household practice—performed on a different date, enacted at a shrine, explicitly public facing, and featuring all sorts of activities (drumming, dancing, torch-holding, distribution of mochi) that are not part of the New Year’s Eve ritual. In one sense, it is a mutation, a new species or strange offspring that diverges from the parent but establishes its own heritable line of tradition. Indeed, I would like to emphasize the radical creativity involved in the making of this matsuri: it took a courageous leap of imagination to move the intimate, semi-improvised shūraku version(s) of Namahage into the very public location of a shrine. Of course, the Matsuri developed slowly over time, but it was that initial move that was critical. But complementary to this radical leap, the Matsuri has also inversely affected the household ritual: I have been told by more than one stakeholder that if not for the Matsuri, the New Year’s Eve ritual would have eventually disappeared. The Matsuri, and its gradual development over the past five decades, not only brought external attention to Namahage but also put Namahage front and center in local discourses about history and community identity, inspiring residents to maintain the shūraku-level performance and even, in some cases,

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to restart performance traditions that had fallen by the wayside. In other words, the offspring breathed life into the parent.44

11

Finding Hrönir

In trying to understand this process, I want to suggest another heuristic term, hrönir, that will likely be unfamiliar to most readers but which can serve as an effective metaphor for thinking through the kind of changes occurring with Namahage—and with other religious and folkloric phenomena. Of course, hrönir is not a Japanese word, but actually from a very distant culture: Tlön. Jorge Luis Borges’ famous short story, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” recounts the discovery of one volume (the eleventh) of an encyclopedia describing the culture and philosophy of another planet. The details of the plot are not relevant here, but Borges’ explanation of the concept of hrönir resonates eloquently with what we observe as the relationship between different forms of Namahage: “In the most ancient regions of Tlön, the duplication of lost objects is not infrequent. Two persons look for a pencil; the first finds it and says nothing; the second finds a second pencil, no less real, but closer to his expectations. These secondary objects are called hrönir and are, though awkward in form, somewhat longer” (Borges 1964: 13). Like all Borges’ work, the concept is creative and confusing and brilliant. But if we replace the word “object” with, for example, “tradition,” and “pencil” with the name of a specific tradition, say Namahage, we have a perceptive if inadvertent commentary on folkloric processes and the way traditions remain a dynamic part of culture, always changing but always the same, always being lost but always being found, and becoming relevant—real, functional, meaningful—to the people looking for them. The onus of interpretation and meaning-making is on the person, whether Oga resident, hotelier, government official, or tourist. Borges goes on to explain, in his wonderfully dry tone, that “until recently, the hrönir were the accidental products of distraction and forgetfulness,” but their “methodical production” (Borges 1964: 13) began about a hundred years ago and “has made possible the interrogation and even the modification of the past, which is now no less docile and plastic than the future” (Borges 1964: 14). 44

Although it is too early to tell for sure and somewhat anecdotal, the ICH designation similarly seems to be breathing new life into the New Year’s Eve ritual. On my most recent visit to Oga (2019–2020) I was told that at least five shūraku had revived the ritual explicitly because of the UNESCO designation.

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It is not a stretch to interpret this as a commentary on the conscious use—the “methodical production”—of festivals and similar traditions for touristic purposes that has been a part of Japanese rural community life since the advent of folklore studies, if not before, gaining particular momentum during the muraokoshi movement of the 1970s. For scholars and tourists, as well as some community members, the thing that is lost or forgotten sometimes seems more important than the contemporary emerging phenomenon. Yet, the fear (or reality) of loss is often the very catalyst for productive, meaningful change. The hrönir works as a metaphor for this kind of productive change. The lost object can be found again, “used” differently by different people at different times; the lost tradition is remade as something new, while the older, earlier version is also “found” and also continues to be of value. Borges goes on to describe the way objects duplicate and reduplicate, infinitely, in a process driven not by the object itself, but by the desires and expectations of the people looking for the object. The relationship of one hrönir to another is derivative, symbiotic, and complex: “the hrönir of second and third degree—the hrönir derived from another hrön, those derived from the hrön of a hrön—exaggerate the aberrations of the initial one; those of fifth degree are almost uniform; those of ninth degree become confused with those of the second; in those of the eleventh there is a purity of form not found in the original. The process is cyclical” (Borges 1964: 14). Borges’ story is of course fictional, fantastic and tongue-in-cheek; I am not arguing that the metaphysics of this (presumably) imaginary planet called Tlön corollate to how traditions here on earth evolve. But I suggest that hrönirism, to coin a term, provides a fitting and productive heuristic for thinking about loss, about nostalgia and longing, and about change, both diachronically and synchronically. I would differ only in one respect with Borges and suggest that the derivative hrönir are not “aberrations” (Sp. aberraciones), for this implies a pure original, but rather that they are variant iterations—and the key process is ultimately, as he notes, “cyclical.” The point is simply that the thing that seems to be lost is never actually lost, because something different is found. And the found thing does not necessarily replace or negate the lost thing but can coexist symbiotically with it, and indeed, even make possible its (re)discovery. If the Matsuri is a second degree hrönir, for example, then the ICH inscription might be a third degree hrönir (or perhaps fourth-degree because of the mukei bunkazai label on the national level?), an “object” that is discovered and endowed with meaning by a new constituency. It is not identical to the shūraku ritual, but exists simultaneously, and inspires us to search for the shūraku version in the first place. The “same” tradition exists in multiple versions, and all are equally “real.”

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Finally, with the notion of the hrönir in mind, we can also return to the religious aspects of these various manifestations of Namahage. Each different Namahage hrönir reveals something about the people who discovered it. As we have seen, the household ritual can be understood in terms of vernacular religion, where religious elements exist but are understated and informal, and imbricated into the context of everyday life. This is lived religion, in which “belief” is inextricable from family, community, and simply growing up in Oga. Inversely, the Namahage Sedo Matsuri hrönir tends to formalize and codify religion, locating the activities on shrine grounds, explicitly signifying the Namahage’s identity as a kami, and clearly articulating over a loudspeaker the sacred qualities of the event. The Matsuri invokes religious references not only to authenticate the performance but also to endow it with a gravitas beyond its more sensationalist scare-the-children reputation that attracts tourists in the first place. And in the third-degree hrönir, articulated through the UNESCO nomination form, there is no mention at all of “religion” or specifics such as “Buddhism” or “Shintō.” Instead, we find the description tailored to conform neatly with the terminology and infrastructure of global bureaucracy. And that is just the point: because this particular hrönir has been “found” by a national and global constituency, the specifics of both the first and second degree are elided for easier consumption. Even though the concept of the hrönir is derived from what might seem like an irrelevant literary text, I posit it here because in my own research, it has proven to be a productive analog for understanding the relationship of different iterations of Namahage and how they mutually inform and constitute one another without cancelling each other out. Shaped by the desires and needs of the moment and place, they are created and recreated through the agency of those doing the seeking. By thinking in terms of hrönir, we sidestep questions of “authenticity” and focus instead on the meanings of Namahage, and who those meanings are for. Namahage is a private ritual performed in individual households on New Year’s Eve, and it is a public festival celebrated every February, and it is a global example of intangible cultural heritage listed with hundreds of others in a UNESCO database. One may have preceded the others historically, but in present-day Oga, they are all meaningful elements of lived experience. They feed each other, and each one makes the others possible. Of course, the dynamics discussed here are specific to Namahage. At the same time, however, I hope the broader model I am calling hrönirism can provide insight into similar rituals, festivals, traditions, and religious events in diverse contexts—and particularly those affected by changing socio-cultural

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circumstances, new media and technology, and the effects of tourism and globalization. By understanding the creative continuity of the past and the present, we can better imagine the eloquent plasticity of the future.

Acknowledgments I am grateful first and foremost to the many residents of Oga who have shared with me their traditions and their ideas, especially those in the communities of Yumoto, Shinzan, Ashizawa, Anzenji, Matsukizawa and Shinmachi. The brilliance and enthusiasm of Mr. Yamamoto Tsugio 山本次夫氏 has inspired my research for two decades; I am forever indebted to him, to his generous family, and to the gracious staff at Yūzankaku. Similarly, I thank my friend and collaborator Ogano Minoru for always sharing his insights and profound knowledge of Oga and Namahage with me, and for making it possible for me to return year after year. I am grateful, as always to Michiko Suzuki (for too much to enumerate here). And last but not least, my deep appreciation goes to Elisabetta Porcu and an extremely perceptive anonymous reviewer whose suggestions have greatly improved this chapter.

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chapter 6

Kuma Matsuri Bear Hunters as Intermediaries between Humans and Nature Scott Schnell University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA [email protected]

Abstract The matagi are traditional hunters in the mountainous beech forests of northeastern Japan. They are distinguishable from recreational hunters in their veneration of the yama no kami, a female spirit or god who dwells in the mountains. This chapter will focus on their kuma matsuri, a set of rituals associated with bear hunting. It will argue that the rituals reinforce a sense of connectedness and interdependence with the forested mountains, as personified by the yama no kami, and that the bear epitomizes the gifts they bestow. From this perspective, the mountains are central to people’s lives and livelihoods, a recognition that is somewhat at odds with the “mainstream” culture of the lowland plains and urban areas. For their part, the matagi routinely move back and forth across boundaries, both physical and conceptual. They therefore play a vital role as intermediaries between the cultivated human realm and that of untamed nature.

Keywords matagi – bear hunting – ritual – Japan – yama no kami

In a religious sense, matsuri 祭り derives from a human desire to interact with the kami 神—the spirits that enliven or “animate” nature. This is reflected in the term jinja 神社, which is written with two Chinese ideographs meaning kami 神—ie., spirit(s) or god(s)—and “association” (sha 社). Jinja is generally rendered into English as “shrine,” referring to a special building and its environs that are dedicated to the performance of Shintō rituals. The English gloss is misleading, however, in that the kami are not “enshrined” within a fixed perimeter but rather float freely through the atmosphere and landscape. A jinja is where

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one goes to beckon them momentarily to a convenient location where they can be honored, appeased, and petitioned. The tutelary jinja of a town or village is typically situated in a transitional zone where buildings, roads, and cultivated land—the ordinary loci of human activity—give way to the forested mountains. The mountains are the realm of the kami, and are thereby synonymous with “wild” and “sacred.” The jinja offers a halfway meeting point where humans can go to, as the term implies, “associate” with the kami. On certain occasions, however, the line between sacred and profane is transgressed, with one side venturing into the other’s domain. The mikoshi 神輿 (portable shrine) procession, as described elsewhere in this volume,1 is one such occasion, whereby the “sacred” is invited into the society of humans to activate and renew their sense of community. This event constitutes the core of matsuri as the term applies to a Shintō shrine festival. The word matsuri, however, may be recognized as the nominal form of the verb matsuru 祭る (alternatively 祀る), meaning “to worship” or “pray.” Thus, at a more basic level, matsuri refers to a ritual act of devotion, however brief or improvised. And while this more basic expression of matsuri as ritual still implies the active involvement of humans with kami—a transaction of sorts— it is no longer confined to established locations like a shrine or neighborhood. It may also involve crossing the boundary between sacred and profane in the other direction: rather than the kami being escorted into the human community, it is humans who venture into the realm of the kami. It is in this vein that I would like to consider kuma matsuri 熊祭り, referring to various rituals and events associated with bear hunting. These are conducted not by the priests and parishioners of a Shintō shrine, but by dispersed communities of traditional hunters known as matagi マタギ, who live and work in the forested mountains of northeastern Japan. Elsewhere I have addressed the role of hunters as intermediaries between villagers and the mountains personified (Schnell 2007). Here I will elaborate upon this role through a descriptive analysis of matagi rituals oriented toward the yama no kami 山の神, a spirit or god that dwells in the mountains. I will argue that such rituals both reflect and encourage reciprocal relationships with other species, and the recognition of one’s own place within an interdependent network. Even so, the line between ritual and ordinary activity is often rather vague; to better understand matagi sentiments as they are regularly enacted in either form, I would first like to provide some background on their particular way of life.

1 See the chapters by Tsukahara, Porcu, and Breen.

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Mountains as Marginal: A Lowland Perspective

People who subsist by hunting animals in “the wild” are often viewed with some disdain by their more agriculturally invested neighbors and the distant urban masses. This inclination receives particular impetus in Japan, where the Buddhist proscription against eating meat has historically cast a negative light on anyone involved in taking the lives of animals, especially the four-legged variety (that is, as opposed to birds and fish; Blacker 1996: 179). And since hunters’ lives are necessarily mobile, they are likely to be perceived as a threat by the central government, which prefers that its subjects remain in fixed locations where they are more “legible” (Scott 1998). It is little wonder, then, that rice cultivation, which is highly sedentary and yields a harvest that is easily monitored and taxed, has long been favored by the Japanese nation-state and celebrated in its foundation myths (Ohnuki-Tierney 1993). As recounted in both the Kojiki 古事記 (Record of Ancient Matters, 712CE) and Nihon shoki 日本書紀 (Chronicles of Japan, 720 CE), the technology for rice production, along with earthly government, were conferred upon Japan’s ancient inhabitants by the sun goddess, Amaterasu 天照, through her grandson Ninigi 瓊瓊杵, and Shintō rituals still refer to Japan as the “land of abundant rice on the bountiful plain of reeds” (toyo ashihara no mizuho no kuni 豊葦原の瑞穂の国).2 Such allusions betray a distinctly “lowland” bias that favors rice cultivation over other means of subsistence such as foraging or horticulture. The mountains may have been revered as sources of irrigation water (Hori 1968: 150–151), but not as proper places to make a living. The distinction between lowland and mountain dwelling cultures in Japan has long been recognized, but the mountain-oriented—or “top-down”—perspective has been conspicuously under-represented in ethnographic and historical research (Tsuboi 1982; Schnell 2005, 2006; Knight 2008: 81; Ishikawa 2011). Such neglect is largely attributable to the lowland bias, and to the related assumption that Japan’s cultural identity is firmly rooted in its ancestral ricegrowing villages. The voluminous work of Yanagita Kunio 柳田國男, revered ‘father’ of Japanese folkloristics (or minzokugaku 民俗学), stands as an apt example. In his earlier studies, Yanagita was intent on documenting regional peculiarities and spent much of his time in remote mountain regions. He was perhaps the first to describe for a popular audience the concept of the yama no kami 山の神, or mountain god (Naumann 1963: 136), which was recognized by 2 For an alternative interpretation of this mythical account, one which calls into question the primacy of rice in premodern Japanese agriculture, see Verschuer (2016: 269–280).

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mountain dwelling people and lowland villagers alike. Yanagita noted that the villagers erected shrines for worshipping the yama no kami at the boundary separating land that they had cleared for cultivation from land that remained in forest. From this he reasoned that people prayed to the yama no kami as a way of gaining permission to enter its realm and use its resources. The concept must therefore have originated among the indigenous hunting and gathering population, who had retreated further into the mountains with the encroachment of agriculture. It was later incorporated into the beliefs of the agriculturalists themselves, whom Yanagita considered the forerunners of the present-day Japanese (Yanagita 1962b). During the mid-1920s, Yanagita’s focus began to shift away from distinctive regional identities toward the definition of a unified mainstream, or jōmin 常民 (common folk), culture derived from rural villagers engaged in rice cultivation. He subsequently espoused a new understanding of the yama no kami more in line with this unifying project. In so doing he drew on a widespread belief among rice growing communities that roughly proceeds as follows. In spring, when the rice seedlings are transplanted, the yama no kami descends from its mountain abode to become the ta no kami 田の神, or rice paddy god, taking up residence in the flooded rice fields to vitalize the crop and ensure a successful growing season. In autumn, when the crop is harvested, this ta no kami retreats back into the mountains and becomes the yama no kami once more. The cycle is repeated year after year, notably coinciding with the flow of irrigation water (see Grapard 1982: 200; Hardacre 1983: 156; Gilday 1990: 273; Schnell 2007: 865). In About Our Ancestors (Senzo no hanashi 先祖の話), one of his best known works, Yanagita notes an interesting parallel between the seasonal movement of the yama no kami and another widespread folk belief—that ancestral spirits, who also reside in the mountains, return every year, either at New Year or at Obon お盆 in mid-summer, to visit their former households. He then proceeds with an interesting yet highly speculative attempt to integrate the two beliefs. He begins with the assumption that land tenure serves as the primary basis for establishing and maintaining a family. From this he reasons that since the ancestors, while alive, had invested so much of their time and energy in the land—specifically the rice fields—it is understandable that they would maintain an ongoing interest in the success of the harvest even after crossing into the spirit realm. Over time, as the land is passed from one generation to the next, the ancestral spirits come to be associated with the rice fields themselves. He therefore concludes that the ta no kami and ancestral spirits are but different manifestations of a single metaphysical presence, and that the yama no kami is simply its off-season identity (Yanagita 1970: 74–75; see also the original in Japanese, Yanagita 1962c: 54).

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Yanagita’s stature was such that his ideas tended to be accepted uncritically and soon became the standard explanations. They have been adopted and conveyed by subsequent scholars, thereby becoming further entrenched in the relevant literature (see, for example, Grapard 1982: 201; Ivy 1995: 108; Miyake 2001: 186). Yanagita himself (1970: 75) insisted that belief in the alternating yama no kami/ta no kami was found all over Japan, “from the farthest north to the farthest south.” Strictly in terms of latitude, this statement may be accurate, but it fails to recognize another source of cultural diversity—namely elevation, as in vertical distance above sea level.

2

Mountains as Central: An Alternative Image of the Yama no Kami

Let us now consider the perspective of people who live and work higher up in the mountains. Communities in these areas generally exist as clusters of houses in narrow river basins enveloped by steep slopes. Arable land is limited and the growing season is often too short for rice cultivation to be feasible. Subsistence traditionally depended upon a diversified strategy that combined gardening near the houses and swidden cultivation on the adjacent slopes, with hunting, gathering, and fishing deeper in the mountains. Timber cutting and charcoal production offered supplemental income, as did migrant labor opportunities such as mining and construction. The “deep mountain,” or okuyama 奥山, area was extensive, affording a wealth of vital resources for people (like the matagi) who possessed the knowledge and skills to exploit them. The forested mountains not only fed water to the streams but also provided food, fuel, medicinal substances, and raw materials for clothing and shelter. Human life and welfare were inextricably linked to the mountain environment and all the other species it contained. The mountains, in other words, were central to people’s lives and livelihoods. Such material dependencies were symbolically acknowledged through localized religious beliefs, specifically relating to the yama no kami. While invoking the same deity, however, these beliefs were somewhat different from those held by people who lived at lower elevations in flatter terrain. From a mountain-oriented perspective, the yama no kami watched over the forest and all its varied inhabitants, be they animal or plant, thus remaining in the okuyama the whole year round—there was no seasonal coming and going (Chiba 1975a: 285; 1977: 395–399). And while the lowland ta no kami was typically identified as male, the yama no kami of hunters and timber cutters was recognized as female (Ishikawa 2000: 746–747; Sasaki 2006: 42–50). In fact, she was often depicted as a nurturing mother, and in many areas served double-

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duty as the patron deity of childbirth (Naumann 1963: 219–221). Some sculpted images of the yama no kami show an infant clinging to her breast and are highly reminiscent of the Kosodate Kannon 子育て観音, or child-nurturing Bodhisattva of compassion. These sentiments have persisted in varying degrees to the present day but are rapidly fading. The intrusion of market capitalism and industrial technologies has enhanced the divide between humans and “nature.” People increasingly draw their necessities from outside the local area, so their ties to the land are obscured or diluted. Rural Japan, especially in the more mountainous regions, is becoming depopulated: young people move away to the cities in search of more attractive social and economic opportunities, while old people (the traditional custodians of local knowledge) die off with no one to succeed them. This combination of factors has led to a general desacralization of the rural landscape, which is understandable if we accept that, in the words of Leonardo Boff (1997: 118), “Only a personal relationship with Earth makes us love it.” But among those who have maintained such a “personal relationship” through their lifestyles and activities, and who still recognize the extent to which their own wellbeing depends upon the presence and viability of other species, the natural landscape continues to be valued as a sacred trust. This intimate association with nature and active involvement in local ecosystems is what epitomizes the matagi—traditional hunters, most famously of bears, in the mountainous beech forests of Northeastern Japan.3

3

Matagi

The origin of the term matagi is the subject of considerable speculation with no definitive answers. One theory suggests it was borrowed from the Ainu language,4 combining the words mata (winter) and iki or ki (to do) to mean work

3 Here I am referring to the Tōhoku 東北 region in northern Honshū, the largest island in the Japanese archipelago. Tōhoku officially consists of Aomori, Akita, Iwate, Yamagata, Miyagi, and Fukushima prefectures, though matagi communities are located in parts of Niigata and Nagano prefectures as well. “Beech forest” is a general term that represents a diverse community of plants and animals, including various other types of trees such as oak, maple, birch, cherry, ash, and chestnut; the beech tree is simply the most representative or defining member. In the mountains of Tōhoku, bunarin ブナ林 (beech forest) resonates with all the cultural associations that mizuho no kuni (land of abundant rice) holds for people in the lower basins and coastal plains. 4 The Ainu are an indigenous people who traditionally subsisted by hunting and gathering and once occupied all of Hokkaidō and northern Honshū, as well as Sakhalin, Khabarovsk Krai,

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that one does in the winter—namely hunting.5 Mutō (1997: 215) speculates that it derives from the Sanskrit word matangi (an occupational category involving the slaughter of animals for meat), perhaps introduced into Japan through esoteric Buddhism. Yanagita (1962a) thought it was a reference to a kind of improvised walking stick made from a forked tree branch (mata 股, meaning “crotch” or “fork” combined with ki or gi 木, meaning “wood” or “tree”). Matagi is usually written in katakana, a native syllabary reserved for foreign words and phrases. When written in kanji, or Chinese-derived characters, it is most often rendered as 又鬼, combining the characters mata 又, meaning “once more” (but in this case “more than”), and ki or gi 鬼 (also read oni), referring to a supernatural demon commonly appearing in Japanese folklore. The allusion here is that in order to kill a wild animal—especially a large and dangerous animal such as a bear—the hunter has to be even more fierce than a mythical demon. This is most likely a “folk etymology” that was coined well after the term’s origin, but that nevertheless served its purpose in training young matagi to be stoic. Each attempted explanation appeals to certain people for certain reasons, and each reveals a different aspect of matagi tradition. For the purposes of this chapter I would like to highlight yet another popular theory—that matagi is a nominalization of the verb matagu 跨ぐ, meaning “to step over or across;” “to bridge, span, or straddle.”6 This derivation accurately captures the essence of matagi activity—they cross freely over mountain ridges (and political boundaries) in pursuit of game animals, they straddle the divide between domesticated space and wild nature, and they serve as a spiritual link between humans and the yama no kami. The more general word for “hunter” in Japanese is ryōshi 猟師, but it fails to convey the same cultural associations. The English loanword hantā ハンター (hunter), is also widely used, and evokes the image of a modern outdoor sportsman. Significantly, the matagi use the word hantā, but never in reference to themselves; rather, it is reserved for people—usually from urban areas—who simply stalk and kill wild animals for recreation with little knowledge of, or affinity for, the local landscape.

and the Kuril Islands. Their language is completely different from Japanese. Many of the place names in northern Honshū are of Ainu origin. The Ainu and matagi are culturally distinct but no doubt interacted historically. 5 Some older matagi recall customary use of the phrase matagi e iku マタギへ行く (going matagi-ing) when setting out to hunt in the mountains. 6 As Mutō (1997: 215) notes, this is similar to the way that kasegu 稼ぐ (to earn) is nominalized as kasegi 稼ぎ (earnings).

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In any case, to describe the matagi merely as “hunters” is somewhat misleading. Until around the mid-1950s, some of them were able to support themselves almost exclusively through hunting. Most, however, were involved in a wide range of subsistence activities that included gathering edible vegetation (ferns, roots, berries, nuts, and mushrooms), freshwater fishing, swidden cultivation of various root vegetables, intensive cultivation of hardy grains (millet, barley, and buckwheat), and perhaps even growing a little rice where conditions allowed. These activities were often supplemented by the production and sale of charcoal as well as migrant labor in the timber cutting, mining, and construction industries. Hunting was largely confined to the winter and early spring when other activities demanded less of their time. Even so, the matagi were renowned for their hunting abilities, supported by an intimate understanding of the mountain terrain and of the habitats and behaviors of wild animals. Of course, wild animals are highly mobile, and their numbers fluctuate. Whether in search of food or evading predation, they roam freely across the landscape with little regard for political boundaries. The matagi adopted a similar pattern, not only in pursuit of game animals, but also to expand their hunting operations into other areas and engage in the commercial exchange of meat, furs, and medicinal substances. Their lives were necessarily more mobile than those of lowland villagers, and therefore less subject to surveillance and regulation by government authorities. A wide variety of game animals made their home in the beech forests, or bunarin ブナ林, that once covered much of central and northeastern Japan. The matagi hunted hare (nousagi 野兎), marten (ten 貂), badger (anaguma 穴熊), flying squirrel (musasabi ムササビ or bandori バン ドリ), copper pheasant ( yamadori 山鳥), and other small game, but in terms of subsistence the larger animals were more highly prized. Large game animals were collectively referred to as shishi シシ, which was an allusion to their having four legs (shi ashi 四足) but generally conveyed the notion of “meat.” For the matagi, the two most important species were the kamoshika カモシカ, or Japanese serow (often described as resembling a cross between a goat and an antelope), and the tsukinowaguma ツキノワグマ, or Asian black bear (Ursus thibetanus), distinguishable by a crescent-shaped patch of white fur on its chest.7

7 Deer (nihonjika 二ホン ジカ) and wild boar (inoshishi イノシシ) generally stayed out of the deep mountain areas since heavy snow accumulations presented impediments to their movement. This is recently starting to change, and is taken by the matagi as another indication that nature is “out of balance.” The encroachment of wild boar is particularly alarming to the matagi because the boar competes directly with the bear for food.

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Due to declining populations of kamoshika in Western Japan, restrictions on hunting the animal began in the 1930s, and in 1955 it was designated a protected species nationwide. Thereafter the matagi focused mainly on bears. Their hunting activities and traditions had been rather extensively studied by Japanese ethnologists, most notably Takahashi Buntarō (1937), Mutō Tetsujō (1997), Gotō Kōzen (1989), Miyamoto Tsune’ichi (1964, 1992), and Chiba Tokuji (1975a, 1975b, 1977), prior to, during, and just after the Second World War. But a popularaudience book by Togawa Yukio (1962) introduced them to a wider readership, and they came to be romanticized in the popular imagination as courageous bear hunters. Matagi still exist, but their numbers are steadily dwindling through attrition. Documentaries typically portray them as nostalgic remnants from a bygone era, or instructive examples for “coexisting with nature” (shizen to kyōsei suru 自然と共生する). Even so, today’s matagi are as much a part of contemporary Japan as the salaried employees of major business corporations. Most of them hold regular jobs (if not yet retired), particularly in forest management and the timber industry. They live in contemporary homes with all the modern conveniences, communicate via cell phone, obtain much of their food from supermarkets, and transport themselves in the most recently manufactured vehicles. Hunting continues to define their identity, but its importance is more symbolic than material. When they hunt they use high-powered rifles with telescopic sights, binoculars for locating their prey, and radio transceivers for coordinating their movements (see Figure 6.1). What then distinguishes them from the ordinary hantā, and what qualifies them as being ‘traditional?’ The answers may be found in some recent scholarship on “traditional ecological knowledge,” or TEK, which Berkes (2018: 7) defines as “a cumulative body of knowledge, practice, and belief, evolving by adaptive processes and handed down through generations by cultural transmission, about the relationship of living beings (including humans) with one another and with their environment” (italics in the original). In contrasting TEK with Western science, Berkes notes that “many systems of indigenous knowledge include spiritual or religious dimensions (beliefs) that do not make sense to science or fall outside the realm of science.” He adds that “Traditional knowledge systems tend to have a large moral and ethical context; there is no separation between nature and culture” (Berkes 2018: 11). In a similar vein, Pierotti (2010) distinguishes TEK in terms of the following characteristics: it is specific to a particular location; it has endured over time but is nevertheless capable of incorporating new information; and it conveys a sense of honor and responsibility on the part of human beings, primarily through the use of stories and metaphors. Of particular interest is the following observation: “Indigenous peo-

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figure 6.1 Contemporary matagi Photo by author

ple invariably contend that the attitude and philosophy involved, rather than the technology, are what make a practice traditional” (Pierotti 2010: 13–14). In short, adopting new technologies does not necessarily require abandoning tradition. The matagi are distinctive in their attachment to place, their intimate understanding of the local ecosystem, and their sense of responsibility for its maintenance and preservation. But what sets them apart most clearly from “ordinary” hunters is their abiding veneration of the yama no kami. They are careful to seek her blessing before venturing into her realm, and to thank her for any benefits they obtain therein. Anything gained from the mountains is thus considered a gift from the yama no kami, and they routinely use the word sazukaru 授かる— a humble verb form meaning “to be bestowed/blessed [with]”—in referring to the taking of game animals. They are also mindful that abusing the privilege— by taking too much or failing to offer anything in return—would invite the deity’s wrath, resulting in declining fortunes. Living things must consume other living things in order to survive—that is the nature of ecosystems and food chains—but killing merely for sport or recreation is anathema. Veneration of the yama no kami thus enforces an ethic of conservation by placing limits on

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the amount of resources that are taken and encouraging efforts to promote the health of the entire ecosystem—of which the matagi themselves are a vital component. The fact that the yama no kami of hunters is female, however, should not be taken as evidence of progressive attitudes toward gender equality. Folk belief holds that the yama no kami is sensitive about her own appearance and inherently jealous of other females (Togawa 1962: 80; Chiba 1975b; Blacker 1996: 181; Fujita 2011: 40). For this reason women have traditionally been prohibited from hunting for fear that the deity might take offense and withhold her favors— refuse to grant the hunters success, in other words. With the number of hunters declining and fears that the hunting tradition may disappear altogether, the restriction on females is slowly starting to lift. At present I know of at least three women who have become matagi, each in a different hunting group. This would have been inconceivable as recently as ten years ago.8 Even so, the transition is piecemeal, and most groups continue to be exclusively male. The justification for excluding women, typically, is reluctance to offend the yama no kami. There are various factions among the matagi, just as there are various denominations within the same religion. One of the major factions, the Nikkō-ha 日光派, claims a vague association with Tendai 天台 Buddhism and identifies itself by invoking a legendary ancestor named Banji Banzaburō 磐次磐三郎.9 According to one narrative, Banji Banzaburō is highly renowned for his skill with the bow and arrow. He fights on the side of the mountain deity Nikkō Gongen 日光権現 in her battle with a rival god Akagi Myōjin 赤城明神, who has taken the form of a giant serpent.10 With deadly accuracy, Banji Banzaburō shoots an arrow into the serpent’s eye, thereby ensuring Nikkō Gongen the final victory. As a reward, he and his descendants are granted the right to hunt freely in the forested mountains all over Japan. This legend is contained in a scroll entitled Yamadachi konpon no maki 山立根本之巻 (Hunter’s Foundational Scroll),11 which is held by the matagi as a kind of license that justifies their lifestyle and freedom of movement. The leader of every hunting group in this faction owns a copy of the scroll.

8 9 10 11

This trend is reflected nationwide, with increasing numbers of women taking up hunting (Tanaka 2011). Alternatively written as either 盤司盤三郎 or 万事万三郎. According to some versions a giant centipede, or mukade 百足. Yamadachi 山立 (sometimes written 山達), is an older, more general term for traditional hunters of Northeastern Japan. It refers to “people who enter the mountains,” and is virtually synonymous with matagi.

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Another story describes Banji Banzaburō not as one man but as two brothers, Banji and Banzaburō, who happen upon the yama no kami in the forest while she is in the midst of giving birth. The elder brother Banji flees in fear of becoming polluted, but the younger brother Banzaburō remains to assist the deity through a successful delivery and is therefore rewarded with the right to hunt in her mountains. This version is particularly interesting in that it acknowledges an active role for human beings in helping to nurture the environment, as personified by the yama no kami. The other major faction, the Kōya-ha 高野派, traces its origins to Kūkai 空 海 (posthumously known as Kōbō Daishi 弘法大師, 774–835), founder of Shingon 真言 Buddhism in the ninth century. This story is contained in another scroll entitled Yamadachi yurai no koto 山達由来之事 (On the Hunters’ Origins). Three hunters are pursuing game on Mt. Kōya 高野 where they encounter Kūkai, who has come there hoping to establish a monastery. Despite the fact that taking the lives of animals is considered deeply sinful in Buddhism, Kūkai allows the hunters a dispensation provided that they comply with certain conditions: they must refrain from killing indiscriminately and take only what they need for their subsistence; they must relinquish the use of bow and arrow since arrows can be shot to great distances (presumably meaning that they are less accurate than a spear and thus more likely to cause suffering to the targeted animals); and of the three hunters, one of them must give up hunting altogether and spend the rest of his life as a Buddhist monk. The hunters agree to these conditions, whereupon Kūkai endows them with a salvific prayer (indō 引導) to recite for the spirits of the animals they kill. Taken as a whole, these narratives establish three important precedents relating to the matagi lifestyle. First, the matagi have the right to move freely through the mountains as they hunt for wild game, unrestricted by political boundaries. Second, they play an active role in local ecosystems by assisting the yama no kami in her productive activities. Third, by maintaining the proper attitudes of reverence and respect, they absolve themselves of sin from killing animals. In other words, by evoking these narratives, the matagi have managed to legitimize their activities through a clever manipulation of religious concepts that would otherwise discredit and exclude them.

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Bears and Bear Hunting

It has long been recognized that among indigenous peoples throughout the northern hemisphere the bear is the object of special respect and veneration, and that bear hunting is accompanied by rituals and ceremonies that are not similarly afforded to other animals (Hallowell 1926; Nelson 1983: 172–189; Shepard and Sanders 1985: 77–91; Scott 2006). The matagi, of course, are no exception. What explains this special treatment of bears in particular? Bears exhibit a number of affinities with human beings. First and foremost they are omnivores, positioned at the top of the food chain. They tend to like the same kinds of food that humans like. Their eyes are positioned forward on their heads to afford binocular vision. Due to their hip structure, they can stand upright on their hind legs to gain a better perspective, and can even walk bipedally. A track from the rear paw of a bear looks remarkably like a human footprint. The front paws, meanwhile, exhibit impressive hand-like dexterity. Bears are good at climbing trees and navigating rugged terrain. Mother bears are notoriously protective of their young, and cubs remain with their mothers for extended periods of time until they learn to survive on their own. If one is looking for a human counterpart in the realm of nature, the bear is an obvious candidate. According to the eminent matagi scholar Taguchi Hiromi 田口洋 美, when matagi are asked “what animal is closest to the yama no kami?” they invariably answer “the bear” (Taguchi Hiromi 田口洋美, personal communication, 3 May 2013). Back in the days when mountain villages had to be largely self-sufficient, bears were highly valued for their meat, especially in regions where other sources of animal protein were lacking. Bear furs are warm and water resistant, so they were often incorporated into cold weather clothing. Of particular importance was the gall bladder (tannō 胆のう but colloquially referenced as kuma no i 熊の胆), which in traditional East Asian medicine is attributed with the power to heal a multitude of ills, especially stomach ailments. In short, bears were essential for human life in matagi villages, and the success of the bear hunt was of paramount importance. It is little wonder, then, that bear hunting was surrounded by rituals and taboos. The villages of Ani 阿仁 in Akita prefecture, located in the vicinity of Mt. Moriyoshi (Moriyoshi yama 森吉山),12 are considered the birthplace of the matagi, and that is where the term was first applied to people who made their

12

Ani no longer exists as a political unit. In 2005 it was amalgamated with three other towns to form the city of Kita-Akita.

