Matsuri: The Festivals of Japan

With a Selection from P.G. O'Neill's Photographic Archive of Matsuri

Herbert Plutschow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134247059
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Estudios étnicos

Contribution to Western understanding of the nature and manifestations of Shinto through the vast galaxy of historic festivals (matsuri) that are here categorized and analysed.

PART ONE:

SHINTO AND SHINTO-BUDDHIST MATSURI IN PERSPECTIVE

1

WHAT ARE MATSURI?

NO MATTER WHAT DIFFICULTIES the analysis of matsuri poses to the analytical scholar, one can find in the matsuri universal features common to traditional rituals in general. By studying these features in meaningful categories, we may gain a general understanding of matsuri, especially of their form and purpose. One or two case studies may yield interesting results, but, given a lack of written documents about local ritual, we must proceed by analogy and extract those elements from specific rituals that conform with universal features of Japanese ritual and indicate, by contrast, independent traditions and local idiosyncrasies. This quest for common elements does not mean to imply that one can find a common source for all of ritual. Rather, matsuri share with most rituals throughout the world universal concepts of the cosmic order and the human place in it. Thus, although it is highly developed and stylized, having given birth to different forms of Japanese art, matsuri participates in universal patterns of human ritual. Precisely by discovering and studying these patterns, we may gain a better general knowledge and understanding of ‘Japanese’ and local ritual.

THE NATURE OF THE DEITIES

Most Shinto matsuri have in common a manifestation of one or several kami. Attempting to elaborate on this simple statement, we at once confront the difficulty of defining a kami. Japan’s earliest written documents, the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matter) of 712, the Fudoki (Geographical Surveys) of 713, the Nihon Shoki (Annals of Japan) of 720 and the Manyōshū (Collection of Poems) of the mid-eighth century, mention a variety of deities which do not lend themselves to a comprehensive and conclusive categorization.

Hori Ichirō, for example, categorizes Japanese deities as follows: 1. ujigami (ancestral deity) 2. hitogami (shamanistic or charismatic personality) 3. hijiri-marebito (visiting deity or ‘saint’) 4. goryō (malevolent spirit of a person who died away from home and, or, as a result of violence, grudge, or other unnatural causes).² As we shall see below, this definition of Japanese deities is useful as a guiding principle, but falls short of explaining the complexity of deity types in Japan, especially when studying the deities from the point of view of matsuri. In ritual, other types of deities and deity combinations must be taken into account. The term kami is equally hard to define. Possibly, people referred to deities as tama (spirit) and only later as kami, when they viewed the tama as anthropomorphic or ancestral. Similarly unresolved is the problem of whether Origuchi Shinobu was right in claiming that human souls become kami,³ and if so, when and under what circumstances this development became possible. Prior to the ninth century, the Japanese distinguished between kami and the souls of the dead, called hito-dama. Kami were worshipped in front of their symbols or later in shrines, but always outside. The souls of the dead, however, were worshipped at the graves or at home. Human souls become kami only in the ninth century, when the goryō cult offered to vengeful spirits began. Hori Ichirō’s hitogami, and Yanagita Kunio’s theory that all kami are ancestral⁴ seem to be a ‘later’ and not ‘original’ development.

a) Nature Deities:

Most deities mentioned in early texts seem to belong to the category of nature deities. According to the above sources, Japanese seem to have worshipped nature deities, especially deities such as mountain, water (watershed, well, river, rain, etc.), sun, moon, storm deities related to agriculture and the agricultural calendar before they worshipped their ancestors or amalgamated natural deities with their ancestral deities. Some of these ‘nature’ deities were genii loci, that is, deities of the land, the providers of food and the supporters of the human order. Some of the most prominent, high-ranking deities were mountain and river deities. Mt. Miwa standing behind the Miwa shrine, and the Three Mountains of Yamato – Unebi, Miminashi and Amanokagu (all Nara prefecture) – are deities, and so are Mt. Fuji and Tsukuba (Ibaraki prefecture), to mention only a few. Kibune and Kamo (both Kyōto), as well as Tatsuta (Nara prefecture), are river deities, enshrined in shrines bearing the same names. Watershed deities such as Mikumari in Yoshino (Nara prefecture) are also river deities believed to control the supply of water. Among natural deities, one should also mention tree deities (kodama) such as the pines of Takasago and Sumiyoshi. Old, venerable trees are to this day worshipped as the seats or places of deity descent (yōgō) yet, often, not only as divine symbols, but as the deities themselves. Except for trees in shrine precincts, sacred trees are surrounded by the conspicuous shimenawa rope from which hang white paper strips as a sign of a divine presence. There are fixed associations between trees and deities: Sumiyoshi with pines, Ise with cedars, Tatsuta with maples and Yoshino with cherries, to mention only a few. These trees may have provided the means or places of divine descent which gave these deities an identity and a tangible visibility.

