Torii

Torii (鳥居) are formalized gateway arches signifying the transition from the mundane world to a sacred area. Shrines may have one or multiple torii. When multiple torii are present, the largest one is usually called the ichi no torii (一ノ鳥居, the first torii), and stands at the approach to the overall shrine. Torii may also be found at various points within the precincts to indicate increasing levels of holiness as you approach the honden (本殿, main sanctuary).

Torii first appeared in Japan around the mid-Heian Period (794-1185) and were probably introduced to Japan from Tang China via Korea as Buddhism spread east. It is believed that torii originated in India from the torana gates in the monastery of Sanchi in central India.

Torana, also known as vandanamalikas, are free-standing arched gateways in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain architecture fo South, Southeast, and East Asia. In addition to Japaense torii, Chinese páifāng gateways (牌樓), Korean hongsalmun (홍살문, 紅箭門), and Thai sao ching cha (เสาชิงช้า) have their roots in the Indian torana.

The hizen torii (肥前鳥居) is an unusual type of torii with a rounded kasagi and pillars that flare downwards.

A torii is usually formed from two upright hashira, (柱, posts) topped by a horizontal shimagi (島木, tie beam) and kasagi (笠木, cap beam) that extends beyond the posts on either side; beneath the kasagi a horizontal nuki '(貫, tie beam) is mortised through the uprights, linking them together. At the center of the nuki there may be a supporting strut called gakuzuka (額束), sometimes covered by a tablet carrying the name of the shrine. Based on this elemental form, a variety of formal styles are found at shrines, depending on the overall style of shrine architecture employed and the character of the central saijin (祭神, deity) enshrined within.

Chigi and Katasogi

Honden (本殿) – main hall, enshrining the kami (神). On the roof of the haiden (拝殿) and honden (本殿) are visible chigi (千木, forked roof finials) and katsuogi (鰹木, short horizontal logs), both common shrine ornamentations.

Katsuogi (鰹木, 堅魚木, 勝男木, 葛緒木) or Kasoegi (斗木) are short, decorative logs found in Shinto architecture. Placed at a right angle along the ridge of roofs, they predate Buddhist influence and are an architectural element endemic to Japan.

In ancient times, katsuogi were used as symbols of status or rank on the houses of members of the court and other powerful families, but they later came to be used only on the major structures of shrines.

Chigi are believed to be a vestige of primitive construction practices in which roofs were formed by crossing and binding together ridge-support poles, the extended tops of which were left uncut.

The original purpose of chigi was as a functional reinforcement to the structure, but today, most serve as symbols emphasizing the sacred nature of the structure.

At the Grand Shrines of Ise, shrine buildings dedicated to male kami are traditionally given an odd number of katsuogi and the ends of chigi are cut perpendicular to the ground, while shrines to female kami have an even number of katsuogi, and chigi are cut parallel to the ground.

The ends of the diagonal chigi are cut at mitered angles either perpendicular (sotosogi) or parallel (uchisogi) to the ground, leading to the alternate name katasogi ("miters").

God is Catholic

A few years back, I was watching the penalty shoot out between Greece and Costa Rica and found it amusing to see members from both teams praying—praying to the very same Christian God, mind you—in the hope that He was supporting their team rather than the other guys and would guide them to victory. 

Indeed, one of the first things Costa Rica's Navas did after he successfully blocked the third penalty kick was to point towards Heaven and say, "Gracias!"

While 97% of Greek citizens identify themselves as Eastern Orthodox Christians—79% of them saying that they "believe there is a God" and another 15.8% describing themselves as "very religious", the highest figure among all European countries—a nationwide survey of religion in Costa Rica found that 70.5% of "Ticos" are Roman Catholics, 44.9% of whom are practicing.

Clearly this says something about the nature of God that has been in dispute since the Great Schism, the medieval division of Chalcedonian Christianity into Eastern (Greek) and Western (Latin) branches one thousand years ago. Namely, that God is, beyond a doubt, Roman Catholic.

(That is, unless those heathen Dutch win the whole shebang.)

The End is Nigh

Two thoughts occured to me when I saw this photo.

One, the end is not as nigh as some would like; and, two, we've clearly got plenty of time to repent, so go ahead and enjoy yourself.

If anything is true, God is not in a hurry.

Sennyoji

Some 15 years ago, my wife and I visited this temple deep in the mountains of Itoshima. We were the only visitors at the time and felt honored when the Buddhist priest on duty invited us into the Holy of Holies or Apse, so to speak, to give us an up-close view of the 1000-handed Kannon statue. As we knelt before it, he burnt incense and chanted a lengthy sutra.