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living, at least in part, by hunting. The Akita matagi belonged to the Nikkō faction, and freely exercised the boundary crossing privileges they had been granted through their ancestor Banji Banzaburō in the Yamadachi konpon no maki. During the latter part of the Edo period, in the early 1800s, they began to expand their hunting activities into neighboring regions and capitalize on emerging markets for meat, fur, gall, and other animal products. When the new Meiji government mounted a program of “reclaiming” land for agriculture in the late 1800s, the matagi began to market their technical skills for the purpose of protecting crops and villagers from wildlife depredations. Hunting thus became a form of migrant labor for the Akita matagi, some of them proceeding to organize bands of hunters in other prefectures and even marrying into local households (Taguchi 2000a: 90–94; 2000b: 101–105). While these so-called tabimatagi 旅またぎ (tabi referring to “travel” or “journey”) were no longer engaged exclusively in subsistence oriented hunting, they nevertheless extended their conservation ethics into the new commercial ventures, recognizing that overexploiting wild animal populations would have eliminated their own raison d’ être. As Taguchi (2000a: 78) explains, “It is impossible to sustain hunting as a way of life without maintaining a balance between capture and propagation. In other words, ‘sustainable hunting’ cannot be achieved unless there is coexistence with wildlife.” Again, the concept of TEK as a combination of knowledge, practice, and belief is highly relevant to this discussion. Indeed, throughout the Taishō 大正 (1912–1926) and early Shōwa 昭和 (1926–1989) periods, the tabi-matagi introduced not only their hunting techniques but also the corresponding beliefs and rituals into other areas, such as the villages of Oguni 小国 in Yamagata Prefecture and adjacent parts of northern Niigata Prefecture (Taguchi 2000b: 105–106; 2002: 143–144). The result was a loosely structured network, not a rigidly controlled system. Tradition, of course, is malleable, and adapts itself to specific local conditions. Turning now to the present day, this malleability helps to explain why dispersed matagi villages share the same basic patterns but vary widely in details. The favored time of year for bear hunting is mid- to late April through early May, just after the bears emerge from hibernation and begin to roam around in search of food. Several factors combine to make this brief period ideal for hunting. Animals are much easier to spot while the trees are still bare. The packed melting snow offers solid footing on the steep slopes, allowing humans easier access to the higher elevations. And since the bears have not been digesting food for several months while hibernating, the gall bladder is much larger, swollen with its accumulated bile. In Japan, however, the official hunting season for all species of game animals is 15 November to 15 February. Bears are in

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hibernation and therefore inaccessible during most of that time. Consequently, the matagi must obtain special permission from their local governments each year to hunt bears during the ideal conditions of early spring.13 The matagi sometimes hunt singly or in twos and threes, but they are better known for hunting cooperatively in larger groups of fifteen to twenty or more members. Generations ago they perfected a technique called makigari 巻き狩り, or “enveloping hunt,”14 which makes clever use of the rugged mountain terrain and has proven highly effective. As the term implies, the participants encircle a steeply sloping watershed wherein a bear has been sighted or is thought to be hiding. Some of them—usually the younger, less experienced members— take positions well down on the slope, forming the bottom of the encirclement. These are the seko 勢子, or drivers.15 Other, more senior members locate themselves along the ridges on either side of the watershed leading up to the summit. They are called uke 受け or ukeseko 受け勢子 (interceptors), and their role is to contain the bear if it tries to cross over into an adjacent valley. Waiting at the top are three buppa 射場 (shooters)—ranked “first,” “second,” and “third”— positioned at intervals along the summit. Their job, of course, is to shoot the bear as it nears their positions, and not surprisingly they are the best marksmen. On a convenient vantage point, usually the high ground directly opposite the encircled watershed, is the mukaimatte 向い待手, who observes and directs the entire operation. This role is usually assumed by the shikari, the leader of the group (see Figure 6.2).16 At a signal from the mukaimatte, the drivers begin to shout: “Hooo-o! Hoooo!” The sounds of their voices echo eerily through the valley. This flushes the bear and gets it moving. The drivers then close in behind to tighten the circle. When a bear senses danger, it instinctively moves toward higher ground. If it heads for the ridge on either side of the watershed, the uke there will turn it 13

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This special permission is granted ostensibly for the purpose of culling bear populations to reduce the number of human-bear encounters and to limit damage to crops (Taguchi 2000b: 92). Also known as shishimaki シシ巻き. It is worth noting that the seko, typically, do not carry firearms. Through years of apprenticeship they gain knowledge and experience—of bear behavior, of the intricacies of the hunt, and most importantly how to navigate their way through the mountains without getting lost. If they prove themselves worthy they will move up through the ranks, perhaps one day joining the buppa (shooters) at the summit. These are the terms used by the Akita matagi. The terms used for the various roles differ from region to region. In Oguni of Yamagata Prefecture, for example, the leader is called either yamasaki ヤマサキ (lead in the mountains) or oyakata 親方 (foreman). The term oyakata is used in Niigata as well. Such leadership is confined to the hunting operations— it does not necessarily carry over into other aspects of community life.

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figure 6.2 View from the position of the mukaimatte Photo by author

back the other way. The bear thus moves in a zigzag pattern as it works its way upslope. Ideally (from the hunters’ perspective), as it nears the summit, it will pass laterally by one or more of the buppa, offering a clean broadside shot. Accepting a gift bestowed by the mountains is not simply a matter of shooting an animal, however. It is effected symbolically through the medium of ritual, which brings us at last to the topic at hand. The following descriptions are drawn from Mikame (1976), Chiba (1969, 1975a, 1977), Sakuma (1985), and Taguchi (2004), as well as my own multi-sited fieldwork among the matagi of Akita, Yamagata, and Niigata prefectures during successive years from 2013 to 2019.

5

Kuma Matsuri

Any mention of kuma matsuri (or of bear ceremony in a Japanese context) will likely bring to mind the Ainu iyomante イヨマンテ, or spirit-sending ritual for bears (Kitagawa 1961; Irimoto 2010). Matagi bear ritual is similar to the iyomante in that it entails an expression of gratitude for the bear’s sacri-

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fice (or gift) and a sending of the bear’s spirit back to its place of origin. But there are also major differences (Ikeya 2005: 166–169). The Ainu of Japan are mostly located in Hokkaidō and hunt the Hokkaidō brown bear, or higuma ヒグ マ.17 The matagi, on the other hand, live mostly in northern Honshū and hunt the Asian black bear (tsukinowaguma), higuma being entirely absent from that region and indeed all of Japan outside Hokkaidō. To the matagi, the bear is a gift from the mountain god, while to the Ainu the bear itself is a god (or kamui in the Ainu language). The iyomante involves capturing a bear cub from its den and raising it to maturity, at which point it is ceremonially killed—or rather (considering that the bear is essentially a spirit) sent back to the spirit realm. Bear ritual for the matagi, on the other hand, is directly related to the hunting effort and begins in the mountains where the bear is encountered and killed in its natural habitat. Kuma matsuri, often referred to in the vernacular as shishi matsuri, manifests itself at three different levels. In the mountains, it is a set of rituals performed over the body of a bear immediately after it has been killed. In the local community, it is a celebratory feast marking the conclusion of a successful bear hunt. At the regional level, it refers to a large tourist event created in the mid-1970s for the purpose of attracting visitors and stimulating the economy.18 Here I will focus on the mountain and community levels, which are in actuality different phases of a single commemorative and conciliatory process. In fact, since the hunt itself is carried out within the realm of the yama no kami and conducted according to a strict set of rules and prohibitions, it too could be considered a sacred (i.e., ritualized) activity. It should be noted here what perhaps is already obvious to the reader—that matagi belief is a kind of “animism” in which nature is recognized as a conscious presence. When the matagi enter into the deep mountains, they carry with them a strong sense or awareness that they are being watched—by both the mountain deity and the animals that reside there (Taguchi Hiromi 田口洋 美, personal communication, 3 May 2013). Their behavior is being evaluated, in other words, as to whether they are demonstrating the proper respect and comportment.

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Ursus arctos yesoensis, the same species as (but a different sub-species from) the Grizzly and Kodiak. This large tourist-oriented version of the kuma matsuri is held every year on 4 May in the village of Kotamagawa 小玉川, Oguni city, Yamagata Prefecture. It retains some of the ritual elements of the traditional version but with an emphasis on spectacle and entertaining the public. As for tourist-oriented versions of festivals, see also Foster’s analysis of Namahage in this volume.

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figure 6.3 Shrine to the yama no kami in Oguni, Yamagata Prefecture Photo by author

5.1 Hunting Rituals As the importance of hunting for subsistence continues to fade, so do its attendant rituals. Often they are abbreviated or abandoned altogether, and with them the sentiments they once conveyed. Depopulation of rural areas, busy work schedules, and new technologies have all had an impact on the way bear hunting is conducted. Here and there throughout northeastern Japan, however, matagi traditions have persisted in varying degrees to the present day. Veneration of the yama no kami remains a defining element in matagi identity. When embarking on a hunt, typically at the point of entry into the okuyama, the participants assemble in front of a small shrine or large rock dedicated to the deity (see Figure 6.3) to seek her endorsement, pray for their safety and success, and make an offering of sake, or rice wine (a small portion of which they themselves imbibe). In former times, that is until around the early 1970s, the matagi were famous for their adherence to a special argot called yama kotoba 山言葉 (mountain language), which was used only in the mountains and not shared with outsiders.19 19

In fact, Taguchi (2000a: 81–83; 2002: 128; personal communication 5 February 2013) claims

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It also served to conceal the hunters’ intentions from the targeted game animals—in this case bears—who were believed to be capable of understanding human speech. While in the mountains, certain behaviors—such as talking too loudly, laughing, singing, whistling, yawning, or mentioning one’s wife or girlfriend—were strictly prohibited. The use of alcohol and tobacco were forbidden as well. Infringement of the rules, typically by a young novice, was considered disrespectful to the yama no kami. Offenders were required to immerse themselves naked in the icy waters of a mountain stream, which served as both an admonishment and a ritual of purification. Any misfortune, or simply lack of success in finding a bear, would invariably arouse suspicions that someone had broken the rules and offended the yama no kami. Many of the older matagi still remember being subjected to such ordeals. At present, however, young recruits are so few and so urgently needed that they are not likely to be treated so harshly. Likewise, yama kotoba, with the exception of a few key words, is no longer spoken. The air of silence and solemnity upon entering the mountains, however, most certainly prevails. This has obvious practical benefits in focusing the hunters’ attention and not alerting the game animals, but is routinely explained as a show of respect. The most iconic expression of matagi sentiments is a solemn ritual called kebokai けボカイ,20 which is usually performed immediately after a bear has been killed. First the bear’s body is laid out on its back—preferably atop a clean patch of snow—with the head oriented toward a particular direction. Typically that direction is north, but some groups choose the east, and others the west. Still other groups arrange the body so that the head is upstream, regardless of the cardinal directions. This lack of uniformity in practice from one group to another should not be surprising. If ritualization involves the framing of an activity to distinguish it from the mundane or purely instrumental (Bell 1992), then what really matters is that some particular direction is specified, no matter which one. Furthermore, the secretive nature of this particular ritual lends itself to variation among groups, as the exact procedures are not shared with outsiders. At this point the group’s leader, the shikari, squats or kneels beside the bear and sprinkles a little salt over its body. Then, while quietly uttering a prayer—

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that the term matagi is part of this special argot and simply means “a person.” Thus, while hunting in the mountains, it was naturally used in reference to oneself and to one’s fellow hunters. The derivation of kebokai is unclear, though the ke (毛) is obviously a reference to the fur or hide. Gotō (1989: 93) states that kebokai means “praying to honor the fur” (ke o iwai inoru koto 毛を祝い祈ること).

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kept secret from all but his eventual successor—he gently brushes the bear with either a branch from a fir tree or a leafy stalk of bamboo grass.21 This is meant as a ritual of purification, much in the manner of a Shintō priest purifying offerings with a haraegushi 祓串 (purification wand). The shikari takes his knife and makes a lengthwise cut down the centerline of the bear’s body. He then makes follow-up cuts from the centerline out to each of the four legs, and proceeds to systematically skin the bear. When the pelt (kegawa 毛皮) has been removed, the hunters gather together and stand around the carcass in respectful silence.22 This is the point at which the kebokai actually begins. Here again, the details of the ritual vary from group to group, but the underlying pattern is the same—the pelt is momentarily held out over the naked carcass while a prayer is offered to the yama no kami. In most versions of this ritual, the head and tail of the pelt are reversed relative to the carcass. In some groups the pelt is held by four hunters, one at each corner. In other groups two hunters do the holding, one at the head and forelegs and the other at the hind legs. In still other groups the shikari alone holds the pelt. Furthermore, the pelt may be held steadily, or it may be waved over the carcass three times. Some groups lay the pelt back over the carcass momentarily, as if covering it up again. The accompanying prayer is more like an incantation and is partly derived from Sanskrit.23 Its meaning is obscure and the wording varies widely among different villages, but it generally incorporates the phrase senbiki mo manbiki mo 千匹も万匹も (“a thousand [more], ten thousand [more]),”24 followed by the phrase abira unken sowaka アビラウン ケン ソワカ.25 The kebokai is a combination of several things at once: an expression of gratitude, an apology to the bear for having taken its life, a gesture of sending the bear’s spirit back to the yama no kami so that it can be reborn in a new body, and a prayer for the proliferation of the bears, upon whom the matagi are so dependent.

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The particular type of fir tree is called Aomoritodomatsu アオモリトドマツ (Abies mariesii, or Maries’ fir). Fittingly, the specific type of bamboo grass being used is the kumazasa ク マザサ (Sasa veitchii), or “bear” bamboo grass. The Japanese term kegawa combines both “fur” and “hide.” Thus “pelt” seems the closest English equivalent. Presumably through the influence of esoteric (Tendai or Shingon) Buddhism. Using the counter hiki 匹, which is reserved for animals. This is a rendering of the Sanskrit incantation a vi ra hum kham svaha, drawn from Shingon Buddhism. Sasamori (1997: 95) attributes its use in folk religious contexts to the influence of the Yamabushi 山伏, or mountain ascetics.

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figure 6.4 Returning home in the evening after a successful hunt. The bear’s body has been cut up and distributed among the participants Photo by author

This description is based on the ritual as it is practiced in Akita Prefecture. The matagi villages of Oguni in Yamagata Prefecture perform basically the same ritual but do not refer to it as kebokai. Rather, they use the term kawakise カワキセ, which derives from the phrase kawa o kiseru 皮を着せる, meaning “to drape the hide.” Afterwards, they perform another ritual in which the leader takes his knife and makes two deep crosswise cuts into the bear’s heart to form a quartering shape. This is called honawari ホナわり (dividing the heart) or honabiraki ほなびらき (opening the heart), hona being the word for “heart” in yama kotoba. It is said to mark the act of accepting the bear’s body from the yama no kami (Taguchi Hiromi 田口洋美, personal communication, 4 February 2013). By extension, “opening the heart” may also represent releasing the bear’s spirit back to the mountains. Whether in Akita or Yamagata, removal of the pelt is followed by yet another ritual in which small pieces of meat are taken from the bear and placed on wooden skewers, then warmed or roasted over a hastily kindled fire. This is called mochigushi 持ち串 (holding the skewers). Generally the pieces of meat are taken from the heart and liver, and sometimes also from the back (i.e., loin). Here again the details vary. Some groups place three pieces of meat on each

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of three skewers for a total of nine, while others place seven pieces of meat on each of seven skewers for a total of forty-nine. In any case, the meat is presented as an offering to the yama no kami, then eaten by the hunters right there in the field. The rest of the body is cut up into portions, placed in plastic bags, and distributed among the hunters to be carried back home. The gall bladder, in particular, is handled with great care, as it is still highly valued for its medicinal properties. The combined weight of a firearm, equipment, and apportioned bear body can amount to a significant burden, especially when navigating rugged, snow covered slopes, so it is important that the burden be equally shared (see Figure 6.4).26 5.2 Communal Feast When the matagi return from a successful hunt, they immediately begin to process the bear (or bears) that the mountains have bestowed upon them. The hunting was a cooperative effort, so the meat too is shared, and everyone who participated, regardless of role or contribution, receives an equal portion. The matagi show their respect to the animal by using every part of it. Whatever is left after distributing the meat—even the bones and entrails—will eventually be placed in a bubbling cauldron along with water, miso, and various other ingredients to produce a thick and richly flavorful stew called kumajiru 熊汁 (bear soup—see Figure 6.5). Bear hunting season does not last long. As the days grow warmer the snow melts rapidly even on the upper slopes. Trees break out in a leafy canopy that conceals the bears’ whereabouts and movements. Prime time for hunting lasts only about two weeks. But in the present day that brief interval is further limited by people’s ordinary work schedules. Hunting is largely confined to two or three weekends. The “Golden Week” holidays (29 April–5 May) at one time offered a prime opportunity for several consecutive days of concentrated hunting, but recently due to the effects of climate change that opportunity often comes too late. A few days after the season has ended, provided that they have been blessed with a bear, the matagi gather together within their respective villages for a

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If the bear has been shot fairly close to the village, the matagi will sometimes attach ropes to its legs and drag it intact all the way back home, using the snow where possible to slide the carcass. In that case the kebokai and associated rituals will be performed at a central location within the village itself—typically a parking space or other open area adjacent to the leader’s home. This is fairly common practice among the Akita matagi.

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figure 6.5 Kumajiru, or bear soup Photo by author

celebratory feast. This is what is usually meant by kuma matsuri.27 The event is hosted by and for everyone associated with the hunt, but often includes representatives from the timber industry, local politicians, police officials, and members of hunting groups from neighboring communities. Central to this feast is the consumption of kumajiru, as well as copious amounts of beer and sake. Consuming the bear is a form of communion, not only among the human participants, but also with the bear itself. The conceptual basis for the entire event is memorializing (kuyō suru 供養する) the bear, without whom there is no matsuri. One might object that this is merely a party, and that the defining elements appear to be drinking and boisterousness. But the same could be

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A kuma matsuri used to be held immediately following each successful hunt. Now however, in order to accommodate people’s busy work schedules, it is usually held only once at the conclusion of the season.

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said of many other matsuri—that they offer a religious rationale for a raucous celebration. The revelry may eclipse, but does not eliminate, the underlying purpose.28 The kuma matsuri is highly reminiscent of what Ray (1991) describes for the Koyukon people of Alaska’s northwestern interior, drawing primarily on the ethnographic work of Richard K. Nelson. The Koyukon, too, are bear hunters, and like the matagi they celebrate a successful hunt with a ritual feast, referred to in English as a bear party. On the surface, the bear party does not seem to be a ritualistic occasion. The men speak about it pragmatically as a way of insuring successful hunting and of renewing traditional culture. But, Nelson was told, the bear party is implicitly a funerary potlatch for the bear spirit. A Koyukon potlatch is a ceremony that honors the deceased with food and gifts for relatives and friends. The soul of the deceased sees that many people have come to the potlatch in his or her name and that the food and gifts have made people happy. Satisfied and content, the soul will then depart and not bother his or her kinsmen. Ray 1991: 169

And so it is among the matagi. Their kuma matsuri is fundamentally a potlatch held to honor the bear (Taguchi Hiromi, personal communication, 20 April 2019). If we accept the premise that the bear is a gift, either from the yama no kami or from the spirit of the bear itself, then it stands to reason that accepting the gift with gratitude and sharing it with others would be pleasing to the giver. Since at least the time of Marcel Mauss (1990 [1925]) it has been widely recognized that gift exchange is fundamental to the creation and maintenance of social relationships. Unless the gift of the mountains is gratefully accepted and consumed, how can “a personal relationship with Earth” be enacted? In the matagi way of thinking, the bear wants its meat to be shared widely, so the more guests who partake of the kumajiru, the greater the honor for the bear, and the 28

The matagi villages of Oguni in Yamagata Prefecture used to invite a local hōin 法印—a high ranking Yamabushi, or mountain ascetic in the Shugendō 修験道 tradition—to the kuma matsuri to perform yutate 湯立て, the dramatic “boiling water” ritual as described by Reader (1991: 67–68) and Blacker (1999: 249–250). This was intended to both purify the hunters and appease the bear’s spirit. Yutate is no longer performed in the local village festivals but has been incorporated into the large tourist event; in fact, along with the opportunity to eat kumajiru, it is considered one of the main attractions (Sakuma 1985: 62–67; Fujita 2011: 74–75).

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more meaningful its sacrifice. In the words of one of my informants, “To eat what you have caught, without wasting it, that is how you pay respect to the animal.” This may help to explain the ethic of sharing so commonly attributed to hunting and gathering cultures all over the world; vegetative food sources may be gathered and kept for oneself, but meat, representing the sacrifice of a sentient being, must be shared with others.

6

Hunters as Intermediaries

As communities carve out places to settle and cultivate, they simultaneously create a divide between themselves and the natural environment. Indeed, the concept of “nature” as an entity separate and distinct from human beings may be considered an unavoidable by-product of cultivating land (Dwyer 1996). Once such a divide has been established, humans and “nature” are placed in opposition. Nature comes to be seen as an enemy, constantly threatening to break in and reclaim its territory through incursions of weeds and insects, crop depredations by wild animals, the mechanical effects of wind and precipitation, etc. In defense of their livelihoods, human communities are obliged to struggle against these continuing threats to their lives and property. The matagi, through their varied means of subsistence, transcend this divide. As hunters who grow crops (or crop growers who hunt) their sympathies lie on both sides. The forest and its denizens are not enemies that threaten their livelihood, but rather a wealth of vital resources necessary for their survival. Life in the mountains is dependent upon reciprocal exchange relationships with other species, so one’s own needs must be balanced against the needs of the others. Taking too much (by killing too many animals, for example) would be detrimental to one’s own existence. Crop damages are accepted (to some extent at least) as part of the exchange. The rituals contained in the kuma matsuri not only express, but also maintain, this sense of mutual dependence and reciprocity. As physical enactments of basic ideals they communicate in two directions—outward toward a watchful presence, and inward toward the self. In this sense ritual becomes what Jordan (2003: 4–5) has described as “a technology of value creation”; that is, a way of instilling favored attitudes and dispositions in the minds of the participants. I shall conclude with an example from a matagi village called Yamakumada 山熊田, which is located deep in the mountains of northern Niigata Prefecture. The name of the village is significant, as it is written with the characters for mountain ( yama), bear (kuma), and cultivated field (ta). Local residents

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have often told me that this name represents what is most important to their survival—in ranked order. Their kuma matsuri is held a few days after the bear hunting has ended— provided, again, that they have been granted a bear. The participants start to gather at around 10:00 a.m. on the second floor of the old kōminkan 公民 館, or public hall, which is located in the heart of the village. They sit on the tatami-matted floor around a long table, chatting amiably. When everyone has arrived, the oyakata—leader of the hunt and on this occasion also master of ceremonies—calls for their attention. He offers a few formal words of welcome, then an official toast. After that everyone relaxes and the beer begins to flow, as the participants pour for one another. Bowls of kumajiru are brought up from the kitchen and handed around until everyone has been served. At around noon, before the serious drinking begins, the hunters rise from the table, go back downstairs, and gather outside on the pavement. The oyakata appears with a bottle of omiki お神酒 (sanctified rice wine), a tray, and some cups. Then he and part of the group—around eight to ten members including a couple of local dignitaries—take their leave and walk up the street, while the other members remain standing outside the kōminkan and watch them go. About halfway through the village, the oyakata and his retinue turn from the street and onto a narrow foot trail leading up into the mountains. The trail becomes steeper as they climb through the forest to an old tochi no ki 栃の木, or horse chestnut tree. For many years this tree has served as the yorishiro 依り 代, or temporary dwelling for the yama no kami. The hunters line up before the tree and beckon her into their presence by clapping their hands twice in unison. With the second clap they keep their hands together and bow their heads in silent prayer. After this they pour a cup of the sake and offer it to the yama no kami, then pour a cup for each other so that all may share in the offering. With the offering completed, the oyakata and his group face back toward the village. They cup their hands to their mouths and together emit a loud, elongated call: “Hooo-o!”—the shout used by the seko when they are driving the bear. Meanwhile, the other participants waiting back at the kōminkan face up toward the mountains in the direction of the sanctified tree. When they hear the call ringing down from above they respond in kind with a call of their own: “Hooo-o!” The back-and-forth calling is repeated for a total of three exchanges, the hunters’ voices echoing back and forth between mountain and village. This deceptively simple-looking ritual epitomizes the role of the matagi, who bridge the divide between the two realms.

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Acknowledgments The author would like to thank Taguchi Hiromi 田口洋美, Matsuhashi Mitsuo 松橋光雄, Saitō Shigemi 斎藤重美, and Ōtaki Kuniyoshi 大滝国吉 for their cooperation, kindness, and friendship. This research was funded in part by a generous grant from the Japan Foundation.

References Bell, Catherine. 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Berkes, Fikret. 2018. Sacred Ecology: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Resource Management, 4th ed. New York: Routledge. Blacker, Carmen. 1996. “The Mistress of Animals in Japan: The Yamanokami.” In The Concept of the Goddess, eds. Sandra Billington and Miranda Green, New York: Routledge, 178–185. Blacker, Carmen. 1999 [1975]. The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan. Richmond: Curzon Press. Boff, Leonardo. 1997. Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books. Chiba, Tokuji 千葉徳爾. 1969. Shuryō denshō kenkyū 狩猟伝承. Tokyo: Kazama Shobō. Chiba, Tokuji 千葉徳爾. 1975a. Shuryō denshō 狩猟伝承. Tokyo: Hōsei Daigaku Shuppankyoku. Chiba, Tokuji 千葉徳爾. 1975b. “Nyōbo to yama no kami: Waga tsuma o yama no kami to agameru yurai” 女房と山の神—わが妻を山の神と崇める由来. Kikan Jinruigaku 季 刊人類学 6(4): 3–88. Chiba, Tokuji 千葉徳爾. 1977. Shuryō denshō kenkyū: Kōhen 狩猟伝承—後編. Tokyo: Kazama Shobō. Dwyer, Peter D. 1996. “The Invention of Nature.” In Redefining Nature: Ecology, Culture and Domestication, eds. Roy Ellen and Katsuyoshi Fukui, Oxford: Berg, 157–186. Fujita, Ei’ichi 藤田栄一. 2011. Matagi no yukue: Matagi wa nani o suru hito zo マタギの 行方—マタギは何をする人ぞ. Oguni, Yamagata: Katō Insatsu. Gilday, Edmund T. 1990. “Power Plays: An Introduction to Japanese Festivals.” Journal of Ritual Studies 4: 253–295. Gotō, Kōzen 後藤興善. 1989 [1949]. Matagi to sanka 又鬼と山窩. Tokyo: Hihyōsha. Grapard, Allan G. 1982. “Flying Mountains and Walkers of Emptiness: Toward a Definition of Sacred Space in Japanese Religions.” History of Religions 21: 195–221. Hardacre, Helen. 1983. “The Cave and the Womb World.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 10(2–3): 149–176. Hallowell, Irving A. 1926. “Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern Hemisphere.” American Anthropologist 28(1): 1–175.

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Hori, Ichirō. 1968. Folk Religion in Japan: Continuity and Change, eds. Joseph M. Kitagawa and Alan L. Miller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hori, Ichirō and Herman Ooms. 1970. “Yanagita Kunio and ‘About Our Ancestors.’” In About Our Ancestors: The Japanese Family System, Kunio Yanagita, trans. Fanny Hagin Mayer and Yasuyo Ishiwara, New York: Greenwood Press, 1–18. Ikeya, Kazunobu 池谷和信. 2005. “Tōhoku matagi no shuryō to girei” 東北マタギの狩猟 と儀礼. In Nihon no shuryō saishū bunka: Yasei dōbutsu to tomo ni ikiru 日本の狩猟 採集文化—野生動物とともに生きる, eds. Ikeya Kazunobu 池谷和信 and Hasegawa Masami 長谷川政美, Kyoto: Sekai Shisōsha, 150–173. Irimoto, Takashi 煎本孝. 2010. Ainu no kuma matsuri アイヌの熊祭り. Tokyo: Yūzankaku. Ishikawa, Jun’ichirō 石川純一郎. 2000. “Yama no kami” 山の神. In Nihon Minzoku Daijiten Vol. 3日本民俗大辞典 (下), eds. Fukuda Ajio 福田アジオ et al. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 746–747. Ishikawa, Tetsuya 石川徹也. 2011. Yama o wasureta Nihonjin: Yama kara hajimaru bunka no suitai 山を忘れた日本人—山から始まる文化の衰退. Tokyo: Sairyūsha. Ivy, Marilyn. 1995. Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jordan, William R., III. 2003. The Sunflower Forest: Ecological Restoration and the New Communion with Nature. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kitagawa, Joseph M. 1961. “Ainu Bear Festival (Iyomante).” History of Religions 1(1): 95– 151. Knight, Catherine. 2008. “The Moon Bear as a Symbol of Yama: Its Significance in the Folklore of Upland Hunting in Japan.” Asian Ethnology 67(1): 79–101. Mauss, Marcel. 1990 [1925]. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Mikame, Kiyotomo 三瓶清朝. 1980. “Shuryō dentō ‘shishimaki’ oboekaki: Hokuetsu ni okeru kuma no kari to matsuri no jirei hōkoku” 狩猟伝統 「シシ巻き」 覚え書き—北 越における熊の狩りと祭りの事例報告. Minzokugaku kenkyū 民俗学研究 45(3): 263– 279. Miyamoto, Tsune’ichi 宮本常一. 1964. Yama ni ikiru hitobito 山に生きる人びと. Tokyo: Miraisha. Miyamoto, Tsune’ichi 宮本常一. 1992. Echizen Itoshiro minzokushi: Sono hoka 越前石徹 白民俗誌—その他. Tokyo: Miraisha. Mutō, Tetsujō 武藤鉄城. 1997. Akita matagi kikikaki 秋田マタギ聞書. Tokyo: Keiyūsha. Naumann, Nellie. 1963. “Yama no kami—die japanische Berggottheit, Part I: Grundvorstellungen.” Asian Folklore Studies 22: 133–366. Naumann, Nellie. 1964. “Yama no kami—die japanische Berggottheit, Part II: Zusätzliche Vorstellungen.” Asian Folklore Studies 23(2): 48–199. Nelson, Richard K. 1983. Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. 1993. Rice as Self: Japanese Identities through Time. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ōta, Yūji 太田遊治. 1989. Matagi: Kieyuku yamabito no kiroku マタギ—消えゆく山人の 記録. Tokyo: Hachiman Shoten. Pierotti, Raymond. 2010. Indigenous Knowledge, Ecology, and Evolutionary Biology. New York: Routledge. Ray, Benjamin C. 1991. “The Koyukon Bear Party and the ‘Bare Facts’ of Ritual.” Numen 38(2): 151–176. Reader, Ian. 1991. Religion in Contemporary Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Sakuma, Jun’ichi 佐久間惇一. 1985. Shuryō no minzoku 狩猟の民俗. Tokyo: Iwasaki Bijitsusha. Sasaki, Kōmei 佐々木高明. Yama no kami to Nihonjin: Yama no kami shinkō kara saguru Nihon no kisō bunka 山の神と日本人—山の信仰から探る日本の基層文化. Tokyo: Yōsensha. Sasamori, Takefusa. 1997. “Therapeutic Rituals Performed by Itako (Japanese Blind Female Shamans).” The World of Music 39(1): 85–96. Schnell, Scott. 2005. “The Rural Imaginary: Landscape, Village, Tradition.” In A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan, ed. Jennifer Robertson, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 201–217. Schnell, Scott. 2006. “Ema Shū’s ‘The Mountain Folk’: Fictionalized Ethnography and Veiled Dissent.” Asian Folklore Studies 65(2): 269–321. Schnell, Scott. 2007. “Are Mountain Gods Vindictive?: Competing Images of the Japanese Alpine Landscape.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13(4): 863–880. Scott, Colin. 2006. “Spirit and Practical Knowledge in the Person of the Bear among Wemindji Cree Hunters.” Ethnos 71(1): 51–66. Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. Shepard, Paul and Barry Sanders. 1985. The Sacred Paw: The Bear in Nature, Myth, and Literature. New York: Viking. Taguchi, Hiromi 田口洋美. 2000a. “Rettō kaitaku to shuryō no ayumi” 列島開拓と狩猟 のあゆみ. Tōhokugaku 東北学 4: 67–102. Taguchi, Hiromi 田口洋美. 2000b. “Gendai no matagi” 現代のマタギ. Rekishi to mizoku 歴史と民俗 16: 80–113. Taguchi, Hiromi 田口洋美. 2002. “Matagi ron: Ichiba to seitaikei no hazama ni ikiru” マ タギ論—市場と生態系の狭間に生きる. In Ikutsumo no Nihon IV: Samazamana seigyō いくつもの日本IV—さまざまな生業, eds. Akasaka Norio 赤坂憲雄, Nakamura Ikuo 中村生雄, Harada Nobuo 原田信男, and Miura Sukeyuki 三浦佑之. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 123–146. Taguchi, Hiromi 田口洋美. 2004. “Matagi no shinkō to shuryō shūzoku” マタギの信仰と

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狩猟習俗. In Tōhokugaku e no shōtai 東北学への招待, eds. Akasaka Norio 赤坂憲雄 and Kikuchi Kazuhiro 菊池和博, Tokyo: Kadokawa Gakugei Shuppan, 40–46. Takahashi, Buntarō 高橋文太郎. 1937. Akita matagi shiryō 秋田マタギ資料. Tokyo: Maruzen. Tanaka, Yasuhiro 田中康弘. 2011. Onna ryōshi: Watashi ga ryōshi ni natta wake 女猟師— わたしが猟師になったワケ. Tokyo: Ei Shuppansha. Togawa, Yukio 戸川幸夫. 1962. Matagi: Karyūdo no kiroku マタギ—狩人の記録. Tokyo: Shinchōsha. Tsuboi, Hirofumi 坪井洋文. 1982. Ine o eranda Nihonjin: Minzokuteki shikō no sekai 稲 を選んだ日本人—民俗的思考の世界. Tokyo: Miraisha. Verschuer, Charlotte von. 2016. Rice, Agriculture, and the Food Supply in Premodern Japan. London: Routledge. Yanagita, Kunio 柳田國男. 1962a [1909]. Yama no jinsei 山の人生. In Teihon Yanagita Kunio shū 定本柳田國男集 4, Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 55–186. Yanagita, Kunio 柳田國男. 1962b [1909]. Sanmin no seikatsu 山民の生活. In Teihon Yanagita Kunio shū 定本柳田國男集 4, Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 493–503. Yanagita, Kunio 柳田國男. 1962c [1946]. Senzo no hanashi 先祖の話. In Teihon Yanagita Kunio shū 定本柳田國男集 10, Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1–152. Yanagita, Kunio 柳田國男. 1970 [1946]. About our Ancestors: the Japanese Family System. New York: Greenwood Press.

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chapter 7

Fire, Prayer, and Purification Early Winter Events and Folk Beliefs in Kyoto Yagi Tōru 八木透 Bukkyō University, Kyoto, Japan [email protected]

Abstract Kyoto is home to a number of unique year-end festivals. This chapter focuses on traditions that occur during Shimotsuki and Shiwasu (the eleventh and twelfth months of the old Japanese lunisolar calendar), including the fire festivals of O-hitaki, Niinamesai, and Daikondaki; events that celebrate visiting deities, such as Daishikō; and purification rites of Shintō, Buddhist, and folk tradition, such as Kakure nenbutsu, Butsumyōe, and Sekizoro. Analysis and comparison of these rituals reveals a common motivation for their origin. As the power of the sun wanes with the winter solstice, the people of Kyoto in the past felt a need to reflect on the previous year, cleanse themselves of accumulated sin and misfortune, and pray that the coming year would bring peace, fortune, and a fertile harvest.

Keywords festival – folklore – purification – o-hitaki – ōharae – visiting deities

1

Introduction1

Every year from late autumn to early winter, several festivals with a connection to fire, such as O-hitaki 御火焚 in November and Daikondaki 大根焚 in 1 This chapter was translated by Jude Pultz and Jillian Barndt. Original title: “Kyōto ni okeru shotō no nenjū gyōji to minzoku shinkō: Hi e no inori to ōharae” 京都における初冬の年中 行事と民俗信仰—火への祈りと大祓え. First published in Japanese as part of the author’s monograph Kyō no matsuri to inori: Miyako no shiki o meguru minzoku 京のまつりと祈り— みやこの四季をめぐる民俗 (Yagi 2015: Chapters 6 and 7). The translators and editors have

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004466548_008

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December, occur in and around Kyoto.2 These fire festivals date from long ago, when the people of Kyoto used flame as a simple emblem of faith. In addition, during the month of Shiwasu 師走, various shrines and temples hold purification rites.3 These events are also a feature of the early winter season in Kyoto and coincide with the winter solstice, the period when daylight is at its shortest. Through analysis of the prayers and deities featured in these traditions, I explore age-old regional beliefs regarding this darkest season of the year. In particular, I focus on those rituals that are unique to the Kyoto area: namely, O-hitaki, Daikondaki, and the rites of purification and repentance observed during Shiwasu. I pay particular attention to the folkloric significance of the events themselves and what this reveals about the underlying beliefs of the participants.

2

Shimotsuki Events of Kyoto

2.1 O-hitaki and Niinamesai Since at least the early modern period, O-hitaki has been the most prominent festival that occurs during the month of Shimotsuki 霜月 in Kyoto.4 Originating with garden bonfires (niwabi 庭火) held at the imperial palace, O-hitaki evolved and accommodated various beliefs over time to become the unique fire festival that is seen in Kyoto today. Historical references date back to the Edo period (1600–1868), but it is possible that the festival’s prototypes can be found as far back as the Muromachi period (c. 1336–1573). Originally occurring during Shimotsuki, O-hitaki involved the burning of a fire before a shrine, along with the recitation of Shintō prayers (norito 祝詞), music and dance performances (kagura 神楽), and offerings of freshly harvested grain (shinkoku 新穀) and sacred rice wine (miki 神酒). The festival

taken some liberties to make the piece work as a standalone chapter and have added explanatory footnotes where necessary. Even as we made a number of additions and clarifications, however, we have endeavored to retain the style and focus of the original text, providing insight into the way in which discourses about festival and religion often bridge academic and popular interests. Published with kind permission of the author. 2 “Kyoto” is used throughout this paper not only to refer to the city itself, but also at times for instances when the author is indicating miyako 京, or “capital.” 3 Shiwasu is the twelfth and last month of Japan’s traditional lunisolar calendar. Historically and today, the positions of the lunisolar months can occur between three and seven weeks later than the corresponding months of the modern solar calendar, depending on the year. 4 Shimotsuki is the eleventh month of the Japanese lunisolar calendar.

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might be thought of as a popular, unofficial form of Niinamesai 新嘗祭.5 Ohitaki is held not only at Shintō shrines and Buddhist temples, but also in each district (chōnai 町内) of Kyoto, where the long-standing custom has been to make an offering of citrus fruits (mikan) and special sweet buns (O-hitaki manjū 御火焚饅頭), which are then distributed to children. In Kyoto, the first O-hitaki festival of the year is held at Fushimi Inari Grand Shrine (Fushimi Inari Taisha 伏見稲荷大社). First, on 8 November, three fire beds are prepared within a sacred space in the shrine compound. Next, in the main shrine (honden 本殿), priests perform a fire-starting ritual (hikiri shinji 火鑚神事). The flames of that sacred fire are then transferred to the fire beds, igniting hundreds of thousands of wooden offering sticks (hitaki gushi 火焚 串).6 There is no doubt that the fire festival at Fushimi Inari is the largest of its kind in Kyoto. O-hitaki festivals also occur at other Shintō shrines, including Kazan Inari 花山稲荷 Shrine, Yasaka 八坂 Shrine, Imamiya 今宮 Shrine, Kurumazaki 車折 Shrine, as well as at Buddhist temples such as the Shingon 真言 temple Kōryūji 広隆寺 in Uzumasa and Shōgakuan 正覚庵 in Higashiyama. In particular, the festival at Shōgakuan is known for its brush memorial service ( fude kuyō 筆 供養), in which used writing brushes are committed to the fire.7 In addition, some districts of Kyoto also hold their own O-hitaki events. For example, the residents of the downtown Kyoto neighborhood that sponsors the Taishi Yama 太子山 float of Gion Matsuri gather at Kōryūji on 22 November for an O-hitaki festival which also serves as their final meeting of the year.8 A picture scroll from the late seventeenth to early eighteenth century entitled “Twelve Months of Play” ( Jūnigatsu asobi 十二月あそひ), which can be found in the collection of Bukkyō University, depicts several Kyoto festivals. One image related to the eleventh month shows a small portable shrine (mikoshi 神輿) in front of a merchant’s house (machiya 町家). A fire burns before the

5 Niinamesai is a New Year festival in which the emperor makes a ceremonial offering of newly harvested rice. 6 The version of O-hitaki that is celebrated at Fushimi Inari Taisha shares features with Fuigo matsuri 鞴まつり (the Bellows Festival), which commemorates blacksmiths. 7 Shōgakuan, also known as fude no tera 筆の寺, is a sub-temple of the Tōfukuji 東福寺 branch of Rinzai Zen 臨済禅. 8 The figure on this float is Shōtoku Taishi 聖徳太子 (574–622), known as the patron of Buddhism and also famous for his Seventeen-Article Constitution. According to legend, he commissioned the construction of Shitennōji 四天王寺 Temple in Osaka and collected the cedar timber from the mountains. This history is reflected in the Taishi Yama float itself: unlike other floats which have a sacred tree made of pine, this one is made from cedar. On Gion Matsuri see also the chapter by Elisabetta Porcu (in this volume).

