Mounted combat between two samurai.
It would be completely wrong to leave the reader with the impression that the image of the samurai and the sacred in modern Japan is manifested only through violence. The examples cited earlier of the Red Brigade and Aum Shinrikyō are aberrations, where the link between the samurai and the sacred has been seized upon and misused for political ends. The development of the martial arts as training for the mind and for the body, the appreciation of Japanese culture through Zen and other artistic expression, is the sacred legacy to which we must cling.
As noted earlier, the visitor to Japan today finds much that is religious, and most of it delights both the mind and the senses. Japanese religion, in its overt expression, is both welcoming and patient to the outsider. The discovery of a local shrine festival often turns out to be the highlight of any tourist’s visit.1 Dig a little more deeply and it is possible to observe respectfully and meaningfully a profound depth of religious expression. A walk through remote wooded mountains may reveal yamabushi (mountain ascetics) performing their pilgrimages in a classic instance of religious syncretism. Clad in white, they make an arduous journey that includes visits to mountain-top Buddhist temples, prayers at wayside Shintō shrines and folk-religious rituals along the way, in a journey that takes them symbolically through the Womb and Diamond mandalas of Shingon.2
As well as surviving and prospering, the world of the sacred in Japan has always been prepared to change. No more striking illustration of this phenomenon exists than the introduction into the rituals of long-established Shintō shrines of something that conveys a more modern message. The Kanamara shrine in Kawasaki is one of only a handful of Shintō shrines left in Japan where the focus of attention is on the human procreative act, the fertility of which is expressed through unusual artefacts within the shrines, such as enormous wooden phalli.3 The festival rituals associated with these objects are well known, well attended and largely misunderstood. The Kanamara shrine has gone one step further in its dealings with matters of human sexuality, and the unequivocal representation of the male sexual organ is now used also to convey the message of safer sex. Participants in the annual matsuri leave with ofuda, the little religious mementoes supplied on such occasions, which contain condoms as well as prayer slips. Even more striking is the new message introduced to the Kabasan Tabako-jinja. As the name implies, the shrine exists because of the local speciality crop grown there:
A yamabushi pilgrim taking part in the pilgrimage from Yoshino to Kumano.
The area at the foot of the mountain is a production area for the whole country of celebrated leaf tobacco. Hail and thunder are tobacco’s greatest enemies. To ward off these calamities, and to ensure bumper crops, prayers are offered every day to the guardian kami in Japan’s unique tobacco shrine.4
The annual festival of the shrine involves a parade carrying a gigantic tobacco pipe, but whereas the Kanamara shrine has introduced an element that is complementary to its central message of fertility, the Kabasan shrine now invites people to come and pray for success in giving up smoking.
The world of the sacred in Japan is therefore one that is continually reinventing itself, and is a predominantly generous world into which even foreign and apparently competitive influences can be incorporated peacefully. But just as the discussion of the mind-set of the common soldier illustrated, when the sacred meets the samurai the perception of the one may not always meet the expectations of the other. So perhaps the last word should go to the character of the sceptical samurai, a figure created for the popular didactic work The Bag of Information for Citizens, published in 1742. It is light fiction, but nothing shows better the wide range of attitudes and emotions that could sometimes be encountered:
A Buddhist priest inside the main hall of his temple.
The Oniyo (devil’s night) festival at Kurume, one of Japan’s most spectacular New Year celebrations.
There is a story about a samurai who was dying, and to whose bed a monk came and said, ‘You have done good service in this life, and so without question you will go to Paradise, so set your mind at ease.’ ‘And what kind of place is Paradise?’ asked the samurai. ‘It is a land where there is neither heat nor cold, and where food and drink can be got for the asking, a place of nothing but comfort and happiness.’ ‘Hmm,’ replied the samurai, ‘that kind of place is very suitable for court nobles, ladies in waiting, women, children and invalids, but I was born in a warrior family accustomed to brave the rain and the cold and to sleep on the ground with my head on a stone. Thus I have lived all my days so that I could render loyal service to my lord and destroy his enemies, and now I have come to die do you think I can change my nature? A beastly sort of place I consider your Paradise.’5