It had been a hard year, but at the time things were looking up. Being prayed over, I couldn’t help feeling that we were experiencing a spiritual spring cleaning that swept all of the negativity of the past several months away. And when it was finished and we stepped down from the we emerged that sacred space, I felt as if a heavy burden I had been carrying had become lighter.

As we left, toes frostbite from the cold, but hearts warmed and filled with hope, I suggested coming again the following year. And we did, year after year until our first son was born and child rearing became all-consuming.

In the meantime, Japan changed. The world changed. There was no SNS or smartphones when we first visited. There were few inbound tourists, too.

Now, I don’t want to sound like a crusty old fart, but I prefer how things were then—little known, quiet, special . . . holy. Thanks to COVID-19, the crowds that had beeb overwhelming so many places known for their tranquil and sublime beauty are once again worth visiting. (That was how I felt when we visited Dazaifu last week, too.)

We may have missed the peak of Sennyoji’s autumnal beauty this time by a few days. But I couldn’t have been happier to see the temple as I remembered it.

And as we left, I suggested once again that we try to come again next year.

From Wiki:

Sennyo-ji (千如寺) is a Shingon temple in Itoshima, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. Its honorary sangō prefix is Sennyo-ji Daihiō-in (千如寺大悲王院). It is also referred to as Raizan Kannon (雷山観音).

According to the legend, Sennyo-ji was founded in the Nara period by Seiga, who came from India as a priest during the period.

Due to its position in the north overlooking the Sea of Genkai, it has been expected from the shogunate as a prayer temple of the foremost line against the Mongol invasions of Japan during the Kamakura period. In its heyday has been said to be lined up to 300 priest living quarters around the temple. Sennyo-ji is a general term of this temple, and it is also referred to as the priest's lodge that was located next to the middle sanctuary, the present day site of Ikazuchi-jinja. The wooden Avalokiteśvara statue is the subject of mountainous faith that has been enshrined in the main hall.

God Bless the Godless

Several years ago, one of my many nephews posted the following quote to his Facebook profile:

Atheism is the opiate of the morally degenerate.

Let me tell you, that really pissed me off. But, rather than admonish him for being so damn ignorant, I let it slide. What would the point be? At the age of eighteen he already had such strong beliefs in his Christianity that he would have been impervious to anything I had to say.

The boy had a reason for being cocksure: he had just been admitted to the U.S. Naval Academy. He would by and by graduate with honors and get accepted to the Top Gun fighter pilot training program, his childhood dream. The kid, no slacker, was certainly bright. Nevertheless, he was still capable of being dumb.

When you have as many brothers and sisters as I do—there are thirteen of us (Bloody Catholics!)—there’s bound to be differences in opinion about politics and religion. My siblings fall into a number of camps politically: there are liberals, moderates, like myself, kooky libertarians, and way-out there conservatives. There are born-again Christians, devout Catholics, salad-bar Catholics, Agnostics, Freethinkers, and the token salad-bar Buddhist: me.

My nephew, needless to say, aligns himself with the conservative born-again Christian camp of the family. His mother, an older sister of mine, home-schooled many of her children, and none of them have fallen far from the tree. They are for the most part aliens to me. Whenever I have the rare chance of talking to them—We met in person for the first time in 18 years a three summers ago—I honestly don’t know what to say. It’s like tiptoeing through a landmine. Now, I’m not saying that they are obnoxious, because they aren’t. They’re extremely decent and polite. All of them are very good-looking, too. It’s just that they have such firm beliefs about everything you know you’re going to end up disagreeing. And afterwards, they’ll pray for you: “Poor uncle has strayed from the path, O Lord. Please help him see the light.” Or some kind of crap like that.

I just checked my nephew’s Facebook profile and saw that the quote remains, indicating to me that he must really believe it. 

Atheism is the opiate of the morally degenerate.

What a quote. Obviously, someone thought they were being clever by corrupting the oft-quoted paraphrase of what Karl Marx had written: “Die Religion . . . ist das Opium des Volkes.”[1]

What irked me so much about the quote was the bold assertion that Atheists were immoral and that only those who believed in God—the Christian Gawd, mind you—were morally upstanding.

As you might suspect, I disagreed.

First of all, you’re not a truly moral person if the only reason you do good or shun “evil” acts is to avoid punishment in the afterlife or be rewarded with a passage through the Pearly Gates. A lot of Christians fail to understand that this is a very low-level, if not childish, stage in moral development. No, a truly moral person does good because it is the right thing to do. He follows standards of morality that are universal, that apply to all people at all times. Do not kill. Do not cheat. Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not hurt others. Why? Because we’re all in the same goddamn boat here and life is difficult enough as is to be made even more difficult by inconsiderate arses.