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figure 7.1 O-hitaki at Takenobu Inari Jinja 武信稲荷神社, Kyoto (2015) Photo by Author

mikoshi with various offerings around it, and local men and women of all ages are celebrating. The commentary states, “Everywhere, from the great houses to the residences of the common folk, garden fires (niwabi) are lit to cheer the deities.”9 In the early Edo period, the physician Kurokawa Dōyū 黒川道祐 (1623–1691) wrote the following in the “Section of the Eleventh Month” of his 1685 “Daily Chronicle” (Hinami kiji 日次紀事): At the festivals held at every Shintō shrine this month, firewood is stacked before the altar, sacred sake (miki) is prepared, and afterward a fire is cast, igniting the pyre … Also, the shrine parishioners (ujiko 氏子) build fires and hold festivals at their homes for their guardian deities (ubusunagami 産土神). In addition, “Mountain Well” (Yama no i 山之井), a mid-seventeenth century haikai 俳諧 (linked verse) collection, contains the following passage:

9 The scroll is available at the Bukkyō University link: https://bird.bukkyo‑u.ac.jp/collections/ junitsukiasobi‑02/ (accessed 4 August 2020).

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On the Day of the Horse in Gion the parishioners of Shimogyō 下京 carry a small portable shrine (mikoshi) through the town, while in the main street bonfires are burnt and offerings of seasonable fruit and sacred sake are made. In “Humorous Chats” (Kokkei zōdan 滑稽雑談), an almanac of seasonal words for haikai written in 1713, we can also find the following description: In the eleventh month, various shrines hold O-hitaki rituals. These rituals serve as the first presentation of the year’s newly harvested grain. When [the rite] is performed at shrines in receipt of court rank it is called Niinamesai; at shrines without such rank it is performed by priests. Since the ritual takes place at night, bonfires are prepared in the shrine compound. The customary term is O-hitaki. From this passage, it can be seen that in early modern times the fire festival that was held at a large official shrine was called Niinamesai, whereas rituals held in smaller nameless or unranked shrines were called O-hitaki. The fact that O-hitaki takes place during Shimotsuki, the eleventh month of the lunisolar calendar, shows its deep connection to the last harvest festival, Niinamesai, as well as to the winter solstice. Niinamesai is a harvest celebration that centers around the imperial household, whereas the vernacular version of the same event is generally called Shimotsuki matsuri. Although this festival has various forms, it is essentially a ritual in which freshly harvested grain is offered to thank the ancestors and to pray for fertile fields in the coming years. In addition, the winter solstice comes toward the end of Shimotsuki. Since the winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, people thought that the power of the sun diminished at this time. Accordingly, they no doubt thought that their life energy would also run low. Thus, the purpose of Shimotsuki matsuri may have been to replenish the energy of both the sun and the people. The spiritual sentiment embodied by the notion of “first sunlight brings renewal and good fortune” (ichiyō raifuku 一陽来福) served as the foundation for such traditions as O-hitaki festivals, the folk expression of Niinamesai.10

10

The more common rendering of this phrase is 一陽来復, which might be translated as “renewal comes with first light” and suggests that with the end of winter comes the rebirth of spring and the renewal of energy and life. In some cases (most famously, the Shingon temple Hōjōji 放生寺 in Tokyo), the phrase is written 一陽来福, with the homonymic 福 (good fortune) in place of 復 (renewal/return). The meaning is similar but, perhaps, adds an even more hopeful expectation for the coming new year.

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2.2 Shimotsuki and Daishikō The most symbolic event that occurs during Shimotsuki around the time of the winter solstice is Daishikō 大師講. Originally conducted from the 23rd to the 24th day of Shimotsuki, Daishikō celebrates the arrival of the deity Daishi-sama, who takes on the appearance of a human and visits people in secret. Throughout the country the event involves such traditions as serving a special porridge of rice and adzuki beans called daishi kayu 大師粥. The name Daishi-sama may have originated from the word taishi 太子, referring to a noble visiting god, but due to Buddhist influences, it later came to refer to daishi 大師, a Buddhist sage. The deity Daishi-sama often represents Kōbō Daishi 弘法大師11 but can also be associated with other renowned priests, such as Ganzan 元三,12 or figures such as Daruma 達磨.13 In any case, the event presents a rare opportunity for ordinary people to encounter an esteemed Buddhist sage. It is said that during Daishikō, Daishi-sama comes in the form of a bedraggled beggar. He is also thought to be disabled in some fashion, to have only a single leg, for example, or legs like wooden pestles. No matter the form Daishi-sama takes, the traditions of Daishikō point to an early Japanese belief in visiting deities (raihōshin shinkō 来訪神信仰) who come from afar to bring happiness to the people during the winter solstice, when the sun is at its weakest.14 One example comes from the town of Tangochō Taiza on the Tango Peninsula (present-day Kyōtango), where Daruma is worshipped on the 23rd day of Shimotsuki in an event known as Daishiko-san ダイシコサン, or Surikogi kakushi スリコギカクシ (Pestle-hiding). It is said that through his training, Daishi-sama’s feet rotted until they were like wooden pestles and that the snow accumulates in order to hide them. Another example of this event can be seen in the town of Wachi (present-day Kyōtamba) in the Funai district of Kyoto Prefecture. 23 November is called Odaishi-san Day; it is said that because Odaishi-san has one leg, snow always falls to hide his footprints. In Wadayama, in the Asago district in Hyōgo Prefecture (present-day Asago city), a special snow known as surikogi kakushi falls from 23 to 24 December. The story goes that long ago Odaishi-sama came to the village and hoped to receive some rice dumplings. A poor old woman, with feet like wooden pestles, refused to steal rice from a

11 12 13 14

Posthumous name of the founder of Shingon Buddhism, Kūkai 空海 (774–835). Posthumous name of the Tendai 天台 monk Ryōgen 良源 (912–985), the eighteenth abbot of Enryakuji 延暦寺. Japanese name for Bodhidharma, the semi-legendary fifth-century Indian monk who is considered the founder of Chan/Zen Buddhism. For more on raihōshin, see the chapter by Foster (in this volume).

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field to make the dumplings for him because she was afraid her crime would be revealed by her footprints. Odaishi-sama caused snow to fall in order to hide her tracks (Itō 1986). As the above examples illustrate, tales of Odaishi-san visiting villages in the form of a disabled man are widespread. Even though the tradition from Wadayama features an old woman who has pestle-like legs, the basic premise of a noble sage arriving on the 23rd night of Shimotsuki remains the same, and key elements such as the disabled person and falling snow are still present. The moralistic element of a sacred visitor causing snow to fall in order to hide the old woman’s theft, however, appears to be rooted in Buddhist ethics and was likely a later addition to the legend. On one hand, in Kyoto and the surrounding area it appears that Buddhism had an early and extensive influence on Daishikō events. The Buddhist practice of almsgiving can be seen in the Daishikō customs from Nagaoka-kyō in Kyoto Prefecture, where the fire festival is influenced by the O-hitaki. The Imazato, Inouchi, and Baba neighborhoods of Nagaoka-kyō held Daishikō until recently. In these areas, the custom was also referred to as Daishi-san’s Bath, and the primary purpose was to offer heated baths to people as charity. On New Year’s Eve in Inouchi, for example, they used to heat up a bath for people at the village assembly hall. Known as Kōbōsan’s Bath, it was surrounded by straw mats and warmed by the teppōfuro 鉄砲風呂 technique, which uses a metal pole that extends into the bath on one end and is heated with charcoal or firewood on the other. Guests were also treated to adzuki bean mochi. In Baba, during the week of 21 January, households that had eaves used to invite people to take medicinal baths in their front yards. The baths were available not only for villagers but for people from other communities as well. In Nagaoka-kyō these Daishikō events are traditionally observed during January, but it is also sometimes said that in the past they were held between autumn and winter, so we can imagine they were once Shimotsuki events. At any rate, given that these events have in common a tradition of offering almsgiving baths (hodokoshi-yu 施し湯), as well as food such as mochi, we can suggest that Daishikō in this area was conducted for the purpose of charity as an act of Buddhist merit (kudoku 功徳).15

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In this regard, we can mention that religious baths, related to terms such as kudoku 功 徳, seyoku 施浴 and ryūgan 立願, date back to the occasional baths offered by Buddhist temples to their lay members and then later opened to the poor. These were sponsored by wealthy patrons and became a form of charitable practice carrying “as much value to the patron as giving food or alms to the sick and poor” (see Butler 2005: 3–4).

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If we consider practices in connection with religions other than Buddhism, a few more examples related to symbolic aspects of the eleventh month festivals can be presented here. In particular, I would like to introduce two events that seem to have preserved the original traditions of Shimotsuki festivals to a large degree. Although I have so far focused on Kyoto and the surrounding area, these events come from the more distant region of Aogashima 青ヶ島, the southernmost island of the Izu archipelago, where an extremely interesting Shimotsuki festival has been passed down. Two folk performances called Deirahon デイラホン and Endan エンダン were held on 25 November at Ōsato Shrine (Ōsato Jinja 大里神社) until the 1950s. The island used to have shamans such as shanin 舎人, urabe 卜部, and miko 巫 女, and most of the annual festivals were performed by these shanin and miko. Deirahon was the first of the Shimotsuki festivals. In this performance, a shanin wearing a mask of a woman’s face is lying down; he gradually rises and begins to dance to a song dedicated to the deities (kami uta 神歌). The name Deirahon comes from an old Aogashima word for “mother.” The dance is a symbolic representation of death and rebirth, in which a mother who has died returns from the grave and becomes reinvigorated with life and energy. Following that event is Endan, which refers to a term for a marriage proposal/discussion (endan 縁談). In this performance, male and female religious practitioners exchange male and female masks, acting out a symbolic representation of marriage and sexual union (Gamō et al. 1975). Deirahon, which represents a “mother” gradually rising from the dead and returning to life, and Endan, which symbolizes the union of man and woman, are both appropriate festivals for Shimotsuki, when the sun’s power and the energy of the people are at their weakest. The folk meaning of these two performances, which depict maternal rebirth and sexual intercourse, is that the power of the sun is revived following the winter solstice and, at the same time, the energy of the people returns to eventually bring about new life. In other words, the rituals embody the concept of “first sunlight brings renewal and good fortune” (ichiyō raifuku) mentioned above, and represent a prayer that the end of winter will herald the creation of new life and return the world to fertility. Considered in this way, perhaps we get a sense of the meaning of celebrating the Niinamesai festival as a thanksgiving ritual during Shimotsuki. After all, why is Niinamesai held during Shimotsuki, so long after the actual rice has been harvested? As with the symbolism implicit in the Deirahon and Endan performances, the purpose of Niinamesai is to pray for the return of the sun, fertility, and the revitalization of all things in the coming year. What we call “Shimotsuki matsuri,” therefore, might be interpreted as a combination of a

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thanksgiving festival and Niinamesai. Although the time of the actual harvest has already passed, Niinamesai, as an official festival sponsored by the Imperial Court, would be put off until the Shimotsuki matsuri was held during the season of the winter solstice; the remnants of this combined form are passed down to us. In this way, by interpreting the timing and symbolic contents of festival performances today, we glimpse the needs and desires of people from long ago who, at the moment of the winter solstice, prayed for the renewal of energy, for the rebirth of life, and for a fertile new year. 2.3 Daikondaki and Visiting Deities Returning now to the Kyoto region, we find several temples that hold Daikondaki festivals in December. The events at Ryōtokuji 了徳寺 and Senbon shakadō 千本釈迦堂 are especially famous and can be considered another form of Ohitaki. At Ryōtokuji, a temple of the Ōtani 大谷 branch of Jōdo shinshū 浄土 真宗 (or Shin Buddhism), Daikondaki is held every year on 9 and 10 December. The festival commemorates a legendary event in which the founder of the denomination, Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1262), stopped at Ryōtokuji while on a pilgrimage to Seiryōji 清凉寺 in the Saga district and Tsukinowa-dera 月輪寺 in Atago.16 This happened during Shimotsuki in the year 1252. There had been a poor harvest that year, and the villagers lamented that they had little to offer the sage. Fortunately, the daikon crop had been abundant, so the villagers brought Shinran fresh daikon cooked with salt. In gratitude for their offering, Shinran made a brush from blades of susuki17 and inscribed the ten-character myōgō 名号, or nenbutsu dedication to Amida Buddha (Ki myōjin jippō kō nyorai 歸命 盡十方無礙光如來)18 to be placed in Ryōtokuji. Because of this story, the Daikondaki festival is held today as a part of Hōonkō 報恩講 celebrations in this temple.19 The myōgō scroll supposedly created by Shinran has been well cared for, and on the day of Daikondaki, it is hung in the main hall of the temple (hondō 本堂). A mound of susuki is also enshrined behind the hall in the spot where, it is said, Shinran gathered the grass that he used for his brush. At some point, daikon came to be considered 16

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It is said that Shinran was on his way back from a pilgrimage to honor his master Hōnen. Tsukinowa-dera is a Tendai temple which belongs to the circuit of 25 sacred sites dedicated to Hōnen (Hōnen shōnin nijūgo reijō 法然上人二十五霊場). See also https://www.ryout okuji.or.jp/報恩講-大根焚-について/ and https://www.25reijo.jp/reijo/ (accessed 2 August 2020). Japanese pampas grass. “I take refuge in the Tathāgata of Unobstructed Light Suffusing the Ten Directions.” Hōonkō is the celebration that memorializes Shinran. It is held either on 21–28 November (Higashi Honganji) or 9–16 January (Nishi Honganji).

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figure 7.2 Daikondaki at Ryōtokuji. 9 December 2016 Photo by Author

a folk remedy for palsy, and in recent years a great number of people participate in Daikondaki festivals in and around Kyoto. Every year in preparation for the events, the temple members (danka 檀家) boil three thousand daikon—but after only two days, they are all gone (Figure 7.2). Another Daikondaki festival is held each year at the Shingon temple Daihōonji 大報恩寺 (popularly known as Senbon shakadō) in the Kamigyō ward on 7 and 8 December, which corresponds to the day of Śākyamuni’s enlightenment under the bodhi tree after six years of practice and austerities. This version of Daikondaki commemorates a legend dating back to the Kamakura period in which the priest Jizen 慈禅 created a talisman by inscribing Sanskrit characters on a daikon. There is, however, no tradition in this temple resembling the arrival of Shinran at Ryōtokuji. Despite this difference, as with the Daikondaki at Ryōtokuji, the people at the Daihōonji festival believe that eating daikon prevents disease, and during the festival they form long lines in order to receive a helping. Traditionally they used a type of round daikon unique to the Kyoto area, but this variety is quite soft and tends to fall apart when cooked for a long time, so now they use the more familiar long daikon. In the traditions of Daikondaki at both Ryōtokuji and Daihōonji, as well as in the various Daishikō legends from Tangochō Taiza, Wachi, and Wadayama, we see a common trope of a visiting sage. During this season when winter

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draws near, one can glimpse the old belief in “visiting deities” (raihōshin) who come from far away to leave some kind of message for the people. The kami and buddhas who visit at this time are considered divine beings, rarely seen during ordinary times. In this sense, they are similar to—and perhaps even conflated with—high priests such as Kōbō Daishi and Shinran. Whether considered divine beings or great men, they come from another world and bring with them messages, gifts or tidings for the people they visit, as in the story of the ten-character myōgō scroll that Shinran gave to Ryōtokuji. In addition, these tales typically involve an offering provided to the divine being (or great man) in return. In the case of Shinran, for example, the people gave him cooked daikon, a vegetable which is representative of the winter season in Kyoto. Within this context, the use of fire is a central component of Daikondaki events and therefore they can be said to stem directly from O-hitaki festivals. Over time, perhaps, the concept of the daikon as an offering to visiting deities drew more attention and the cooking and eating of the daikon became the main attraction. Nevertheless, Daikondaki is one variety or mutated form of O-hitaki and, moreover, can also be said to be a type of Daishikō. 2.4 The Folk Significance of O-hitaki and Daikondaki Having discussed late autumn events occurring in Kyoto, especially O-hitaki and Daikondaki, it is worth briefly considering the folkloric significance of the fires that frequently appear as part of these Shimotsuki festivals. Fundamentally, the folkloric meaning of the fire in O-hitaki and Daikondaki is that of a beacon to welcome the gods, as well as an offering to them. Fire also plays a critical role in ritually purifying the space. As previously mentioned, these events allow us to glimpse a kind of hidden consciousness regarding the winter solstice. That is, during the season when the sun’s power and the people’s energy decline to their lowest point, fire was used to call upon the kami and buddhas in order to pray for the revitalization of all things. These rituals are surely based on age-old traditions of visiting deities. Moreover, it seems that the power of the fire was deemed a necessary part of restoring the energy of the weakened sun. In addition to these simple early beliefs, Buddhism had a strong influence on the Shimotsuki festivals of Kyoto, shaping them over time into the Daishikō and Daikondaki events celebrated today. We have seen this influence in the stories of Kōbō Daishi and Shinran as well as the emphasis on almsgiving mentioned above. In other words, the festivals as practiced in contemporary Kyoto may be strongly colored by Buddhism, but we can surely trace their origins back to folk rituals in which fire was used to summon deities and pray for the rebirth of all things.

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Shiwasu Events of Kyoto

It is important to note that according to today’s Gregorian calendar, the winter solstice occurs in December, and the new year begins soon afterward. But on Japan’s traditional calendar, the winter solstice occurs in Shimotsuki, the eleventh month; thus, when the winter solstice concludes, there is still more than a month until the start of the new year. All of the events I have discussed so far occur in Shimotsuki, but what of Shiwasu, the twelfth month of the traditional calendar? I believe that Shiwasu of the old calendar was the month of purification or ōharae 大祓え (also ōharai). In the early modern period, during this month people in Kyoto celebrated a variety of events related to purification, several of which have survived in some form to this day. Ōharae is the formal ritual to cleanse away the sin (tsumi 罪), impurity (kegare ケガレ), and bad luck/misfortune ( yaku 厄) that clings to humans, buildings, and other living spaces. As the concept spread to the common people, however, the essential meaning was forgotten and purification came to be understood as an annual cleansing and removal of accumulated soot and dust. The original purpose of the ritual was to purify and cleanse the mind and body and to renew the world in which we live. 3.1 The Hidden Nenbutsu of Rokuharamitsuji During the month of Shiwasu, from 13 to 31 December, the temple Rokuharamitsuji 六波羅密寺 holds an event now called Kūya’s dancing nenbutsu (Kūya yuyaku nenbutsu 空也踊躍念仏, lit. Kūya’s leaping-with-joy nenbutsu), but it was originally known as the kakure nenbutsu かくれ念仏, or hidden nenbutsu. As the traditional name implies, the quiet invocation of Amida’s name was held behind closed doors, hidden from the people outside. Rokuharamitsuji is the 17th temple of the 33-site Saigoku Pilgrimage dedicated to the bodhisattva Kannon (Saigoku sanjūsan kasho Kannon reijō 西国三十三ケ所観音霊場), and is said to have been founded by the itinerant monk Kūya 空也 (903–972) in the tenth century. Kūya earned fame during the Heian period (794–1185) as a high priest and gifted teacher of the common people. According to legend, he traveled to various countries from an early age, worked to repair roads and build bridges, and held memorial services for the abandoned dead by chanting the nenbutsu. In Kyoto, Kūya secretly mingled with the people of the streets; because of his efforts to aid the poor and the sick, he became known as the “holy man of the marketplace” (ichi no hijiri 市の聖). In the year 951, a plague swept through the capital, resulting in a large number of deaths. Kūya provided aid by erecting a statue of the eleven-faced Kan-

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non (Jūichimen Kannon 十一面観音菩) in hopes that it would help stop the epidemic. The statue was enshrined at Saikōji 西光寺 in Higashiyama, which later became Rokuharamitsuji. Rokuharamitsuji is located in Rokurochō 轆轤 町, which is said to have gotten its name from the word dokuro 髑髏, meaning skulls, due to its association with the cemetery of Toribeno at the foot of Mt. Higashiyama (see also Yagi 2015: 70). Kūya placed the statue of Kannon at the entrance of the cemetery, marking the border between this world and the next.20 Kakure nenbutsu originated from what is called “dancing nenbutsu” (odori nenbutsu 踊り念仏), which Kūya performed in order to pray for the end of the plague. Supposedly, because the nenbutsu practice was suppressed during the Kamakura period, particularly within Tendai Buddhism, odori nenbutsu was performed in secret. What was actually suppressed, however, was the “exclusive” nenbutsu practice (senju nenbutsu 専修念仏) advocated by Hōnen 法然 (1133–1212), the founder of Jōdoshū 浄土宗, which is a practice of devotion solely to Amida Buddha. Nenbutsu as a basic discipline of Mahayana Buddhism was in fact practiced in every Buddhist school during the middle ages. Hōnen’s emphasis on the nenbutsu as the only way to achieve religious liberation, however, differed from the other nenbutsu practiced thus far; it was therefore considered a threat to Buddhism by the other denominations, criticized as “heresy” (itan 異端), and subject to oppression. To this day, Kakure nenbutsu is held surreptitiously in the inner sanctum of the temple at dusk, just as it was in the past. In order to make the nenbutsu unrecognizable to anybody hearing it from the outside, instead of “namu Amida Butsu” 南無阿弥陀仏, the formula “mō dā nan ma i tō” モー ダー ナン マイトー is chanted, which can be stopped at a moment’s notice. The motions of this type of nenbutsu are performed with ample, open movements, with the head lowered and the body swinging from side to side while a gong is struck. If the officiating priest makes a signal of “okasshai” おかっ しゃ い, the practitioners rush deeper into the back of the temple in order to prevent anyone from discovering they were chanting the nenbutsu. This procedure closely resembles the secret method used to escape the ban against this practice. Kakure nenbutsu is performed in this way every night from 13 through 31 December, at which point the new year begins. The Kakure nenbutsu tradition of Rokuharamitsuji, as explained above, is said to have originated with the odori nenbutsu that Kūya performed in the

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When Kūya’s disciple Nakanobu 中信 was active, Rokuharamitsuji belonged to the Tendai sect, but in the sixteenth century it became a Shingon temple.

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hope of ending the plague. It can be considered a Buddhist practice with the same function as ōharae: through the power of the nenbutsu it served to cleanse away sins and impurities that had accumulated throughout the year, and to celebrate the joy that the coming year would bring. 3.2 Butsumyōe From 2 to 4 December, an event called Butsumyōe 仏名会 (Ceremony for Reciting the Names of the Buddhas) is held at Chion-in 知恩院, the head temple of the Chinzei 鎮西 branch of Pure Land Buddhism.21 Also known as Nōkotsu butsumyōe 納骨仏名会 (Ceremony for Reciting the Names of the Buddhas and Laying the Ashes to Rest), the event serves as a memorial service for the spirits of those who died that year. According to Imahori Taitsu, a scholar of the history of medieval Buddhism, the Butsumyōe of Chion-in was suspended during and after the Ōnin War (1467–1477) but revived in 1712. Following the Meiji Restoration (1868) it was suspended once more and then reinstated in 1898. It continues to be held to this day (Imahori 1989). During the Muromachi period, Butsumyōe was called Butsumyō sange 仏 名懺悔 (Repentance through the Recitation of the Names of the Buddhas). Held at the end of the year, the ceremony consisted of chanting 3,000 names of Buddhas of past, present, and future in order to repent for one’s sins and cleanse away impurity. In other words, this ceremony was a way of atoning for transgressions (Butsumyō keka 仏名悔過) related to the Buddhist concept of extinguishing or destroying “sins” (metsuzai 滅罪). According to Imahori (1989), temples in the Nara period (710–794) often held repentance ceremonies at the end and beginning of the year in order to exorcise the effects of the calamities that had befallen the community during the year. Such year-end repentance events are similar to the Shintō ceremonies of purification held at the imperial palace. “Repentance” (keka) in Buddhism means confessing personal transgressions and faults relating to the Three Jewels of Buddhism;22 and there are also ceremonies, such as rituals (girei 儀礼) and memorial services (hōyō 法要), practiced at the same time in order to receive benefits (riyaku 利益). The name of a given repentance ceremony depends on the principal object of devotion (honzon 本尊): in the case of Yakushi Nyorai 薬師如来 (Bhaisajyaguru, the Buddha to cure all ills), the event was called Yakushi keka; the ceremony for Kisshōten 吉祥天 was 21 22

Chinzei-ha is the major branch of Jōdoshū. Another branch is Seizan-ha 西山派. The so-called Three Jewels (sanbō 三宝) are the central pillars supporting Buddhist practice. They are the Buddha, the Dharma (the teachings of the Buddha), and the Sangha (the monastic order, or more broadly, the community of Buddhist followers).

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called Kichijō keka 吉祥悔過; and the ceremony for the Bodhisattva Kannon was called Kannon keka. A well-known high priest from Nara or Kyoto would be invited to officiate at these rituals. These officiating priests often traveled far for the event, and Imahori (1989) theorizes that Shiwasu 師走 (meaning “running priests”), the traditional name for the twelfth month, is derived from this phenomenon. In the mid-Heian period, events specifically referred to as “repentance” (keka) declined and were replaced by ceremonies, such as shushōe 修正会 and shunie 修二会, which occur at the beginning of the year, in January and February respectively. Among them, a well-known shunie (also called o-mizu tori お 水取り, or sacred water-drawing ceremony), held today at Tōdaiji 東大寺 temple in Nara, was once known as the Eleven-Faced Kannon Repentance (Jūichimen Kannon keka), dedicated to this bodhisattva enshrined in the Nigatsudō 二月 堂 hall. To return once more to Chion-in: an event known as Ominugui shiki 御身 拭式 (Wiping Ceremony) is held on 25 December in the Mieidō 御影堂, the main hall of the temple where the image/statue of Hōnen is kept. During this Buddhist ritual, the head priest of the denomination (Jōdo monsu 門主) wipes away the accumulated dust and dirt of the previous year from the statue of Hōnen. The event dates back to the Edo Period, to the year 1650. For Jōdoshū members, it is a once-a-year opportunity to pray near the statue of Hōnen; and fervent followers receive the cloth used by the head priest to wipe the statue as an ominugui kesa 御身拭袈裟.23 Ominugui shiki can therefore be understood as a year-end purification ritual in which the cleansing is both figurative and literal. 3.3 Ceremonies for the Common People: Purification Rites and Sekizoro During Shiwasu, purification rites were held at sites such as the imperial palace, Shintō shrines, and Buddhist temples. As mentioned previously, these were deeply religious and symbolic rituals intended to cleanse the sin, injury, and misfortune clinging to humans, their homes, and other living spaces. For the common people, however, the opportunity to be involved in such events must have been rare. How then did the many ordinary people living in Kyoto cleanse themselves of the sins, impurities, and misfortunes of the previous year? In the early modern picture scroll mentioned above, “Twelve Months of Play” Jūnitsuki asobi, people called sekizoro 節季候 (twelfth-month singers)

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The kesa is the monk’s surplice, worn over one shoulder. By calling the humble cloth by this name, it is elevated to the status of a sacred object.

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appear in the section on Shiwasu. The preface to the section contains the following text: “At the end of the year, the sekizoro dance and beg for things.” From the scroll, it can be seen that sekizoro were entertainers who went door-to-door at the end of the year, dancing and singing chants such as “Sekizoro, sekizoro, how joyous!”24 Since the middle ages, this role was filled by a variety of people from the lower classes. Each group of performers consisted of about four people. As they went from house to house, they wore ferns25 on their heads, cloth coverings on their faces, and long narrow baglike garments on their shoulders. Sekizoro were just one type of celebratory public performance held at year’s end, similar to such prominent events as Senzu manzai 千秋万歳 and Daikoku mai 大黒舞. Interestingly, the fern worn by the dancers on their heads is the same type of plant used for making the shime kazari 注連飾り (sacred Shintō rope with festoons) decoration commonly displayed during the New Year holiday, suggesting a connection with the idea of purification. Kurokawa Dōyū’s 1685 book Hinami kiji (Daily Chronicle), mentioned earlier, contains the following entry on Sekizoro for the 12th day of December: Starting today, beggars wear ferns atop their hats, cover their faces with red cloths that show only their eyes, and in groups of two to four they enter people’s homes and dance in their gardens, begging for money or rice. If we read further in this same entry, we see that from 12 until 27 or 28 December the sekizoro make the rounds of Kyoto. In effect, then, through entertainers like sekizoro, the common people of Kyoto were “purifying” themselves of the transgressions and pollution of the previous year—in other words, these endof-the-year performances were a form of ōharae. Yamaji Kōzō, an authority on performance history and folk performing arts, has done a detailed analysis of sekizoro. He suggests that since the early modern period we can divide groups that were outcaste or discriminated against (hisabetsumin 被差別民) into two lineages: the sanjo 散所 lineage and the kawaramono 河原者 lineage. The sekizoro were part of the latter group, the kawaramono, whose job was to purify and remove pollution. Yamaji explains that their purpose was to “visit each home in their own district to remove the impurities of the year,” and that “in return for completing this work they received com-

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Sekizoro sekizoro, medetainaa せきぞろせきぞろ、めでたいなー. See the scroll at: https: //bird.bukkyo‑u.ac.jp/collections/junitsukiasobi‑02/. Urajiro 裏白 (sorbus japonica).

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pensation” (Yamaji 2010: 22–23). Yamaji’s argument is persuasive and suggests that the sekizoro tradition entrusted the removal of people’s pollution to this outcaste group and that, to the common folk of the capital, they played an essential role in purification. With this in mind, once more we can see that the sekizoro’s work can be more broadly construed as a form of ōharae.

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Conclusion

As is clear from the discussion above, since long ago the people of Kyoto have used various methods to cleanse their transgressions and impurities as the old year passes into the new. While the rituals introduced here are varied and have distinct histories and symbolic connections, they all reflect a profound appreciation for a cyclical existence understood through binary forces of corruption and absolution, pollution and purification, death and rebirth. Whether through fire, through prayer, or through song and dance, they articulate a consciousness in which individual and community must be purified in order to regenerate for the new year, as the cycle of nature continues. These days people making their first shrine visit of the year pray for all sorts of worldly benefits for the future. I would argue, however, that they are less inclined to seek absolution and purification for the infelicities of the previous year. We might say that this is because people have forgotten the traditional meaning of the month of Shiwasu. But I feel there is a deeper reason: life in the contemporary world simply provides very few chances for reflection and introspection. While the meaning of “purification” and “repentance” conveyed to us by our ancestors may seem unconnected to present-day society, perhaps it is time for those of us living today to remember and reimagine these traditions, so that we can create new opportunities for critical introspection.

References Butler, Lee. 2005. “ ‘Washing off the Dust’: Baths and Bathing in Late Medieval Japan.” Monumenta Nipponica 60(1): 1–41. Gamō, Masao 蒲生正男, Tsuboi Hirofumi 坪井洋文, Muratake Sei’ichi 村武精一. 1975. Izu shotō: Sedai, saishi, sonraku 伊豆諸島—世代・祭祀・村落. Tokyo: Miraisha. Itō, Hiroyuki 伊藤廣之. 1986. “Daishikō to shimotsuki matsuri” 大師講と霜月祭. In Bukkyō minzokugaku taikei 6 Bukkyō nenjū gyōji 仏教民俗学大系6仏教年中行事, ed. Itō Yuishin 名著出, Tokyo: Meicho Shuppan, 251–266. Imahori, Taitsu 今堀太逸. 1989. “Butsumyōe to ominugui shiki” 仏名会と御身拭式. In

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Bukkyō gyōji saijiki 12 gatsu: Joya 仏教行事歳時記12月—除夜, ed. Setouchi Jakuchō 瀬戸内寂聴 et al., Tokyo: Daiichi Hōki, 105–112. Yamaji, Kōzō 山路興造. 2009. Kyōto geinō to minzoku no bunkashi 京都芸能と民俗の文 化史. Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan. Yamaji, Kōzō 山路興造. 2010. “Sekizorokō” 節季候考. In Nenchū gyōji ronsō: Hinami kiji kara no shuppatsu 年中行事論叢—日次紀事からの出発, ed. Hinami Kiji Kenkyūkai 日次紀事研究会, Tokyo: Iwata Shoin, 11–29. Yagi, Tōru 八木透. 2015. Kyō no matsuri to inori: Miyako no shiki o meguru minzoku 京の まつりと祈り—みやこの四季をめぐる民俗. Kyoto: Shōwadō.

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chapter 8

Encounters with the Past Fractals and Atmospheres at Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri Andrea Giolai Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands [email protected]

Abstract Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri is an important local festival celebrated every winter in Nara. While the festival has been analyzed from the point of view of its relations with religious institutions such as Kasuga Taisha and Kōfukuji, to date less attention has been paid to its historical transformations. Countering linear narratives that tend to portray it as largely unchanged since its inception, this chapter combines ethnography, historiography, and religious studies to provide a more multivocal analysis of the Onmatsuri. After an overview of its main celebrations, the chapter revisits the origins of the festival, describes the ontological multiplicity of its deities, and analyzes material elements that concur to its “fractal” features. Showing how these heterogeneous elements generate a diffuse “atmosphere of the past,” this study discusses practitioners’ accounts of ritual participation, as well as the relationship between ideological reconstructions of the past and material embodiments of religious symbols.

Keywords Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri – Nara – gagaku – material religion – atmosphere

1

Introduction

Every December, the amateur group Nanto Gakuso 南都楽所 takes part in Nara’s Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri 春日若宮おん祭, a large festival familiarly known as “Onmatsuri” or simply “the matsuri.”1 Throughout its celebrations,

1 On- is an alternative reading of the honorific character 御. Sources up to the encyclopaedic © andrea giolai, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004466548_009 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

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and especially during the 24 hours between 16 December and 17 December, members of Nanto Gakuso perform numerous gagaku 雅楽 and bugaku 舞楽 pieces, elegant music and dances for which Onmatsuri is especially renowned.2 Given its long history, religious contents, and demanding performances, the festival is construed as crucial to the group’s identity, and participation as both a great privilege and the ultimate reward for months of rehearsals. During my fieldwork with them, I was struck by how the musicians and dancers of Nanto Gakuso described the matsuri in connection to its distinctive “atmosphere.” In conversation, practitioners alluded to marked dissimilarities between indoor events, such as stage concerts, and outdoor celebrations, like matsuri and Buddhist services. While the former were seen merely as vehicles of artistic expression, the latter were for them more intense experiences, hardly captured by expressions like “concert” (ensō 演奏) or “performance” ( jōen 上演). Indeed, as pointed out by my interlocutors, playing at matsuri requires a particular affective disposition, one that must be consonant with the specific ritual and religious overtones of the event.3 In this context, the concept of “the matsuri atmosphere” (matsuri no fun’iki 祭りの雰囲気) emerged as a powerful emic trope used to describe sensations prevalent in moments of intense parKojiruien 古事類苑 (1896–1914) refer to the festival as gosairei 御祭礼 or Kasuga Wakamiya sai 春日若宮祭. It is unclear when the term Onmatsuri first came into use. For a general overview of Japanese matsuri that assumes “universal features common to traditional rituals in general,” see Plutschow (1996). For a more nuanced approach, see Hardacre (2017: 475– 507). Hardacre is fully aware of the treacherous task of defining matsuri: she notes that the term “can be used in a broad sense to denote any shrine observance of a celebratory nature,” but adds that it may also have “vernacular meanings that include festival but also transcend the boundaries of the term’s usage in academic Shinto circles” (Hardacre 2017: 477). 2 The characters that make up the word gagaku are often translated as “Japanese court music,” but a more accurate rendition would be “elegant (雅) music-and-dance (楽)” (see Endō 2013). Today, gagaku is a Japanese traditional performing art consisting of accompanied vocal compositions, purely instrumental compositions, and compositions that accompany dance. The melodies were either borrowed from the Asian continent between the seventh and eighth century CE, then modified in Japan, or composed anew by Japanese authors during the Heian and Kamakura periods (see Nelson 2008; Terauchi 2016). Gagaku has been a part of Shintō and Buddhist ceremonies from its inception; today, it is often performed during rites of passage such as marriages and funerals. The genre is intimately associated with the Imperial court and stately protocol, conveying sentiments of solemnity and an aura of antiquity. Apart from the Onmatsuri, another important local celebration that features a large number of bugaku pieces is the Shōryōe bugaku daihōyō 聖霊会舞楽大法要, which takes place on 22 April at Shitennōji 四天王寺 temple in Osaka, as a memorial service for Prince Shōtoku (see Minamitani 2008; Terauchi 2013). 3 Significantly, the verb most commonly used to describe gagaku and bugaku performances at the Onmatsuri is the religiously inflected hōnō suru 奉納する, to “offer” or “dedicate” something to the kami.

