Hitching Rides with Buddha: A Journey Across Japan

by Ferguson, Will

  It was a time of great upheaval. Gods were born. Gods of the sky and the clouds and the trees and the earth. Gods of strength, of art, of love and anger—and of war. Until at last, the heavens and earth were filled with kami, god-spirits inhabiting every hidden corner and cranny of Japan, the Land of Wa, the Islands of Harmony. Key among them was Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess.

  It was Amaterasu’s grandson, Ninigi-no-Mikoto, who descended from the High Plain of Heaven to a windswept mountaintop in southern Kyushu. He brought with him the three Imperial Insignias of Divine Rule, still in existence today: a sword, a curved jewel, and a polished mirror. The immortal Ninigi-no-Mikoto had come to rule the islands of Japan, but through intrigue and insult his ancestors were cursed with a finite existence—immortality was lost—and from them came the human race, otherwise known as “the Japanese.”

  The Grand Shrine of Udo Jingū is dedicated to Ninigi-no-Mikoto’s grandson. He in turn fathered Jimmu, the mythical first Emperor of Japan. And thus, through this long, convoluted family tree, the present Emperor of Japan traces his lineage directly back to Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess.

  Shinto, the Way of the Gods, is Japan’s homegrown religion. Buddhism came much later (via Korea), and in some ways remains an imported faith. Buddhism has a founder, a doctrine, and an historical basis: Shinto has none of these. Shinto’s origins are lost in the mists of prehistory. As a faith, it grew from the natural awe, the fear and trembling, that humans have for the world around them: the fertility of womb and earth, the natural forces and the mysteries of life.

  In Japan, the world is filled with primordial spirits. The kami are everywhere. The unseen world is pregnant with them, rich in life and charged with energy. Historical figures have been elevated to kami, and so have abstract nouns and animals.

  Deeper still, Shinto is about being Japanese. One is not converted to Shinto. One is born into it. One simply is Shinto in the same way that one simply is—or isn’t—Japanese. The idea of Shinto proselytizing is absurd. During World War II, the Japanese Empire built massive Shinto shrines in the countries it occupied: Singapore, Korea, Taiwan. But, removed from its Japanese soil, Shinto withers and dies. It is perhaps the only religion in the world that failed to convert the people it conquered.

  Although it was used as a propaganda tool during World War II, and still contains heavy imperial connections, Shinto has largely returned to the more earthy, joyous roots from which it sprang. Shinto celebrates life. It is optimistic. Buddhism, in contrast, is gloomy. Shinto is for weddings; Buddhism is for funerals. Buddhist festivals are sombre. Shinto festivals are freewheeling, drunken affairs, intent on entertaining the gods. Buddhism worries about the afterlife. Shinto is concerned with the everyday and the here-and-now.

  You will find Shinto shrines throughout Japan. Some are crumbling, some are well-tended. A few are lavish; most are small and humble. The object of veneration is often a polished silver mirror, a surface that reflects—and contains—the world around us. These mirrors, polished to a sheen, yet still clouded, are both reflective and obscure—a perfect symbol for the numinous nature of the religious impulse. Mirrors and local gods, the universal and the tribal.

  You approach Shinto shrines through torii gates, and the entrances are usually guarded by a pair of stone lion-dogs. Like so many things Japanese, these lion-dogs came to Japan from China through a Korean intermediary. When they define themselves, the Japanese tend to skip Korea, the middleman, and claim a connection to China that is direct and overemphasized. But here, in the shrine grounds of the gods, the Korean connection is acknowledged: the guardians are called koma-inu, “Korean dogs.” That Korean icons should protect the repositories of all that is Japanese in spirit—the Emperor’s Church in a sense—that Korean dogs should be given such a high-ranking position is something rarely commented upon by the Japanese. These stone guardians provide a telling clue about the ancient Korean roots of the Japanese Imperial Family.

  The lion-dogs were originally a lion and a dog, and were very different in appearance, but over the years stonecutters found it easier to carve them to the same proportions. The two figures grew more and more alike, until their features blended. One lion-dog has a mouth that is always open, the other has a mouth that is always closed. The open-mouthed lion-dog is named Ah, the other is named Un, or more properly, nn. “Ah” is the first sound you make when you are born, “nn” the last sound you make when you die. “Ah” is the breath inhaled that begins life, “nn” the exhale of release, the breath that allows life to escape. Between the two lies all of existence, a universe that turns on a single breath. Ah is also the first symbol in the Japanese alphabet, n the last. And so, between these two lion-dogs, you also have the A and Z, the Alpha and Omega. In the original Sanskrit, ah-un means “the end and the beginning of the universe; infinity unleashed.”