Now, I’m not saying people who do good only so that they might go to Heaven are bad. If that’s what works for them, and if their beliefs enable them to function as good citizens, then the more power to them.

The problem is that many self-confessed “good Christians” are not very good at being true Christians, that is, loving, kind, understanding and accepting, open-hearted, giving, concerned about the less fortunate, forgiving, and so on. No, far too many “good Christians” are hating, unfriendly, unaccepting those different from themselves, close-minded, callous towards those less fortunate, judgmental, and downright mean.

They are also dishonest.

In Japan, in this den of morally degenerate Atheists, I can leave my notebook computer, iPhone, and wallet on the table at a café while I pop into the restroom and expect to find everything untouched when I return. In America, all three would be gone before I could even unzip my fly.

A decade ago while we were waiting in line at the check-in counter at the airport, my father dropped his money clip. The clip contained quite a bit of cash, his driver’s license, and some credit cards.

After I checked in and was heading towards the departure gate, I could hear my father’s name being paged over the airport PA system: “Mr. Crowe, please return to the United check-in counter.”

Back at the check-in counter, the ground staff handed my father his money clip, saying, “I believe you dropped this.”

Returned was my father’s money clip, his credit cards and driver’s license, but no cash. My suspicion is that the Naval officer who had been standing right behind us in line noticed my father drop it and, thinking this was his lucky day, had pocketed the cash. Thank you for your service, indeed!

In that God-fearing country, America, finders truly are keepers, and losers weepers. I often joke that would be a far more fitting motto than E pluribus unum.

Meanwhile in Godless Japan, you can be pretty sure—not 100%, but pretty damn close—that when you lose or forget something, you’ll get it back.

According to a recent article published in Rocket News, “In 2014 alone, a stunning amount of cash and lost possessions was turned into police stations around Tokyo. In cash alone, over 3.3 billion yen was turned in. That’s a whopping US$27.8 million picked up and taken to the authorities. Could that happen anywhere else in the world?”

Probably not.

Incidentally, I once left my notebook computer at an ATM. A brand-new MacBook Pro with all the bells and whistles, worth about three thousand dollars, I didn’t realize I had forgotten it till I was on the other side of town. I hurried back to the ATM, and—God bless the moral Atheist—it was still there. In the half hour or so that had passed, I’m sure several dozen people must have used the ATM and seen what was obviously a case holding a notebook computer, and yet no one took it.

David Sedaris made an interesting observation about Japan in his book When You are Engulfed in Flames:

“You don’t put your dirty shoes on the seat like many Americans do because, one, people sit there, two, it’s disgusting, and, three, you might stain a person’s clothes if you do. You wouldn’t like to sit down on a dirty seat would you? You wouldn’t like another person’s inconsideration cause your new dress to get dirty, would you?”

There is a basic consideration for others here in Japan, a desire not to inconvenience the people around you that is a much better driver of moral behavior than Heaven or Hell ever could be. I’ve said it before, but Americans could learn a lot from the Japanese in this regard.

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Incidentally, my quotes include:

In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot—Mark Twain, Notebook, 1935

El día que la mierda tenga algún valor, los pobres nacerán sin culo./The day shit has value, the poor will be born without arses—Gabriel García Márquez

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different—Vonnegut, Timequake

Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood—Gabriel García Márquez

縁なき衆生渡し難し (Even Buddha cannot redeem those who do not believe in him)

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them—Thoreau

Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole—Evelyn Waugh

Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has a single solution: that is, pregnancy—Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

“The world must be all fucked up,” he said then, “when men travel first class and literature goes as freight.”—Gabriel García Márquez again

Amputees suffer pains, cramps, itches in the leg that is no longer there. That is how she felt without him, feeling his presence where he no longer was— Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes—Gene Roddenberry

It is better to spend money like there’s no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there’s no money—P. J. O’Rourke

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 [1] The full quote rendered into English is “The full quote from Karl Marx translates as: “The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

Fukyo Kunshu

On my way home from this morning’s run, I found the following post at the entrance to a temple:

不許軍酒入門内

Reading: fukyo kunshu nyūmonnai

Meaning: くさいにおいのする野菜と、酒は、修行の妨げになるので、寺の中に持ち込んではならない、ということ

軍 (kun) refers to not only vegetables such as garlic, leeks, and onions, but also “nama-gusai” (foul-smelling or fishy) meat and seafood.

These things as well as alcohol are proscribed as they interfere with the religious training of the monks in the temple.

Another variant is:

不許軍酒入山門

山門 (sanmon) means the main entrance to a temple, the temple itself, or a Zen temple. In the past, temples were located in the mountains (山) far from human habitation (人里離れた).