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ticipation. Emanating from a heterogeneous network of material and immaterial elements—including sounds and gestures, but also animals, clothes, foods and even smells—the matsuri atmosphere was central to my interlocutors, yet peculiarly elusive. While putting fun’iki into words seemed at times like an impossible task, frequent references to the history and religious context of the matsuri made it abundantly clear that historical and religious concerns were central to my interlocutors. Historical, religious, and artistic facets of local matsuri are all staples of Japanese cultural anthropology, as evidenced by the pioneering work of Yanagita Kunio 柳田國男, Orikuchi Shinobu 折口信夫, and Honda Yasuji 本田安次. Yet, these studies tend to treat each of these aspects independently, maintaining a rigid separation between large-scale analyses and ethnographic examples of contemporary ritual participation. In this chapter, I take a different approach, linking Onmatsuri’s religious contents and convoluted history to the theoretical notions of “fractals” and “atmospheres.” I mobilize the geometrical-turned-anthropological metaphor of the fractal not as an illustration of the matsuri’s postmodern fragmentation,4 but because the complex part-whole relationship it evokes resonates with the tension between the phenomenological “figure” of ritual participation (i.e., a focus on certain “parts” of the matsuri), and its broader historical “ground” (i.e., the matsuri considered “as a whole”). Similarly, I relate the notion of “atmosphere”—increasingly popular in anthropology and ethnomusicology— to sketches from my fieldwork.5 Despite being central to its practitioners, moments of intense “atmospheric attunement” (Stewart 2011) often go unregistered in linear narratives of the Onmatsuri.6 Providing a multivocal description of the festival, I suggest that its longevity and ritual efficacy rest upon the diffused circulation of specific atmospheres of the past couched in apparently minor, easily overlooked moments of participation. Through a first-person account, I show how and why specific events in the festival came to be constructed in the current way, arguing that fractal participation and atmospheric attunement characterize contemporary participation in the Onmatsuri.

4 For an early “postmodernist view” of ritual, see Gerholm (1988). 5 For recent works on “atmosphere,” see for example, Anderson (2009); Roquet (2016); Eisenlohr (2018); Slaby and Scheve (2019); Riedel and Torvinen (2019). 6 Terauchi (2011: 62–95) is a rare exception. Stewart (2011: 452) rearticulates the contours of the term “atmosphere” noting that it points toward “an attunement of the senses, of labors, and imaginaries to potential ways of living in or living through things.” I use the notion in a similar manner.

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1.1 Otabishosai Fieldnotes, 16–17 December 2018 I am sitting in a warm and loud dining hall full of people dressed in purple, green, and white costumes. It’s almost 8pm, and soon the kitchen will close. The clothes I’m wearing are not my ordinary clothes: long, traditional hakama pants, a sleeved jacket with delicate patterns of purple wisteria flowers ( fuji), and a stiff, hexagonal black hat. It’s the ceremonial attire of my gagaku group, Nanto Gakuso, and the flowers are more than ornamental; as symbols of the Fujiwara house, they evoke the connection between the elegant music and dances of the “southern capital” (Nanto) and the Fujiwara, the most powerful family of premodern Japan. Though the situation is common enough (everyone around me is either having dinner or taking a break), the myriad symbols surrounding us—like the wisteria flowers on my clothes—situate the event in a historical framework, activating the powerful category of the past. As more members of the group flock in, the fabrics start to sway and whirl around in a colorful dance. I-san, a younger-looking man in his fifties, and F-san, a tall woman in her early sixties with a stern look neutralized by rare but broad smiles, are sitting across from me, and we are deep in conversation. I-san is getting excited, and F-san, cheeks now turning red, is listening with her eyes shut. “What do I like about this matsuri? Well, first of all, it’s all about its atmosphere.” Here, I-san inserts a long pause, for effect. “In other words,” he resumes, “we come every year, we play for hours and hours, three days in a row; it’s cold and you have to play flute, dance, sing, play drums … it’s exhausting! But if you think of the audience (okyakusan お客さん), when they’re out there, and all they hear is the sounds coming from the forest, closer and closer … then after a while they finally see the whole procession coming down, and the sound of gagaku gets louder and louder …” F-san jumps in: “It’s great!” “Right? Yeah, quite amazing” I-san resumes. “So, we are a big part of the matsuri. Actually, I think we are an indispensable part of the matsuri. Because, in the end, without the sound of gagaku there would be no ‘Onmatsuri atmosphere.’” Second pause for effect. “Now, please have another bowl of miso soup. It’s getting cold outside!” As I pour myself another bowl, my thoughts go back to the night before. I am standing with the crowd in front of the temporary shrine, just 50 meters from the dining hall. It’s late, cold, and rain is pouring down on us. About one hundred people have gathered, and we are waiting on both sides of a dirt road. For over an hour, we have been staring at the dark path leading to the Kasuga Shrine, two kilometers uphill in the forest. The Akatsukisai 暁祭, a ritual in which various blessed foods are presented to the kami, is about to begin. Suddenly, the rain stops. It must be around midnight when we are finally able to make out faint sounds in the distance. Ten minutes later, I can dis-

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tinguish the contours of two white figures walking down between the trees. Gradually, I realize that these ghostly visions are dragging torches of burning pine, charcoal leaving a red, glimmering trail behind. Their mouths are covered by white cloth, and they are followed by a procession of approximately 20 priests, also in white. At the end of the procession, musicians play gagaku while walking. People around me whisper impatiently. As the procession draws near, we are instructed to lower our heads and turn off all electronic devices: no recordings allowed. Suddenly, I realize that everyone around me is humming out a deep, droning sound: “Oooo–.” Right at that moment, the air— not just my surroundings, but the medium of every vibration—feels different: denser and still, it’s filled with sounds, the smell of burning pine, incense and sap. The memory is still fresh, but I am back in the dining hall, staring into my miso soup: “The Onmatsuri atmosphere, indeed!” I think, suspended between the silence of my interlocutors, the noises of the cafeteria, and the fleeting yet lingering impressions from the day before.

2

From Linear Narratives to Fractal Accounts

Rooted in ancient combinatory cults but firmly tied to Shintō in modern times, Nara’s Onmatsuri lies at the intersection of spirituality, local identity, and touristic commodification.7 Today, the festival is one and many things: an important winter celebration with a history that goes back more than 800 years; a “living museum” of medieval performing arts (Misumi 1982: 66); an item of Japanese intangible cultural heritage; an economic asset capable of attracting swarms of tourists; and a source of public recognition and visibility for the city of Nara. Like many shrine celebrations, it is both secretive and bombastic, structured and chaotic, intensely numinous and utterly quotidian.8 To a casual bystander, however, Onmatsuri may appear not as a totality, but as a compilation of disjointed events. Two amateur photographers observing the horses gathered at the outer edge of Nara Park on the morning of 17 December 2018, for example, seemed only superficially acquainted with the history

7 For a recent account that weaves together all three aspects, see Hatakama and Yasuda (2016). 8 For rare ethnographic analyses of Japanese festivals in English, see Ashkenazi (1994); Foster (2015); Kalland (1995); Schnell (1999).

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figure 8.1 Map of the main events of 15–18 December. The title reads “Route of the Parade and Guide to Various Shintō Celebrations.” Printed at the back of an information pamphlet compiled by the Association for the Preservation of the Ancient Arts of Kasuga and sold every year during the festival Yamato Geinō Konwakai 2015

and ritual contents of the festival: “Me, I just came for the horses … Did you know they bring them from all over Japan? They’re gorgeous,” said one of them, a man in his sixties. Nodding approvingly, the second man, somewhat older and with a thick Kansai accent, turned to me and added: “It’s a very ancient festival, you know? Unchanged for a thousand years, or so I heard. They sell pamphlets with all the information, I think.” Numerous examples of such casual conversations suggest that many people who attend the matsuri have only a general sense of its busy schedule (Fig. 8.1). For most of them, 17 December stands out as a particularly busy day, and can be considered a “matsuri within the matsuri.” Thousands of visitors come only for the day, eager to watch a massive costume parade (owatari shiki 御渡り式) proceed through the central streets of Nara (Fig. 8.2). For those interested in the artistic and ritual aspects of the matsuri, however, it is only after the parade, in the afternoon of 17 December, that the “Onmatsuri

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figure 8.2 A detail of the Watarishiki parade. Citizens and tourists often follow the parade through the streets of Nara, showing support for friends or members of specific sectors (za), such as the dengaku troupe and the horseback archers. 17 December 2013 Photo by author

atmosphere” can be savored. Having kicked off at noon, the parade reaches the forested area of Kasuga Taisha 春日大社 by 2:00 pm. Following a series of ceremonial performances in front of an ancient pine tree (matsu no shita shiki 松 の下式), the participants enter a broad mossy area. Temporary wooden structures are set up to host musicians, priests and special guests overlooking a simple open-air stage (shiba butai 芝舞台) at the center of a stretch of land. At 4:00pm, music and dances are offered to the kami of Wakamiya Jinja 若宮 神社, who is hosted for 24 hours in a temporary dwelling place called angū 行 宮 or kari no miya 仮宮 (Fig. 8.3). The kami has been brought down from its usual abode by means of an intense procession, called Senkō no Gi 遷幸の儀, on the night of 16 December (Fig. 8.4). During the procession, priests dressed in white transfer the body of the kami and intone the keihitsu 警蹕, a low, droning vocal sound that blends with gagaku creating an otherworldly “symphony” (Hashimoto 1986: 65). This is the moment I-san was referring to during our chat in the dining hall on 17 December, pointing toward its “atmospheric” quality. The celebrations that start at 4:00pm are known collectively as Otabishosai お旅所祭. They consist of a long succession of ancient performing arts, some of which are only performed in Nara. Gagaku and its danced repertoire, bugaku,

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figure 8.3 The angū or temporary shrine. Its rustic architectonic structure includes highly symbolic features, such as the white, triangular paper blocks on the walls: the origin of these decorative elements is still unclear. 17 December 2018 Photo by author

occupy a special role in the Otabishosai, with more than ten dances performed by Nanto Gakuso. At approximately 11:00pm, all the lights are put out, the shintai 神体 is carefully removed, and the kami is brought back to Wakamiya Jinja, a shrine located on the East side of Kasuga Taisha’s main pavilion. This procession, called Kankō no Gi 還幸の儀, mirrors the earlier Senkō no Gi of 16 December. It reaches the shrine just before midnight, and only musicians and shrine personnel are allowed to witness this section of the ritual. The Otabishosai then comes to a close, with a final dance performed by shrine priestesses, followed by the recitation of norito 祝詞 (prayers) reporting the successful conclusion of this year’s celebrations and praying for the next. The scope and scale of Onmatsuri in general and of the Otabishosai in particular are uncommon for a local festival. A description of the events of 16 and 17 December may serve to illustrate the seamless interconnection of ritual moments that, although nested within the larger framework of the Onmatsuri, can also be experienced independently as instances of its general atmosphere. As I show below, multiple connections between its parts compose Onmatsuri’s richly layered ritual participation.

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encounters with the past table 1

Prospect of Onmatsuri’s celebrations

Day and time

Event

Overview

1 July

Yabusame sadame 流鏑馬定

1 October

Nawamunesai 縄棟祭 Bachō no chigo no okuraiuke 馬長児僧位僧官授写式

In what can be considered the festival’s first ceremony, the groups in charge of organizing the horseback archery announce to the kami of the Wakamiya Shrine the names of the young boys who will be riding the horses and shooting ceremonial arrows in the coming festival (chigo 稚児). Purification of the area where the temporary shrine will be built. The boys who will serve as chigo go to Kōfukuji and receive the official title of hōingon no daisōsu 法印 権大僧都, which only lasts for the duration of the festival. Blessing of ritual offerings (wild game, fish, spears, swords and armors). Visit to the Wakamiya Shrine, including several performances. The Evening Rite of the Sacred Abode precedes the removal of the kami’s “body” (shintai) from its usual abode. The body of the deity is transported to the temporary shrine (otabisho). Blessed offerings of food are presented to the deity. Shrine priests visit both Kasuga Taisha and Wakamiya Jinja. A huge ceremonial parade featuring participants dressed in ancient attire. The parade is divided into twelve sectors (za 座): 1. Hi no tsukai 日使, the festival’s main sponsor; 2. Miko 巫女, shrine priestesses; 3–5. Performers of Seinō 細男, Sarugaku 猿楽 and Dengaku 田楽; 6–9. Participants in horseback archery and ceremonial races; 10. Nodachihoka 野太刀, a display of special swords; 11. Yamatozamurai 大和士, delegations of various local groups and corporations; 12. Daimyō gyōretsu 大名行列, delegations from former domains (han 藩). Since Kōfukuji monks were once among the main organizers of the festival, the ceremonial parade used to pass through the Southern Gate (nandaimon) of the temple on its way to the temporary shrine. The monks would then preside over the parade, announcing the name of each sector and making sure that everything was in order. Today, a similar ceremony is held, with a symbolic function.

Beginning of December

15 December 2:30 pm Ōshukushosai 大宿所祭 16 December 2:30 pm Yoimiya mōde 宵宮詣 4:00pm

Yoimiyasai 宵宮祭

10:30pm

Senkō no gi 遷幸の儀

17 December 1:00 am 9:00am

Akatsukisai 暁祭 Hondensai 本殿祭

12:00pm

Owatari shiki お渡り式

12:50pm

Nandaimon gyōmyō no gi 南大門交名儀

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giolai Prospect of Onmatsuri’s celebrations (cont.)

Day and time

Event

Overview

1:00pm

Matsu no shita shiki 松の下式

1:00pm

Keiba 競馬

2:30pm 2:30pm

Chigo yabusame 稚児流鏑馬 Otabishosai 御旅所祭

Various performances are offered to the tutelary deity of the medieval Kasuga-Kōfukuji multiplex. According to legendary tales, the benevolent god Kasuga Daimyōjin 春日大明神 appeared beneath this sacred pine tree. Ceremonial horse race held in the area between the sacred pine and the temporary shrine. Archery on Horseback performed by three young boys.

11:30pm

Kankō no gi 還幸の儀

18 December 1:00 pm

Hōnōzumō 奉納相撲

2:00pm

Goen Nō 後宴能

Performances offered to the kami on the lawn stage: 1. Kagura 神楽 (Mikomai 巫女舞): dances of the shrine priestesses; 2. Azuma asobi 東遊: a regional dance performed by youngsters; 3. Dengaku 田楽: ancient performing art connected to and evoking rice planting; 4. Seinō 細男: little is known about this simple ritualistic dance, perhaps the vestige of a pantomime; 5. Kagura shiki 神楽式 (also known as Sarugaku no okinamai 猿楽の翁舞): a reconstructed version of the precursor to Nō theater; 6. Bugaku 舞楽: a uniquely rich array of court music and dances including twelve pieces, for a total of over five hours. The pieces performed are: Enbu 振鉾; Manzairaku 万歳楽; Engiraku 延喜楽; Katen 賀殿; Chikyū 地久; Yamatomai 大和 舞; Ran’ryōō 蘭陵王; Nasori 納曽利; Sanju 散手; Kitoku 貴徳; Batō 抜頭; Rakuson 落蹲. Symmetrical to the Senkō no gi, it consists in the removal of the deity from the temporary shrine and its transportation back to the Wakamiya Shrine. Ceremonial sumo match performed by children and adolescents. Nō performance on the lawn stage of the temporary shrine. It marks the conclusion of the entire festival.

In the past 50 years, scholars have produced detailed and lengthy accounts of Onmatsuri’s celebrations, often under the auspices of Kasuga Taisha.9 Japanese researchers often emphasize the festival’s complexity: Ishii Tatsurō, for exam-

9 See especially Orikuchi (1967); Kasuga Kogaku Hozonkai (1982); Hashimoto (1986); Nagashima et al. (1991); Yamamichi (1991); Terauchi (2011: 61–95); Hatakama and Yasuda (2016). For an excellent visual documentation, see the 1991 Heibonsha documentary Chūsei no sairei: Chūō kara chihō e 中世の祭礼–中央から地方へ.

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ple, notes that Onmatsuri is “a giant annual festival … so complicated that one has to see it several times in order to understand it properly” (Ishii 1987: 134, 136). Overwhelmingly, analytical responses to this complexity have taken the form of meticulous descriptions of “ritual procedures” (shidai 次第), often accompanied by impersonal explanations of each component (see Tab. 1). In contrast, the limited academic literature available in English has tended to focus either on the symbiotic relationship between the festival and Yamato province at the time of Onmatsuri’s inception, or on the cult of Kasuga Daimyōjin 春日大明神, a composite deity which originated at the Kasuga TaishaKōfukuji 興福寺 “shrine-temple multiplex” ( jisha 寺社), the main “unified Shinto-Buddhist complex center” of medieval Nara (Grapard 1992: 1). In his monograph devoted to the religious center, Allan Grapard outlined the significance of the Onmatsuri as a moment of “regeneration” for the entire province of Yamato. According to his structuralist interpretation, “the symbolic body and the identity of the province are regenerated through an interaction of the binary opposition nature/culture that is expressed in food systems, dances, and games, all of which are subsumed under an opposition between purity and pollution that is at the foundation of the social hierarchy” (Grapard 1992: 167).10 While Grapard’s analysis highlights how religious dynamics are articulated on a geographically vast scale, others have chosen to explore how the same processes have been represented through artistic iconography.11 Here, a special place is granted to the seemingly ubiquitous depictions of Kasuga Daimyōjin (also known as Kasuga Gongen 春日権現), the combinatory deity that emerged as the summation of the kami and buddhas venerated at the multiplex. The Kasuga Gongen genki 春日権現験記, a medieval set of illustrated scrolls, contains miraculous legends associated with the deity, and is arguably the most significant source of information on its cult (see Tyler 1990; Hardacre 2017: 190– 193).12 In all these examples, Onmatsuri is treated merely as a tile within a much larger mosaic. The only study in English devoted specifically to the festival is a journal article by Ishii Tatsurō (1987). Despite offering scant ethnographic details, Ishii’s article shifts the focus from broad historical examinations to the

10

11 12

Similarly, Helen Hardacre recently noticed that the festival “projects an image of the unity, not only of the two institutions [of Kōfukuji and Kasuga Shrine], but also the city of Nara where they are located, and beyond its boundaries to encompass the entire province” (Hardacre 2017: 185). See especially Susan C. Tyler (1992). For a recent introduction, see the catalogue of the exhibition that commemorated the completion of its restoration (Kunaichō Sannomaru Shōzōkan 2018).

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festival’s present format. This is a valuable contribution: with the exception of recent publications in Japanese (especially Terauchi 2011; Hatakama 2014; Hatakama and Yasuda 2016), research on Onmatsuri has been largely indifferent to the transformations, suppressions and reconstructions of the festival’s constitutive elements, conveying the sense that little has changed between its inception in the twelfth century and the present. This has resulted in the lasting myth of Onmatsuri’s unchanged iteration “for a thousand years,” as stressed by casual spectators more interested in specific aspects of the event than in its religious or historical facets. But such “linear narratives” are at once simplistic and misleading. On the one hand, they often ignore or gloss over historical evidence that may call into question specific ideological accounts; on the other, they tend to portray ritual participation as an experientially flat act of impassive, external observation. To contrast such narratives, I propose to look at the “fractal elements” of Onmatsuri: those elements that break apart superficial coherences, bringing to light the dissonances and inconsistencies of Onmatsuri’s linear accounts. Originating from chaos theory, the term “fractal” “refers to phenomena of ‘self-similarity,’ or the tendency of patterns or structures to recur on multiple levels or scales” (Mosko 2005: 24). Since the 1980s, the analogical image of the fractal has been used in anthropological texts by important representatives of the so-called “ontological turn” (see e.g. Wagner 1991; Strathern 2004). In their works, the fractal has been used to describe the self-similarity of abstract notions that stand in a part-whole relationship, such as “the individual” and “the collective.” In a more circumscribed sense, fractals have been recently evoked with reference to Japanese religious rituals.13 Discussing the Japanese “medieval esoteric episteme,” Fabio Rambelli has noted that “esoteric Buddhism envisions the cosmos as a fractal structure, in which each phenomenon is ‘formally’ similar to all others and to the totality” (Rambelli 2013: 35, my emphasis). In the semiotic worldview of esoteric Buddhism, in fact, “each component of the mandalic cosmos is both related to any number of other entities and equivalent to the totality itself” (Rambelli 2013: 14). This “recursive cosmology” (Rambelli 2013: 35) is precisely the context in which Onmatsuri was born. From this point of view, therefore, the development of a fractal approach to the study of Japanese matsuri in general and Onmatsuri in particular seems in line with current developments in the study of Japanese religiosity.

13

For a short discussion of possible images employed to theorize ritual, including that of the fractal, see Grimes (2013: 181–182).

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At the same time, the use of the term “fractal” builds upon new understandings of the ontological status of medieval Japanese deities. For Bernard Faure, for instance, their “fractal nature … reflects an essential, ontological multiplicity that cannot and should not be reduced to historical accidents” (Faure 2016: 16). The image of the fractal reveals its full analytical import when Faure’s observations are brought to bear on the broader context of ritual participation in a specific matsuri. Using it to grasp more effectively how a local festival is experienced by some of its participants allows us to appreciate the value of its constitutive parts not only as reflections, but also as “iterations” of the matsuri as a whole. This fractal quality of matsuri can overcome historical inconsistencies and apparent contradictions between different elements of the same festival, helping us to understand ritual participation in less normative ways than are often dictated by rigid structures like official shidai. In the next section, I explore how a fractal approach can be applied to the study of Onmatsuri’s early history. Moving from an analysis of the earliest available sources, I show that the “origin story” upheld by linear narratives of the festival is the result of selective reinterpretations of the past, intended to conceal the generative role of Buddhist institutions in the early phases of the matsuri’s existence. My analysis reveals the kind of “nestedness” that characterizes anthropological uses of the term “fractal.” My argument is that through subsequent modifications, erasures and reinstatements, material-symbolic elements of the Onmatsuri have been folded into and encapsulated in specific aspects of the festival, so that access to any of these aspects simultaneously provides access to the large-scale dimension of the entire matsuri, in a complex interplay of parts and whole.

3

More Than One History

According to some of Onmatsuri’s most important stakeholders, such as Kasuga Taisha and the Association for the Preservation of the Ancient Arts of Kasuga (Kasuga Kogaku Hozonkai 春日古楽保存会), in 2019 the festival has been held 880 times.14 Such claims are hardly surprising: since the nomination of “the performing arts and Shintō rites of Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri” (Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri shinji geinō 春日若宮おん祭神事芸能) as items

14

See e.g. http://www.koto‑netpress.com/bookmark/onmatsuri/ (Accessed 20 February 2019).

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of Japanese “important intangible folk cultural property” ( jūyō mukei minzoku bunkazai 重要無形民俗文化財) in 1979, a process of “musealization” and “heritagization” of the matsuri has been greatly accelerated (Hatakama and Yasuda 2016: 177).15 Despite frequent claims to Onmatsuri’s “unbroken tradition” by government officials (see e.g. Yamato Geinō Konwakai 2015: 2), however, the festival’s continuity is contradicted by the earliest available historical records.16 The modern circulation of an “origin myth” reshaping the public image of the matsuri into a quintessentially “Shintō” celebration has played a central role in this process of heritagization. In its most common version, the story states that the Onmatsuri was initiated in 1136 by the kanpaku 関白 Fujiwara no Tadamichi 藤原忠通 (1097–1164) in an attempt to appease the deities that had brought floods and famine to the province. Tadamichi offered prayers to the “young deity” of Wakamiya and started the festival on the seventeenth day of the ninth month in the second year of the Hōen 保延 era (1136), (Ishii 1987: 134; see Hatakama and Yasuda 2016: 3–6, 91–96).17 Emphasizing the virtuous intervention of a member of the Fujiwara family—the founders of the Kasuga Shrine in the eighth century—the story places the kami of Wakamiya at the center of a politico-religious network binding Shintō institutions to the territorial control of the Yamato province. As recently pointed out by Hatakama Kazuhiro and Yasuda Tsuguo, however, the so-called “Tadamichi origin story” (Hatakama 2014: 372) has little historical grounding and appears to be a comparatively recent reinvention of the past (see especially Hatakama and Yasuda 2016: 3–24). The first document claiming that Tadamichi was responsible for the creation of the festival is the Record of Kasuga Shrine (Kasuga jinja ki 春日神社記), dated 1611 (Hatakama 2014: 371– 372). The story spread quickly in the following centuries, with the help of popular books designed and published at least in part to incorporate and spread it. Texts like the Collection of Famous Places in the Southern Capital (Nanto meisho shū 南都名所集, 1675), or the Double-Flowered Cherry Blossoms of Nara’s Famous Places (Nara meisho yaezakura 奈良名所八重桜, 1678), as well as the Annual Celebrations of Kasuga Shrine (Kasugasha nenjū gyōji 春日社年中行事,

15 16

17

On the history of intangible heritage preservation in Japan, see Akagawa (2015); Lancashire (2013); Thornbury (1997: 41–74). Throughout the sixteenth century, for instance, the festival was repeatedly interrupted due to violent attacks by Yamato’s neighboring samurai warlords (see Hatakama and Yasuda 2016: 75–76). The following argumentation recapitulates arguments put forth by historians Hatakama Kazuhiro and Yasuda Tsuguo (see Hatakama 2014; Hatakama and Yasuda 2016).

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figure 8.4 A moment of the Senkō no Gi procession as depicted in the Edo-period Kasuga Ōmiya Wakamiya gosairei no zu (Nagashima 1985a: 354–355). On the bottom-left corner, priests carrying huge pine torches are visible, while on the top-right side is a depiction of the musicians playing gagaku instruments, including a suspended drum. Available at: http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/ha03/ha03 _00953/ha03_00953_0003/ha03_00953_0003_p0017.jpg

1680) all demonstrate that by the end of the seventeenth century, the reinvention of Onmatsuri’s past was commonly accepted as historical truth (Hatakama and Yasuda 2016: 91). Nowhere is this new ideological setup more clearly illustrated than in the Kasuga Ōmiya Wakamiya gosairei no zu 春日大宮若宮御祭 礼図, a collation of previously published materials compiled in 1742 (Hatakama and Yasuda 2016: 86–141; see also Hatakama 2014: 324–355) (see Fig. 8.5).18 Earlier textual evidence, however, tells a different story. The first available sources on the matsuri are short entries in the Chūyūki 中右記, a chronicle of life at court written by Fujiwara no Munetada 藤原

18

A typographic reprint is contained in Nagashima (1985a). On the controversial identity of its author, see Hatakama (2014: 325–329).

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figure 8.5 The area of the otabisho or temporary shrine. Two huge gagaku drums with symbols of the sun and moon frame the performance area. On the left side of the picture, the temporary shrine is clearly visible, enclosed by fences on both sides. Kasuga Ōmiya Wakamiya gosairei no zu (Nagashima 1985a: 378–379). Available at: http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/ha03/ha03 _00953/ha03_00953_0003/ha03_00953_0003_p0029.jpg

宗忠 (1062–1141), and the Wakamiya saireiki 若宮祭禮記, a text written by Nakatomi Sukeomi 中臣祐臣 (1275–1342), a priest active at the recently estab-

lished Wakamiya Shrine (Hatakama and Yasuda 2016: 4).19 Both sources state explicitly that Tadamichi set the date in which the festival should be celebrated. However, the shrine diary also states that the Onmatsuri was “an affair of the taishu [大衆]” (Hatakama and Yasuda 2016: 7).20 At the time, the terms taishu and shuto 衆徒 indicated the personnel employed at Kōfukuji (Hatakama and Yasuda 2016: 7), while the terms jinin 神人 or jinmin 神民 identified members of the Kasuga Shrine (Grapard 1992: 76, 98–99; Hashimoto 1986: 36–37). Thus, even though they do not rule out Tadamichi’s role completely, primary sources

19 20

On the creation of the Wakamiya Shrine, see Royall Tyler (1990: 57–58). The original passage states: 爲大衆沙汰、若宮御祭礼始給事 (Nagashima 1985b: 439).

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seem to indicate that the birth of the festival was intimately connected to the Buddhist component of the Kasuga-Kōfukuji multiplex. Given the frequent struggles over taxation and territorial borders between the multiplex, the Fujiwara, and the court, Hatakama Kazuhiro and Yasuda Tsuguo have suggested that the creation of the new matsuri could be understood as a public display of wealth, strength, and symbolic capital.21 If that was indeed the case, the authors suggest, the Onmatsuri might have originated from an argument between Kōfukuji and the Fujiwara or the court, either as a way to request divine assistance in the matter, or, post factum, to give thanks to the kami for winning the argument (see Hatakama and Yasuda 2016: 7–19).22 Further proof for such a claim can be found in an entry in the Daijōin jisha zōjiki 大乗院寺社雑事記, a diary compiled by Jinson 尋尊 (1430–1508), the abbot of the Daijōin monzeki 門跡 temple (see Tsuji 1965).23 Offering his remarks on the first occurrence of the Wakamiya festival, Jinson mentions that prayers were offered in connection to a “big complaint” (daiso 大訴) (Hatakama and Yasuda 2016: 10; Yasuda 2001: 16–21). If the contribution of Kōfukuji monks to the establishment of Onmatsuri seems indisputable, why did the “Tadamichi theory” eventually prevail? The answer has much to do with the delicate political balance between Kasuga and Kōfukuji. In fact, with the gradual decline of Kōfukuji during the sixteenth and seventeenth century, an alternative account of the matsuri’s origins became increasingly appealing to Kasuga Shrine (see Hatakama and Yasuda 2016: 75– 76). Eventually, due to Kōfukuji’s political demise, even official Buddhist documents such as the Kōfukuji yurai sono taki 興福寺由来其他記 (1727) started to accept the notion that the matsuri had been initiated by Tadamichi as historical truth—a clear testimony of the transformed socio-political landscape (Hatakama and Yasuda 2016: 94). The so-called separation edicts (shinbutsu bunri rei 神仏分離令) of 1868 further reinforced the gradual construction of a linear Shintō narrative that would

21

22

23

While both Kōfukuji and Kasuga originated as manifestations of the power of the Fujiwara family—the former as their ujidera 氏寺 and the latter as the cultic site of worship of their ujigami 氏神—by the twelfth century the decline of the so-called sekkan seiji 摂関政治 system and the consequent shift of power from provincial governors (kokushi 国司) to more centralized authorities had set in motion a bifurcation of their political interests (see Grapard 1992: 138–139; Hatakama and Yasuda 2016: 14). Indeed, the very establishment of the Wakamiya Shrine has been interpreted as an attempt to “strengthen [Kōfukuji’s] hold on the Kasuga shrine” (Nagashima 1959: 9, quoted in Tyler 1990: 58; see also Ishii 1987: 35). On the organization of Kōfukuji’s monzeki 門跡, the temples administered by members of aristocratic families, and specifically on Jinson’s diary, see Grapard (1992: 106–114, 171–185).

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eventually result in the intimate association of Onmatsuri with Kasuga Taisha. Accordingly, the policy of forcible separation of Buddhism and Shintō resulted in the abolition of Buddhist elements in the matsuri’s celebrations. One particularly significant instance was the elimination of the Yabusame sadame 流 鏑馬定 and the Nandaimon gyōmyō no gi 南大門行命儀, two rites traditionally overseen by the “five masters for special ceremonies” (bechie goshi 別会 五師), important monks affiliated with Kōfukuji (see Tab. 1) (Terauchi 2011: 69).24 Together, they used to signal that the matsuri was in the hands of powerful monks belonging to Kōfukuji. Their excision thus “purified” Onmatsuri’s history, facilitating the establishment of a fully Shintō narrative. Despite the reinstatement of both rites after 1985 (see Yamato Geinō Konwakai 2015: 6), linear narratives concerning the matsuri’s origins have remained largely unaltered. Indeed, the revival of rituals suggesting the influence of Buddhist institutions has not affected the post-Meiji portrayal of Onmatsuri as a “Shintō event,” despite the existence of textual evidence casting doubts over this interpretation. While this reinvention of the past has provided a coherent “origin story,” with Fujiwara no Tadamichi in the role of main protagonist, the modern interpretation has also rendered opaque those elements of the matsuri that would have revealed its original connections to Kōfukuji. This tension between the festival’s “origin story” and its “historical origins” is one of the main reasons for Onmatsuri’s contemporary fractal nestedness: quite literally, different histories are folded within its ritual procedures. As the next section will demonstrate, this is not confined to Onmatsuri’s history, but also extends to the multifarious representations of its kami and bodhisattvas.

4

The Fractal Gods of Nara

4.1 Otabishosai Fieldnotes, 17 December 2015 Rakuson 落蹲 is a paired dance characterized by the use of yellow costumes and fearsome dragon masks with movable jaws. There is a general consensus among the musicians of Nanto Gakuso that this piece is at once the most enthralling and the most physically demanding of the whole Otabishosai. During a break on the night of 17 December 2015, T-san, a freshman at a local university and a 24

During the Yabusame sadame, the boys who would act as chigo were selected by the bechie goshi, whereas at the Nandaimon gyōmyō no gi Kōfukuji monks ostentatiously presided over the parade, announcing the name of each section passing through the Southern Gate (nandaimon).

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skilled second-generation performer of gagaku flutes, shares with me some of his views on the piece: “The melody is short, but the piece as a whole is very long, so you must go on and on repeating the same phrases. In itself, that’s quite boring, but it makes it easier to get a glimpse of the dancers onstage. You play pretty much automatically, especially because by the end of the day you’re really tired. Still, I think that state you’re in is probably the best way to appreciate Rakuson. I remember studying the dance movements: it’s tiring, because you keep going down on your knees and getting up. But [during the actual performance] the atmosphere is mysterious ( fun’iki wa shinpiteki 雰囲気は神秘 的), especially because it comes at the end of a long matsuri.” After the break, we go back to the gakuya 楽屋, the musicians’ room, and we play until the end of the ritual, two hours later. Glimpsing the stage during Rakuson, I can’t help but notice that the dancers almost never face the audience: for the most part, their torsos point toward the temporary shrine. Every time they crouch or lower their heads, the movements make me think of a deep, ceremonial bow. In this way, Rakuson communicates a sense of distance from the human world: as the last performance of the daylong Otabishosai, it constitutes at once a sonic and physical invocation, giving tangible form to the ethereal domain of the kami. 4.2 Parts Becoming Wholes Whether we choose to interpret it as a timeless Shintō ritual, a modern concoction, or a commodified example of heritage preservation, for over seven centuries Onmatsuri has been the favorite meeting place of the people of Yamato and their deities. Of course, this is true of many matsuri, for “Japanese gods exist and thrive mainly through ritual. It is ritual that literally brings them down to earth, in the life of the worshiper, or more precisely in the purified arena prepared for them” (Faure 2016: 40). But how does Onmatsuri exemplify and, for some participants, convey the theophany of its specific deity? What are the features of Onmatsuri’s object(s) of worship, and how do these features translate into a specific symbolism? Trying to answer these questions, this section shows that the “gods of Nara” are complex composite figures: assemblages with shifting, fractal identities, they not only fit into, but also help generate Onmatsuri’s nested structures. As indicated by its name, the Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri revolves around the kami enshrined in the Wakamiya Jinja. The identity of this deity can be traced back to the interrelation of the four kami venerated at the Kasuga Grand Shrine. Ame no koyane no Mikoto 天児屋根命 (in the Third Sanctuary) and his consort Himegami 比売神 (Fourth Sanctuary) were probably the first deities to be installed there during the seventh or early eighth century; they are “agrar-

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ian gods from old Kawachi province [河内国] (to the east of modern Osaka), where the Fujiwara originated” (ten Grotenhuis 1999: 145). By the middle of the eighth century, two war gods were added to the cult: Futsunushi no Mikoto 経津 主命 (Second Sanctuary) and Takemikazuchi no Mikoto 武甕槌命 (First Sanctuary).25 As for the kami known as Wakamiya, the earliest testimony is a document of the Chidori 千鳥 family, the branch of the Nakatomi 中臣 in charge of the shrine since its foundation in 1135 (see Royall Tyler 1990: 62; Grapard 1992: 101). According to this record, “in the third month of 1003, a translucent, gelatinous mass formed on the underside of the floor of the Fourth Sanctuary [of the Kasuga Shrine]. The mass soon grew so large and heavy that it fell, and from it emerged a little snake. The snake crawled up the northwest pillar of the structure and disappeared into the sanctuary” (quoted in Tyler 1990: 57; see also Ōhigashi 1982: 8).26 Immediately, it was clear that the snake was the child of the divine couple Ame no Koyane and Himegami. As such, it was moved to an independent building in 1135, thus establishing the Wakamiya Shrine.27 Concurrently, the kami was given the name Ame no Oshikumone no Mikoto 天押雲根命. Inseparable from this process of identification was the larger context of medieval honji suijaku 本地垂跡, “the idea that local, native deities (kami) are emanations of universal, Buddhist divinities” (Teeuwen and Rambelli 2003: 1).28 Accordingly, Ame no Oshikumone could be represented either as the bodhisattva Monju 文殊 (Sk. Mañjuśrī) or as Kannon 觀音 (Sk. Avalokiteśvara) (ten Grotenhuis 1999: 147). For Grapard, “when the Wakamiya kami is represented as Monju, who is often depicted in Buddhist iconography as a youth, it is represented as a youthful entity” (Grapard 1992: 88). The connection with Kannon, on the other hand, “may be related to youth initiation or to the feminine character of young men who were the object of romantic attachments on the part of some aristocrats and monks of various temples” (Grapard 1992: 89). Indeed, given the prominent role of young boys (chigo) in medieval rituals at Kōfukuji, including Onmatsuri’s Yabusame sadame, such erotic overtones seem 25 26 27

28

Allan Grapard has traced the origins of each deity, showing the significance of their cult for the Nakatomi-Fujiwara clan (Grapard 1992: 29–44). For the original text, see Naraken Kyōikukai (1987). The term “Wakamiya” is used generically to identify cultic sites whose enshrined deities are the offspring of kami venerated at a “main shrine” (Kokugakuin Daigaku Nihon Bunka Kenkyūjo 1994: 44–45). At Kasuga, the pairing of kami and buddhas “reflected the intimate association between Kasuga and Kōfukuji, which ranged from religious practice to administrative and financial organization” (ten Grotenhuis 1999: 146–147). For a useful chart of the main associations between Kasuga kami and Kōfukuji buddhas and bodhisattvas from the late Heian to the Sengoku period, see ten Grotenhuis (1999).