Many kami relate to agriculture, for example, the various field deities (uka no mitama) worshipped by farmers throughout Japan. Many kami are also mountain or river deities, descending from ‘above’ to fertilize the fields and bless the agricultural labour. The sun, moon, and storm deities are also nature deities, but as imperial ancestors, they became anthropopathic, national deities, as well. Some of these deities, however, are still being worshipped locally.

Any distinct area or topographical formation in the human geography was revered as a deity – a kind of eco-deity that personified the land. Many place names and deity names are therefore identical; all land with a name was not only human land, but a land under the protection of a tutelary deity and considered divine. We find such names in exhaustive numbers in the Engi Shiki (a book on imperial ceremonies compiled in 905) and in the Fudoki. ‘Asuka nimasu kami’ (resident deity of Asuka), for instance, stands not only for the Asuka region (Nara prefecture), but for the Asuka deity and its shrine, suggesting a unity of land and deity. Numerous place name legends reveal this identity between places and deities.

b) Ancestral Deities:

Should we look closer at these land and nature deities, however, we discover that many of them are also ancestral deities. Mt. Miwa (Nara prefecture), looked upon as a shintai or divine body, is a mountain deity, as I noted above, but also served as the ancestral deity (Ōmononushi) of the Ōmiwa clan in ancient Japan. The same can be said about the Katsuragi and Kamo deities – ancestors of the clans of the same name – or about Kibitsuhiko, the ancestor of the Kibi clan and his territory (roughly Okayama prefecture). Similarly, the sun is a nature deity but also the ancestral deity of the imperial and, often under varying names, of other clans. The Tsushima and Owari clans also worship the sun (Amateru Mitama no Kami) as the clans’ ancestor (in this case the sun is male and not female, as in the case of Amaterasu of the imperial family). The Iki clan worships the moon (Tsukuyomi) as the clan’s ancestor and the Yoshino clan the female well-deity Mihikahime. This amalgamation of nature deities with ancestral deities presents a complex problem. It may have resulted from the belief that the spirits of the dead dwell in mountainous areas from where they control the watercourses and therefore the agricultural production. Also, this amalgamation may have been politically motivated.

Many of the prominent ancestral shrines do not contain ancestral deities. So, for example, the Isonokami shrine (Tenri, Nara prefecture) enshrines the deity Futsunomitama and not the Mononobe ancestral deity Nigihayahi, despite the fact that Isonokami is the centre of Mononobe clan worship. For the Mononobe, a warrior clan, the sword represented the professional tool par excellence of the clan. Takemikazuchi, a deity who subdued the land of Izumo, is enshrined at the Kashima shrine (Ibaraki prefecture), the centre of Nakatomi ritual, and not Ame no Koyane, the ancestral deity of the Nakatomi clan. The Sumiyoshi shrine (Ōsaka) of the Tsumori clan worships the deity Tsutsunoo, one of the deities created by Izanagi’s purification, and not Hoakari, the ancestral deity of the clan. The same applies to shrines established by continental clans; Ukanomitama, a grain deity, is worshipped at the Inari shrine of Fushimi (Kyōto) first built by the Hata clan. The Hata ancestral deity, however, appears to be Hata no Irogu. Similarly, Sengen (Shizuoka prefecture), Hinokuma (Wakayama prefecture) and Itsukushima (Hiroshima prefecture) shrines were not, at least at the beginning, ancestral shrines. Like the Miwa shrine, Itsukushima shrine became the ancestral shrine of the Taira and of the Saeki clans only later, perhaps under continental influence. It is conceivable that nature deities became ancestral deities because, as in other religions, priests or tribal leaders were often identified with the deities they served. This combines the ujigami with the hitogami cult as defined by Hori. Since the priests had control over such deities, they became identified with them and thereby became hitogami. The amalgamation of priest (hitogami) and a natural phenomenon believed to be divine can be observed in the imperial myths. As high-priests of an agricultural state, the emperors worshipped the sun (Amaterasu), but became amalgamated to the deity as its living descendants, as is clear in the Daijō-e accession ritual during which the emperor becomes identical with his ancestral sun-goddess. Similarly, the Kamininju of the island Kakeroma (Kagoshima prefecture) is a priest but also a deity who appears with a white shini dress with wide sleeves and a crown made of vines of fern and carrying a large fan and blade of eulalia. Local communities may well have blurred the distinction between a natural deity and the deified spirit of the ancestor inasmuch as clans related intimately to their territory, agriculture and community.