重要語の意味

葷＝「くん」と読み、①くさみのある野菜、にんにく、にら。②生臭い肉と魚。  酒＝アルコールを含む飲み物で、アルコールによって人の脳をまひさせるもの。 日本酒、焼酎（しょうちゅう）、紹興酒（しょうこうしゅ）など。  山門＝「さんもん」と読み、①寺の正面の門。②お寺。禅寺。（お寺は本来、人里離れた山にあるべきなのでこのように言う）。  入る＝「いる」と読み、はいるの古い言い方。  許さず＝「ゆるさず」と読み、許さない。そのようにさせない。  修行＝「しゅぎょう」と読み、仏教を学びその真理にもとづく悟りを得るために努力すること。  妨げ＝「さまたげ」と読み、物事が進むのにじゃまになる。  寺＝「てら」と読み、仏像を置いて僧侶が住み仏教の修行をするための建物。  戒律＝「かいりつ」と読み、寺の僧侶が守るべき日常のきまりごと。不殺生、不偸盗、不邪淫、不妄語、不飲酒など。  戒壇石＝「かいだんせき」と読み、戒律を守る目的で設けられた小さな結界を示す目じるしの石。結界石。  出家＝「しゅっけ」と読み、一般の人が住んでいるこの世間を捨て仏門にはいること。  結界＝「けっかい」と読み、寺の秩序を守るために決める一定の限られた場所。修行の妨げとなるものが入ることを許さない場所。 

For more on this, go here.

Gokoku Jinja

One of my favorite places in Fukuoka City is Gokoku Jinja, located just south of Ōhori Park.

According to the Encyclopedia of Shintōism, Gokoku is a shrine built for the protection of the nation and "dedicated to the spirits of individuals who died in Japanese wars from the end of the early modern period through World War II."

These shrines were originally called shōkonsha (lit. "spirit-inviting shrines") in the prewar period numbered over one hundred. In 1939, however, they were renamed gokoku jinja. Following Japan's defeat in the Pacific War, "the shrines were placed under strict observation by the occupation armies, and many of the shrines changed their titles, though most have today reverted back to their original name . . . In most cases, they have added individuals who have died in service to local public organizations to their lists of enshrined kami (spirits or gods). Yasukuni Jinja in Tōkyō acts as the central or home shrine for gokoku jinja nationwide." (See note below.)

   I wrote about Gokoku Jinja in my second novel A Woman's Nails:

Many of the more interesting sites in Fukuoka are fortunately within a short walk from my apartment: the castle ruins with its maze of stone ramparts, and Ôhori Park, which has a beautiful Japanese garden. A Noh theatre and art museum are also located in the area, as is Gokoku Jinja and a martial arts center simply called Budôkan.

Gokoku Jinja, like Tōkyō’s infamous Yasukuni, is a shrine dedicated to those who died defending Japan. Had I known this little fact before visiting the shrine, I may have been moved in an altogether different way. Instead, I was inspired with a deep sense of awe, the very awe which was sorely absent when my father would drag his unwilling brood at an ungodly hour every Sunday morning and stuff it into the first two pews of our dimly lit, dusty old house of worship where we’d reluctantly take part in that hebdomadal morose pageant, Mass.

No, if the divine and mysterious were to be felt anywhere, it was in shrines such as Gokoku, a serene island of ancient trees, expansive lawns and painstakingly raked gravel. It’s a spiritual oasis in the heart of a frenetically bustling desert of asphalt and condominiums and if you’re not moved to the core when visiting the shrine, then you have no core. With the Catholic church, the nearest I ever got to appreciating the power of the Almighty was at the coffee and donuts bonanza after Mass when dutifully sitting-standing-genuflecting automatons were resurrected with copious amounts of caffeine and sugar.

After a purifying ablution of my hands, I passed between a pair of komainu statues and through a towering wooden torii gate, entering the shrine. At the end of a long the broad path of combed gravel was the shinden, a long, one storey golden structure with a gracefully sloping roof at the edge of a lush and verdant woods. Iron lanterns and straw braiding hung along the eves, and a young woman, her black parasol leaning against the offertory box, bowed her head in prayer. Drawn by both curiosity and a spontaneous reverence, I made my way along the gravel path, ascended the short flight of steps and offered up a pray, myself.

One day my father will ask cynically, “So, now you’re a Shintōist, are ye?”

And I’ll reply, “When was I never one?”

What did I pray for? Happiness, of course.

With the change in my pocket, I bought an o-mikuji, a small folded strip of white paper with my fortune written in Japanese on one side, and, to my surprise, in English on the other.

“Your flower is heather,” the o-mikuji told me. “It means lonely.”

Wonderful.

“You are introverted and like to be alone,” the prognostication continued.

Not really.

“But man cannot live on without others.”

Hah! No man is an island! Plagiarism!