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plausible (see also Terauchi 2011: 70). According to Bernard Faure, on the other hand, “at the Wakamiya Shrine of Kasuga, Daikokuten [大黒天] (or rather Ōkuninushi [大国主]) is worshiped today as part of a couple, together with Okame お亀 (a.k.a. Otafuku お多福, the popular version of the goddess Ame no Uzume 天宇受売)” (Faure 2016: 53–54). As these contrasting hypotheses reveal, the question of the identity of the Wakamiya deity cannot be resolved through recourse to either Shintō divine genealogies or Buddhist depictions in isolation: instead, a more complex articulation of signifiers is at play in medieval Japanese religious practices. This productive “assemblage” of kami and Buddhist deities was not confined to external signifiers: each deity was “a combination of a plurality of divine entities” and “a multifaceted entity with many names and many appearances” (Teeuwen and Rambelli 2003: 2, 30 emphasis added). In fact, “originals and traces were not one-to-one associations, but complex combinations of several deities based on sophisticated semiotic operations, myths, legend, and so on” (Teeuwen and Rambelli 2003: 1–2). For Faure, Japanese medieval gods were “networks” or “hybrids” (Faure 2016: 26, 38) whose “essential multiplicity can never be reduced to an essence or contained in a taxonomy” (Faure 2016: 43 emphasis added). Medieval deities such as the ones enshrined in the KōfukujiKasuga multiplex could be “assembled” (Teeuwen and Rambelli 2003: 30), but their phenomenological presence did not rest on clear-cut manifestations of completeness (see Faure 2016: 44). In this eminently “fluid pantheon,” in which “the play of analogies and identities allows the emergence of new lateral, rhizome-like relations between the gods” (Faure 2016: 31), the entities venerated in Nara gradually converged toward the unitary-but-multiple figure of Kasuga Daimyōjin, “the numinous unit of the associated kami and buddhas/bodhisattvas of the Kasuga-Kōfukuji multiplex” (Grapard 1992: 93).29 Literary and artistic works such as the Kasuga Gongen genki provide a stark depiction of the process: in the medieval scroll, the entity appears in different guises, including a deer, a lady, a young boy, a sakaki tree, and so on.30 Similarly, diverse representations of Kasuga Daimyō29

30

Grapard notices that “the term Kasuga myōjin appears for the first time in a document written by a monk of the Enryakuji on Mount Hiei in 859” and that “by the 12th century Kasuga daimyōjin formed a single entity as protector of land in various provinces, and it was becoming the protector of the entire province of Yamato” (Grapard 1992: 93, 95). Myōjin and gongen are highly ambiguous terms, belonging to a “moot category” of Japanese divine beings (Teeuwen and Rambelli 2003: 29). While myōjin refers to “a single divinity, several divinities, or a unified group of divinities” (Grapard 1992: 93), gongen could be translated as “provisional manifestation” (Faure 2016: 27), and indicated “neither native kami nor divinities from the Buddhist pantheon; rather, they were virtuous beings

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jin and its terrestrial abode gave rise to popular artistic genres, including both “deer mandalas” (shika mandara 鹿曼荼羅) and aerial representations of Nara’s cultic centers, interpreted as a sacred realm or a special pure land on earth.31 The influence of such imagery on Japanese medieval culture at large is attested by the dissemination of poems and Nō plays citing or alluding to Kasuga Daimyōjin (such as Kasuga Ryūjin 春日龍神), the sacred Mikasayama hill on which the Kasuga Shrine rests, or the sacred landscape of Nara as a whole (see Royall Tyler 1990: 127–144). In this context, localized manifestations of the fluid constellation of signs and practices associated with Nara and its deities were likely to be perceived metonymically: the kami of Wakamiya and its festival, for instance, could stand for “the symbolic body of the province of Yamato” (Grapard 1992: 162). When these metonymic associations were mobilized successfully, social cohesion was at once strengthened and publicly represented (see Hashimoto 1986: 61). Thus, the Onmatsuri was not just a collective celebration, or merely the product of political struggles among the multiplex, the Fujiwara, and the court: it was also the moment in which a “macrosemiotic entity” (Teeuwen and Rambelli 2003: 48) was given the form of a real-life event, a phenomenologically rich experience that engaged the community through the five senses as much or even more than through the powers of symbolic representation. The metonymic character of some of the most important religious signifiers circulating in medieval Nara is apparent in a number of elements that are central to the “Onmatsuri atmosphere”: from purportedly “minor” ritual events to architectonic and artistic hidden references, the specific identity of the kami or the form it assumed was perhaps less important than the activation of physical and intellectual states—the feelings of something manifesting itself.32 After all, “the name of a god does not designate a gathering or subsum-

31

32

from foreign lands who travelled to Japan to bring benefits to its people, and, in particular, to promote the cause of Buddhism” (Teeuwen and Rambelli 2003: 29). On deer mandalas, see especially ten Grotenhuis (1999: 157–159); Susan C. Tyler (1992: 67– 73). On shrine mandalas and the Gongen emaki, see also Susan C. Tyler (1992: 115–183); Hardacre (2017: 185–193). Fabio Rambelli similarly notes that “sutras today (and perhaps, to a certain extent, also in the past) … tend to function as just another liturgical implement, as part of the ritual setting. As such, they contribute to create a Buddhist ‘atmosphere,’ much like design artifacts and commodities” (Rambelli 2007: 104). He further links the atmospheric role of liturgical implements to “the cultural trend to express one’s feelings and emotions through fashionable commodities,” suggesting that the connection between atmospheres and material artifacts can be traced back to Tanaka Yasuo’s novel Nantonaku, kurisutaru なんとなく、 クリスタル (Rambelli 2007: 270). For a discussion of the novel, see Field (1989).

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ing (of the multiple into unity), but a metaphoric deployment, a permanent onto/morpho-genesis” (Faure 2016: 38). Thus, a medieval matsuri could be conceived as that moment in which an instance of “onto/morpho-genesis” is made tangible: imbued with symbols, words, and the potential to become “particular occurrences of the different modes of existence and manifestation of a sacred entity” (Teeuwen and Rambelli 2003: 53), buddhas and kami are parts becoming wholes. Matsuri, in this sense, can be understood as fractal entities that contain within themselves entire networks of divine associations. In the next section, I will focus on two examples of how Onmatsuri’s “divine assemblages” contribute to the emergence of specific “atmospheres of the past,” closing in on yet another scale of the festival’s self-similarity: ritual participation.

5

Of Masks, Dragons Scales, and the Atmospheres of the Past

Since ancient times, the Wakamiya deity has been associated with water and water sources. In the Kojiki 古事記 (712), for example, Ame no Oshikumone is described as “the kami charged with fetching ‘Heavenly Water’ from the wells atop Mount Futagami [二上山] for the enthronement ceremony of emperors,” and is thus “symbolized by a snake or dragon” (Grapard 1992: 88). The symbolism might even date back to local kami cults. According to Hashimoto Hiroyuki, for instance, the snake appearing in the Chidori document alludes to a “primordial Kasuga faith” (gen Kasuga shinkō 源春日信仰), ancient beliefs that grew in and around Mount Mikasa long before the Kōfukuji-Kasuga multiplex came into existence (Hashimoto 1986: 13–15, 25). Hashimoto links these ancient cults to rainmaking rituals, ascetic practices, and dragon cults—practices through which “society acknowledges the ‘other world’ through boundaries” (Hashimoto 1986: 17). For him, watercourses are physical metaphors for the boundaries of the social body: the emergence of the Wakamiya deity is thus a logical evolution of earlier forms of kami worship rooted in the symbolism of water. Furthermore, the creation of a new shrine connected to a supernatural snake also aligned with broader shifts in medieval Japanese society regarding the association of religious practices with the semantic field of water. As David Bialock notes, by the late Heian and early medieval period, the sacrality of water deities (mizu no kami 水の神) in their various guises as serpent (orochi 大蛇), snake (hebi 蛇), dragon king (ryūō 龍王), dragon girl (ryūnyo 龍女) and

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the like, underwent a fresh reinvestment of meaning as a variety of factors converged to transform them into a richly ambiguous symbolic site for mediating many of the contradictions in medieval culture. Bialock 2002: 281

The presence of a salamander pond in the vicinity of the Wakamiya Shrine thus suggests the appropriateness of the site for the creation of a festival which, although probably initiated by Kōfukuji monks, was integrated in the cosmological world of the kami venerated at Kasuga (cf. Grapard 1992: 160). In this regard, the overlap of Buddhist and Shintō elements characterizing the origins of the Onmatsuri is typical of “medieval Shintō” as a whole. As noted by Andreeva, in fact, “in medieval Japan, serpent symbolism became ingrained in the iconography, doctrinal elucidations, and rituals of a whole cluster of religious and performative practices built on the Buddhist worldview and focused on kami” (Andreeva 2017: 307). When it comes to Onmatsuri’s present form, however, the sacrality of water deities is not an echo of the distant past but a rich semiotic motif especially discernible in the rites of the Otabishosai. Architectural details, for instance, might bear witness to the continuity of cosmological themes. During the construction of the temporary shrine, triangular blocks of white paper are inserted into the outer walls of the kari no miya building. These rustic decorations remain clearly visible when the mud walls solidify (see Fig. 8.3), but their meaning is far from transparent: it has been suggested that the blocks might contain words inscribed on a sheet of paper set in their middle, but there is no indication of what these words might be. Potent utterances (dhāranī)? Japanese poems? Names of divinities? Requests? Divinatory formulas? It has also been suggested that the triangular blocks represent dragon scales. Grapard 1992: 159–160 (emphasis added)

Because the earth used to build the walls was collected from areas inhabited by onmyōji 陰陽師, scholars also suggested that the white triangular “scales” may bear some connections with ancient yin-yang practices (Yamamichi 1991: 162). When questioned about this peculiar architectural feature during the ritual on 17 December 2018, M-san, a Kasuga priest and member of Nanto Gakuso, dismissed overly complicated interpretations, insisting that the triangles should be seen as “decorative and artistic.” Pushed for further comments, he concluded that “even if the majority of the people don’t know what these things stand

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for, they are still an element of the matsuri, and can make people more curious.” While the symbolic and likely esoteric relevance of these blocks remains unclear, their presence attests to the fact that specific layers of meaning have been physically inscribed in the ceremony. M-san’s remarks also indicate an awareness of the role of metonymic and fractal signs related to water (deities) in the establishment of a particular ritual atmosphere. Similarly, the bugaku dances performed at the end of the Otabishosai contain allusive reminders of the snake/dragon/water deity of Wakamiya. In contrast with the first “auspicious” dances, the last bugaku pieces performed by Nanto Gakuso—Ran’ryōō 蘭陵王, Nasori 納曽利 and Rakuson 落 蹲—are lively and assertive, characterized by the use of vivid masks and distinctive costumes (see Tab. 1). While Ran’ryōō is associated with the story of a Chinese king of such beauty that he was forced to put on a fearful dragon mask in order to encourage his troops to fight, Nasori and its twin dance Rakuson are known as the “dances of the two dragons” (sōryū no mai 双竜舞) (Lee 1965: 235) (Fig. 8.6).33 The Otabishosai ends with a performance of Rakuson, a modified version of Nasori with two masked dancers instead of one.34 The piece is characterized by a “crouching” movement, perhaps alluded to in the second character of the title, uzukumaru 蹲, which has exactly that meaning. Hashimoto takes this movement to mean both “gathering energy” and “waiting for the next year” (Hashimoto 1986: 106–109). For him, Rakuson stands as a symbol of the “cosmic cycle of renewal,” and the dancers’ bodies represent the “externalization of the other-that-lives-in-us” (Hashimoto 1986: 107). More plainly, we could say that the link between the piece and dragons/snakes is coherent with the mythical origins of the Wakamiya deity: such presences are consistent with the symbolic economy of meanings at play during the Onmatsuri. The fact that an allusion to a serpent-like figure should come from the performers is far from coincidental, given that “in the medieval period, water deities in the form of dragons assumed great importance as the tutelary divinity of travelers, traders, and those engaged in entertainment, especially musicians” (Bialock 2002: 281). Such traces of early cults do not amount to signs of universal human structures, as Hashimoto suggests; nor are they manifestations of what Grapard calls

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For more detailed information on the origins and musical characteristics of the pieces, see Endō (2013: 341–342). This performance style is unique to Nara gagaku. Other groups perform Nasori as a twoperson dance, and Rakuson with only one dancer on stage (Endō 2013: 342; Terauchi 2011: 83).

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figure 8.6 Final moments of the dance Rakuson. The crouching posture and upward movement of the hand are hallmarks of this pair dance and have been interpreted as gathering energy from the sky and transferring it to this world. See Hashimoto 1986: 106–109. http://www.koto‑netpress.com/ bookmark/onmatsuri/sight/scene03.html © 2015 KansaiCreative.inc. Onmatsuri hozonkai

the “logic” of the Onmatsuri, according to which “the symbolic body of the province (the kami) and the hierarchical social body of men must merge in a single identity” (Grapard 1992: 165). Rather, they act as localized manifestations of the fractal nature of the deity celebrated every winter, and re-present it each time the festival takes place. Ultimately, the function of scales, dragon masks and crouching movements is neither exclusively vestigial nor exclusively symbolic: it is at once both and more than the sum of these aspects. As I show in the remainder of the paper, in fact, these material-semiotic elements are central to the activation of a process of sensory attunement that generates and is generated by an “atmosphere of the past.” With the expression “atmosphere of the past,” I refer to the felt evocation of complex systems of feelings enabled by “ostensive signs” such as the costumes in a parade, the music performed, or the ritual symbols displayed.35 Although “evocations of the past” is a valuable alternative, recently the term “atmosphere” has gained currency in the context of anthropological and ethnomusicological research.36 Indeed, music and atmosphere are often under-

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“Ostension” was defined by Umberto Eco as a semiotic phenomenon occurring “when a given object or event produced by nature or human action … is ‘picked up’ by someone and shown as the expression of the class of which it is a member” (quoted in Rambelli 2013: 12). On the theme of ostension in Buddhist semiotics, see Rambelli (2013: 11– 13). Recent studies of atmospheres, music, and sound include Abe (2014, 2018); Eisenlohr

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stood as coterminous phenomena: “it seems that wherever music resounds, feelings are likely to unfold as perhaps vague, but nonetheless intrusive and pervasive, spatially extended atmospheres” (Riedel 2019: 2). Grounded in the contemporary “radical empiricism” of affect theory and “process philosophy,” the concept of atmosphere is mobilized by anthropologists and ethnomusicologists with specific reference to “a shared sense of affective intensity … occupying an immersive, resonant, and spherical spatiality, much like sound itself” (McGraw 2016: 131).37 Not to be construed as a mere synonym for the felt environment, “the atmospheric” captures a quasi-meteorological dimension of states-of-being in formation: “an atmosphere is not an inert context but a force field in which people find themselves. It is not an effect of other forces but a lived affect—a capacity to affect and to be affected that pushes a present into a composition, an expressivity, the sense of potentiality and event” (Stewart 2011: 452; see also Anderson 2009).38 In research on sound or music, atmospheres are predominantly addressed as “states” that characterize a specific milieu and the collective inhabiting it, rather than particular individuals. Indeed, “atmosphere” or an “atmospheric situation” describes a “feeling” that fundamentally exceeds an individual body or conscious subject, and instead pertains primarily to the overall situation in which a multiplicity of bodies cohere. Atmosphere thus challenges a notion of feelings as being private or even as being the mere mental states of a cognizant subject, and instead construes feelings as spatially extended, environmental, collective, materially tangible, culturally inflected or “asubjective.” Riedel 2019: 4

The notion of atmosphere also helps to detect “forms of sociality [otherwise] difficult to observe” (McGraw 2016: 140), and thus can be productively applied to the anthropological study of rituals. This kind of “atmospheric sociality” (McGraw 2016: 140) is emergent and diffuse: less normative than Durkheim’s “collective effervescence,” it can be used to describe fleeting but sensorially rich experiences of the kind described by my interlocutors. Acting as “acoustic philosophers” (Abe 2018), the musicians of Nanto Gakuso acknowledge the contribution of gagaku and bugaku to the emergence of Onmatsuri’s charac-

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(2018); McGraw (2016); Plourde (2014, 2017, 2019); Riedel (2019); Riedel and Torvinen (2019); Roquet (2016). For a variety of approaches to affect, see Wetherell (2012); White (2017). For a different use of the term, specific to Japanese media, see Roquet (2016).

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teristic atmosphere. In doing so, they link their artistic practices to metonymic, fractal or otherwise “ostensive” signs. These signs, in turn, point towards the past not just as an interpretive category, but as a rich repository of associations that can be activated through ritual participation. That participants point toward the atmospheric dimension of the music they play in relation to the past is hardly surprising; echoing Friedlind Riedel, we could say that for the members of Nanto Gakuso “atmosphere manifests as a relation to the past” (Riedel 2019: 32). As an intangible but indispensable dimension of the festival, atmospheres of the past affect the quality of matsuri participation, shaping its environmental affordances. From an internal perspective, in fact, “the labored viscerality of being in whatever’s happening renders choices and surfaces already weighty with the atmosphere one is literally attuning to” (Stewart 2011: 451).39 Thus, it is primarily the affective potential of atmospheres that makes the concept so valuable: because they are actively partaking in something “out of the ordinary,” spectators and actors alike become aware that their own ritualized presence is “an aspect of their experience” (Schieffelin 2006: 621). In other words, “the process or activity itself becomes their mode of mutual sociality” (Schieffelin 2006: 624). From this point of view, a ritual is also the sociality that it produces—and sociality, though undoubtedly heterogeneous, is largely an effect of felt relations, or atmospheres. In their affective capacity, atmospheres are not merely constructed, but also generative.40 The circulation of interconnected symbols that reinforce a perception of coherent part-whole relations gives form to this affective-semiotic process of participation. In the case of Onmatsuri, in fact, particular “sensory surfaces” are inscribed with fractal objects, such as the architectonic “dragon scales,” the masks, the movements of the dancers, and the sounds of gagaku. These symbols recall and contribute to the emergence of the overall phenomenological experience of the matsuri: as noted by Brian Massumi, in fact, “some atmospheres can enable a ‘felt-reality of relation’” (quoted in McGraw 2016: 142). Similarly, processes of attunement to the past are often the subject of my dis39

40

At the same time, and not in contradiction to this dynamic, ritual participation may also be described by participants in passive terms: as “a particular state of consciousness or experience characteristic of a group under conditions of emotional arousal and collective effervescence while engaged in ritual activity, [participation] is characterized by the group members’ sense of ‘abandoning themselves to’ or ‘being submerged in’ or ‘overcome by’ a kind of external force, a larger compelling process, group identification, or superior (sacred) presence” (Schieffelin 2006: 615). From this point of view, as recently observed by Riedel (2019: 89), “creating and mobilizing atmospheres can be considered a technology of power.”

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cussions with Nanto Gakuso members. This is so because, to a greater extent than is generally recognized, “ritual efficacy” is also about the intimacy of sharing an atmosphere: the feeling of being part of an event (the whole) contained in the space of a single moment (a part of that whole) (see Sørensen 2006). Evocations of this kind are not restricted to human interactions. Rather, they extend to participants’ relations with supernatural entities. Deities are more than the signs and semiotic processes at play in a ritual event: they, too, can dwell in “the vanishing trace of a presence, perhaps a floating feeling of uncanniness, fear, or joy, caused by a close encounter with an elusive higher power. Discourse about gods reveals not merely the content of beliefs but a certain existential or phenomenological tonality, which is always at risk of slipping through the meshes of symbolic discourse” (Faure 2016: 48 emphasis added). This phenomenological tonality is powerfully brought to the fore by ethnographic encounters, especially when, as in my own experience with Nanto Gakuso, ritual participation is shared through performance. Performing Rakuson, one cannot but sense that music and dance are offered to humans and nonhumans alike: music and dance feed into the atmosphere of the festival because they are appropriate elements of that atmosphere. Of course, these phenomenological overtones are not open to all: ritual participation presents itself at once as spontaneous and rigidly governed. But for my interlocutors, this is far from paradoxical, because the kind of coherence they experience need not be linear. Onmatsuri’s entirety is folded in the individual pages of its celebrations. Its fractal logic makes one feel the pliancy of the partwhole relations every time a symbol is evoked or encountered. In this way, the matsuri rests upon affective and atmospheric encounters with the past, disclosing, generating, and remolding the felt presence of innumerable “partial connections” (Strathern 2004).

6

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have revisited both the history and the contemporary structure of Nara’s most important religious festival, the Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri. Combining ethnographic materials and historical sources that shed light on its religious background, I have argued that accounts that follow a “linear narrative” tend to ignore the matsuri’s composite features, downplaying the role of Buddhist institutions in the festival’s creation. Through my analysis, I have also tried to deconstruct simplistic accounts that tend to portray the matsuri as an unchanged iteration of the same events throughout the centuries. To counter this supposedly unproblematic narrative, I have tack-

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led the complexity of the matsuri by highlighting its heterogeneous features. Approached in this way, Onmatsuri emerges as a “composite of composites” (see Mol 2016). I have paid particular attention to two aspects of the festival’s complexity: its “fractal” characteristics, and the circulation of “atmospheres of the past” through material and semiotic symbolism. I have demonstrated that the history of the festival is folded in its constitutive events in such a way that access to its parts reinforces a sense of participation in a coherent whole. At the same time, I have tried to show that ritual participation functions experientially by virtue of specific signs inscribed with evocative meanings. Examples include the triangular blocks inserted in the walls of the temporary shrine and the dances performed during the Otabishosai ritual. These elements confer a distinctive “phenomenological tonality” to ritual participation. It is thanks to the tension between its fractal entanglements and “atmospheric attunements” (Stewart 2011) that Onmatsuri has managed to retain its significance in the spiritual ecology of Nara province. Future research on Onmatsuri will elucidate other ways in which the festival’s complexity has manifested itself in modern times, such as the role of transportation networks in the transformation of the matsuri into a popular tourist attraction;41 the ways in which local stakeholders transformed Onmatsuri from a provincial festival into “the festival of Nara city” (Nara no shimatsuri 奈良の市祭) (Hatakama and Yasuda 2016: 158); the processes of preservation, restoration, and renewal set forth by the nomination of the “Shintō Performing Arts of the Kasuga Shrine” as Important Intangible Folk Cultural Heritage. These lines of enquiry should be pursued via a combination of history, religious studies, and anthropology, because Onmatsuri’s past is often inscribed in the lived memory of many of its current participants, including the musicians and dancers of Nanto Gakuso. Through further integrations of oral history, ethnographic research, and ritual studies, we may be able to reach a deeper understanding of how materiality, religiosity and complex semiotic processes intertwine in sensuous ways. In the context of Nara’s specific “culture of place” (Grapard 1992: 258), in fact, “as place is sensed, senses are placed; as places make sense, senses make place” (Feld 1996: 91).

41

On this aspect, see Hatakama and Yasuda (2016: 150–165).

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Acknowledgments This work was supported by JSPS Kakenhi Grant Number 17F17760 “Past Futures: Gagaku’s Experimental Developments Within and Beyond the National Theatre” (2017–2019). Special thanks are due to the members of Nanto Gakuso and their leader, Mr. Kasagi Kan’ichi 笠置侃一 for allowing me to take part in the Onmatsuri celebrations on three different occasions (2013, 2015, 2018). I also wish to thank Daniele Sestili and Suzuki Haruo 鈴木治夫 for precious introductions, as well as the editors of this volume, Fabio Rambelli, and an anonymous reviewer of the Journal of Religion in Japan for their insightful comments.

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Plutschow, Herbert. 1996. Matsuri: The Festivals of Japan. Richmond: Japan Library. Rambelli, Fabio. 2007. Buddhist Materiality: A Cultural History of Objects in Japanese Buddhism. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rambelli, Fabio. 2013. A Buddhist Theory of Semiotics: Signs, Ontology, and Salvation in Japanese Esoteric Buddhism. New York: Bloomsbury. Riedel, Friedlind. 2019a. “Atmosphere.” In Affective Societies: Key Concepts, eds. by Jan Slaby and Christian von Scheve, London: Routledge, 85–95. Riedel, Friedlind. 2019b. “Atmospheric Relations: Theorising Music and Sound as Atmosphere.” In Music as Atmosphere: Collective Feelings and Affective Sounds, eds. Friedlind Riedel and Juha Torvinen, New York: Routledge, 1–42. Riedel, Friedlind, and Juha Torvinen (eds.). 2019. Music as Atmosphere: Collective Feelings and Affective Sounds. New York: Routledge. Roquet, Paul. 2016. Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Schieffelin, Edward L. 2006. “Participation.” In Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts, eds. Jens Kreinath, Joannes A.M. Snoek, and Michael Stausberg, Leiden: Brill, 615–627. Schnell, Scott. 1999. The Rousing Drum: Ritual Practice in a Japanese Community. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Slaby, Jan, and Christian von Scheve (eds.). 2019. Affective Societies: Key Concepts. London and New York: Routledge. Sørensen, Jørgen Podemann. 2006. “Efficacy.” In Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts, eds. Jens Kreinath, Joannes A.M. Snoek, and Michael Stausberg, Leiden: Brill, 523–531. Stewart, Kathleen. 2011. “Atmospheric Attunements.”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29(3): 445–453. Strathern, Marilyn. 2004. Partial Connections. Lanham: AltaMira Press. Teeuwen, Mark, and Fabio Rambelli. 2003. “Introduction. Combinatory Religion and the Honji Suijaku Paradigm in Pre-Modern Japan.” In Buddhas and Kami in Japan: Honji Suijaku as a Combinatory Paradigm, eds. Mark Teeuwen and Fabio Rambelli, New York: Routledge, 1–52. Terauchi, Naoko 寺内直子. 2011. Gagaku o kiku: Hibiki no niwa e no izanai 雅楽を聴く— 響きの庭への誘い. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Terauchi, Naoko. 2013. “An Alternative Gagaku Tradition: The Garyōkai and Modern Osaka.” In Music, Modernity and Locality in Prewar Japan: Osaka and Beyond, eds. Hugh De Ferranti and Alison McQueen Tokita, Aldershot: Ashgate, 173–190. Terauchi, Naoko. 2016. “Ancient and Early Medieval Performing Arts.” In A History of Japanese Theatre, ed. Jonah Salz, New York: Cambridge University Press, 4–19. Thornbury, Barbara E. 1997. The Folk Performing Arts: Traditional Culture in Contemporary Japan. Albany: State University of New York Press.

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Tsuji, Zen’nosuke 辻善之助 (ed.). 1965. Daijōin jisha zōjiki 大乘院寺社雜事記. 12 Vols. Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten. Tyler, Royall. 1990. The Miracles of the Kasuga Deity. New York: Columbia University Press. Tyler, Susan C. 1992. The Cult of Kasuga Seen through Its Art. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan. Wagner, Roy. 1991. “The Fractal Person.” In Big Men and Great Men: Personifications of Power in Melanesia, eds. Maurice Godelier and Marilyn Strathern, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 159–173. Wetherell, Margaret. 2012. Affect and Emotion: A New Social Science Understanding. Los Angeles: SAGE. White, Daniel. 2017. “Affect: An Introduction.” Cultural Anthropology 32(2): 175–180. Yamamichi, Kōzō 山道興造. 1991. “Eizō Kaisetsu: Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri” 映像 解説–春日若宮おん祭り. In Chūsei no sairei: Chūō kara chihō e (Taikei Nihon rekishi to geinō: Oto to eizō to moji ni yoru) 中世の祭礼中央から地方へ (大系日本歴史と芸 能—音と映像と文字による). Vol. 4, eds. Amino Yoshihiko 網野善彦 et al., Tokyo: Heibonsha, 157–174. Yamato Geinō Konwakai 大和芸能懇話会 (ed.). 2015. Onmatsuri no hirogari おん祭の 広がり. Nara: Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri Hozonkai. Yasuda, Tsuguo 安田次郎. 2001. Chūsei no Kōfukuji to Yamato 中世の興福寺と大和. Tokyo: Yamakawa.

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chapter 9

Demographic Change in Contemporary Rural Japan and Its Impact on Ritual Practices Susanne Klien Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan [email protected]

Abstract Contemporary rural Japan is characterized by depopulation, reflected by the large number of aging residents, abandoned houses and shops (akiya 空家) and an increased number of “hamlets at the margin” (Ono 2005), i.e. hamlets with more than 50% of residents over 65 years old. As a result, many ritual festivities including matsuri 祭 (festivals) of various kinds face challenges in securing practitioners. This study explores the impact of demographic change on selected ritual practices in Niigata Prefecture, drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2007–2009 and 2018. With a focus on the changes that traditional Buddhist dances and Shintō shamanic performing arts known as kagura have undergone as a result of demographic decline and lifestyle shifts, this chapter examines the measures residents are taking to ensure the continuity of ritual practices.

Keywords demographic decline – ethnography – ritual practice – agency of practitioners – kagura – nenbutsu odori

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Introduction

Rural Japan usually evokes images of demographic decline, depopulation and derelict housing. Ono Akira’s notion of genkai shūraku 限界集落 (marginal hamlets, 2005), i.e. hamlets that cannot function any longer due to more than 50% of the residents being over the age of 65, has become a widely cited term in sociology and adjacent disciplines. There is no doubt that Japan has faced

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an unprecedented aging population in recent years: according to calculations from the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Japan’s population is expected to decrease from 127 million in 2005 to 116.7 million in 2030, with the percentage of residents over 75 growing from 9 % to 20 % (Muramatsu and Akiyama 2011: 426–427; Kato 2014: 26). The most recent population census conducted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in 2015 revealed that the national average for the percentage of people aged 65 or older had already reached 26.6%.1 According to a report published in May 2014 by the Japan Policy Council (JPC), a private think tank, 896 municipalities will “vanish” in the near future (Kato 2014: 25). Switek has pinpointed Japan’s contemporary situation: “As the most aged society in the world today, Japan is at the forefront of demographic change expected to affect populations across the globe” (Switek 2014: 263). Not surprisingly, rural areas have a high proportion of senior citizens. Previous research has described the growing salience of age across Japan (Traphagan 2008: 387; Traphagan and Knight 2003; Thompson 2006, 2014; Love 2007, 2013, 2014; Allison 2013; Kavedzija 2014; Danely 2016) and how retired individuals maintain their health by engaging in daily activities such as gateball (Traphagan 1998). Indeed, driving through rural areas, we find ubiquitous signs of greying residents: vehicles for the elderly before home entrances to ensure access if owners cannot walk with ease, green maple leaf stickers that designate drivers over seventy, gateball tournaments. Kajii (2008) provides impressive visual documentation of aged people living in rural communities facing severe depopulation and declining birthrates. Statistics clearly indicate where Japan is moving demographically. This paper aims to qualitatively explore the impact of demographic decline on traditional ritual practices categorized as folk performing arts, focusing on the perspective of its practitioners. As Thompson has argued, “the preservation of local minzoku geinō (folk performance arts) was a serious concern among municipal residents throughout Japan who feared that their grassroots folk traditions and cultural histories would be forfeited to modernity during the postwar period” (Thompson 2006: 124). The demographic decline has clearly taken a toll on ritual practices in rural areas. I will present empirical data to illustrate the multilayered—and hopefully more nuanced—impact of depopulation on individual ritual practition-

1 https://www.stat.go.jp/data/kokusei/2015/kekka/kihon1/pdf/gaiyou1.pdf (Accessed on 12 March 2019).

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ers. I propose that the practices of the groups introduced in this chapter indicate that individuals who engage in traditions are torn between 1) long-held values of timeless traditions as ontological norms of society and 2) creatively coping with inevitable demographic changes. These two concurring features explain the gap between alleged continuity and the need for traditions to change in order to maintain their societal relevance. As Peter Berger succinctly puts it, “Traditions persist because they change” (Berger 2009: 43). Within this context, my research shows that on the one hand, group members often claim that the tradition they engage in has not changed over time. At the same time, however, participant observation and follow-up interviews reveal that considerable change has occurred, sometimes as a conscious decision by practitioners. This confirms Latour’s claim: “One is not born traditional, one chooses to become traditional by constant innovation” (Latour 1994: 103). Demographic decline has forced aging rural residents to rethink previous ways of perpetuating traditions that were focused on clearly bounded, tightly knit agricultural hamlets. Rural areas continue to be perceived as dichotomic opposites of progressive urban centers, fitting into nostalgia-laden catchphrases such as furusato 故郷 (native place or old hometown) or satoyama 里 山 (area between mountain hills and arable flat land) as cogently analyzed by Robertson (1991: 30–32). However, participant observation and individual narratives indicate that practitioners have resorted to creative ways of coping with demographic decline. In so doing, they have redefined the scope of their communities as well as the notion of bounded rural villages as carriers of tradition (Klien 2016). In other words, in sharp contrast to previous ways of geographically clear bounded perpetuation of traditions, mobility and hybridization have emerged as key features in folk performing arts. Furthermore, in contrast to some practitioners’ assumptions about the timeless nature of their traditions, participant observation and narratives indicate that “preservation” is characterized by ongoing adaptation to constantly changing environments and circumstances. Victor Turner has described societies as “processes [that are] responsive to change, not fixed structures. Forms survive through flux, and new ritual items, even new ritual configurations, tend more often to be variants of old themes than radical novelties” (Turner in Applebaum 1987: 488–489). On the subject of changing environments, Kawano Satsuki has incisively observed that “The creation of ritual contexts comes, not only from acting bodies, but also from the environments that contain them. Bodies do not act in a vacuum. Whether in a house, a neighborhood, or a shrine, it is necessary to take ritual environments as seriously as the ritual bodies that act in them” (Kawano 2005: 7).

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Drawing on this intricate reciprocity of individuals and their environments and the constant changes permeating both, I will explore how demographic decline shapes ritual practice. Analyses of two selected preservation groups in Niigata Prefecture—one related to Buddhist invocation dances and one engaging in Shintō shamanic performing arts referred to as kagura—provide important insights into how aging rural inhabitants face the palpable impacts of demographic decline.

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Method and Key Questions

This study draws on empirical data obtained from participant observation conducted in 2007–2009 and follow-up fieldwork in 2018 in Tōkamachi City, Niigata Prefecture. Located in southern Niigata Prefecture in one of the most picturesque regions of Japan, with high mountains and abundant snow in the winter, Tōkamachi is known for its rice cultivation as well as sake production. Tōkamachi City had its peak number of residents in 1950, when the population exceeded 104,000. In 2017, the number of registered residents had shrunk to almost half at 54,917 (Tōkamachishi Kyōiku Iinkai Jimukyoku Bunka Supōtsubu Bunkazaika 2018: 22). By 1990, senior citizens over 65 exceeded individuals below 15 years of age, with a rate of aging of 37.06 % by 2016. In some secluded mountain hamlets, the aging rate is even higher. Ten years ago, I was a postdoctoral researcher based in Tokyo conducting qualitative research into the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, a contemporary art festival, in Tōkamachi City. As part of this project, I also explored both local and non-local appropriation of traditions.2 I argue that these ritual practices offer valuable vantage points from which to assess how aging rural residents cope with the impact of demographic decline. Surprisingly, other than the research of Thornbury (1993), Knight (1994), Traphagan (2008), Traphagan and Knight (2003), Thompson (2008, 2014) and Watanabe (2016), there are no studies in English that explore the links between depopulation and ritual practices in Japan. I address this lacuna by focusing on the following key questions:

2 Over the past decade, I returned to the field several times, but since I was researching unrelated projects, I could not meet all of the groups I had interviewed before. I visited Akakura, the second site described in this paper, briefly, to meet the former chairman of the group and his wife.

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– What changes have preservation societies faced over the past ten years? – What measures have practitioners taken to address these changes? – What impact do these changes have on the meaning of these ritual practices? – What views do preservation society members express regarding their future? – What does this tell us about the ascribed temporality of traditions?

3

Rituals: Between Individual Agency and Collective Constraint Rituals are performative: they are acts done, and performances are ritualized: they are codified, repeatable actions. Schechner 1994: 613

Rituals are more than repetitive, stylized, prescribed behavior or the social routine. Kawano 2005: 3

The above descriptions reflect how the study of rituals has changed from generally performative understandings (Schechner 1994) to interpretations that ascribe to them multilayered functions (Kawano 2005), leaving opportunities for intentional intervention on behalf of stakeholders. In this section, I draw on previous research that perceived the creativity of ritual in diverse contexts (Geertz 1973: 412–454; Tambiah 1979; Kawano 2005; and Bell 1997), adopting the interpretation of rituals as tools of individual expression that are subject to constant change. The two cases presented below illustrate how practitioners move between social change, as embodied by individual appropriation, and adaptation to external circumstances, such as demographic decline. The tension and disconnect palpable between practices and assumptions of preservation groups across Japan embody the evolution of traditions, from Weberian antipodes to modernity to postmodern interpretations. In order to ascribe continued relevance to traditions in postmodernity, scholars from various disciplines have emphasized the interpretative element rather than the essential nature of traditions (Robertson 1998: 111). For example, Shoham defines tradition as “assigned temporal meaning, i.e. a symbolic activity in which various social groups attribute traditional qualities to certain sectors of life that are understood as binding together different times” (Shoham 2011: 313). Similarly, in his observations of modern sumo wrestling, Marshall Sahlins stated that “Modern sumo is clearly a permutation of older

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forms and relationships, made appropriate to novel situations.” He continued with the assertion that “This is a living tradition, precisely one that has been able to traverse history” (Sahlins 1999: 408–409). In the pages that follow, I draw on the coexistence thesis, which holds that detraditionalization—the demise of tradition and traditional society— has already occurred, but at the same time, “traditions rely on individual critical reappropriations for their continuous efficacy over time and space, and (conversely) individuals rely on background habits for their freedom of thought” (Ingram 1997: 1728). The tension between the dynamic practices that comprise traditions, and the perceptions of traditions as antimodern values, illustrates the pressures that practitioners face in revitalizing such traditions. Adjusting previous iterations of a particular tradition and shaping it so that it transcends time and space is no easy task, as the case studies below will show. Despite evidence that both performing arts originated outside of the local community in which they are practiced today, current practitioners still tend to emphasize their local context and relevance. Their narratives indicate that they continue to hold on to persistent notions of traditions as ontological norms, grounded in the soil, propagated as timeless heritage.