  In Japan, people who are in perfect tune with each other, such as a pianist and a violinist playing in duet, are called ah/un-no-kokyū. Kokyū means “breathing,” and the phrase suggests perfect, exquisite harmony: ah/un-no-kokyū, two or more breathing as one. If self-actualization is the ideal to which the Western world aspires, then common breath is the ideal to which Japan—and indeed, much of Asia—aspires. The word harmony in Japanese has the same cachet that the word freedom has in the West.

  In Japan, the word for freedom, jiyū, carries with it the nuance of selfish or irresponsible behaviour. Group harmony is a higher value. This doesn’t make the Japanese a nicer people. There are thieves and cheats and nasty characters in Japan, as there are anywhere. But the values that Japanese society subscribes to are starkly different from those of the West. If you had to embody the ideals of the West it would be the Statue of Liberty, or the Goddess of Jiyū as she is known in Japan, standing defiantly, the torch raised: a singular, powerful, one-of-a-kind presence. This is not the type of thing you would choose if you wished to give form to Japanese ideals. The ideals of Japan are captured instead in a thousand small stone guardians, in a thousand shrines, big and small, across Japan. A dog and lion so near in spirit that they have blended into one. Ah/un-no-kokyū.

  On a less esoteric level, ah-un also refers to old married couples (or even old friends) who have been together for so long that they no longer have to finish their sentences. One begins with “Ah …” and the other agrees with “Nn …” (which is the Japanese equivalent of “uh-huh”) and the entire meaning is understood.

  As you enter a shrine ground, beyond the lion-dogs, you will find a fountain and a dipper. If you are planning to approach the gods you must first rinse your hands and mouth with water. Having made yourself presentable, you may now step up. You toss in a coin, bow, clap your hands once, and ring the bell. It is a rattle really, a dry hollow sound that nudges the gods awake. You bow again, make your silent petition, and clap twice more before you step away, making sure not to turn your back on the god enshrined within, behind the mirror.

  Most of Japan’s two thousand festivals revolve around the local Shinto shrine. The god is drawn from his inner sanctum by the shrine priest, coaxed out with a paper wand, and then paraded through the streets in a palanquin. It is thought that these processions were originally very slow and serious events, with the shrine priest himself carrying the altar through the village to ensure harvests, safety, prosperity. But, human vanity being what it is and the vanity of the gods being even stronger, the temporary containers of the gods grew larger and larger and more and more elaborate, requiring more and more people to carry them. Small armies of strapping young men were conscripted to carry the palanquin. And as these young men—girded with saké and priestly blessings—hauled the gods through the street on their shoulders, the rite descended into hilarity. The gods were bounced and jostled and ridden like runaway bulls, tipped over, sprayed with beer and saké. Competing gods even began jousting with one another in spectacular clashes. The gods, it was decided, enjoyed this. After all, they had spent the rest of the year in fitful sleep, their slumber constantly interrupt
ed by worshippers rattling the bell and asking for favours. That the festivals of Japan are Latin in their revelry is a fact that takes many Western visitors by surprise. Shinto cajoles the gods into action. It entertains them, and in doing so it celebrates the world around us.

  Even here, at the Grand Imperial Shrine of Udo Jingū the atmosphere is more festive than sacred. Souvenir shops and snack-food stalls flank the approach, and visitors pass through a gauntlet of distractions on their way to the shrine. Men snap your photo and then try to sell you a copy. Round-faced ladies in aprons offer soft icecream cones and fried squid impaled on sticks. The smells swirl like oil and water. You catch the sweet scent of octopus steamed in dough. Snails, still in shell, simmer in broths. Trinkets and toys and yells of welcome ricochet around you. Cartoon characters, super-heroes, and the god-son Ninigi-no-Mikoto are rendered in the same pink plastic and they all compete for the same jingle of coin in cup. Stalls sell good-luck charms and talismans and sacred tablets. And right smack beside them are fake doggy-do and large novelty buttocks. Everything is jumbled up in postmodern anarchy.