“Let people into your heart, and you will be happy.”

Bingo!

Regarding my hopes and ambitions, I was told to “make efforts, and try to be friendly with a lot of people.”

By gum, try I will!

“Your studies will be all right, if you keep calm.” I took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly, releasing a small fart, redolent of sour milk.

Any more relaxed and I’d be dead.

I was advised to be cheerful, but to not aim too high when looking for a job. It was also suggested that being quiet on dates wasn’t always the wisest thing to do, and, because I was, again, too introverted I must “behave cheerfully.”

Dutifully noted!

Not particularly impressed with this fortune—it was only shokichi, a four out a scale of about six—I tied it onto a narrow branch of a nearby tree and left the shrine.

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© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A Woman's Nails is now available on Amazon's Kindle.

Daisai

Checking out the Daimyo Machi Catholic Cathedral's website, as you do, I came across a Japanese word I'm sure few Japanese know: 大斎 (daisai).

It Latin, daisai translates as jejunium, or "[major] fasting" in English. Another word for fasting in Japanese is "danjiki" (断食), but that word doesn't seem to be used in reference to Catholicism. (I could be wrong, though.)

A counterpart of dasai is shosai (小斎) or “small fasting”.

Daisai (大斎) refers to the eating of one regular meal a day and two smaller meals and should be performed on Ash Wednesday (yesterday), and every Friday and Saturday of Lent, the 40-plus day period that culminates with Easter Sunday.

Shosai (小斎) refers to not eating meat and abstaining from things or activities one enjoys. (Hey! Where's the fun in that?)

If you are elderly or infirm, you get a pass. Kids, too, don't need to participate. (Ah, if only my father had known that!)

Anyways, . . .

I never cared much for Lent as a child. Who did? In our family, there was no meat on Fridays—but we had really good fish and chips then, so no big woop—long fasting from Saturday to Sunday morning Mass, only rice on Wednesdays, and worst of all: NO TV for the entire Lenten season. Talk about hell on earth for a young kid!

In this Era of COVID-19, the Daimyo Cathedral has requested those feeling ill remain at home. Ye of little faith. Tsk, tsk.

http://www.daimyomachi-c.or.jp/custom_contents/cms/linkfile/news_20200223.pdf

Bloody Catholics

“Look at ‘em! Bloody Catholics filling the bloody world up with bloody people they can’t afford to bloody feed!”

              --from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life

When I was a kid—I couldn’t have been more than six at the time—I asked my parents why they’d had so many goddamn children. I was Number Eleven myself, and Number Twelve had come into the world recently. It was in my mother’s arms, as new as the furniture in the living room that had also just arrived. The timing of the two was so uncanny that it wouldn’t have surprised me if my father had replied that we kids had all been promotional giveaways, my little sister having been thrown in for free when he bought the living room furniture at Ethan Allen.

What he told me, however, was no less remarkable:

“When two people, who are in love, sleep in the same bed together, babies happen.”

My parents, who still hugged and kissed each other after nearly twenty years of marriage, were clearly in love. Even a six-year-old could see that. What’s more, they slept together every night in a giant king-sized bed. Why, if you put two and two together, naturally you got twelve.

A year and a half later, Number Thirteen appeared out of nowhere.

Now, compare that with the bleak conjugal life of my paternal grandparents and you’ll understand why I found what my father told me had so convincing.

I spent a lot of time with my grandparents when I was little, so much so that most of my earliest childhood memories involve them rather than my own parents.

Let me tell you, hardly a day went by when my grandmother and grandfather were not squabbling about something. I remember my grandmother would get so fed up with her husband’s grousing that she’d turn her hearing aid off. Out of earshot, out of mind, I guess.

On top of that, Grandma and Grandpa slept not only in separate beds, but in bedrooms that lay at opposite ends of a hallway. It made perfectly good sense to me then that the two would have only one child: my father.

Now that I am much older, and a father myself, I understand that Catholicism probably played just as big a part in my parents' fecundity as that big bed of theirs.

Shimenawa

Shiménawa (七五三縄, 注連縄 or 標縄, literally "enclosing rope") are another common decoration of the Japanese New Year. Rice straw is braided together to form a rope, that is then adorned with pine, fern fronds, more straw and mandarine oranges. They can represent a variety of auspicious items, such as the rising sun over Mt. Fuji or a crane. The shiménawa pictured above is the one that hung on my front door a few years ago.

Used mostly for ritual purification in the Shintô religion, shimenawa can vary in diameter from a few centimetres to several metres, and are often seen festooned with shidé paper. The space bound by shimenawa often indicates a sacred or pure space, such as that of a Shintō shrine.