4

Case Study 1: The Power of Camaraderie in Traditional Performing Arts Nakajō Dai no saka Preservation Group

The Nakajō Dai no saka 中条大の坂 (lit. ‘the great slope’ of Nakajō) dance takes place in Nakajō, a district of Tōkamachi City that currently has a population of 9025 residents, as compared to 9870 residents in 2010.3 Located north of central Tōkamachi, Nakajō is adjacent to the Shinano River, blessed with abundant nature and characterized by flat rice paddies. Nakajō Dai no saka belongs to the category of bon 盆 dance, i.e. a dance performed at the annual bon festival in mid-summer. Dancers stand in a circle and move slowly, usually accompanied by taiko drums. There are no written sources about the beginnings of the Dai no saka. The dance is said to contain elements invoking Śākyamuni Buddha, such as bowing one’s head to express respect, forming a circle and repeating chants. It has also been claimed that it was ‘imported’ by a kimono merchant trading in Echigo cotton crêpe (chijimi

3 See Tōkamachi City homepage http://www.city.tokamachi.lg.jp/shisei_machidukuri/F100/F1 01/1454068621571.html (Accessed 28 February 2019).

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縮) some 200 years ago, who came back from a trip to Kyoto and Osaka and

subsequently spread the dance to Niigata (Horinouchi-chō Kyōiku Iinkai 1975: 3). After World War Two, the tradition lapsed for ten years, but was resumed by the young men’s association and has been performed ever since in the annual bon festivities in August.4 It has constituted an important source of entertainment and a space for casual meeting, especially for younger residents; thus, as an element of social interaction, it has long been of critical significance, as I will discuss later. The current Dai no saka Preservation Group (hozonkai 保存会) was founded in October 1973, and the dance itself was designated as an intangible folk cultural property by Tōkamachi City (mukei minzoku bunkazai 無形民俗文化財) on 26 January 1984.5 However, according to group members, they had been coming together to practice the dance as an amateur singing group uta no aikōkai 歌の愛好会 long before. For four years now, the present chairman of the group has been Ikeda Masaharu, a quiet but energetic sexagenarian whose father had also been a member. Compared to other preservation groups, this group is modest in its size. When I conducted participant observation and interviews with the group back in 2008–2009, there were twenty members (as compared to twenty-eight in 2001), with the number decreasing annually—no new member has joined for ten years now. Following up on my fieldwork almost ten years later in autumn 2018, I learned that membership has now decreased to fifteen (ten males, five females), as some members have died or left the group. Currently, the oldest member is ninety-one, the youngest member is sixty years old. Higuchi Tatsuichi, former chairman of the young men’s association, indicates his regret that the current Nakajō Dai no saka group has not been successful in fundraising compared to similar associations in other communities. He jokes that Nakajō residents are too laid back to bother about funds (inter-

4 In rural areas, typically, different age associations stratify communities into broadly defined groupings of peers, as John Traphagan points out (2000: 86). Young men’s associations (seinen dan 青年団) generally include men from twenty years of age until their early forties, while old persons’ clubs accommodates individuals over sixty years of age. 5 Preservation groups are commonly set up by practitioners, often when the number of members is decreasing. Some dances, including the Dai no saka dance and Akakura Kagura 赤倉神 楽, have been designated as intangible folk cultural properties (mukei minzoku bunkazai). In the report Tōkamachishi rekishi bunka kihon kōzō (Tōkamachi City Basic Plan on History and Culture) issued in 2018, Tōkamachi City lists thirteen such properties (Tōkamachishi Kyōiku Iinkai Jimukyoku Bunka Supōtsubu Bunkazaika 2018: 95). Groups that hold this designation receive a symbolic annual subsidy of 10,000 JPY from the municipal government, which is funded partly by the national Agency of Cultural Affairs (Bunkachō 文化庁).

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view, 18 August 2008). The group does not pursue any systematic planning or strategy with regard to maintaining and managing tradition, although they are aware of the urgent need to recruit new members. Questioned about how they came to join the Nakajō Dai no saka group, almost all male members joined through their engagement in the young men’s association. Some members have participated for several decades and observe that the social context of the dance has changed considerably. As a kind of bon dance, Dai no saka was once an essential part of social community life; in the past, such festivities were one of the only forms of entertainment and were therefore extremely popular, especially among younger people, since they provided a space of encounter (deai 出会い) with others. Despite this eminently secular function, the practice has long been placed in the category of nenbutsu odori 念仏踊り, or dances in honor of Amida Buddha.6 By paying their respects to Amida Buddha, dancers hope to achieve rebirth in the Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss (gokuraku jōdo 極楽浄土; Sk. Sukhāvatī). A more famous version of the dance practiced in nearby Horinouchi Town, which was designated as an important intangible folk cultural property on the national level ( jūyō mukei minzoku bunkazai 重要無形民俗文化財), emerged from the human need to cope with the frustration and stress of everyday life; sources indicate that the dance was performed to this end as early as 1279 (Horinouchi-chō Kyōiku Iinkai 1975: 5), but it was also gradually ascribed with the meaning of honoring one’s ancestors, as in a true bon dance. No such source exists to explain the Nakajō Dai no saka, but it too is considered to be a variety of the nenbutsu dance that spread due to its great popularity, albeit a secular version that nonetheless retains some religious aspects. It may strike some readers as ironic that older practitioners associate the dance that was initially started as a ritual practice to pacify the spirit of deceased ancestors with romantic feelings and entertainment in their youth. However, even the initiator of the nenbutsu dance, the monk Kūya 空也 (903–972), combined the pacifying functions of the dance with the entertainment of local children (Kawakami 1988: 122). Such a confluence of religious and secular elements seems entrenched in Japanese folk practices over centuries, as seen in Elisabetta Porcu’s research about the blurring of secular and religious with regard to the Gion Matsuri (Porcu 2012, and in this volume). The number of participants in annual Dai no saka events in recent years confirms the impact of ongoing depopulation. According to the reports on 6 Nenbutsu odori (Buddhist invocation dances) were first introduced by monk Kūya 空也 (903– 972). Kawakami (1988: 122) defines nenbutsu odori as “dances accompanied by the sound of bells and drums while reciting Buddhist prayers.” See also Yagi (in this volume).

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activities by the Dai no saka group, in 2017 performances at local religious sites attracted considerably fewer practitioners than those at public schools and commercial locations. For example, a gathering at the local Chōsenji 長泉寺 temple on 9 August only attracted five participants, while a performance at the local Yawata Matsuri on 26 August had only three practitioners. 4.1 Social Significance Members of the Dai no saka Preservation Group meet monthly on Friday evenings to practice. Originally, meetings were scheduled more frequently, but the group chairman explains that due to the rather simple steps of the dance, members now only need to gather once a month. Dancers form a circle and move clockwise. Practices are often followed by casual drinking, which reflects the importance of social interaction and jovial camaraderie. Some members explicitly refer to the pleasure such meetings hold for them, since they offer opportunities for exchanging opinions with other members across generations in an egalitarian manner, which is rare in quotidian social interaction. Before practice starts, members chat jovially about issues unrelated to the dance. Additionally, the group has gone on trips together several times. In autumn 2009, for example, they went to Yamanashi Prefecture for the pleasure of traveling together. Members remark that they would not continue as a group if everybody were not on such good terms; indeed, especially now that municipal funds have been reduced, most expenses need to be paid individually, so membership in the group also reflects a small financial commitment and therefore a commitment to spending time with each other. When I revisited the group in November 2018, the sense of friendship and amicable camaraderie was still evident. Group members continue to make trips together once a year; they shared with me their happy memories of their last trip to Naruko Onsen in Miyagi Prefecture and mentioned their upcoming trip to Sendai. 4.2 Practice and Transmission The preservation society performs annually at the Tōkamachi Snow Festival in February and at the traditional arts festival at the Belnatio Resort near Tōkamachi in September. Once a year, group members gather to discuss issues related to the tradition, membership and organizational matters. The society has emphasized transmitting the tradition by instructing students of Nakajō primary and junior high schools, and two group members regularly teach at the local high school with the aim of recruiting younger members. Some members try to attract their grandchildren, but so far to no avail. Nevertheless, during our meeting in November 2018, the group seemed optimistic about its future,

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arguing that those who are interested in this kind of dance will join sooner or later (interview, 2 November 2018). In 1990, the group issued a sixteen-page manual that contains instructions on how to practice the dance and sing the accompanying songs. Apart from this manual, however, no written material exists with regard to Dai no saka. Transmission and instruction take part by practicing together, younger participants watching the more experienced group members and imitating their movements and singing. The dance is accompanied by high-pitched singing and traditional Japanese drums (taiko). Practitioners repeatedly chant “Namu Amida Butsu,” the traditional prayer to the Buddha Amida. Since the movements are not physically strenuous, group members can keep dancing for several hours (Tōkamachi Shishi Hensan Iinkai 1997: 89). One octogenarian member remembers that in her youth, bon dances used to last for two full days and she could hardly wait to join such events. She reminisces with laughter that she met her husband at one such event, remarking that she has so many happy memories of these dances (interview, 18 August 2008). Smiling whimsically, former chairman Higuchi Tatsuichi, who has engaged in the dance for more than forty years now, tells me that in those days he used to stay out with his friends—using the term yoasobi 夜遊び or night play—and they would have to walk home early in the morning. Another member points out that with the advent of television, many people stopped coming to the dances. Before that, the temple grounds used to be so crowded that one could hardly move. Other members point out that the contemporary lifestyle of corporate employment is not compatible with such long-lasting social events. In the past, when seasonal summer festivities were highly popular, most residents were self-employed, primarily working in agriculture, and could thus stay as long as they liked. The bon dance I attended in August 2009 attracted numerous participants, all of them from the local region and representing all generations, although there were more elderly people than younger ones. However, the enthusiasm, vitality and joie de vivre described by senior group members when they reminisced about the bon dances of their youth was nowhere to be found. In fact, while there was a pleasant matsuri atmosphere—with food stalls and vendors selling toys and various gadgets—the slightly repetitive rhythm of the Dai no saka dance carried traces of melancholy, which was reinforced by the lack of dancers. Senior members regret that in contemporary times, with so much opportunity for alternate entertainment, bon dances do not seem attractive to younger generations (interview, 10 August 2008). Despite changes to both the social context of Dai no saka and its significance to the community, most members maintain that the dance itself has

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not changed much. However, they also admit that some changes may have occurred over time, but the original state of the dance cannot be verified for lack of documentation. One senior member eventually mentions that in the past, old women used to dance while actually praying and bowing their heads. Some more experienced members still know how to dance in this style, but at some point it was decided not to continue with this style. After this historical change was mentioned, most members seem surprised, noting that this is the first time they had heard this story. The overall sense that I get from my discussions is that historically the Dai no Saka Preservation Group has had a rather static understanding of tradition and how to protect it; members generally agree that extreme changes are not acceptable, since that would pose a risk to its continuity in its present form. Yet, some of them also know that historically, there have been changes and decisions about how to proceed, and they also indicate that they will leave it to the younger members to maintain the tradition and to decide about what course to take in the future. To sum up, the tradition of Dai no saka dance has undergone distinct changes even if most members do not seem to know about them or be concerned about the details. Whereas formerly, the dance was performed within the framework of a bounded community and was attributed important social functions, it is now performed frequently at annual events mostly for external visitors (especially in the case of the traditional arts festival). However, for many members, especially the more senior ones, the dance still holds precious memories of happy days gone by; for a majority of members, participating regularly in the group helps them reproduce the past and engage in social interaction. This romanticist nostalgia for bygone days implies that continuing to engage in the dance is a means for some, especially more senior members, to assign temporal meaning (Shoham 2011: 313) to something that otherwise might be discarded as an artifact of the past; that is, their deep feelings for its past incarnations help them to create connections with the present and, possibly, with the future. Indeed, I contend that the very nostalgic memories of the past described by some practitioners are assigned relevance in the present not only through the dance itself, but through the concomitant regular meetings and joint trips with other group members. Reproducing the past and connecting the past to the present and future may be a key incentive for members to continue to engage in this dance. This may be why social interaction is generally ascribed high importance by group members. At a practice session in the local community center, a male practitioner remarked to me that his main incentive for continuing his mem-

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bership is the opportunity to engage with fellow members regardless of age, status and other factors in an egalitarian manner and to exchange opinions about issues unrelated to the tradition that brought them together. A female septuagenarian who has been a member for over thirty years conceded that since she has been in the group for so long, she sometimes skips the monthly practice. More than the practice, she explained, she enjoys the casual gathering and drinking with other members after the practice. In fact, in terms of length of time spent, drinking far exceeds dancing (interview, 2 November 2018). Clearly, practitioners’ narratives and participant observation suggest that in this case tradition functions as a significant vehicle for stimulating social interaction in an increasingly depopulated society.7

5

Case Study 2: “There Are Things You Can’t Buy with Money— We Really Want People!”

5.1

The Akakura Kagura Preservation Group The fascination with the Akakura Kagura, in short, is its unassuming naturalness and wit that has been transmitted from ancient times. I think it is no exaggeration to claim that its appeal comes from the fact that the colours of former times have been preserved in their original state. Sumiyoshi 1996: 120

The village of Akakura is located eight kilometers up in the mountains from central Tōkamachi and has all the features of a so-called marginal hamlet: remoteness, depopulation, and a disproportionately large number of aging residents. The street leading up to the village was restored only a few years ago; formerly it took residents a full day to walk downtown and come back again. According to statistical data produced by the Tōkamachi municipal office, in 2007 Akakura had nineteen households with fifty-eight inhabitants.8 By 2017, the number of households was down to eighteen with a total number of thirty-

7 In another example, a female member in her seventies conceded that she did not attend practices for some time due to a car accident; however, she resumed dancing after her recovery, partly to improve her fitness and overall wellbeing (interview, 18 August 2008). This indicates considerable individual agency and adaptation to personal needs in appropriations of folk performing arts. 8 Tōkei de miru Tōkamachi, Chapter Three: 37, http://www.city.tokamachi.lg.jp/soshiki/sm/02/ 03/gyomu/1450419679604.html (accessed 30 January 2019).

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nine residents (twenty-one male, eighteen female).9 These figures illustrate Japan’s transition from a society where multigenerational households were the norm to households with only 1–2 residents, often aging ones. The Akakura Kagura Preservation Group consists only of local residents: everybody registered in the village automatically becomes a member. The preservation group was founded in 1966 with the aim of promoting and fostering the transmission of the local performance tradition, known as Akakura Kagura, to the next generation. It was felt that this “training of successors” (kōkeisha ikusei 後継者育成, Sumiyoshi 1996: 26) was necessary because of the increasing difficulty of attracting younger people willing to learn the Shintō shamanic dance due to changing lifestyles and work conditions and the ensuing depopulation of the village (cf. Kawano 2005: 111). In other words, the preservation society was only founded when a sense of crisis emerged about the dwindling number of members (interview, 2 November 2018). Literally meaning “the entertainment for the kami (deities),” kagura 神楽 has been defined as “a religious performance that often accompanies Shintō matsuri 祭 (rite or festival) and is considered its prototype” (Averbuch 1998: 294). The main function of kagura was chinkon 鎮魂 or the pacifying of spirits, through which people could gain the support and goodwill of the deities in order to have a good harvest, be blessed with descendants and the like. Every year, the Akakura Kagura is performed on the grounds of the local Jūnisha Jinja 十二社神社, evidence of its strong religious connotations. As will be outlined later, previously, kagura was embedded in village (agricultural) everyday life and constituted a natural part of communal identity. Being an active kagura member was synonymous with being a respectable resident. On the surface, the Buddhist invocation dance (Dai no saka) and the entertainment of the deities (Akakura Kagura) seem divergent genres. However, significantly, both rituals revolve around chinkon. Kobayashi and Knecht (1981: 2) indicate, “Although it had undergone changes in later periods, kagura is originally a rite for the repose of souls of the departed, a chinkon rite.” In a similar vein, Inoue recently argues that it is “vital that comparative research is conducted between kagura and Nenbutsu odori (Buddhist prayer dances), which also share the characteristic of rituals for the spirits of the dead” (Inoue 2008: 292).

9 http://www.city.tokamachi.lg.jp/soshiki/sm/02/03/gyomu/1450419679604.html, (accessed 30 January 2019).

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figure 9.1 Akakura Kagura Shishi: The main kagura performance in autumn Photo by Author

5.2 Historical Origins It is generally assumed that Akakura Kagura dates back 300–400 years. One hypothesis suggests it originates with village or folk kagura, known as sato kagura 里神楽, of the Yotsuya style, which was popular in Edo, and may have been taken up by Akakura residents during pilgrimages to the Ise Shrine (Ise Jingū 伊勢神宮). Another claim is that the dance can be traced back to Jōetsu and the Kubiki region; however, no definite sources exist to verify either assertion (Akakura Kagura Hozonkai 2000: 1; Tōkamachi Shishi Hensan Iinkai 1997: 756). Reportedly, the oldest historical document about Akakura Kagura is from 1692 (Genroku 元禄 5), but its whereabouts are unknown. There is also a document from 1770 (Meiwa 明和 7) showing that the costs for the restoration of the local Jūnisha Shrine in that year were partially covered by income from kagura performances (Tōkamachi Shishi Hensan Iinkai 1997: 756). More generally, kagura centering on the lion dance, as does Akakura Kagura, was previously practiced in many places throughout Niigata Prefecture. This type of kagura is referred to as shishi kagura 獅子神楽 (lion kagura). The dance as performed in Akakura has many similarities with daidai kagura 代々 神楽, short dances typically performed before the main altar of a shrine for a small

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audience of jinja and parish representatives (as opposed to the miko kagura 巫女神楽 type or priestess dance), which is said to have started as a dedication

ritual and is thus greatly respected. However, in the case of Akakura, the dance was not historically performed by shrine staff but rather by farmers, so while it does not belong to the daidai kagura type, it has borrowed heavily from this category. The Akakura Kagura performance can be divided into four sections: niwamai 庭舞 (dance of the garden), iwatomai 岩戸舞 (rock cave dance), men kagura 面 神楽 (kagura performed with masks) and tsurugi no mai 剣の舞 (sword dance). In addition, it includes kyōgen 狂言 (traditional Japanese comic theatre) and manzai 漫才 (a two-man comical play). Between scenes, Ise Ondo 伊勢音頭 (folk singing and dancing in Ise style), Kōdaiji 広大寺 (a piece about a local temple), hana okesa odori 花笠踊 (traditional singing and dancing featuring conical hats adorned with flowers) and other art forms are performed; all these scenes and genres together are referred to as the Akakura Kagura. The dance is accompanied by music, usually traditional Japanese flute ( fue), drums (taiko) and the three-stringed instrument shamisen. Despite the fact that conversations about and textual material on the Akakura Kagura tend to focus on historical continuity and its identity as a form of timeless heritage, rituals of dedication were hardly ever performed during the Meiji period; regular dedication ceremonies were only held from 1912 through 1935 (Tōkamachi Shishi Hensan Iinkai 1997: 757). Before that, dedication rituals were carried out only on certain occasions, such as the construction of new houses, marriages, koshōgatsu 小正月 (celebrated in the first month of the year) and other seasonal festivities. Presently, the only remaining seasonal event of this sort is the September shrine festival. Many Akakura community members think of their kagura tradition as unchanging. In fact, the chairman of the preservation group states that if change were to feature in kagura performance, it would be the end of kagura as it has been transmitted from ancient times. His use of the word ine 稲 (rice plant) to describe the essence of this form of kagura that needs to be preserved illustrates its strong agricultural context (interview, 6 August 2008). Conversations with group members show they feel a great sense of responsibility to preserve, practice and transmit the dance from one generation to the next. Despite these feelings, however, in practice Akakura Kagura is not characterized by static preservation. The commemorative booklet published by the preservation group on the anniversary of the group’s founding in 2000 illustrates the complex dynamic between preservation and change. For example, it mentions the importance of “stealing good points from others” and combining one’s individual physical characteristics smoothly with kagura so that one’s dance becomes

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personal, but at the same time, maintains a standard that honors the name of the Akakura Kagura as an intangible folk cultural property designated by the local government (Akakura Kagura Hozonkai 2000: 74). Clearly, creative appropriation has been an accepted part of kagura performance for some time now. To reiterate, this flexibility in the perpetuation of tradition seems to contradict the official rhetoric of the chairman and group members. On the one hand, residents hold their revered kagura tradition in high respect, resulting in a distinct sense of responsibility to preserve the time-honored tradition. On the other hand, they also simultaneously indicate their awareness of the changing conditions they face: decreased interest in kagura, dwindling membership numbers and aging practitioners. There are also generational differences between practitioners and their view of this tradition. More senior practitioners tend to speak with enthusiasm about their mostly positive memories of acquiring and improving the numerous skills required for kagura and related social experiences; younger practitioners often focus on their sense of obligation to continue a tradition passed on from their fathers and grandfathers. Such divergent experiences illustrate the implicit generational differences in meaning derived from folk performing arts such as kagura. In the narratives of more senior practitioners, there is a nostalgia for the past and a deep contextualization of kagura as part of community life, which may account for their implicit assumptions about the continuity of the tradition despite demographic decline and lifestyle changes. Akakura Kagura was designated as the first intangible folk cultural property in Tōkamachi by the Department of Cultural Property (bunkazaika 文化財課) of the Tōkamachi City Museum in 1976. From 1994 onwards, the group received funds from Niigata Prefecture and Tōkamachi City for activities related to the training of successors and could thus purchase the necessary performing equipment (Akakura Kagura Hozonkai 2000: Preface). Whereas in former times, there were numerous other hamlets in the Echigo-Tsumari region where kagura was practiced, Akakura is the only one remaining. In the places that had a kagura tradition before, even memories of the dance have mostly vanished (Tōkamachi Shishi Hensan Iinkai 1997: 755–756). The close linkage between the kagura preservation group and community affairs as such is highlighted by the fact that the annual meeting of the preservation group is held together with the community meeting to discuss issues related to Akakura. In other words, kagura is synonymous with village identity. Given this background, it is no surprise that the annual performance in the village is an eminently important event and takes place before a crowded and partly non-local audience. According to one resident, for those living in Akakura it would seem unnatural not to take part in the kagura. The former

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chairman of the preservation group, Niwano Tadao, suggests that the great popularity of kagura in the village is comparable to a string of DNA (interview, 6 August 2008). Residents also state that due to its small size, the village is extremely well contained, which facilitates the organization of preservation meetings. In fact, the preservation group has been praised by the municipal education council of Tōkamachi for having contributed to slowing depopulation (Akakura Kagura Hozonkai 2000: 5). Indeed, compared to other villages in the region, depopulation seems to have occurred at a relatively slow pace in Akakura. When I conducted fieldwork in 2007–2008, despite the small size of the village and its aging residents, I did not sense the same atmosphere of resignation or depression that I had in other hamlets. However, when I conducted a follow-up in 2018, this had changed and there were clear signs of progressing depopulation. Residents are now mostly in their seventies and eighties, and there are no infants at all. Given these demographic circumstances, sexagenarians are considered “young” in the preservation group (interview, 2 November 2018). Depopulation even featured in jokes: when the conversation threatened to be derailed multiple times by autumnal kamemushi かめ虫 (stink bugs), practitioners laughed that there are plenty of bugs but no people in the hamlet (interview, 2 November 2018). The main character of the kagura, the lion, has been performed by 31-yearold Kazuma-san (Figure 9.2), who works in the agricultural cooperative in central Tōkamachi. When I revisited Akakura in 2018, Kazuma-san had moved downtown, but continues to perform the lion. One of the long-term septuagenarian members concedes that when he was in his fifties, he assumed that everyone would stay in the hamlet (and in the preservation group) and Akakura would endure as a community. However, currently, with fewer than twenty households, he is not sure what future awaits the hamlet and its residents (interview, 2 November 2018). 5.3 Social Significance At the rehearsals, there are representatives across generations, but the tier of individuals between thirty and forty is the most sparsely represented. Back in 2008, according to the chairman, the preservation group did not have a sense of crisis about its continuity. At the time, the chairman was convinced that residents would maintain their interest in the folk theatre, and that interested non-locals would also come to see the performance in the future. This is also why the preservation group did not make efforts to disseminate information about its activities and performances. As the previous chairman Niwano Tadao stated back in 2008, “We are not selling it much (laughs). We are not a busi-

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figure 9.2 Kazuma-san backstage after kagura performance, September 2007 Photo by author

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ness, after all. And we don’t have much of a sense of crisis that our kagura may vanish” (interview, 6 August 2008). The Akakura Kagura Preservation Group performs in the annual festival in autumn organized by the Traditional Performing Arts Group (Dentō Geinō Hozonkai 伝統芸能保存会). Still more important is the performance that takes place annually, usually on the first Saturday in September, on the grounds of the local Jūnisha Shrine, as the kagura is dedicated to its tutelary deity (Akakura Kagura Hozonkai 2000: 3; Tōkamachi Shishi Hensan Iinkai 1997: 756). This performance setting clearly indicates its strong religious connotations even if practitioners do not explicitly verbalize the religious nature of their kagura. Furthermore, according to the Tōkamachi shishi 十日町市史 (Tōkamachi Municipal History), the fact that the Akakura Kagura utilizes a portable shrine (mikoshi 御輿) provides evidence of its origins in Ise Dai Kagura 伊勢大神楽, a genre of itinerant kagura in which performers travelled across Japan (Tōkamachi Shishi Hensan Iinkai 1997: 756). Despite the fact that the performance takes place at a Shintō shrine, as Averbuch has poignantly argued, Buddhist elements feature in numerous kagura texts (Averbuch 2013: 248), and Akakura Kagura is no different. While at first sight, it seems to fit neatly into Shintō paradigms, some expressions can be interpreted as Buddhist “footprints,” to borrow Averbuch’s expression. For example, in the opening dance called iwatomai 岩戸舞 (dance of the rock cave) performed by the lion, the kagura text refers to the “four worlds” (shikai 四界), an expression denoting heaven, earth, water and sun—or, in Buddhist thought, earth, water, fire and wind (Sumiyoshi 1996: 55, 61). The same dance features a Daigongen 大権現 (Sumiyoshi 1996: 55), which denotes an “earthly manifestation (i.e. kami) of a buddha or bodhisattva” (Averbuch 2013: 250). The September performance on the village shrine grounds is the major social event of the year, with everybody in the village and many in Tōkamachi attending, even mothers with their sleeping infants on their backs. Before the kagura starts, the chairman invites guests to a generous banquet at his spacious house a few minutes from the shrine grounds where the kagura would be performed (in case of rain, the performance takes places in the local community center). Guests usually include the mayor of Tōkamachi, municipal parliamentarians, employees of the prefectural revitalization bureau and kagura-related acquaintances, friends and family members. When I had the honor to be invited in 2007, I was the only female (and foreign) guest at the banquet. According to former chairman Niwano Tadao, the banquet is funded by individual donations as well as neighborhood association fees. The atmosphere at the banquet was family-like, with copious amounts of alcohol consumed. Later, while watching the kagura at the shrine, spectators

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figure 9.3 Pre-kagura dinner reception, September 2007 Photo by author

also enjoyed drinking sake and chatting in between the acts so that the entire atmosphere was easy-going and vibrant. Even after the performance ended late at night, some guests continued drinking at the only local sushi restaurant specially opened that night until early the next morning. This experience is exemplary of the social importance of the traditions (Figure 9.3). Indeed, many performers have stated that the greatest pleasure of being part of the Akakura Kagura is the opportunity to engage in social interaction of various sorts and travel to different places (Akakura Kagura Hozonkai 2000: 14).10 5.4 Practice and Transmission During the rehearsals for the annual village performance, which take place in the village community center and usually start in mid-August, performers seem highly motivated and concentrated. The village elders correct younger 10

The preservation group occasionally performs upon invitation to places such as Tokyo, Nagoya, Iwate Prefecture and Izumo Shrine in Shimane Prefecture. They have also performed abroad, in India for the twentieth commemoration of the group and in 1988 in the United States.

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figure 9.4 Practicing Akakura Kagura moves Photo by author

performers, oral transmission being the only means of instruction. Previous chairman Niwano Tadao has noted that there is no written instruction (interview, 6 August 2008) and the kagura pamphlet points out explicitly that the handing down of the tradition occurs when one person directly passes it on to another. This is not limited to the action of dancing but also relates to the attitude towards practice and the kagura as such (Akakura Kagura Hozonkai 2000: 74). What strikes the observer is the naturalness of the practice as well as the intensity and great pride with which the residents practice and perform the kagura. This may be related to the fact that just as in the previous case of Dai no saka, almost all residents started to practice the dance in the young men’s association. In contrast to other forms of traditional performing arts well known across Japan, such as Kurokawa Noh 黒川能 (Kelly 1990), Akakura Kagura is mainly performed by villagers for themselves, friends and family; this accounts for the semiprivate atmosphere of the event. Being an essential part of village identity, the tradition does not bear any elements of staging or enactment for external visitors (cf. Foster in this volume). Although the chairman and group members would point out repeatedly that people interested in their kagura

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were welcome, Akakura villagers did not consider any activities to explicitly attract external visitors. In a sense, the manner of perpetuation suggests a selfsufficient engagement with a tradition that may have originated elsewhere but is at present firmly rooted in the village and carried on by locals. And yet, in spite of this rootedness, history has shown this to be a fluid tradition and one which is still changing. As another side-effect of depopulation, group members indicate that due to decreasing competition, levels of instruction and quality of performance have declined. In the past, potential practitioners had to compete to join; now, as a result of the declining birthrate, anyone interested in membership is welcome, regardless of their performing qualities and discipline. As one participant explained to me, “Before, teachers were really strict when instructing younger practitioners. I was also told at some point that I was not good enough. Now, since nobody is strict, people don’t really become good performers. There are just not enough people and the lifestyle has also changed” (interview, 2 November 2018). When I ask the group members in 2018 how they envisage the next ten years, they say that they do not expect any big changes. They argue that as long as the village still exists, they expect to continue to be active as a group, even if members inevitably age. “There are some things we cannot buy with money—we really need people” (interview, 2 November 2018). The dilemmas faced by the group embody two larger competing issues within post-growth Japan: a shrinking population on the one hand, and ingrained focus on vernacular, local membership on the other. As mentioned before, members perceive the Akakura Kagura as in the DNA of the community, and when I meet members again in November 2018, they say that “locals are better at mastering kagura since they have grown up here and are familiar with the rules and customs, something that would be difficult for someone moving in from another place.” My interlocutors illustrate this statement by describing an episode about a young male newcomer from Tokyo who left Akakura after only a few months because he struggled to adapt to the agricultural lifestyle. They also explain to me that in the neighboring village, urbanites have opened a collective house; these neophytes sometimes help the senior practitioners with preparations, but ultimately, “we can only count on our relatives (segare)” (interview, 2 November 2018). This sentiment, in fact, embodies the group’s strategy in a nutshell: present members have recruited their grandchildren and thus managed to limit the decrease of practitioners, but they are hesitant to rely on people outside the fold of their own families and fellow villagers. But even while group members seem cautiously optimistic about their future, we can also hear in their narratives inherent resignation about depopulation and aging. Members evidently continue to perceive their kagura as

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firmly rooted in the local soil, culture and community despite growing signs that the maintenance of their treasured performing art will not be sustainable with local practitioners only. Participant observation and follow-up interviews clearly show that kagura continues to be perceived as an ontological norm in Akakura that is intricately related with the locality. Yet, demographic decline has clearly necessitated a rethinking of the ways in which tradition is perpetuated—from preservation through a focus on locality to the maintenance through a more flexible understanding of what constitutes living tradition, as envisaged by Latour (1993). Practitioners’ emphasis on their nextof-kin as the only successors of kagura, as well as the message in the title of the pamphlet that refers to tradition as “a gift handed down from the ancestors” (Akakura Kagura Hozonkai 2000), clearly implies roots in the locality and constructs a bounded understanding of tradition. Towards the end of the pamphlet, however, in a chapter on the basics of the dance, there is a passage about individual reappropriation that belies any notion of unchanging tradition: By watching the steps of the teacher and others, by occasionally stealing good aspects from others, by bringing in the idiosyncrasies of one’s physique, by studying how one can improve one’s dance, practitioners develop their own style. This is exactly what maintaining a standard of dance that is appropriate for a designated cultural property is about. This is how the Akakura Kagura has been passed on over its long history. Akakura Kagura Hozonkai 2000: 74

Even given this flexibility, however, lower standards of performance due to a decreasing pool of available performers, relocation of some performers from the village to central Tōkamachi and an overall decrease in local residents have resulted in a sense of crisis and a greater willingness to accommodate changes in how the kagura is perpetuated. Practitioners also point out that due to a lack of performers, those who continue to engage in the kagura can no longer choose, but are assigned roles (interview, 6 August 2008). Even as they remark about reliance on next-of-kin as the main perpetuators of the kagura, the members of the preservation group with whom I conducted the follow-up interview in 2018 also indicated with a laugh that “anyone would be welcome who is interested in joining as a member” (interview, 2 November 2018). Finally, practitioners did not touch upon religious aspects of the kagura, although its sacred nature featured indirectly. In the 85-page-pamphlet documenting the tradition, only one sentence briefly mentions that the kagura has been performed in honor of the tutelary deity of the local shrine (Akakura Kagura Hozonkai 2000: 3). Also, former chairman Niwano Tadao’s statement

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that the kagura is not a business and hence no active dissemination was desirable, can be interpreted as an implicit inference about its sacredness. In sum, references to religious aspects of the kagura were scarce in materials and only implicit in conversations, but nonetheless present.

6

Discussion

The two cases presented above differ in terms of location, history of the preservation group, age structure and the meanings ascribed by group members to the tradition. However, both groups face similar issues of securing practitioners and both have experienced declining interest in their activities and membership. They continue to rely on mostly local members, but state that they would welcome non-local members. In both cases, participants imply that their traditions are strongly rooted in location despite evidence of non-local origins. The empirical data discussed in these two case studies is in line with Rappaport’s observation that the “repetition [of rituals] contributes to a sense of order and continuity while allowing the flexibility and adaptation” (Rappaport 1999: 427 referenced in Danely 2012: 19). On the one hand, practitioners indicate that depopulation has opened their groups up to non-locals, as previously argued by Thompson (2014); however, in practice, numerous groups seem inherently skeptical about non-local members. My own interviews reveal that despite a growing sense of crisis about the impact of demographic decline on their activities neither group has actively recruited new members. As regards their future, both groups seem cautiously optimistic even if their concern remains palpable. Both contend that individuals interested in their activities will eventually appear, although the lack of younger practitioners and new members in both cases suggest that this may be overly optimistic. Contrary to common representations of rural Japan on TV and other media as the “repository of Japan’s distinctive cultural heritage” (Schnell 2005: 212) and “as the last reserve of noble virtues” (Kelly 1986: 606), discussions with practitioners suggest that they negotiate between perpetuating their traditions with respect to local heritage and at the same time personalizing them to fit individual contemporary needs. Moreover, practitioners’ experiences vary widely. Some emphasize subjecting themselves to the local heritage rather than pursuing their personal satisfaction, while others mention that it took years for them to actually like and appreciate the performing art in question. As Ebenbauer and Jonveaux (2018: 52) have noted, individuals engaging in ritual practices are drawn “between self-empowerment, hegemonic subjection and manipulation.” Indeed, on an individual level, some long-term practition-

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ers admit to personalizing the traditions in accordance with their own needs and circumstances; others say that they feel a sense of responsibility to pass on the tradition as is. This individualized appropriation could be interpreted as an effort to engage in a living tradition by adapting to personal, contemporary needs, making it relevant to each individual living in the present. In both cases discussed above, some participants enjoy the cross-generational exchange, and many emphasize the importance of social interaction, in one instance even exceeding the ritual practice per se. Buddhist dance group members indicate that the religious element was abandoned at some point; an experienced member concedes that she sometimes skips practices. These narratives suggest that practitioners employ considerable agency in pursuing (or choosing not to pursue) folk performing arts, ascribing contemporary meaning to them by shaping them into traditions that fit into their daily lives. However, in both cases, it was clear from many of my interviews that changing lifestyles and new forms of entertainment have resulted in a decrease in the popularity of traditional performing arts and participation in the preservation groups. The older members get, it seems, the more they enjoy the social interaction that comes with group membership, rather than the actual activities. This underscores the importance of preservation groups as venues of crossgenerational interaction. Whereas demographic decline has resulted in decreasing members, preservation groups seem to project their pride about the past into confidence that they will continue to attract new participants, whether by relying on their next-of-kin or disseminating information about their activities. Practitioners’ narratives suggest that members negotiate between the past, present and future, and that cautious hope coexists with resignation. Both cases discussed above paradoxically make evident the flexible circulation, and simultaneous rigidity, of past and present. First, the conflicting narratives of practitioners point to traditions deeply invested in the past, but that also bring the present and future into play through gradual adjustments by individual practitioners as well as by the groups. This echoes Shoham’s understanding of tradition as a “socio-cultural practice that assigns temporal meaning” (Shoham 2011: 315). Second, contemporary practices of folk performing art practitioners continue to be invested in repertoires of the past, proudly persisting in the myth of locally grounded heritage. The evident gap between declining membership and aging practitioners in both groups and the rather hopeful—if demographically unfounded—rhetoric by group members about continuity illustrates the juxtaposition of ingrained ontological normativity of traditions persistently rooted in the soil and progressing demographic decline in contemporary rural Japan. In both cases outlined above, a strong sense of

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nostalgia and positive associations with regard to social relations in senior practitioners have resulted in the implicit belief that their ritual practices will continue to play a key role in their local communities despite recent demographic decline suggesting that the very vitality of their hamlets may be at stake.

