Japan's Spiritual Homeland

So, a blog post or two ago I mentioned that I've had two big travel dreams since arriving in Japan.  One of them was traveling to the Idaho of Japan to see the pilgrims.  The other dream was to travel to what is known as the spiritual homeland of the Japanese people located on the Ise Peninsula.

After Hiroshima, Dad and I were trying to figure out how much more traveling we wanted to do and where we wanted to go.  We were hankering for a change of scenery to get us outside of big city centers, especially since our sojourn to the Alps was a complete failure.  We decided to split the travel difference and go to Ise, which is conveniently about halfway up the coast to Tokyo from Hiroshima.

Ise is not particularly easy to get to, requiring a transfer from the Shinkansen at Nagoya, and then a 90 minute express local train ride that leaves from Nagoya station only every hour.  However, if time and budget permits, this destination is a must-see.  Ise was at the top of my list of places that I want to return to and explore in more detail.

The entire peninsula is famous for many attractions, including a sprawling pearl museum and showroom, as it was here that Mikimoto first discovered how to culture pearls.  As much as I would have loved to see that, Dad and I only had a day, and we focused our attention on the Grand Shinto Shrines known collectively as Jingu, and the Wedded Rocks known as Meoto-Iwa.

The Ise Shrines are in the middle of a sacred forest on the outskirts of a couple of small towns.  The Shrines defy description, but the best way to think of them is Japanese austerity at its most poignant.  In keeping with an ancient Shinto tradition, the shrines are rebuilt every 20 years and only unfinished timber is used, so as the years pass, the structures basically return to nature - roofs turn to fungi, walls turn weathered and mossy.  The shrines we saw were at year 16 of the cycle.  There are footpaths and trails winding around pools of water and up into the mountains revealing smaller sub-shrines in the great complex.  These structures are thought to be the oldest indigenous architecture forms in Japan.  They reveal Japan's unique indigenous aesthetic that predates Chinese influence.  As the center of Japanese identity, these shrines have experienced great fluxes in power and influence as Shinto and nationalism have ebbed and flowed in power and influence.  As an example, I read that these shrines were the driving force of Japanese militant nationalism and State Shintoism during World War II.

The most incredible thing about our visit to these shrines was that, as far as either of us could tell, we were the only ones there who were not Japanese.  There were Japanese people of all ages, wearing all kinds of clothes, speaking in all kinds of dialects.  Some were alone, some were with families, and some were in huge tour groups.  They lined up single file and patiently waited as people approached a shrine in pairs, tossed coins into the offeratory, clapped their hands and bowed. They admired sacred trees and stones where kami are said to reside.  They took photographs, bought amulets and small shrines for their houses and taught their toddler boys and girls the correct way to worship.  All were coming to visit Jingu on a pilgrimage it's said all Japanese people should go on before they die. 

The thing that struck me the most about this place was how contradictory it was to Michael Zielenziger's description of Japanese people in his book Shutting out the Sun.  Zielenziger book attempts to explain why Japanese society is so messed up (ex: hikikomori shut-ins, high suicide rates, parasite singles and young women who boycott traditional marriage expectations).  In his book, which is largely a hodge-podge description of Japan's "social dysfunction," Zielenziger argues among other things that Japan has replaced a religious or spiritual urge with consumerism and commercialism.  As evidence, he cites that every time he's been to a shrine or temple, the only people he sees paying their respects are the elderly and tourists.

All I can say to this is that Zielenziger - whose book was published in 2009 - and I clearly have not been to the same shrines or temples, and he most certainly did not visit Ise or Shikoku, two of the most important pilgrimage places in Japan.  What bothers me most about this is that I worry that Zielenziger, a secular Jew, writes that Japan lacks a religious or spiritual sensibility because he doesn't recognize Japanese behaviors and attitudes to be religious.  It's true that Japanese people overwhelmingly describe themselves as atheist when polled, but its also true that Japanese people hold membership in Buddhist sects, participate in Shinto religious festivals in large numbers, teach their children how to behave and worship at religious sites, and make pilgrimages all over the country.  Some of the most famous tourist facilities are shrines and temples of great historical importance or architectural beauty. 

I'm way out of my comfort zone here, but I'm pretty convinced that Shinto goes about making sense of the human experience in a pretty different manner than the Judeo-Christian tradition does.  What this brings me to is that the very, very little time I've spent reading about religion in Japan has deepened my appreciation for how difficult words rich in connotations like "God," "worship," and "religion" can be to take outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition and apply to a tradition like Shinto.  However, on the other hand, what other language would be preferable?  There must be some balance between the language used to describe a tradition, but I worry that in the case of Zeilenziger, the balance has tipped in the "lost in translation" direction...

Anyway, these are just some of the feelings and questions and ramblings my visit to Ise has stirred up and occupied lot of my thoughts recently.