 Shiménawa are believed to act as a ward against evil spirits and are also set up at a ground-breaking ceremonies before construction begins on a new building. They are often found at Shintō shrines, torii gates, and other sacred landmarks.

They are also tied around objects capable of attracting spirits or inhabited by spirits, called yorishiro. These include trees, in which case the inhabiting spirits are called kodama, and cutting down these trees is thought to bring misfortune. In cases of stones, the stones are known as iwakura.

Most of the following photos were taken of shiménawa hanging at the entrance of restaurants and boutiques in my neighborhood.

This is the kind of shimékazari typically found in Fukuoka.

Mochi-tsuki

Because my sons’ kindergarten is Buddhist, there are no Christmas decorations or Christmas-related events. None whatsoever.

(No worries there as we already do plenty at home.)

The kindergarten does, however, hold New Year’s related events, such as “mochi-tsuki”. 

What’s “moji-zugi”, you ask?

Mochi-tsuki (moh-chee-tsoo-kee) is the making of mochi (rice cake) by pounding steamed sticky rice (もち米, mochi kome) with large wooden hammers for God knows how long. It is in the words of the esteemed Mr. Wiki very “labor intensive”. I think the only thing that we have remotely similar to mochi-tsuki in the US is handmade ice cream.

Now the thing with handmade ice cream is that your effort is rewarded with something that tastes pretty damn good. Mochi, on the other hand, is rather bland. Mixed with sweet beans or covered with syrup, it can be rather nice. But, again, alone it’s so hopelessly boring, it makes you wonder why people go to all the trouble.

My son has already left for school. He asked me to go, too, but as only the fathers of third-year students can attend—damn—I have been spared the forced labor demanded of tradition.

This evening I will be taking my boys to see the Christmas lights in Kego Park and ride the kiddie “Polar Express” train.

There are only five more days till Christmas. For some reason or another, this holiday season has just whizzed by. Last year, I couldn’t wait for it to be over. This year, though, . . .

I think it’s the realization that Christmas with young boys who believe all the stories of Santa Claus, no matter how far-fetched or contradictory, won’t last forever. We’ve got perhaps five or six more years of the season’s magic. And then? Well, we will just have to find a new way to enjoy the holiday. Perhaps with a mochi-tsuki party.

Labor Thanksgiving Day

About this time every year, I have the same conversation with my students: “There’ll be a national holiday next week,” I begin. “Can any of you tell me the name of that holiday?”

Silence.

“C’mon, think. This Friday — and no peeking at Wikipedia!”

One of the student calls out: “Culture Day!”

“No. Culture Day, or Bunka no Hi, was three weeks ago on Nov. 3,” I remind them. “Thursday, Nov. 23. What’s the holiday? Anyone? Anyone?” I feel like the economics teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

“Oh! I know!”

“Ayano, yes, what was it?”

“Kinrō Kansha no Hi.”

“That’s right! Now what is Labor Thanksgiving Day? Anyone?”

One student suggests that it is a day we give thanks to our parents for working hard.

“Well, maybe, but there’s more to it than that. Are any of you doing anything special for Labor Thanksgiving Day?”

Crickets.

I go around the room, asking students what their plans are. Some will work at their part-time jobs, others will probably loaf about at home. A few may go shopping.

“If you’re not going to do anything special, why have a national holiday?” I ask. “Whenever a national holiday holiday rolls around, I always try at least to wear my ‘Rising Sun’ skivvies.”

When half of them laughs, the other half that has been dozing comes to life. Now that I’ve got their attention I ask why some of their holidays, such as the autumnal equinox, Shūbun no Hi, fell on a Saturday last year? “Why not move the day to a Monday like so many other holidays? Why is the date for Shūbun no Hi and other holidays like Kinrō Kansha no Hi fixed?”

They don’t know.

Shūbun no Hi, I explain, is actually one of two Kœreisai and Labor Thanksgiving Day is in reality a harvest festival called Niiname-sai, a Shintō rite performed by the Emperor.

“Have any of you heard of either Kōreisai or Niiname-sai?”

Of course, none have.

“Are you guys really Japanese?” I ask with feigned disbelief, eliciting embarrassed laughter from the students.

I then ask them how many national holidays Japan has.

“Eleven!”

“Nope.”

“Twenty!”

“I wish!”

“Eight!”

“Sorry.”

“Sixteen!”

“That’s right. There are 16 national holidays. And next year there will be nineteen. Many more than most countries have.”

With their help, I write the names of the holidays on the board with the corresponding dates. Once I have them all down, I tell them to pay attention to the 10 holidays that have fixed dates: National Foundation Day (Feb. 11), Showa Day (Apr. 29), Culture Day (Nov. 3) and so on. “Now, what do these days have in common?”