References Akakura Kagura Hozonkai 赤倉神楽保存会 (ed.). 2000. Akakura Kagura: Senjin tachi no okurimono. Akakura Kagura Kinenshi 赤倉神楽—先人たちのおくりもの. 赤倉神 楽記念誌. Tsunanmachi: Burein Insatsu. Allison, Anne. 2013. Precarious Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Averbuch, Irit. 1995. “Performing Power: On the Nature of the Japanese Ritual Dance Performance of the Yamabushi Kagura.” The Journal of Ritual Studies 10: 3–34. Averbuch, Irit. 1998. “Shamanic Dance in Japan: The Choreography of Possession in Kagura Performance.” Asian Folklore Studies 57(2): 293–329. Averbuch, Irit. 2013. “Reflections of Buddhist Thought in Kagura Dance, Song, and Structure.” Journal of Religion in Japan 2(2–3): 244–275. Bell, Catherine. 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bell, Catherine. 1997. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berger, Peter. 2009. “The Inventiveness of a Tradition: Structural Anthropology in the Netherlands from an Outsider’s Perspective.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 34(1): 23–49. Danely, Jason. 2012. “Repetition and the Symbolic in Contemporary Japanese Ancestor Memorial Ritual.” Journal of Ritual Studies 26(1): 19–32. Danely, Jason. 2016. “Hope in an Ageing Japan: Transience and Transcendence.” Contemporary Japan 28(1): 13–31. Ebenbauer, Peter and Isabelle Jonveaux. 2018. “Zwischen Selbstermächtigung und Unterwerfung: Rituelle Praxis als Machtfaktor in spätmoderner Zeit.”Limina: Grazer theologische Perspektiven 1(1): 47–67. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books. Hashimoto, Hiroyuki. 2003. “Between Preservation and Tourism: Folk Performing Arts in Contemporary Japan.” Asian Folklore Studies 62(2): 225–236. Horinouchi-chō Kyōiku Iinkai 堀ノ内町教育委員会 (ed.). 1975. Dai no saka: Kyōdo geinō bon odori 大の坂—郷土芸能盆踊り. Ingram, David. 1997. Book Review of Paul Heelas, Scott Lash and Paul Morris (eds.). 1996. Detraditionalization: Critical Reflections on Authority and Identity, eds., Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. American Journal of Sociology 102(6): 1727–1729. Inoue, Takahiro 井上隆弘. 2008. “Sanshin’en ni okeru shirei saigi: Shizuoka-ken Hama-

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matsu-shi Misakubo-chō ni okeru shimotsuti mattsuri to nenbutsu odori no hikaku kenkyū” 三信遠における死霊祭儀—静岡県浜松市水窪町における霜月祭と 念仏踊の比較研究 / “Rituals for the Spirits of the Dead in San-shin-en: A Comparative Study of the Shimotsuki-matsuri and Nembutsu-Odori in Misakubo-cho, Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Prefecture.” Kokuritsu rekishi minzoku hakubutsukan kenkyū hōkoku 国立歴史民俗博物館研究報告 142(3): 257–293. Ishida, Kōgo 石田コウゴ. 1990. Kubiki no hitobito no geinō 頸城の人々の芸能. Jōetsu. Kajii, Shoin 梶井照陰. 2008. Genkai shūraku 限界集落–Marginal Village. Tokyo: Foiru. Kato, Hisakazu. 2014. “Declining Population and the Revitalization of Local Regions in Japan.” Meiji Journal of Political Science and Economics 3: 25–35. Kavedzija, Iza. 2014. “The Age of Decline? Anxieties about Aging in Japan.” Ethnos: 1– 24. Kawakami, Mitsuyo. 1988. “The View of Spirits as Seen in the Bon Observances of the Shima Region.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 15(2–3): 121–130. Kawano, Satsuki. 2005. Ritual Practice in Modern Japan: Ordering Place, People, and Action. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Kelly, William. 1986. “Rationalization and Nostalgia: Cultural Dynamics of New MiddleClass Japan.” American Ethnologist 13(4): 603–618. Kelly, William. 1990. “Japanese No-Noh: The Crosstalk of Public Culture in a Rural Festivity.” Public Culture 2(2): 65–81. Klien, Susanne. 2016. “Shinto Ritual Practice in Miyagi Prefecture after the Great East Japan Earthquake: The Case of the Ogatsu Hoin Kagura.” Asian Ethnology 75(2): 359– 376. Knight, John. 1994. “Rural Revitalization in Japan: Spirit of the Village and Taste of the Country.” Asian Survey 34(7): 634–646. Kobayashi, Kazushige and Peter Knecht. 1981. “On the Meaning of Masked Dances in Kagura.” Asian Folklore Studies 40(1): 1–22. Lancashire, Terence A. 2011. An Introduction to Japanese Folk Performing Arts. London and New York: Routledge. Latour, Bruno. 1994. Nous n’avons jamais été modernes. Paris: La decouverte. Love, Bridget. 2013. “Treasure Hunts in Rural Japan: Place Making at the Limits of Sustainability.” American Anthropologist 115(1): 112–124. Love, Bridget. 2007. “Fraught Fieldsites: Studying Community Decline and Heritage Food Revival in Rural Japan.” Critical Asian Studies 39(4): 541–559. Love, Bridget. 2014. “Sustainability at Dead-Ends: The Future of Hope in Rural Japan.” RCC Perspectives 3, Asian Environments: Connections across Borders, Landscapes, and Times: 95–100. Moriarty, Elisabeth. 1976. “Nembutsu Odori.” Asian Folklore Studies 35(1): 7–16. Muramatsu, Naoko and Akiyama, Hiroko. 2011. “Japan: Super-Aging Society Preparing for the Future.” The Gerontologist 51(4): 425–432.

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Ono, Akira 大野晃. 2005. Sanson kankyō shakaigaku josetsu 山村環境社会学序説. Tokyo: Noubunkyo. Porcu, Elisabetta. 2012. “Observations on the Blurring of the Religious and Secular in a Japanese Urban Setting.” Journal of Religion in Japan 1(1): 83–106. Robertson, Jennifer. 1991. Native and Newcomer: Making and Remarking a Japanese City. Berkeley: University of California Press. Robertson, Jennifer. 1998. “It takes a village: Internationalization and Nostalgia in Postwar Japan.” In Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan, ed. Vlastos, Stephen, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 110–129. Rokkum, Arne. 2006. Nature, Ritual and Society in Japan’s Ryukyu Islands. London and New York: Routledge. Sahlins, Marshall. 1999. “Two or Three Things that I Know about Culture.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropology Institute 5(3): 399–421. Schechner, Richard. 1994. “Ritual and performance.” In Companion Encyclopaedia of Anthropology, ed. Tim Ingold, London and New York: Routledge, 613–647. Schnell, Scott. 2005. “The Rural Imaginary: Landscape, Village, Tradition.” In A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan, ed. Jennifer Robertson, Malden, Oxford, Carlton, Victoria, Australia: Blackwell Publishing, 201–217. Shoham, Hizky. 2011. “Rethinking Tradition: From Ontological Reality to Assigned Temporal Meaning.” European Journal of Sociology 52(2): 313–340. Sumiyoshi, Junji 住吉順二. 1996. Dentō Geinō: Akakura Kagura 伝統芸能—赤倉神楽. Tokyo: Organ Shuppankyoku. Switek, Beata. 2014. “Representing the alternative: Demographic Change, Migrant Eldercare, and National Imagination in Japan.” Contemporary Japan 26(2): 263– 280. Tambiah, S.J. 1979. “A Performative Approach to Ritual.” In Proceedings of the British Academy 65. Trans. and eds. Andrea Belliger and David J. Krieger, Oxford: Oxbow Books, 113–169. Thompson, Christopher S. 2006. “Preserving the Ochiai Deer Dance: Tradition and Continuity in a Tohoku Hamlet.” In Wearing Cultural Styles in Japan: Concepts of Tradition and Modernity in Practice, eds. Thompson, Christopher S. and John W. Traphagan, Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 124–150. Thompson, Christopher. 2008. “Population Decline, Municipal Amalgamation, and the Politics of Folk Performance Preservation in Northeast Japan.” In The Demographic Challenge: A Handbook about Japan, eds. Florian Coulmas, Harald Conrad, Annette Schad-Seifert and Gabriele Vogt, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 361–386. Thompson, Christopher, S. 2014. “Are you Coming to the Matsuri?: Tsunami Recovery and Folk Performance Culture on Iwate’s Rikuchu Coast.” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 12(5, 2). https://apjjf.org/2014/12/5/Christopher‑Thompson/4070/article .html (accessed 8 June 2020).

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Thornbury, Barbara E. 1993. “From Festival Setting to Center Stage: Preserving Japan’s Folk Performing Arts.” Asian Theatre Journal 10(2): 163–178. Tōkamachi Shishi Hensan Iinkai 十日町市史編さん委員会 (ed.). 1997. Tōkamachi Shishi 十日町市史. Vol. 8 (Minzoku 民族). Niigata: Dai-ichi Insatsusho. Tōkamachishi Kyōiku Iinkai Jimukyoku Bunka Supōtsubu Bunkazaika 十日町市教 育委員会事務局文化スポーツ部文化財課 (ed.). 2018. Tōkamachi-shi Rekishi Bunka Kihon Kisō 十日町市歴史文化基本構想. Tōkamachi: Takizawa Insatsu. Traphagan, John. 1998. “Reasons for Gateball Participation among Older Japanese.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology 13(2): 159–175. Traphagan, John. 2000. “Reproducing Elder Male Power through Ritual Performance in Japan.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology 15: 81–97. Traphagan, John. 2008. “Ancestors, Burial Rites, and Rural Depopulation in Japan.” In The Demographic Challenge: A Handbook about Japan, eds. Florian Coulmas, Harald Conrad, Annette Schad-Seifert and Gabriele Vogt, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 387–394. Traphagan, John W. and John Knight (eds.) 2003. Demographic Change and the Family in Japan’s Aging Society. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. Turner, Victor. 1987. “Symbols in African Ritual.” In Perspectives in Cultural Anthropology, ed. Herbert Applebaum, Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 488–501. Watanabe, Masako. 2016. “New Religions, Depopulation, and the Aging Population: Konkōkyō and Risshō Kōseikai.” Journal of Religion in Japan 5(2–3): 263–305.

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chapter 10

Photographic Essay Secret Eroticism and Lived Religion The Art of Matsuri Photography Michael Dylan Foster University of California, Davis, CA, USA [email protected]

Ogano Minoru 小賀野実 Photographer, Saitama City, Japan [email protected]

Abstract Through interviews and personal observation, this chapter introduces the photographer Ogano Minoru, exploring his particular take on the practice of matsuri photography. In his photos, Ogano tries to visually capture the affective aspects of matsuri as experienced by participants. He suggests that even when matsuri are not organized through religious institutions, they emerge from deeply held beliefs and everyday life concerns in the local community. The concluding part of the chapter is a brief photo essay about mushi-okuri and related matsuri in the Tsugaru region (Aomori Prefecture).

Keywords photography – mushi-okuri – lived religion – matsuri – Tsugaru

It goes without saying that matsuri have long been an integral part of tourism in Japan, and a significant aspect of the tourist experience of matsuri is photography. At any major Japanese festival, you can see serious amateur photographers wielding digital SLR cameras with massive lenses as they jockey for position, sometimes standing on ladders in order to get an unobstructed

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The subject of photography Photo by M.D. Foster

view of the action. More casual visitors snap photos with compact digital or mirrorless cameras, smart phones and sometimes—awkwardly—iPads. Of course, picture-taking is not limited to large touristic festivals: even at small community-based matsuri, friends and family members pose for selfies or take still shots or videos of each other, and of the broader festival activity. In short, practices of photography—and underlying desires to visually apprehend, record, memorialize, aestheticize, narrativize, share—are part and parcel of the contemporary matsuri experience.

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figure 10.2 Photographers and other spectators at the Fukagawa Hachiman Matsuri in Tokyo, 12 August 2017 Photo by M.D. Foster

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This brief somewhat personal essay with photos explores the practice of matsuri photography by focusing on a photographer who has been taking pictures of matsuri for four decades. I introduce my friend and collaborator Ogano Minoru 小賀野実 (b. 1958) through the lens of my own experiences traveling with him to matsuri over the years, and also through his own words from recent interviews. The chapter concludes with a brief photo-essay by Ogano himself focusing on mushi-okuri 虫送り (literally “sending off of the insects”) events in the Tsugaru region of northern Honshū. Ogano Minoru is a professional photographer who makes a living taking pictures of norimono 乗り物: vehicles such as tractors, firetrucks, ambulances, police cruisers, airplanes, buses, construction equipment and, especially, trains. In a country full of railroad aficionados, Ogano is constantly busy. He has published literally hundreds of picture books, mostly for children, and is incessantly taking photos, editing, organizing and writing for several major publishing houses. His work requires him to travel ceaselessly throughout the archipelago, from Hokkaido to Okinawa, in order to capture vehicles in the wild, as it were—not parked or pulling into a station, but live and in action, as they come around a bend, steam across a bridge, or emerge from a copse of trees. Wherever he goes, Ogano familiarizes himself with the train schedule and the landscape, so he can secure a vantage point in a field or on a hill for just the right shot—a speeding train captured crisply in full color and detail, but still retaining an ineffable sense of movement. It is a finely nuanced job that also demands physical ruggedness and a sense of adventure. Three years ago, in the hills of Kumamoto Prefecture, Ogano stumbled into a trap for wild boar (inoshishi 猪) and still has a scar on his leg to show for it. For all his success and experience, however, Ogano does not consider himself a “photographer,” a shashin-ka 写真家. Rather he refers to himself as a “cameraman” カメラマン, emphasizing the fact that he does this work for a living: even though he is a proud and consummate professional, his photos of trains and tractors and other vehicles are a way to put food on the table. Taking pictures of norimono is his job, he has told me many times, not his passion. But just as he is familiar with trains in all their local manifestations—and in both metropolitan and rural locales trains are remarkably varied—Ogano is also intimately familiar with matsuri. He thinks of this interest in stark contrast to his work with trains: for Ogano, photographing matsuri is not a way to make a living, but a passion and an art. It is, as he puts it, his “lifework.” I first met Ogano on 12 February 2010 in the small city of Oga 男鹿 in Akita 秋田 Prefecture. We were both there for the Namahage Sedo Matsuri なまはげ 柴灯まつり, a mid-winter festival held for three consecutive nights at Shinzan

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Shinzan Shrine, 31 December 2015 Photo by M.D. Foster

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Ogano with Namahage, 12 February 2012 Photo by M.D. Foster

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Shrine (Shinzan Jinja 真山神社). Since 1998 I had been researching Namahage, both its household ritual form celebrated on New Year’s Eve as well as this tourist-oriented festival held in the middle of February. My closest contact in the community, a hotel owner and community leader named Yamamoto Tsugio 山本次夫, introduced me to Ogano, explaining that he had known him for many years and that he was even more obsessed with Namahage than I was (for more on Namahage, see the chapter by Foster in this volume). It turns out, in fact, that Ogano had been visiting, photographing, and researching Namahage since 1984. His research and photos—particularly of Namahage masks—were prominently featured in the best book on the subject I had been able to find.1 He has undoubtedly witnessed more versions of Namahage (as performed in small hamlets throughout the region) than any other individual alive today—or perhaps ever. Despite the fact that he is not a resident of Oga, his relationship to the festival and community is profound: as a constant visitor, he is close friends with many Oga residents, well respected for his work, and privy to local politics, gossip and family dynamics. To me, the depth and breadth of his knowledge came as a revelation—and, generously, he was willing to share his insights and his contacts with me. We soon became close friends. Since that time, I have had the opportunity to travel with Ogano to numerous festivals—Namahage, of course, but also Nebuta ねぶた in Aomori City, Neputa ねぷた in Hirosaki, and Tachineputa 立佞武多 in Goshogawara, as well as Shichi 節祭 in Iriomote-jima in the far south of Okinawa Prefecture and, most recently, the Sawara Grand Festival (Sawara no taisai 佐原の大祭) discussed by Tsukahara in this volume. Through these various experiences, I have gotten a sense of how a professional photographer—or at least this particular professional photographer—apprehends the experience of matsuri. It is a form of practice different from that of a local participant, different from a tourist and different still from an ethnographer or researcher—though, in my opinion, it contains elements of all three. Ultimately, Ogano’s passion for matsuri derives from an interest in seeing people and capturing their emotions as they participate in these collective activities. He describes what he finds in matsuri as a sort of “secret eroticism” (himitsu no erochikku 秘密のエロチック), something exciting and unexpected and meaningful in the muddy (doro doro shiteiru ドロドロし ている) complexity of all these people coming together. His invocation of “eroticism” is intentional because he feels that in matsuri we can often discover a kind of sexuality that emerges from the very roots

1 There are two editions of the book (Nihon Kaiiki Bunka Kenkyūjo 2004 and 2016).

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Ogano’s early photos Photo by M.D. Foster

(kongen 根源) or foundation (kisō 基層) of humanity. “Matsuri,” he says, “has an atmosphere that suggests reproduction (seishoku 生殖), the creation of descendants.” The prayer and desire for an abundant rice harvest is also a prayer and desire for strong and abundant children. What he sees in matsuri is “human ways of living” (ikikata 生き方). In this respect, although Ogano is hesitant to invoke the word “religion” (shūkyō 宗教) when talking about matsuri, it seems to me that he is implicitly recognizing a kind of “lived religion” that entails, in the words of Robert A. Corsi, “attention to people’s signs and practices as they describe, understand, and use them, in the circumstances of their experiences, and to the structures and conditions within which these signs and practices emerge” (Corsi 2003: 172). Matsuri, of course, is a dynamic expression of such contextualized signs and practices, and Ogano’s photographs are his way of paying attention to them. In turn, he causes us, as we look at his photos, to also pay attention to them. Indeed, Ogano’s interest in matsuri originated simply from his desire to photograph people and their lifeways. He has shown me photos he took in his early years: they are stark, monochrome images of people in rural communities working in the fields, transporting things, posing in groups, stopping to rest. (See fig. 10.5)

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It was this sort of rural lifestyle—and the emotions that go with it—that interested him from the beginning. He explained to me that he started taking photos of matsuri during my school days, before even turning twenty … because it was the kind of situation in which humans could most easily be photographed. It didn’t actually have to be matsuri, but my first desire was to take photos of people … The reason matsuri are good for this is because you can take photos of people without them complaining. If you just walk up to a person [in a regular situation] and ask if you can take their photo, they will think you are strange … But in the case of matsuri, you can take people’s photos without having to ask each time. It’s easy—that’s why I started taking pictures at matsuri. What he wanted most to capture in people was “their faces, bodies, ‘spirits,’ anything. Their hearts (kokoro 心). These are things that come out during matsuri more than in normal times. In normal times, these things are hidden … [but during matsuri] people reveal themselves (sarakedasu さらけ出す).” He goes on to note that, “if a person has a face I want to photograph, then I will take a picture. Ideally such a face will be photogenic—it doesn’t have to be what we would call ‘beautiful’ as long as there is something interesting about it (aji ga aru 味がある).” Ogano’s interest in matsuri developed hand in hand with his desire not just to take pictures to sell—as he does with his norimono photos—but to create more transcendent images: During matsuri people’s feelings (kanjō 感情) are expressed in a way we can appreciate … On festival days, the expressions on people’s faces are easy to see … I realized this as soon as I began taking photography seriously—it didn’t matter to me until I started to think that I would like my photos to be works of art (sakuhin 作品) … not just regular pictures, but something good—“art”—that’s when I realized I had to start taking photos very seriously. It was then that I realized that matsuri were the fastest way to do this … When I was a student, any matsuri anywhere in any small village was fine. But when I left school I felt that the job of a professional was to take the best pictures I could of proper matsuri … It was unimaginable for a pro to be praised for a picture of just any matsuri in just any small village—the challenge was to take an amazing picture of an amazing matsuri that would make it seem even more amazing.

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But what constitutes an amazing photo? A photo in which the human appears, in which we can see the human personality (ningensei 人間性) of the subject. [For example] if you look at Namahage you will understand. It is not just the Namahage that is captured in these photos, but the humans. And not just the people, but the feeling. That’s the difference between a photo that is a commodity (shōhin 商品) and one that is a work of art (sakuhin). In a work of art, you capture the inner feelings of the subject … When I asked Ogano about how one does this, how one creates a matsuri photo that is a work of art, he explained that you begin with technical abilities, practice, getting to know people, and practical decisions about what, where and when to take photos. Similar to ethnographic fieldwork, it is important to create a connection with members of the community: In a lot of situations there are things you cannot photograph unless you have a good relationship with the local residents. You cannot just take pictures because it suits you ( jibun katte ni 自分勝手に); you have to properly perform greetings (aisatsu 挨拶) and work to gain the support (nemawashi 根回し) of the villagers—that is essential. For [a large outdoor matsuri] like Nebuta, you just have to ask at the time whether you can take photos … You don’t necessarily have to be on good terms with the people. That is one way of taking pictures. But in my opinion, in the case of Japanese matsuri, it is better to be on good terms with folks before taking pictures. But beyond the technical aspects and practical work, there is something intangible: Even if you have a certain amount of skill, you need “sense.” Sense is like somebody’s personality. It is not something you can teach. You can teach technique: “In cases like this you should do this, and so on.” Technical things can be taught. But you can’t say, “you should feel this way, or you should think this way”—that can’t be taught. In December of 2018, a set of pictures of Namahage that Ogano had taken over the last three and half decades was displayed in a public venue in Oga, the small city where Namahage takes place. The same photos had been shown earlier in a gallery in the ritzy Ginza neighborhood of Tokyo, but it was in Oga that he felt

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Ogano talking with friends at an exhibition at the Oga Station Gallery, Oga City, Akita, 30 December 2018 Photo by M.D. Foster

rewarded by the experience. “With a work of art,” he told me, “it doesn’t matter if the person looking at it doesn’t understand it—that is fine. It doesn’t have to be mass produced. You don’t have to sell a lot. As long as it is understood by those people who understand—that is all you need.” In Oga, he explained, people truly understood his pictures and felt a connection to them. He himself was physically present for much of the exhibition, and also eagerly read comments left by visitors. It was particularly meaningful for him when somebody would identify a friend or relative in the image, or talk with him about their own personal memories of Namahage. In most gallery exhibitions, Ogano told me, touching a picture is strictly prohibited. But in the Oga exhibition he was thrilled to observe visitors constantly touching his photos with their fingers; it was as if they were making contact with a memory, an experience, a feeling beyond the two-dimensional veneer of the photographic surface. While Ogano himself did not describe it this way, it seems to me that there is a kind of eroticism at work here as well, with the intimate, private household ritual revealed for all to gaze upon in the public space of the gallery. Those who look carefully can find, as it were, a nakedness to each image, a revelation of intensity and emotion that, while not sexual, is deeply personal. To some viewers—particularly those who know the people in the photos—the images must transcend their flatness, suggesting something affective, embodied, tantalizingly three-dimensional, and stimulating a desire to make physical contact.

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Despite his hundreds of books on trains and other vehicles, Ogano has published very little on matsuri—his only book was the volume on Namahage masks mentioned above. But this has changed recently. After his Namahage exhibition, he was asked to produce a photo book on Namahage for both children and adults, and it has recently been released (Ogano 2019). Now he is eager to start work on other matsuri—dashi 山車 or yamahoko 山鉾 style matsuri found throughout Japan, and then neputa-style matsuri. Having passed the celebratory age of sixty, he explains, it is finally time to share his “lifework.” One type of matsuri Ogano has explored on and off for years is mushi-okuri, which is found mostly in the Tōhoku and Kantō regions. Although it takes many different forms, mushi-okuri is generally performed during the early part of the growing season to protect the rice crop from insects that cause disease and damage. Ogano speculates that the custom is probably more prominent in the northern part of Japan because the summer growing season is shorter than in the south. Insects come suddenly and just at the moment when the success of the crops is absolutely crucial. In warmer climates, he suggests, the longer growing season gives farmers a chance to plant something else even if some crops are eaten by insects. Ogano himself has spent a lot of time in Goshogawara 五所川原 in the Tsugaru 津軽 region of Aomori Prefecture, where mushi-okuri takes place in late June. He has only seriously photographed the matsuri twice—the first time about twenty years ago—but has observed mushi-okuri three other times and also made many local acquaintances through photographing Tachineputa, another Goshogawara festival held later in the summer. Particularly in the case of mushi-okuri, he explains, “If you are not on good terms with people you can’t take good photos. Because mushi-okuri is not a performance (engi 演技) for visitors.” Ogano does not see a direct connection between mushi-okuri and institutional religious structures, what he would label shūkyō. It is, however, part of an informal belief system, the sort of lived religion discussed above. Undoubtedly, Ogano explains, mushi-okuri constitutes a form of worship, but the “organizing factor” is the shūraku 集落 (hamlet; village; community) rather than a temple or a shrine. The matsuri develops not through the auspices of a specific religious institution but from a deep-seated shinkō 信仰, or belief, in which it is felt that an effigy in the shape of a mushi must be sacrificed to the kami 神 for protection. His understanding of this kami is that it generally does not have a specified name or body ( jittai 実態) but is more of a “feeling.” Ogano points out, however, that even though mushi-okuri itself is rarely administered by religious institutions, the event often begins with visits to the

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shrines in each community. There the yatai 屋台 (festival floats) and the people carrying them are blessed for safety by the local kami. As is visible in some of the images that follow, they also receive a gohei 御幣, a wooden wand with white paper streamers, as a sign of this blessing and an indication that the kami are present during the matsuri. In one image, we can see a shimenawa 注連縄, a Shintō symbol indicating sacredness. The incorporation of such Shintō materials and practices into the performance of a community festival like mushiokuri, of course, reflects the ways in which religion is intertwined with everyday life in rural Aomori (and elsewhere). Now, having spent these pages introducing my friend Ogano and his approach to matsuri and photography, I end with a brief set of his photos and explanations (translated by me), introducing mushi-okuri and two related matsuri.

1

Mushi-okuri in Tsugaru

In the very northern part of Honshū, in the plains of Tsugaru in present-day Aomori Prefecture, one can still find festivals called mushi-okuri that are characteristic of agricultural peoples and lifestyles. Tsugaru is ravaged by blowing snow throughout the winter, but spring comes with a sudden burst of green and a beautiful spreading landscape of rice paddies and vegetable fields. After the rice seedlings have been planted and grow to a certain point, all at once there appear hordes of insects that carry disease and damage plants. In order to thwart this pestilence and pray for the healthy growth of the rice, a ceremony called mushi-okuri is performed. It is said that mushi-okuri in Tsugaru has been performed since the advent of agriculture in Japan some 3000 years ago. But as far as written documents are concerned, it is recorded in the Eiroku nikki 永禄日記 that in the sixth month of the year 1627 there was an overwhelming invasion of insects, so each village performed a mushi-okuri ceremony, and within the Tsugaru domain, the Tendai 天 台 Buddhist monk Tenkai 天海 (1536–1643) led prayers for seven days. Nonetheless, it is said that an infestation of locusts destroyed the entire rice crop on the Tsugaru plains that year. This is thought to be the origins of the current form of mushi-okuri ritual in the region. The “mushi” 虫 (insect) used in the mushi-okuri ceremony is in the shape of a ryūda 竜蛇 which is a combination of dragon and snake, and appears frequently in a number of matsuri throughout Japan. The head is mostly made from wood, and the body is made from rice straw. Large ones can be between five and ten meters long, while smaller ones are only about one meter long.

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Ryūda head Photo by Ogano Minoru

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Ryūda heads Photo by Ogano Minoru

Large mushi are hung as protection in tall trees or other high places at the entrance to the village. Smaller mushi are floated through the rice paddies or through the canals and irrigation ditches of the community, in rites such as sanaburi 早苗振り, to pray for the growth of the rice plants.

2

Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri 奥津軽虫と火まつり

Today there is a festival called Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri, which started in June of 1973 as a merging of mushi-okuri with a hi-matsuri (fire festival). Originally, every community performed this similarly, and the festival entailed pulling a 5–6 meter mushi on a large yatai around the village. With the mushiokuri yatai in the lead role, each village group accompanies it with a different local performance. One after another, we can see performances such as the arauma 荒馬 dance that imitates a horse, or the shishi mai 獅子舞 “lion dance,” or the very showy tachi-buri 太刀振り sword performance. The style of this festival is similar to the summertime Tachineputa festival, also famous in Tsugaru.

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Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri Photo by Ogano Minoru

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Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri Photo by Ogano Minoru

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Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri Photo by Ogano Minoru

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Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri Photo by Ogano Minoru

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Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri Photo by Ogano Minoru

Every year in mid to late June, Mushi to Hi Matsuri takes place in Goshogawara. Gigantic torches, made from grass thatching bundled together and weighing some 70–80 kilograms, are pulled throughout the town by young folk dressed all in white. At the end, the giant torches are lit up at the riverbed near the Iwaki River 岩木川, and there, accompanied by a fireworks display, an especially large “insect” is burnt. This is called the “Ascension of the Insects” (mushi no shōten 虫の昇天), and it is considered the climax of the festival.

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Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri Photo by Ogano Minoru

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Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri Photo by Ogano Minoru

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Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri Photo by Ogano Minoru

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Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri Photo by Ogano Minoru

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Scene from Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri Photo by Ogano Minoru

Uma-ichi Matsuri 馬市まつり

Near Goshogawara, in Tsugaru City つがる市 (formerly Kizukuri Machi 木造 町), they hold a festival called Uma-ichi Matsuri every year at the end of August. In the early part of the twentieth century, there used to be an auction for selling farm horses (uma 馬). In recollection of the bustle and excitement of that time, a new festival was created [in 1975].2 A nebuta float in the shape of a horse is paraded through the town, and in the evening, the float is set on fire. But even here, we can see “insects”: a mushi made of straw rides on the back of the horse. For many years, the mushi has been a symbol—even a mascot—of the Tsugaru region. You can find images of mushi (or ryūda) in various places, such as on manhole covers or as decorations on postboxes. Seeing something like this for the first time in the Goshogawara region, you might not understand what it means. It could be a caterpillar or maybe a snake, and it would not be unreasonable to see it as a dragon. But most people would not think it is an insect! 2 According to the Tsugaru City website, the horse auction first began in 1903. For more on the history and current format, see https://www.city.tsugaru.aomori.jp/tourism/event/5/3478 .html (accessed 20 September 2019).

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Uma-ichi Matsuri Photo by Ogano Minoru

figure 10.20 Manhole cover Photo by Ogano Minoru

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References Nihon Kaiiki Bunka Kenkyūjo 日本海域文化研究所 (ed.). 2004. Namahage: Sono men to shūzoku—“Oga hantō-shi” no bekkan ナマハゲ—その面と習俗—男鹿半島史の別 巻. Akita: Nihon Kaiiki Bunka Kenkyūjo. Nihon Kaiiki Bunka Kenkyūjo 日本海域文化研究所 (ed.). 2016. Namahage: Sono men to shūzoku—kaiteiban “Oga hantō-shi” no bekkan ナマハゲ—その面と習俗改訂版— 男鹿半島史の別巻. Akita: Nihon Kaiiki Bunka Kenkyūjo. Ogano, Minoru 小賀野実. 2019. Namahage: Akita, Oga no kurashi o mamoru kami no gyōji なまはげ—秋田・男鹿のくらしを守る神の行事. Tokyo: Popura-sha.

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Index Abare Kannon 60 Abe Shinzō 57 About our Ancestors (Senzo no hanashi) 168 affect 3, 136, 152 agency-of-artifacts approach 8, 18 Ainu 170, 171, 180, 181 Akagi Myōjin (deity) 175 Akakura (village) 251, 259, 261, 262, 263, 264, 269, 270 Akakura Kagura 2, 7, 254, 260–263, 266– 268, 270–271 as intangible folk cultural property 263 hana okesa odori 262 iwatomai (rock cave dance) 262, 266 Jūnisha Jinja 260, 261, 266 Kōdaiji 262 men kagura (kagura performed with masks) 262 niwamai (dance of the garden) 262 tsurugi no mai (sword dance) 262 Akakura Kagura Preservation Group 260, 262, 264, 266, 270 Akita 2, 4, 5, 66, 118, 120, 122, 138, 140, 170, 177, 178, 179, 180, 185, 186, 280 Amaterasu Ōmikami (sun goddess) 89, 90, 167 Ame no Oshikumone no Mikoto 232, 235 Ame no Uzume no Mikoto 24, 27–28, 233 Amenokoyane 90 Amida Buddha 203, 207, 255, 257 amulet 48, 59, 60, 67, 69, 70, 133, 138 See also chimaki; fuda Andreeva, Anna 236 angū/kari no miya 219, 236 Ani 177 Anzenji 127, 129, 156 Aogashima 202 Aomori Prefecture 7, 170, 277, 287, 288 aramitama See violent spirits artifacts 8, 14–18, 139 Ashizawa 129, 156 Association of Shinto Shrines (Jinja Honchō) 79

Atago 203 Atago mountain 50 Atago Shrine 50 Atagokō 48, 50 atmosphere(s) ( fun’iki) 6, 8, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 219, 220, 231, 234, 238–241, 242, 257, 283 ato matsuri (second float procession) 4, 37, 38, 39, 44–45 See also Gion Matsuri Authorization Act 55 Averbuch, Irit 266 Banji Banzaburō 175, 176, 178 bear hunting 6, 165, 166, 177, 178, 182, 186, 190 bear hunters 6, 165, 173, 188 See also matagi bear ritual 180–181 belief 1, 7, 70, 134, 135, 137, 138, 147, 159, 169, 178, 287 folk belief 168, 175 See also shinkō Bell, Catherine 152 Berger, Peter 250 Berkes, Fikret 173 Bialock, David 235 bodhisattva 128, 230, 266 bodhisattva Kannon 60, 170, 206, 207, 209, 232 bodhisattva Monju 232 Boff, Leonardo 170 bon dance 7, 253, 254, 255, 257 See also obon Borges, Jorge Luis 157, 158 Breen, John 5, 73 Buddha 89, 90, 100, 113, 128, 205, 208, 223, 253, 266 buddhas 100, 205, 208, 223, 233, 235, 266 Buddhist 3, 7, 38, 42, 79, 84, 89, 93, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, 108, 112, 113, 114, 133, 134, 135, 167, 176, 195, 197, 200, 201, 207, 208, 209, 214, 223, 225, 229, 230, 232, 233, 236, 241, 248, 251, 260, 266, 272, 288

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302 Buddhist merit (kudoku) 201 Buddhism 6, 41, 42, 59, 100, 114, 128, 129, 131, 133, 134, 148, 149, 159, 171, 175, 176, 201, 202, 203, 205, 207, 208, 224, 230 See also Amida Buddha; Śākyamuni; Shaka Nyorai; Yakushi Nyorai bugaku 214, 219, 237, 239 bugyō (medieval magistrate) 53 bunarin (beech forest) 170, 172 buppa (shooter) 179, 180 Butsumyōe (Ceremony for Reciting the Names of the Buddhas) 195, 208 calamities 41, 42, 46, 59, 208 Chiba Prefecture 2, 4, 10, 11, 19 Chiba Tokuji 173, 180 Chidori (family) 232, 235 chief abbot (zasu) 84, 91, 113 Chikatsu Ōmi 86 chimaki (charms of bamboo leaves) 46, 51, 59, 60, 67, 69 chinkon (pacifying of spirits) 7, 260 chinowa (wreath of miscanthus reed) 59 Chinzei Hachirō Tametomo 24, 25 Chion-in (head temple of Chinzei branch of Pure Land Buddhism) 208, 209 Mieidō (main hall) 209 chōie (neighborhood assembly house) 48, 53 chōnai (district/neighborhood) 19, 21, 69, 197 chōnaikai (neighborhood association) 47, 50, 55, 56, 132 chōnaikai-chō (neighborhood association head) 50, 55 chōshū (merchant class) 43 Christianity 41 Chūai (fourteenth emperor) 25 Chūgai denpō 110 Chūyūki 227 Constitution of the Empire of Japan (Dai Nihon teikoku kenpō) 27 contested zone(s) 5, 8, 37, 39, 43, 69, 71 Corsi, Robert A. 283 Dai no saka 7, 253–258, 260, 268 as intangible folk cultural property (mukei minzoku bunkazai) 254, 255 See also nenbutsu odori

index Dai no saka Preservation Group (hozonkai) 254, 256, 258 Daigongen 266 Daihōonji (popularly known as Senbon shakadō, 204–205) 204 Daijōin jisha zōjiki 229 Daijōin monzeki temple 229 Daikokuten/Ōkuninushi 233 Daikondaki 195, 196, 203, 204, 205 daikon (radish) 203–205 Dai-Nankō (Kusunoki Masahige) 11, 25 Dainichi 99 Daishi-sama (deity) 200–201 Odaishi-sama 200, 201 Daishiko-san (also Surikogi kakushi) (pestlehiding event) 200 surikogi kakushi (special snow) 200 Daishikō 195, 200, 201, 204, 205 almsgiving baths (hodokoshi-yu) 201 daishi kayu (porridge) 200 Daishi-san’s Bath 201 Kōbōsan’s Bath 201 Daoism 41, 134 Daoist 42 Daruma 200 dashi (floats) 3, 10, 11, 13, 14, 22, 23, 59, 71, 92, 95, 129, 287, 297 See also yatai, yamahoko decorations 4, 10, 14, 15, 18, 22, 23, 24, 26, 31, 33 Deirahon 202 deity 2, 6, 7, 18, 27, 31, 38, 43, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 86, 120, 128, 129, 134, 136, 149, 152, 169, 170, 174, 175, 176, 181, 182, 195, 196, 198, 200, 202, 203, 205, 213, 223, 225, 226, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 241, 260 See also kami; raihōshin; ubusunagami tutelary deity 44, 59, 71, 237, 266, 270 See also go-shintai demographics 2, 4, 7, 248, 249, 250, 264 demographic decline 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 263, 270, 271, 272, 273 demon See oni dengaku 91 district head (kuchō) 21 district head representative (kuchō dairi) 21

