Half Convinced, Half In Doubt, and Fine to Stay that Way

 

At the end of May this year, I went to Japan to fulfill a couple of travel goals I had there.  The first one was in the town of Nasu, in Tochigi Prefecture, to attend a festival called the Gojinkasai (“Divine Fire Festival”).  It is centered around appeasing a yokai, specifically a legendary fox spirit named Tamamo-no-mae.  The climax of the festival is building a large bonfire before the boulder her spirit is imprisoned in to appease her and guarantee a bountiful harvest.  

It was a short festival.  It started in the afternoon on Sunday, May 31st, running until after sunset when the bonfire is lit.  Despite its small size it is quite fun and lively.  With lots of activities, modern dances, folk music with traditional instruments, parades of cosplayers dressed like fox spirits and other yokai, or spirits.  

To my surprise though, the climatic moment of the festival, lighting the bonfire was very moving.  Evocative.  I stood on one of the wooden walkways as the torch bearers, dressed in white robes, wearing fox masks, followed the path down the slope from the shrine at the top of the hill.  While drums and flutes played, and a Shinto priest recited traditional prayers.  

When the “Tree,” the pyramidal stand of wood, with a tree top at its top, was finally set alight, the crowd let out a deep throated “Ahhhh.”  Goosebumps rose up on my skin.  I felt like “something” was about to happen.  I stood there, watching the fire burn as the music played.  I could see the “tree” begin to lean to one side.  I waited for the inevitable collapse.  When it finally happened, I applauded along with everyone else.  A feeling of…  Accomplishment, filled me.  Something…  Important had happened.  

But what?  I was not sure.  I’m not a believer in Shinto.  Indeed, I would describe myself as agnostic.  Willing to believe that there is “something” more beyond the world I experience around me, but more willing, probably, to believe in something closer to the Catholicism I was raised with.  

So, what was it that moved me?  What had we “accomplished?  Was it some sort of race memory from the stone age, related to fire and darkness?  Had I been touched by some pagan rite, and needed to push it aside as temptation?  I didn’t know.  And it persisted in my thoughts.  

After Nasu, I continued on my trip to the town of Matsushima, on Sendai Bay, next to the city of Sendai itself.  Another place on my travel list, this one prompted by my desire to visit all the places mentioned in my Japanese lessons, where the famous poet, Basho, created a poem about seeing the islands of Matsushima and was so moved he could only recite its name three times.  

Since I knew very little about the town, other than its reputation for scenic beauty, I decided to hire a private tour guide.  A young woman named Mai.  She had been born in the town, left to go to school in Tokyo, later work in India, travel to 22 countries around the world, and then return to Matsushima, where she works as a local tour guide.  

It was from Mai that I learned about Matsushima’s cultural importance.  How it was originally a site for the ascetic training of Buddhist monks.  The islands of Matsushima have numerous caves carved into them where the monks would live, pray, meditate, seeing to strengthen their belief.  I also learned from her that the daimyo, or samurai lord, that build the city of Sendai, and turned it into a regional commercial center, Date Masamune, was a man of conflicting beliefs.  Though he insisted throughout his life that he wasn’t a Christian, he commissioned a ship, based on the ships the Spanish and Portuguese used to come to Japan, to be built and sent on a multi-year trip to Rome.  The representatives were granted an audience where they asked him to send support to the Japanese Christians against persecution.  

After crossing the bridge that connected the closest island, Oshima, with the mainland, we came upon a small Shinto shrine, no bigger than an old style phone booth.  Shinto and Buddhism co-exist peacefully in Japan, so seeing the shrine was not a surprise.  But it did prompt a return of the unanswered question that came to me in Nasu.  

The small shrine was dedicated to Inari, the goddess of rice and its harvest, amongst other things.  The shrine that oversaw the Gojinkasai was also dedicated to Inari.  While Mai was explaining to me that Shinto shrines didn’t start getting built in Japan until Buddhism came to the country, when they were prompted to build houses for their gods as well, I remembered another visit to a larger, more famous shrine to Inari I’d visited and something I’d seen there.  

The Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto, is world famous and is always crowded with tourists, both domestic and from overseas, coming to see it.  It’s most famous feature is a series of mon gates that cover the pathways that lead to the summit of the hill it sits on and back.  Hundreds of gates.  Perhaps, thousands.  On one of my visits I asked workmen setting up a new gate over one of the pathways how many they erected each year.  Their answer was, “over a hundred.”   