More silence.

“Anyone? Anyone?”

No one even volunteers a guess. They really have no idea what I’m getting at. None.

“All of the holidays with fixed dates are related to the emperor,” I explain. “Ten of your 16 national holidays are related to the emperor.”

You’d think they would know this already, but for the vast majority of them it is a revelation.

1. New Year’s Day (Jan. 1) was, until 1947, a national holiday on which the imperial worship ceremony called Shihōhai (四方拝) was held.

2. Foundation Day (Feb. 11) was known as Kigensetsu (紀元節), or Empire Day, until 1947, a holiday commemorating the day on which, legend has it, Emperor Jimmu acceded the throne in 660 BCE.

3. Vernal Equinox (Mar. 20 or 21), an imperial ancestor worship festival called Shunki Koreisai (春季皇霊祭).

4. Showa Day, the birthday of Hirohito who has been referred to by his posthumous name Emperor Showa (昭和天皇, Shōwa Tennō) since his death in 1989.

5. Greenery Day (May 4). This is the former name for Hirohito’s posthumous birthday. In 2007, Greenery Day was moved to May 4 and April 29 was renamed Showa Day. From 1985 to 2006, May 4 was a generic “national day of rest,” one more day expanding Golden Week.

6. Autumnal Equinox (Sep. 23 or 22). Like the spring equinox, this was an imperial ancestor worship festival called Shuki Kōreisai (秋季皇霊祭).

7. Culture Day (Nov.3). While this day commemorates the 1946 announcement of the new Constitution, it is actually Emperor Meiji’s birthday. The timing of that announcement was probably not a coincidence. Kenpō Kinenbi, or Constitution Memorial Day, takes place on May 3 and celebrates the promulgation of the 1947 Constitution of Japan.

8. Labor Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 23), again, is the imperial harvest festival called niiname sai (新嘗祭). Niiname-sai (新嘗祭, also pronounced Jinjōsai — lit. Celebration of First Taste) is a Shinto harvest festival that takes place at the Imperial Palace and shrines throughout the country on the 23rd and 24th of November.
   According to the Encyclopedia of Shinto, “The Emperor arranges an offering of sake, rice porridge, and steamed rice (made from the newly harvested rice) served in special vessels crafted from woven beech leaves (kashiwa) and presented to the kami (gods) on a special reed mat (kegomo). Following this evening meal (yumike), the Emperor purifies himself in seclusion (kessai) for the night and, after changing robes (koromogae), prepares the morning offering of food for the kami.”
   The rite is called Daijōsai (大嘗祭) when the emperor performs it for the first time after ascending the throne.

9. The present Emperor’s Birthday is Dec. 23, or Tennō Tanjōbi. With the abdication of Emperor Akihito and the enthronement of his son, Crown Prince Naruhito, next spring, I suspect that Dec. 23 will be renamed Heisei no Hi once Feb. 23 becomes the new Tennō Tanjōbi, bringing the number of national holidays to 17, and those related to the Emperor to 11. (Actually, there will be even more holidays due to the ceremonies related to the abdication and enthronement.)

As for the 10th, Marine Day (the third Monday of July), this holiday used to be held on July 20 and commemorated Emperor Meiji’s return to Yokohama at the end of a trip around the Tōhoku region of Japan aboard the sailing ship, Meiji Maru. (Incidentally, the restored ship is on display at the Etchujima Campus of the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology.)

“Why do you know this?” a student asks me.

“Why don’t you?” I shoot back.

“We’re not interested… ”

“This has nothing to do with being interested or not. I’m not all that interested in Japanese holidays myself, but I am curious.”

“Curious?”

“Yes, curious! You have a national holiday called Marine Day. Didn’t that ever make you wonder why there wasn’t a Mountain Day, too? Well, I guess there is now, so go figure. Or, doesn’t it strike you as odd that you have all these national holidays on which you don’t do anything in particular? Again, why have a national holiday? Case in point, the equinoxes: why are they national holidays, but Obon (Japanese festival of the dead) is not? Obon is a much more important holiday for ordinary Japanese people, but it’s not a holiday . . .”

Curiosity. Inquisitiveness. A healthy dose of skepticism. These are things that are sorely lacking among Japanese students today.

Established in 1948, Labor Thanksgiving Day is a day on which, we are told, Japanese “celebrate production and give thanks to their fellow citizens”. In reality, they do little more than blow both the day and their hard-earned money mesmerized by pachinko machines.

Sumiyoshi in Summer

Dubious Science

The first time I heard of Happy Science was during the 2009 Lower House election that would had the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) a well-deserved drubbing.