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index dragon 22, 230, 235, 236, 237, 238, 240, 288, 297 Durkheim 239 Ebenbauer, Peter 271 Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale 251 ecosystem 6, 170, 174, 175, 176 Edification Ministry (Kyōbushō) 105 Edo period (Tokugawa) 16, 19, 21, 23, 24, 26, 27, 178, 196, 198, 209 Eiroku nikki 288 ekijin (disease divinities) 41 Emperor Gosuzaku 79 Emperor Jinmu 25, 101 Emperor Kanmu 87 Emperor Shōwa 105 Emperor Sujin 103 Emperor Taishō 105 Emperor Tenji 86 Endan 202 Engishiki 79 Enryakuji Temple 42, 80, 84, 87, 91, 100, 102, 112, 113, 114 eroticism 282, 286 Esoteric Buddhism 128, 148, 171, 224 See also mikkyō eta (discriminatory term for socially ostracized community) 99 See also hisabetsumin Faure, Bernard 134, 225, 232, 233 feeling 3, 7, 136, 137, 284, 285, 287 festival See matsuri figure See ningyō fire festivals 6, 195, 196, 199, 201 See also o-hitaki; hi-matsuri floats (in festivals) See dashi; yamahoko; yatai folk performing arts 7, 210, 249, 250, 263, 272 folklore 18 folk practices 42 Foster, Michael Dylan 5, 7, 34, 73 fractal 6, 8, 213, 215, 224, 225, 230, 231, 235, 237, 238, 240, 241, 242 fuda 50 See also amulet fude kuyō (brush memorial service) 197 Fujiwara family 216, 226, 229, 232, 234 Fujiwara no Munetada 227

303 Fujiwara no Tadamichi (kanpaku) 226, 228, 229, 230 furusato (hometown) 147, 250 furyū (elegance, refinement) 38, 43, 45, 92, 95, 114, 115 Fushimi Inari Grand Shrine (Fushimi Inari Taisha) 197 gagaku 214, 216, 217, 219, 231, 239, 240 gall bladder (tannō; kuma no i) 177, 186 Ganzan 200 Gell, Alfred 17 genkai shūraku (marginal hamlets) 7, 248, 259 Genkon shikkō Hie jinja korei saishiki (The Contemporary Staging of Hie’s Ancient Festival) 108–109 Giolai, Andrea 6 Gion 2, 4, 5 Gion bayashi 54 Gion Matsuri 14, 30, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 46, 48, 50, 51, 54, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 197, 255 Naginata Hoko (first float of the procession) 38, 53, 69, 72 chigo (sacred boy) 38, 53, 69 shimenawa kiri (ceremonial cutting of the sacred rope) 38, 67 Ōfune Hoko 38 ato matsuri (second float procession) 38, 39, 70 Niwatori Hoko 42 shinkōsai and kankōsai (mikoshi parades during Gion Festival) 43, 45, 60, 61, 65 yamahoko floats 14, 15, 37, 287 Yamahoko junkō (procession of floats) 37, 38, 43, 44, 45, 53, 61, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 yamahoko-chō 4, 39, 41, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 56, 59, 62, 65, 67, 68, 69, 72 Yamabushi Yama 59 Ennogyōja Yama 59 Tokusa Yama 59 Kita and Minami Kannon Yama 60 kippu-iri (opening ceremony) 48, 58– 59 kiyo harai (purification rituals) 48, 60

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304 mitama utsushi (transference of kami from main shrine to portable shrine) 48, 60 yoiyama (eve of float procession) 51, 65, 69 saki matsuri (first float procession) 51– 52, 65, 70 Tōrō Yama 52 nagoshi no harae (summer purification ritual) 58, 59 yoimiyasai (night ritual of transferring a spirit, or mitama of the kami from the main hall to the kagura hall) 60 Eki Jinja 59 Gion Matsuri Yamahoko Rengōkai (Association for the Gion Festival Yamahoko) 38, 45, 48, 51, 52, 55, 56, 67, 70 Gion-sha (Gion shrine) 42 Glassie, Henry 16–17 Glassman, Hank 133 gofun (pigment) 23 gohei 51, 69, 147, 288 Gokenchō 99, 110–111, 114, 115 goma (ritual) 53, 54, 60, 148 gongen (avatars) 89 goryō (departed spirits) 41, 42 goryō-e (ritual to placate departed spirits) 41, 42 gōsha (village shrine) 105 go-shintai 44, 59, 71, 220 Goshogawara 282, 287, 293, 297 Gotō Kōzen 173 gozasen (barges) 85 Gozū Tennō 42 Grapard, Allan 128, 223, 232, 237 Great Golden Rock (kogane no ōiwa) 88 Great Hie State Shrines (Kanpei Taisha Hie Jinja) 101 See also Hie shrines Great Miwa (kami) 109 gūji (priest) 141, 147 gyōji (event, function) 45, 66, 154 haiden (worship hall) 80, 84 haikai (linked verse) 198, 199 Hamoyama 88 Hannya shingyō See Heart Sutra Hantā (hunter) 171, 173 See also ryōshi; matagi

index haraegushi (purification wand) 184 Hashimoto Hiroyuki 235, 237 hata-hata (fish local to Oga) 125 Hatakama Kazuhiro 226, 229 hayashikata musicians 65 Heart Sutra (Hannya shingyō) 84, 99 Heian period 41, 79, 153, 206, 209, 235 Heike monogatari (Tale of the Heike, the) 22 Hie (alternative reading of Hiyoshi) shrines 79, 80, 84, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 95, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 108, 112, 113, 114 See also Hiyoshi Taisha Hie Jinja (Oga) 123, 129 Hie koshiki saishi (Hie Shrine’s Traditional Rites) 109 Hie sairei kozu (Old Map of the Sannō Festival) 95–96 Hie sannō hari-maze byōbu (A Screen Collage of Hie Sannō) 96–97 Hie sannō sairei shinki (New Record of the Hie Shrines’ Sannō Festival, 1688) 87, 91, 92 Hiesha negi kuden shō (The Secret Transmissions of a Hie Shrine Priest: Abridged) 103–104, 109 Hiesha Shintō Himitsuki (A Secret Record of Shintō at the Hie Shrines, 1577) 87 Hiesha shin’eki nenjū gyōji (Annual Ceremonies Overseen by Priests at the Hie Shrines, 1588) 87 Higuchi Tatsuichi 254, 257 higuma, brown bear 181 hikiri shinji (fire-starting ritual) 197 hi-matsuri (fire festival) 290 Hinami kiji (Daily Chronicle) 198, 210 Hirata Atsutane 104 hisabetsumin 210–211 kawaramono 210 sanjo 210 hitaki gushi (wooden offering sticks) 197 Hiyoshi Taisha 5, 78, 79, 80, 81, 84, 85, 103, 113 Nishi Hongū 80, 84, 105, 112 Usanomiya 80, 84, 100, 105 Shirayamanomiya 80, 84 Higashi Hongū 80, 82, 84, 105 Jugenomiya 80, 82, 103, 105 Ushionomiya 80, 100, 103

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index Sannomiya 80, 89, 103, 105, 112 Ninomiya (earlier name for Higashi Hongū) 89, 99, 102, 103, 104 Jūzenji (earlier name for Jugenomiya) 88, 89, 100 Great Sannō Gate 85, 90, 100, 104, 105 Middle Gate 90, 93 Great Sacred Gate 90 See also Hie; Ninomiya Festival Hobsbawm, Eric 148 Hokkaidō 181 honabiraki (opening the heart) 185 honawari (dividing the heart) 185 Honda Yasuji 215 honden (main shrine) 48, 197 Hōnen 207, 209 Hongū (“main shrine”) 104–105, 107, 108 honji suijaku (“original forms of deities and their local traces”) 89, 128, 232 Honshū 181 household ritual 5, 118, 121, 125, 138, 139, 146, 151, 152, 153, 156, 159 hozonkai (preservation association) 46, 48, 50, 51, 52, 55, 56, 68, 71, 155 See also preservation society hrönir 118, 121, 157, 158, 159 “Humourous Chats” (Kokkei zōdan) 199 Hyōgo Prefecture 200 ICH See Intangible Cultural Heritage; UNESCO Imahori Taitsu 208, 209 Imamiya Shrine 197 indō (salvific prayer) 176 Inoue, Takahiro 260 Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH; mukei bunka isan) 4, 5, 11, 45, 66, 118, 119–120, 121, 149–151, 154, 155, 158, 159, 217 See also UNESCO Ise Dai Kagura 266 Ise Ondo 262 Ise sangū meisho zue 94–95 Ise Shrines 94, 261 Ishii Tatsurō 222–223 Iwaki River 293 iyomante (spirit-sending ritual for bears) 180–181

305 Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkachō) 150 Japanese folkloristics (minzokugaku) 167 Jingikan (government office for shrine affairs) 100 jinja (shrine) 165–166, 220, 262 See also specific shrine names Jinja Honchō (Association of Shinto Shrines) 79 Jinson 229 Jōdo shinshū 203 jōmin (common folk) 168 Jonveaux, Isabelle 271 Jordan, William R. 189 Juge Shigekuni 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 114 Jūichimen Kannon (Eleven-faced Kannon) 206–207, 209 Jūnigatsu asobi (“Twelve Months of Play”) 197, 209 Kadokawa Daisaku 45 Kageyama Haruki 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 104, 109 kagura 50, 85, 90, 108, 196, 248, 251, 260– 264, 266, 268–271 daidai kagura 261, 262 miko kagura 262 See also miko sato kagura 261 shishi kagura 261 Kajii Shoin 249 Kakushin (Enryakuji monk) 87, 90, 91, 92 kamainu (lion-dog statues) 129 Kamakura period 42, 204, 207 kami (deities, gods, goddesses) 5, 6, 41, 42, 45, 48, 56, 59, 60, 62, 67, 72, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84–91, 95, 97, 100–105, 108, 109, 110, 112–114, 128, 129, 131, 136–137, 147, 148, 159, 165–166, 202, 205, 216, 219, 220, 223, 226, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 238, 260, 266, 287, 288 kami uta (song dedicated to kami) 202 kamisama 135 See also deity; yama no kami kamishimo (male ceremonial dress) 51, 52 Kamo no Agatanushi Motochika 103 Kamo River 102 Kamo Wakeikazuchi (kami child of Tamayorihime) 81, 92, 102, 108, 109, 114 kamoshika (Japanese serow) 172, 173

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306 kamui (god in Ainu language) 181 kankō no gyōji (tourism event) 154 Kannon keka 209 Kanpei Taisha Hie Jinja (Great Hie State Shrines) 79, 105 Kansai 1, 5, 50, 218 kansai (state rites) 107 See also shisai Kantō 1, 19, 26 karakuri ningyō (mechanical doll) 52 Karasaki 85, 110 Kashikone 90 Kasuga Daimyōjin/Kasuga Gongen 223, 233–235 Kasuga faith 235 Kasuga Gongen genki 223, 233 Kasuga jinja ki (Record of Kasuga Shrine) 226 Kasuga Kogaku Hozonkai (Association for the Preservation of the Ancient Arts of Kasuga) 225 Kasuga Ōmiya Wakamiya gosairei no zu 227 Kasuga Ryūjin 234 Kasuga Taisha Shrine (Nara) 90, 101, 213, 216, 219, 220, 222, 225, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 234, 236 Ame no koyane no Mikoto 231, 232 Futsunushi no Mikoto 232 Himegami 231, 232 Takemikazuchi no Mikoto 232 Kasuga Taisha-Kōfukuji 223, 229, 233, 234, 235 Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri (“Onmatsuri”) 2, 5, 6, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 220, 222–224, 225–231, 232, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242 Akatsukisai 216 Kankō no Gi 220, 216 matsu no shita shiki 219 Otabishosai 219–220, 230–231, 236, 237, 242 owatari shiki 218 “the performing arts and Shintō rites of Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri” (Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri shinji geinō) 225, 242 Senkō no Gi 219–220 Kasugaoka (Kasuga Slope) 90, 108, 111 Kasugasha nenjū gyōji (Annual Celebrations of Kasuga Shrine) 226

index Katori (city in Chiba) 11, 19 katsura (tree) 84 Kawachi Province 232 kawakise 185 See also kebokai Kawano, Satsuki 250 Kazan Inari Shrine 197 Kazuno 86 kebokai 183–185 kede See kera Keikō (twelfth emperor) 25 keihitsu 219 keka See repentance kende See kera kera (straw coat) 123, 126, 127, 129, 141, 147 Kichijō keka 209 Kimbrough, Keller 133 Kimura Yoshihiro 79 Kimura Toshiaki 55 Kintarō 11 Kintoki Yamauba 25 Kisshōten 208 Kita Kannon Yama 45 Klien, Susanne 7 Knecht, Peter 260 Knight, John 251 Kobayashi, Kazushige 260 Kobie 102 Kobiezan Daimyōjin 88 Kōbō Daishi See Kūkai Kōeki Zaidan Hōjin (Public Interest Incorporated Foundations) 55 Kōfukuji 213, 228, 229, 230, 232, 236 Kōfukuji yurai sono taki 229 Koizumi Jun’ichirō 57 Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) 11, 24, 79, 86, 101–102, 103, 167, 235 Kojikiden (On the Kojiki) 101–102, 103, 114 Komatsu Kazuhiko 153 Konchi’in Temple 92 Konkō mandala 90 Kōryūji 197 Koshikijima no Toshidon 121 Kosodate Kannon (child-nurturing Bodhisattva of compassion) 170 Koteda Yasusada (Shiga Prefectural Governor) 111

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index Kōya-ha (matagi faction) 176 Koyukon 188 Kuji kongen 102 kujiaratame (presentation of lots) ceremony 53, 56 kujitori shiki (drawing lots ceremony) 38, 56, 57, 71, 72 Kūkai (Kōbō Daishi) 176, 200, 205 Kukurihime 84, 103 Kuma Matsuri (shishi matsuri) 2, 6, 165, 166, 180–181, 187, 188–190 kumajiru (bear soup) 186, 187, 188, 190 Kuni no Satsuchi 89 kunin (low-ranking monks) 91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 97, 100, 113–114 Kunitokotachi no Mikoto 89, 101–102, 113, 114 Kupari, Helena 135 Kurasono Jinja 110 Kurokawa Dōyū 198, 210 kurumakata (float pullers) 52, 68 Kurumazaki Shrine 197 Kurushima Hiroshi 92, 94 Kushi Inada Hime no Mikoto (consort of Susanoo no Mikoto) 41 Kusunoki Masatsura See Shō-Nankō Kūya 206–207, 255 ichi no hijiri (“holy man of the marketplace”) 206 See also nenbutsu odori kyōgen (traditional comic theater) 91, 262 Kyoto 2, 4, 5, 6, 14, 30, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 47, 53, 57, 60, 61, 62, 67, 69, 70, 71, 83, 92, 93, 100, 102, 110, 195, 196, 197, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 209, 210, 211, 254 Kyoto Gion Matsuri Volunteer 21, 68 Kyoto Prefecture 200, 201 Kyōto shimin shinbun 45, 52 Lake Biwa 78, 85, 90, 91, 92, 93, 108, 110, 111, 113 Latour, Bruno 250, 270 lived religion 135, 159, 277, 283, 287 See also vernacular religion Lotus Sutra 99 machiya (merchant’s house) Mahayana Buddhism 207

197

maidono (kagura hall; dance hall) 60 makigari (enveloping hunt) 179 mamori fuda (amulet) 48 Manchurian Incident 27 manzai 262 marebito theory 14, 138 Marōdo 88, 103, 105 Massumi, Brian 240 matagi (traditional hunters) 6, 165, 166, 169, 170, 171–180, 181, 182, 183, 184–186, 188, 189, 190 matagu (to step over or across) 171 See also bear hunters; bear hunting material culture 16–17 materiality 17, 136, 179, 242 Matsuda Inari 101 Matsuo no o 86 Matsuo Shrine 102 Matsukizawa 122, 123, 124, 126, 128, 129, 132, 135, 137 matsurau (to serve and obey the gods) 152 matsuru (to worship or pray) 166 matsuri (festival) 79, 110, 121, 129, 140, 141, 152, 153, 154, 158, 159, 165, 166, 187–188, 195, 196, 198, 202, 203, 213, 214, 215, 224, 225, 231, 234, 235, 240, 248, 257, 260, 277, 278, 280, 282, 283, 284, 285, 287, 288, 290, 293, 297 intrinsic to religion 1, 43, 60, 121 as multidimensional event 1, 7, 8, 43, 45, 56, 144, 154 photography of 277, 280 matsuri-sairei distinction 92, 110 See also sairei Mauss, Marcel 188 Meiji hachinen Hie jinja korei saishiki (Eighth Year of the Meiji Era: Hie Shrine’s Traditional Rites) 107 Meiji period 18, 19, 26, 42, 44, 56, 79, 99, 105, 108, 110, 178, 230, 262 Meiji Restoration 208 Meiji Revolution 99, 109, 113, 114 Mikame Kiyotomo 180 Mikasayama hill 234 miki (sacred sake) 48, 59, 190, 196, 198 mikkyō 41, 128, 129 See also Esoteric Buddhism miko (shrine maiden) 50, 202 miko mai (shrine maiden dance) 28

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308 mikoshi (portable shrines) 21, 32, 33, 43, 44, 48, 56, 57, 60, 61, 62, 80, 82, 84, 87, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95, 97, 103, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 129, 166, 197, 198, 199, 266 mikoshi buri (mikoshi shaking) 84, 91, 108, 109, 114 mikoshi harai (purification of portable shrines) 56 mikoshi togyo (procession of portable shrines) 43, 45, 53, 55, 56, 67 Minamoto no Yoshitsune 25, 30 minzokugaku (Japanese folkloristics) 167 Miwa Shrine 86 miyadera (shrine under Buddhist administration) 42 Miyamoto gumi 55, 56 Miyamoto Tsune’ichi 173 mochi (rice cakes) 148, 201 goma mochi 143, 147 mochigushi (holding the skewer) 185 Motoori Norinaga 101–102, 103, 114 Mount Futagami 235 Mount Mikasa 235 Mt. Hachiōji 80, 81, 91, 105, 108 Hachiōji 88, 89, 100, 111 Mt. Hiei (Hieizan) 78, 80, 84, 102, 109, 112 Mt. Kōya 176 Mt. Miwa 84 Mt. Moriyoshi 177 Mt. Shin (Shinzan) 148 mukaimatte 179 mukei bunka isan See Intangible Cultural Heritage; UNESCO mura (village) 122 mura okoshi (village revitalization) 138, 158 Murakami Tadayoshi 13, 15 Murayama Shūichi 79 Muromachi period 43, 196, 208 mushi 287, 288, 290, 293, 297 mushi-okuri (“sending off the insects”) 7, 277, 287, 288, 290 Mushi to Hi-Matsuri 293 Ascension of the Insects (mushi no shōten) 293 Mutō Tetsujō 171, 173 myōjin taisha 79

index Nakajō 7, 253, 254, 255, 256 Nakatomi family 232 Nakatomi Sukeomi 228 Namahage 2, 4, 5, 66, 118, 159, 282, 285, 286, 287 objectification of 138–139 as private ritual 121–128, 153–154 as public festival 140–148, 153–154 religious qualities of 128–138 See also Namahage Sedo Matsuri Namahage-kan (Namahage Museum) 139, 140 Namahage Sedo Matsuri 5, 66, 67, 118, 121, 140, 144, 146–148, 150–151, 153–154, 156, 158, 159, 280 Namahage Daiko (taiko-drumming concert) 142, 144 Namahage gesan (descent of Namahage) 142 Namahage gyōji saigen (staged reenactment of Namahage New Year’s ritual) 141 Namahage Odori (Namahage Dance) 142 Nandaimon gyōmyō no gi 230 Nanto Gakuso 213, 214, 216, 220, 230, 236, 237, 239–241, 242 Nanto meisho shū (Collection of Famous Places in the Southern Capital) 226 Nara 2, 209, 213, 217, 218, 219, 223, 231, 233, 234, 242 Nara meisho yaezakura (Double-Flowered Cherry Blossoms of Nara’s Famous Places) 226 Nara period 208 Nasori 237 nationalism 10, 18, 33–34 Nebuta 282, 285, 297 See also Neputa; Tachineputa Nelson, Richard K. 188 nenban (supervisors of shrines and floats) 21 nenbutsu (invocation of Amida Buddha) 203, 207–208 nenbutsu odori 255, 260 See also kakure nenbutsu under Rokuharamitsuji Temple; Kūya; odori nenbutsu; senju nenbutsu nenjū gyōji (annual event) 153, 154

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index Neputa 282, 287 See also Nebuta; Tachineputa Nezumiya 16 Nichibunken (International Research Center for Japanese Studies) 38, 47 nigimitama (gentle spirit) 82 Nihon shoki (Chronicles of Japan) 11, 24, 89, 101, 167 Niigata Prefecture 1, 2, 7, 178, 180, 189, 248, 251, 254, 261, 263 Niinamesai 6, 195, 196, 197, 199, 202–203 Nikkō Gongen 175 Nikkō-ha (matagi faction) 175, 178 ningyō (figures) 11, 14, 15, 16, 18, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 ninjūnisha 79 Ninigi no Mikoto 24, 25, 89, 167 ningyō jōruri (puppet theater) 26 Ninomiya Shrine 102 Ninomiya Festival 91 Nishiki Shin’yokai 56 Nishikawa Yoshisuke 104–105, 107, 108 niwabi (garden bonfire) 196, 198 Niwano Tadao 264, 266, 268, 270 Nō drama 234 Nōkotsu butsumyōe (Ceremony for Reciting the Names of the Buddhas and Laying the Ashes to Rest) 208 norimono (vehicles) 280, 284 norito (Shintō prayer) 50, 196, 220 Obon (Buddhist holiday during which ancestral spirits return home) 168, 253, 254 See also bon dance Oda Nobunaga 80, 87, 91 Odaishi-san Day 200 odori nenbutsu (dancing nenbutsu) 207 Oga 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 128, 129, 131, 132, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 151, 153, 154, 156, 157, 159, 280, 282, 285, 286 Oga no Namahage See Namahage Oga Shinzan Denshō-kan (Oga Shinzan Folklore Museum) 138 Ogano Minoru 7, 129, 277, 280, 282–288 Oguni 178, 185 ōharae (month of purification) 206, 208, 211 okashi (sweets) 59 Okishi 19

309 O-hitaki 6, 195, 196, 197, 199, 201, 203, 205 Okada Seishi 79 Okame 28, 233 Oku-Tsugaru Mushi to Hi Matsuri 290 arauma (dance imitating a horse) 290 shishi mai (lion dance) 290 tachi-buri (sword performance) 290 Ōkuni Takamasa 104 okuyama (deep mountain) 169, 182 Ōmandokoro (Great office) 82, 83, 84, 91, 97, 103, 108, 109, 110 Ōmi yochi shiryaku (A Brief Account of Ōmi and Environs) 95 omiki See miki Ominugui shiki 209 ōmisoka no gyōji (New Year’s Eve event) 153 Ōmiwa Shrine (restyled name for Ōmiya Shrine) 105, 108 Ōmiwa Shrine (Nara) 105 Ōmiya Avatar Festival (Ōmiya gongen sairei) 91 Ōmiya Shrine 87, 91, 99, 103, 105 Ōmiya gate 90 ondotori (people standing on the front of the float) 53 Ōnamuchi 80, 84, 87, 88, 91, 103, 105, 107, 112, 113, 114 oni 119, 134, 136, 147, 171 Ōnin war (1467–1477) 43, 208 Onmatsuri See Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri onmyōji (yin-yang master) 236 Ono Akira 7, 248 Ono no Tōfū 25 Ono River 19 Orikuchi Shinobu 13, 152, 215 Orsi, Robert 135 Osada Mitsuhiko 62 Osaka 232, 254 Ōsaka Mainichi shinbun 109 Ōsato Shrine 202 Oshiogori festival 55 o-tabisho (temporary shrine) 44, 57, 61, 62, 65, 72 Otagi 93 otoko matsuri (men’s festival) 51, 72 Ōtsu City 78, 84, 110, 111 Ōtsu Prefecture 100, 101, 103 oyakata (leader of a hunt) 190

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index

Ōyamakui 79, 80, 81, 82, 86, 89, 92, 101–102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 111, 113, 114 Ōyamakuiden (On the kami Ōyamakui) 101–102

Ryōtokuji 203, 204, 205 myōgō scroll 203, 205 See also Daikondaki ryūda 288, 297

pacifying spirits (chinkon) 7 pelt (kegawa) 184, 185 photography 277, 278 Pierotti, Raymond 173 Platvoet, Jan 60 polyphony 55, 56, 72 Porcu, Elisabetta 4, 5, 34, 160, 255 preservation society 2, 155, 252, 256, 260 See also hozonkai Primiano, Leonard 133 Pure Land Buddhism (Jōdoshū) 207, 208 Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss (gokuraku jōdo) 255 purification 6, 43, 50, 56, 58, 59, 60, 65, 112, 183, 184, 195, 196, 206, 208, 209, 210, 211 Mauritius (Port Louis) 118, 119

sachi no hoko (great spear of good fortune) 94 sage 200, 201, 203, 204 Sahlins, Marshall 252 sai (festival) 43 sairei 92, 110 Saidō-sai 66 Saigoku Pilgrimage 206 Saijin oyobi kanjō nenki unnun (“On the Hie kami, the dating of their enshrinement, and other matters”) 103, 104 sajiki (viewing pavilions) 91, 93, 99 sakaki 50, 84, 92, 94, 111, 112, 113, 233 Sakamoto 78, 80, 82, 83, 84, 93, 95, 96, 97, 99, 104, 107, 110–111, 113 Sakuma Jun’ichi 180 Sakura Gate 108 Śākyamuni (historical Buddha) 99, 204, 253 See also Shaka Nyorai Samukawa Tatsukiyo 95 sandai (three great festivals of Japan) 41 Sangokushi (Records of the Three Kingdoms) 22 Sannō 2, 5, 83, 87 Sannō Matsuri (festival) 78, 79, 80, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 94, 95, 97, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 107–115 Banba Path 83, 84, 85, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 108, 109, 111, 113 hanawatari (flower parade) 83, 91, 95, 97, 99, 112, 114, 115 hitsuji no goku (offerings for the day of the sheep) 83, 91 day of the sheep 91 Ōsakaki parade 84, 94, 95, 99, 113 Sannō sairei byōbu (Sannō Festival Screen) 92–93 ubuya (birth hut) 83, 108 Sannomiya (kami) 88 sanpai (ritual visit) 50 Sanskrit 171, 184, 204 Sanwaka Shin’yokai 56 Sasaki Takamasa 79 Satō Masato 104

raihōshin (visiting deities) 120, 138, 200, 205 as UNESCO element of Intangible Cultural Heritage 120, 121, 149, 150 Rakuson 230–231, 237, 241 Rambelli, Fabio 128, 224 Rappaport, Roy A. 271 Ray, Benjamin C. 188 religious and secular (boundaries/spheres/ negotiations/blurring) 4, 37, 39, 40, 55, 56–57, 60, 61, 62, 71, 72, 132, 255 repentance (keka) 196, 208–209, 211 ritual participation 213, 215, 220, 224, 225, 235, 240, 241, 242 ritual practice 7, 134, 248, 249, 251, 252, 255, 271, 272, 273 ritual procedures (shidai) 223, 225 Robertson, Jennifer 250 Roemer, Michael 59, 68 Rokuharamitsuji Temple 6, 206–207 kakure nenbutsu (hidden nenbutsu) 6, 195, 206, 207 Kūya yuyaku nenbutsu (Kūya’s dancing nenbutsu) 206 Saikōji 207 Russo-Japanese War 111 ryōshi (hunter) 171 See also matagi

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index satoyama (area between mountain hills and arable flat land) 250 Sawara 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 23, 25, 26, 29, 31, 34 Honjuku and Shinjuku districts 19, 20, 21 sazukaru (to be bestowed/blessed with) 174 Sawara Festival floats 16, 21, 25, 26, 31, 33 figures (ningyō) 11, 14, 15, 16, 18, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 16–17, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 Sawara Float Event 11 Sawara Grand Festival (Sawara no taisai) 2, 4, 10, 11, 14, 19, 20, 23, 25, 30, 32, 33, 282 Sawara no taisai See Sawara Grand Festival Schnell, Scott 43 sculptures 22, 23 seikyō bunri (separation of state and religion) 55, 57, 150 Seisei kōsha 55, 56 Sekido ward 26 sekizoro 195, 209, 210, 211 seko (driver) 179, 190 sendo mairi (shrine visit) 50 senju nenbutsu (“exclusive” nenbutsu practice) 207 See also nenbutsu Senzo no hanashi (About our Ancestors) 168 Shaka Nyorai 89, 91, 114 See also Śākyamuni Shaku nihongi 101 shaman (miko, urabe, shanin) 202 shamanic 248, 251, 260 See also miko Shichi 282 Shiga Prefecture 2, 5, 78, 80, 93, 105, 107, 108, 110, 111 Shijō Han’eikai Shōtengai Shinkō Kumiai (Cooperative for the Promotion of the Shops and Association for the Thriving of Shijō Street) 62 shikari (leader of hunting group) 179, 183, 184 shimenawa (Shintō sacred rope) 288 See also shimenawa kiri under Gion Matsuri Shimotsuki (eleventh month) 195, 196, 199, 200, 201, 202, 205, 206 Shimotsuki matsuri 199

311 Shin Buddhism (Jōdo shinshū) 203 Shinano River 253 shinbutsu bunri (separation of Buddhism and Shintō) 42, 229 Shingon 129, 176, 197, 204 Shin’itai (Band of Divine Dignity) 99 shinji (Shintō ritual) 45, 56, 59, 70 shinkō (religion/faith) 67, 70 See also belief shinkoku (newly harvested grain) 196 shinnenkai (New Year’s party) 48 Shinran 203, 205 shintai 220 See also go-shintai Shintō 3, 6, 7, 14, 18, 27, 41, 42, 45, 50, 59, 65, 67, 72, 79, 82, 84, 90, 100, 104, 113, 114, 128, 129, 131, 132, 134, 135, 149, 159, 166, 167, 184, 195, 196, 197, 198, 208, 209, 217, 223, 226, 229, 230, 231, 233, 236, 251, 260, 266, 288 Shintō taikei 104 Shinzan Shrine 5, 66, 140, 141, 147, 148, 153, 280–282 Shirayamahime Shrine (name for Marōdo Shrine) 105 shiri-tsunagi (hip-tying) 81, 108, 109 shiri-tsunagi no norito (hip-tying prayer) 81 shiri-tsunagi no goku (offerings to the seven kami) 81 shisai (private rites) 107 See also kansai Shisai tetsuzuki sho (Procedures for the Conduct of the Private Festival) 108 shishi (guardian dogs) 22 shishi (large game animals) 172 Shiwaka Shin’yokai 56 Shiwasu (twelfth month) 195, 196, 206, 209, 210, 211 Shō-Nankō (Kusunoki Masatsura) 11, 25 Shōgakuan 197 Shōgenji family 89 Shōgenji Kitoku 108, 109 Shōgenji Kiyo 99, 101–102 Shōgenji Yukimaru 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 103, 113 Shoham, Hizky 252, 272 Shōshinshi 88, 100 Shōwa period 178

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312 Shugendō (mountain asceticism) 59, 128, 131, 134, 148 shūkyō (“religion” as a term/concept) 59, 67, 132, 283, 287 shūraku (hamlet) 122, 124, 128, 129, 131, 133, 134, 135, 142, 146, 151, 156, 158, 287 shūshin (moral education) 11 Stoeltje, Beverly 154 Sugawara no Michizane 27 Suigo Ohashi Bridge 19 Suikoden (Tale of the Marshes, or Water Margin) 22 sumō 26, 252 Surikogi kakushi See Daishiko-san Susanoo no Mikoto 41, 42, 56 Suwa Shrine 19, 20, 21, 33 Switek, Beata 249 ta no kami (rice paddy god) 168, 169 tabi-matagi (traveling matagi) 178 Tachineputa 282, 287, 290 See also Nebuta; Neputa Tagorihime 84, 103, 105, 107 Taguchi Hiromi 177, 178, 180 Taiheiki (Chronicle of Great Peace) 22 taiko (traditional Japanese drums) 142, 257, 262 Taishō period 178 Taizō mandala 90 Takahashi Buntarō 173 Takamagahara 24 Takehaya Susanoo no Mikoto 25 See also Susanoo no Mikoto Takigawa 128 Tale of the Heike (Heike monogatari) 22 tamagushi (offering made with sakaki branch and strips of paper, cotton, or silk) 50, 65 Tamayorihime 80, 81, 82, 84, 89, 92, 102, 103, 104, 105, 108, 109, 111, 114 Tangochō Taiza 200, 204 tatemae (public face) 55 tea ceremony 53, 56 ritual tea ceremony (kencha shiki) 56 Teeuwen, Mark 128 TEK See traditional ecological knowledge Tendai Buddhism 42, 112, 129, 175, 207, 288 Tenson Shrine (Tenson Jinja) 84, 111 Thompson, Christopher 249, 251, 271 Thornbury, Barbara 251

index Tōdaiji 209 Togawa Yukio 173 Tōhoku 55 Tōkamachi City 251, 253, 254, 259, 263, 264, 266, 270 Tōkamachi City Museum Department of Cultural Property (bunkazaika) 263 Tōkamachi shishi (Tōkamachi Municipal History) 266 tokin (hat-like accoutrement) 128 Tokyo 16, 17, 23, 26, 105 Tone River 19 torii (shrine gateway) 57, 83, 97, 124, 127, 129, 140 Tōshinsho (Report) 101, 103 traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) 8, 173, 178 “training of successors” (kōkeisha ikusei) 260, 263 Traphagan, John 251 Tsugaru 277, 280, 287, 288, 297 Tsukahara, Shinji 4, 282 tsuke matsuri (side show) 32 tsujimawashi (turning of a float) 53 tsukinowaguma (Asian black bear) 172, 173, 181 tsukurimono (decorations; crafts; handmade objects) 15, 16 Turner, Victor 250 ubusunagami (guardian deities) 198 Ueki Yukinobu 14 ujigami (local deity) 44, 55 ujiko (parishioners) 19, 20, 21, 44, 48, 50, 66, 68, 69, 198 ujiko institution (ujiko soshiki) 56 uke (also ukeseko) (interceptor) 179 Uma-ichi Matsuri 297 Umetani Kōei 112 UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) 119, 135, 149 Intangible Cultural Heritage (mukei bunka isan) (ICH) 45, 66, 119–120, 121, 154, 159 Representative List 4, 5, 11, 66, 119–120, 121 World Heritage (sekai isan) 154 Urashima Tarō 11, 25

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index vernacular religion 133, 135, 137, 140, 147, 149–150, 152 See also lived religion violent spirits (aramitama) 81, 82, 89, 103, 108, 109, 111 von Glahn, Richard 134 Wachi 200, 204 Wadayama 200–201, 204 Wakamiya (kami) 232–235, 237 Wakamiya Jinja 219, 220, 226, 228, 229, 231, 232, 233, 236 Wakamiya saireiki 228 ward (chōnai) 19, 20, 21, 26, 31, 32, 69 ward conferences (sōchō kaigi) 21 Watanabe, Masako 251 Williams, Raymond 136, 137, 148 winter solstice 195, 196, 199, 200, 202, 203, 205, 206 Yabusame sadame 230, 232 Yagi Tōru 6, 73 Yagiyama 99, 110–111, 112, 114, 115 Yahashira no Mikogami 56 Yakushi keka 208 Yakushi Nyorai 208 yakuyoke awamochi (mochi against calamities) 59 yamahoko (floats) 13, 14, 37, 47, 51, 52, 53, 65, 69 See also dashi; yatai yama, hoko, and yatai float festivals 11, 13 yama kotoba (mountain language) 182, 183, 185 Yama no i (Mountain Well) 198 yama no kami (mountain deity) 6, 165–171, 174–177, 181–186, 188, 190 Yamabushi (mountain ascetics) 53, 128 Yamadachi konpon no maki (Hunter’s Foundational Scroll) 175, 178 Yamadachi yurai no koto (On the Hunters’ Origins) 176

Yamagata Prefecture 178, 180, 185 Yamaji Kōzō 14, 210 Yamakumada 189 Yamamoto Tsugio 282 Yamashiro no kuni fudoki (Records of Yamashiro Province) 101–102 Yamasue no Ōnushi no kami (another name for Ōyamakui) 86 See also Ōyamakui Yamato Province 84, 86, 223, 226, 231, 234 Yamato Takeru no Mikoto 25 Yanagita Kunio 13, 92, 94, 110, 152, 153, 167, 168, 169, 171, 215 Yahashira no Mikogami (offspring of Susanoo no Mikoto and Kushi Inada Hime no Mikoto) 41 yanekata 52 Yasaka Shrine (Gion Festival) 4, 37, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 48, 50, 52, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 65, 67, 71, 72 (O-hitaki Festival) 197 Seisei kōsha (shrine-related association) 72 (Sawara Grand Festival) 19, 20, 21, 33 Yasuda Tsuguo 226, 229 Yasukuni Shrine 57 yatai (festival floats) 3, 13, 14, 129, 141, 288, 290 See also dashi; yamahoko Yoinomiya (Night shrine) 82 Yomiuri shinbun 110 yorishiro (temporary dwelling for gods) 13, 14, 190 Yoshida Kōjirō 45, 67, 70 Yōtenki (A Record of the Resplendent Heavens) 87 Yumoto 132, 156 Zen (Buddhism) 62 zōri (straw sandals) 52

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