In addition to the mon gates, there are as many, if not more, altars set up along the pathways.  The same workmen told me that each altar could be dedicated to a different kami.  The work “kami” is usally translated as “god” in English, though “Spirit” or “Faery,” as in the Fey from Celtic Folklore would be more accurate.  

It was clear to see that not every altar was treated equally.  While some were well maintained, during one of my visits I saw one being used by a small group of people, others were clearly neglected.  One had a tree growing across the walkway approaching it, making it impossible to reach without crouching down on your hands and knees to crawl beneath the bowel of the tree.  Others were broken, the mons before them leaning against them, as if waiting for someone to return to set them up again.  

One in particular came to mind.  It was an altar that had been neglected for so long it was covered with a fine patina of moss.  When I visited the shrine and saw that altar, I imagined the kami that it was dedicated to becoming angry.  Angry at those that had created it, and then abandoned their worship of him or her.  

With this altar in mind, now connected with my unanswered question from the Gojinksai, I asked Mai about the Japanese people’s belief in Shinto.  Did they believe the Shinto kami existed and hear their prayers, are moved by their bonfires, or was it a tradition that has been carried on to today, because it’s fun and bring the tourists?  

Mai paused for a moment, as she looked at my picture of the altar.  She answered me by talking about her time in India.  While working there, she read a number of books about different religions.  Specifically about Hinduism.  And Christianity, due to the western influence on India.  

She told me that reading those books taught her that the Japanese and Westerners don’t believe in the same way.  The books about Hinduism were closer.  But the book about western beliefs showed her something very different from what she was used to. 

I asked her to explain.  She referred to my picture of the moss covered altar.  She talked about how Shinto was focused on nature and its processes.  That when they, Japanese people, attend festivals like the one I described, they are responding to those processes.  Birth.  Life.  Growth.  Maturation.  Decline.  They feel them and know they are real.  She nodded at the picture of the moss covered altar on my phone.  She told me then that she believes the kami that altar was dedicated to would probably see the altar in the same way she saw it.  

I asked her how she saw it.  She said, “Beautiful.”  

This answer startled me.  I had never considered it being perceived in that way.  As I looked at the photo again, as if for the first time, I remembered something I had read recently.  From a book I had started reading before the trip.  A sort of preparation for what I was going to experience.  

The Book of Yokai (2nd Edition) by Michael Dylan Foster is about the spirits of Japanese folklore.  There is a section in it about fox spirits, and Tamamo-no-mae is mentioned in it as well.  But it also discusses how the belief in and relationship toward these spirits has changed over time, up to and including the present.  

In one section of the book, which I remembered after hearing Mai’s perception of the moss-covered altar, it discusses the concept of “hanshin-hangi” which means “half-convinced, half-in doubt.”  According to Foster, this is not describing a mental state where you’re trying to resolve two opposing beliefs, to come to one conclusion.  It is a state where both coexist peaceful.  The question Foster poses at the end of the passage isn’t whether or not the Japanese believe in yokai, and by extension to my question, Shinto.  But why we westerners require a yes or no answer in the first place?  

It was then that I began to see my experience at the Gojinkasai differently.  Throughout the festival I found myself engaged with the event and the people I was sharing the experience with.  I watched the “hyakkigyagyou,” the “March of a 100 Demons,” where the cosplayers recreated a legendary event from the past, now recreated for fun.  I watched people dressed as fox spirits in a cafe down the street from the park before the festival took place, dancing in character as a violinist played Pachelbel’s Canon.  I listened to the invocation of the Shinto priest as the white robbed torchbearers marched from the shrine after being blessed, to carry their torches in the gathering darkness.  I shivered as everyone “Aaah” as the “tree” was touched with the fire.  And I applauded as it collapsed, feeling that…  We, had accomplished something.  

It comes to me, as a former Theatre Arts major, that I may have just been giving into the suspension of disbelief that any good performance requires.  Or, it might have just been me achieving a long-standing travel goal.  Or, it might have been something more.  Something greater.  Or something less.  It might just be something I don’t need to answer at all.  And just go with the feeling.