One day during the 12-day campaign period before the election,[1] a noisy political sound truck sped past me with the usual contingent of white gloved hands waving out of the windows and the improbable name Kōfuku Jitsugen Tō (幸福実現党, The Happiness Realization Party, HRP) plastered on the side of it.

“You gotta be kidding,” I said to myself as I waved back listlessly to the enthusiastic lackeys in the van.

In 2009, there was no shortage of minor political parties with silly names, including “The Essentials”, “The Freeway Club”, “Japan Smile Party” and “The Forest and Ocean Party”, none of which would gain any seats in the election. The Happies, however, would press on election after election.

Curiosity getting the better of me, I did a bit of research into the party when I got home that day and I learned that HRP was the political wing of Kōfuku no Kagaku (幸福の科学, Happy Science), a cult founded in 1986 by Ryūhō Ōkawa.

According to an article in The Japan Times, “the Happies have an eye-catching manifesto: multiply Japan’s population by 2 1/2 to 300 million and make it the world’s No. 1 economic power, and rapidly rearm for conflict with North Korea and China. If elected, the party’s lawmakers will invite millions of foreigners to work here, inject religion into all areas of life, and fight to overcome Japan’s ‘colonial’ mentality, which has ‘fettered’ the nation’s true claim to global leadership.”             

I don’t know about you, but it sounded to me as if the person who wrote the manifesto had been smoking meth.

Pipe dream or not, Kōfuku Jitsugen Tō fielded 345 candidates, or nearly one in each electoral district—more than the either the Democratic Party of Japan, which would go on to win the election, or the ruling Liberal Democratic Party—in the 2009 election, yet failed to win any seats in the National Diet. Further bids in 2012 and 2014 with a similar number of candidates also yielded zero seats. At a cost of 3 million yen per individual electoral district and 6 million yen per proportional representation block, The Happies have squandered almost six billion yen (over $50 million) over the past three campaigns.

Or have they?

If the real aim of these hopeless election campaigns has been brand recognition rather than electoral victory, then The Happies must be very happy indeed. Six years ago, I had never heard of either the cult or its leader, but now I have. I’m sure it is no different with your average Tarō in Japan.

Still, fifty-plus million dollars ain’t chump change. By comparison, Mitt Romney spent $42 million of his own money in his failed attempt to win the Republican nomination for presidential candidate in 2007-08, the second most spent by a candidate self-financing his run. All of this got me thinking how The Happies were able to finance not only their election campaigns, but also their construction boom which has seen several gaudy new palaces dedicated to the ego of Ōkawa erected throughout Japan over the past several years.

It’s hardly news that religions, old and new, are able to generate fabulous amounts of tax-free income, but to make money, they’ve got to have adherents to their faith.

According to Happy Science’s, the cult claims to have twelve million followers in ninety countries. I found this number to be highly dubious as it is the exact same figure claimed by another cult, Sōka Gakkai. Although considered a “new religion” in Japan, S.G. International has been around since 1930 and has its origins in Nichiren Buddhism, which itself dates back to the 13th century. Although, I do not know anyone who is a follower of Ryūhō Ōkawa, I have come across quite a few members of Sōka Gakkai over the years. The entertainment world in Japan is famously peopled with followers of the religion.

By comparison, the Mormons[2] have over 15 million followers and the Jehovah’s Witnesses have 8.2 million, thanks to both religions’ aggressive missionary work throughout the world and unfortunately at my doorstep.

The more I ruminated on it, the more Happy Science’s claim of twelve million believers just didn’t add up.

Then it hit me. I knew how to get a fairly accurate estimate of Happy Science’s followers in Japan: the results of the 2009 election.

In the proportional representation blocks, The Happiness Realization Party and Kōmeitō, the party closely tied to Sōka Gakkai, got the following number of votes:

Hokkaidō Block

20,276 votes for HRP vs. 354,886 for Kōmeitō

 
Tōhoku Block

36,295 vs. 516,688

 
Northern Kantō Block

46,867 vs. 855,134

 
Southern Kantō Block

44,162 vs. 862,427

 
Tōkyō Block

35,667 vs. 717,199

 
Hokuriku Block

32,312 vs. 333,084

 
Tōkai Block

57,222 vs. 891,158

 
Kinki Block

80,529 vs 1,449,170

 
Chūgoku Block

32,319 vs. 555,552

 
Shikoku Block

19,507 vs. 293,204

 
Kyūshū Block

54,231 vs. 1,225,505

 
The Happiness Realization Party garnered about 459,000 proportional representational votes, less than 6% of the 8,054,000 votes for the Kōmeitō, which suggests that The Happies actually have around 720,000 followers. After watching this video of Ryūhō Ōkawa’s great psychic power, it makes me wonder how he managed to even get that many.

Obviously, I'm in the wrong business.