  The approach to Udo Jingū bustles, and the closer you get to the main altar, the thicker the crowds, the quicker the tempo. Touring parties march through in phalanxes: schoolgirls in sailor uniforms, boys in brush-cuts and school caps. There are couples, new and unsure and excruciatingly aware of each other’s presence, couples comfortable, couples sullen, and couples past caring. They move like tributaries through the main torii gate. The sound and scent of the sea increases as you approach. A wooden boardwalk descends in steps along the cliff face. Waves break below, rolling up against the Devil’s Washboard. People begin hurrying as they near the cave.

  The sun is oppressive. It shimmers in a haze. The world is overexposed, reflective surfaces are painful to look at, the colours are washed out. But here, inside the womb of the cave, the shadows are damp and the air is wet. The cave breathes, and its exhalations are cool against your skin. Ah … Unn …

  Your eyes slowly adjust to the dark, and details emerge. The shrine takes form, appearing from the murk like an image on a photographic plate. Sounds: whispering voices, dry rattles, and the hollow plonk of water dripping.

  The shrine roof is in copper green, its angles fluid. It has the slope of a caravan tent. The style harkens back to the Mongolian steppes and the temporary tents of nomadic tribes. A message embodied in the very architecture of Shinto: The world is in flux, life moves, the rivers flow, and even the homes of the gods are but temporary shelters. Someday they, too, will be folded down like tents and put away.

  I buy a bag filled with small clay pebbles and go outside to try my luck. In front of the cave a wooden balcony juts out over a jumble of boulders and salt spray. The sea throws herself up against the cliff face again and again, but the shrine remains just out of reach, tucked into its cave.

  In among the sea rubble, at the bottom of the cliff, is a large misshapen boulder called “Turtle Rock,” and atop the turtle’s back is a shimenawa rope, looped in a circle. The rope signifies the presence of a kami and marks the area inside the circle as hallowed. Being (a) a Westerner and (b) a male, my first thought at seeing this holy circle, perched atop a large boulder at the bottom of a cliff, is to wonder, “How the heck did they ever get that rope down there?” I imagine it is one of the duties of the novice priests. “Send Hiroshi down, he’s the new guy.” Or maybe they tossed it, Hula Hoop style. The mysteries of the universe never held such appeal for me as the mystery of how they got that rope out there onto that boulder.

  The circle on Turtle Rock is part of a sacred shooting gallery. Remember the clay pebbles I bought earlier? It is time to win favour with the gods. At Udo Jingū you lean over and toss the pebbles at the rock. If they land and stay within the circle you will be rewarded with great fortune, long life, good health—the usual stuff. People crowd the edge of the boardwalk, laughing and flinging pebbles. The sea is afloat with them, they cover boulder tops and rock ledges like rabbit droppings. Mounds of pebbles are inside the rope circle, but most have bounced out. Many are wildly off the mark. Not me. When it comes to tossing clay pebbles onto large rocks, I am pretty well the Omnipotent Master of the Universe. I try not to snort too loudly at the awkward misfires of my fellow worshippers. A voice beside me says, “He’s cheating.”

  I looked around to see who was doing the cheating. They were referring to me.

  “I beg your pardon,” I said, scanning the crowd with a kind of How Dare You! look on my face, but no one would meet my eye. I continued tossing the pebbles. I was going for the world record slam-dunk pebble toss.

  “What a cheater.”

  I spun around to face my detractors. Nothing. No one said a word. Finally, out of pity I suppose, an elderly couple stepped out toward me. She was wearing a trim blue elderly-aunt-type skirt, her hair suspiciously black. The gentleman she was with had heavy-framed glasses, a string necktie, and a balding head with strategically combed strands of camouflage.

  The man smiled at me. He had his camera out and for a minute I thought he was going to ask if he could take my picture. This happens occasionally. Japanese tourists like to take snapshots of exotic white people in Japan, along with the usual pictures of flora and fauna. High-school yearbooks inevitably have photos of the school trip to Nara and Kyoto, with students posing first beside temple deer and then beside foreign tourists. In both cases, whether they are feeding the deer or feeding the foreigners, the students have the same nervous smiles. Personally, I hate posing for photographs. But no, the man didn’t want my photo. He wanted to correct my error.