c) Important Historical Personalities

Hori’s definition of hitogami includes historical figures who, either as ancestral deities of their clans and, or of their hegemonies, have become deities and objects of worship. Influential men and women are worshipped perhaps in an effort to upkeep the peace and order they established or helped establish, or to perpetuate the high standards they, as founders of cultural traditions, have achieved. These were all people who left their marks on Japanese history and culture.

Thus, Nakatomi (Fujiwara) no Kamatari (614-69) and Prince Naka no Ōe (Emperor Tenchi, 626-71), who, after having crushed the Soga, founded the modern Japanese state in 645, are worshipped at Tanzan shrine (Nara prefecture). As founders of a prominent military clan, Minamoto no Yoriyoshi (995-1082) and Yoshiie (1041-1108) are worshipped at Shima shrine’s ‘Kobata no Hatamatsuri’ (first Sunday of December) and Minamoto no Yoritomo (1123-1160) at Kamakura’s Shirahata shrine. Oda Nobunaga (1534-82) at Kyōto’s Takeisao shrine, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-98) at Kyōto’s Toyokuni shrine, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616) at Nikkō’s Tōshō-gū shrine and Emperor Meiji (1852-1912) at Tōkyō’s Meiji Jingū shrine, are all founders of new political eras. This raises the question: why not Ashikaga no Takauji (1305-58), the founder of the Ashikaga shogunal government. The answer is perhaps that Takauji was overshadowed by the worship of his failing rival: Emperor Godaigo (1288-1339). Despite his worship at twelve Shirahata shrines, Yoritomo has not become the object of wide-spread popular worship like his half-brother and political rival, Minamoto no Yoshitsune (1159-89).

Prominent poets and scholars have become objects of worship. The Manyōshū poet Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (dates unknown, seventh century) and the compiler of the Kokinshō, Ki no Tsurayuki (883-946), like the poet and statesman Sugawara no Michizane, may have been worshipped not only as positive but mainly as combined maleficient and beneficient deities, therefore belonging more to the category of evil spirits (goryō). On the other hand, Abe no Seimei (921-1005), the celebrated yin-yang practitioner (Kyōto’s Seimei shrine), Ono no Tōfū (Michikaze, 894-966), a deity of calligraphy, at Kyōto’s Tōfū shrine, Izumi Shikibu (mid-Heian period), the authoress of the Izumi Shikibu Diary, at Izumi Shikibu-dera, and Murasaki Shikibu (978?-1016?), the creator of the Tale of Genji, at Ishiyama-dera and Princess Shokushi (Shikishi, ?-1201), a poetess of the collection Shinkokinshū, at Kyōto’s Hanju-in, are worshipped at their shrines and temples. Furthermore, the Biwa player Semimaru is worshipped at Semimaru shrine (Ōtsu-shi, Shiga prefecture) and the poet Sarumaru Dayū at Sarumaru shrine (Uji-shi, Kyōto-fu).

Furthermore, people offer matsuri to the poet Bashō (1644-94, at Ueno-shi, Mie prefecture), the scholars Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801, ‘Norinaga Haru-matsuri’ at Matsuzaka-shi, Mie prefecture) and Ninomiya Sontoku (1787-1856, ‘Sontoku-sai’ at Odawara-shi, Kanagawa prefecture) and, from the Meiji period, the writer Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933), at ‘Kenji Matsuri’ Hanamaki-shi, Iwate prefecture) and Ishikawa Takuboku (1886-1912, at Hōkoku-ji, Iwate prefecture), to mention only a few.

Similarly, in the Buddhist tradition, founders of ...