  “You are not doing it properly,” he said. “Men must use their left hand when they throw the pebbles. Women may use either, but it is better if they use their left hand also.”

  So I switched hands. I missed every shot. The crowd around me began chuckling and saying things like, “Jōzu desu ne,” and other such derisive comments, so I decided to stop.

  The gentleman who had corrected me carefully folded his handkerchief over and dabbed his forehead a few times. The Japanese don’t seem to have any sweat glands. I know that sounds like a gross generalization, but it’s true. I was sweating like the proverbial pig, beads dripping from my eyebrows, my shirt plastered to my back like a really bad job of wallpapering, and yet this elderly man needed only a few token dabs to mop his brow. As usual, I had forgotten to bring a handkerchief. He offered me one of his spares and I wiped my face and neck and forearms, stopping just short of my armpits. We both agreed that it was very hot out. His wife nodded deeply at my astute observations regarding current weather conditions (hot), and I knew that I had been adopted. I wrung out the handkerchief and then reached out to shake their hands. They seemed to hesitate.

  “I am Professor Takasugi of Tokyo University,” he said, and then paused. When I didn’t react, he repeated his introduction. “Tokyo University,” he said, and I realized that I was meant to be impressed by this, so I said, “Ah, yes, Tōdai, a great university.”

  He smiled modestly. “Thank you. My wife, Saori. She is also my assistant. We are in Kyushu for research. We are studying the social life of wild plates.”

  “Wild plates?”

  “Not plates, monkeys.”

  “Ah, yes,” I said. “That would make more sense.”

  The words for plate (sara) and monkey (saru) sound similar in Japanese, and for some reason I can never keep them straight. And like many Westerners, I also get confused by “human” (ningen) and “carrot” (ninjin), which once caused a lot of puzzled looks during a speech I gave in Tokyo on the merits of internationalization, when I passionately declared that “I am a carrot. You are a carrot. We are all carrots. As long as we always remember our common carrotness, we will be fine.”

  On another occasion I scared a little girl by telling her that my favourite nighttime snack was raw humans and dip.

  Once Professor Takasugi and I got the wild plate thing sorted out, he explained that he and his wife were planning to trave
l south, toward Cape Toi, to visit a remote wild monkey island. They invited me along, and even though I was originally headed north, I accepted their invitation. After all, how often is it that you get to see plates in their natural habitat?

  8

  THE PROFESSOR’S CAR was cluttered with academic detritus. We had to move several boxes filled with loose papers to make a space for me in the back. All the while his wife was nodding with that painfully polite smile that many uninitiated outsiders mistake as being a sign of friendship. It is actually a sign of extreme unease.

  Her husband slipped into his professor posture. “The social life of monkeys is very revealing,” he said, with the air of a man who has spent his life studying something to the point where he has lost all perspective on its importance. (University does that to you.) “Japanese monkeys,” he assured me, “are a unique breed.”

  He eased his car out of the parking lot. Did I know that Japanese monkeys were the most northerly in the world? No? Did I ever see monkeys in the wild before? No? Well, this would be a very interesting trip for a foreigner such as myself.

  I tried to get the Professor to perform a monkey call for me, but he wouldn’t take the bait. “I study the social life of monkeys, not communication,” he said, so I did my own call and asked him if I was close. His wife giggled behind her hand.

  The Professor spoke English exceptionally well, and he was clearly an expert in his field. His wife showed me a book he had written and nodded in deep agreement whenever I complimented him, shutting her eyes as she did so. She wasn’t so much a wife as a fan. Unfortunately, I just can’t take any bald man seriously when he oils his hair and combs it over, in long mutant strands, across his head. I was in the backseat as well, which didn’t help, because I had this hardboiled-egg view of things. Instead of paying attention to the social life of Japanese monkeys, I was more fascinated with the Comb-Over Strategy itself. Do these people really think anyone is fooled? Don’t they have mirrors? Or is it mirrors that are the problem? Straight ahead in your bathroom mirror must be the only way that combed-over hair looks even remotely natural. And even then, how often do you see people with hair growing horizontally across their forehead? The Japanese, who have a certain flair for comic description, refer to the comb-over look as bar-code head, in reference to the bar-code prices in supermarkets. Sitting in the backseat with this uncomplimentary view of a Tokyo University (pause) Professor, I was longing to pass a light wand over his head and see what kind of price would come up.