Patchwork Yokohama
10. Religious Yokohama
by Pencil Louis
Vince often expounded on the religious tolerance in Japan.
Apart from the Jehovah Witnesses who were pests at the
railway stations and the immediate assumption that he must
be a Christian because of his European good looks, he
discovered that the Japanese, on the whole, didn't talk much
about their religious beliefs or expect anyone else to share
them. While he found it interesting to regard Shinto and Zen
from afar and even applaud their basic tenets, he realised
that he was a complete alien when it came to the real faith
of the average Japanese man or woman.
Upon reflection, he realised that he was probably alien to
the real faith of the average Australian man and woman, but
there were certain things that had rubbed off. It took him
over a year to get used to the sight of souvenir shops in
the compounds of even the most moderately sized temple. The
idea of the money changers in the temple was almost more
than the average atheist could stand. It soon dawned on
Vince that religion was a business in Japan as clearly as
education or medicine, and that, in many cases, the monetary
side of the dealings was clearly more significant than the
spiritual side.
Vince realised that he had always considered Christianity a
business in his own country and there was little doubt that
they made money out of birth, death and marriage in much the
same way as the Shintoists and Buddhists did. They had their
fund raising fairs too. Vince wondered if the shrines and
temples were exempt from tax in Japan in the same way that
churches were in Australia.
For all their lack of religious fervour, the Japanese, as
far as Vince could see, were obsessed with their own temples
and shrines. Although it was far cheaper to travel overseas,
especially in Asia, than it was in Japan, most preferred to
tour their own country. A lot of this seemed to involve
visiting temples and shrines, clapping their hands, ringing
a bell, buying a wish and posing for a photograph.
Undoubtedly, if you asked a local resident of just about
anywhere in Japan to show you the local sights, you would
find yourself on a tour of the local religious
establishments. While Vince was well aware that his friends
meant well enough, he found himself stifling a yawn after
the third shrine just as his host was announcing that this
was a very famous shrine indeed. Such tours had about as
much interest for Vince as a trip around the churches of
Geelong.
Vince often wondered why there was such a fascination for
something he found so completely dull. It was during a walk
down part of the old Kamakura road that he suddenly felt
that he had hit upon the answer. With a group of
acquaintances, he stepped off the No. 138 bus at
Kaminobananairobatakekosu, which as well as being one hell
of a mouthful meant the seven coloured fields of Kaminoba.
Vince did ask why it was called that, but no one seemed to
know. Perhaps, they suggested, it was because of the
different crops grown in the fields, which gave them
different colours and textures.
It was in this area that Vince came across his first
sekibutsu. He was well aware that he had probably passed
hundreds of these little stone relief statuettes, but paid
them little or no mind. He was soon to discover that these
effigies carved from local rock held a wealth of historical
and religious significance.
Sekibutsu, he was told, were stone Buddhas that had been
crafted not by stone masons but by ordinary folk to show
their religious devotion during the stringent Tokugawa
regime of the Edo era. And they were often the scenes for
small festivals during the farm workers one day off in the
year. Back in the good old days, Vince thought, before
unions and workers' rights. These sekibutsu were also
positioned near crossroads or temples or at the entrances to
towns. Pilgrims encouraged common folk to carve these
Buddhas as a sign of their religious devotion and the
practice was tolerated by the Shogunate, no doubt because
religion was the opiate of the people.
The first sekibutsu Vince's party came across was also a
sign post showing the direction and distances to the towns
of Kamakura and Ryoji for the convenience of the pilgrims
and other travellers. It had been carved in 1716 and was set
in a hedge row of myrtle and boxwood. Vince was mildly
impressed at the facts that his Japanese friends reeled off
from a local guide book that seemed to be solely about the
sekibutsu of the district.
Along the way, they stopped in at a Korean Buddhist temple
called Ankokuji. Its centrepiece was a huge four ton bell,
two metres high and 145 centimetres in diameter around the
base. Vince was assured that it was rung daily at 6:00 a.m.
and 6:00 p.m. to purify any bad feelings in those who heard
it. They were thrice purified on that day as Vince heaved
the wooden pole at it. He had actually been trying to find
out the dimension of the swing of the pole and hadn't really
meant to strike it. There was no mistaking that it had been
struck. It resounded for a full three minutes afterwards.
After offending the 700,000 Koreans in Japan, the party was
off to their next sekibutsu. If Vince had been interested in
the first one, he wasn't prepared for the heat of the debate
over the second. Firstly, it was the exact meaning of the
characters below the actual Buddha and then, they discovered
the figures of the three monkeys - see no evil, hear no
evil, and speak no evil. In Japanese, they were referred to
as mizaru, kikazaru and iwazaru. Vince had actually noticed
them before anyone else, but had consciously refrained from
mentioning them lest he cause further consternation. It was
all to no avail as one of the eagle-eyed kanji interpreters
remarked on them and another hot debate began over whether
they had been carved before or after the colourful three
monkeys transom at Nikko. There was a point where Vince
feared that the party might come to blows and he was torn
between whether to steer well clear of any such dispute or
to choose the most logical side.
To make matters worse, the third sekibutsu also had the
three monkeys on it and this one was dated at 1680, a fact
that both sides of the argument claimed proved their very
point. They did manage to come to some agreement over the
meaning of the kanji. This sekibutsu was clearly a totem
devoted to safety at night and a good harvest. Vince had,
however, realised that there were more to these small
monuments than he had at first thought. How much more so
must that have been true of the larger shrines and temples.
The party moved onto a shrine which celebrated the bushi war
god, Yamatotakkeirunomikoto. The bushi had evidently fought
an eight-headed dragon and defeated it by chopping off each
of its head. If this latter day Saint George wasn't enough,
they were led to the site where the Buddhist monk, Genyubo,
had buried himself alive in order to cure sufferers of sore
throats and colds, a noble gesture in the days before
antibiotics and menthol throat lozenges. Vince's guide
explained that this was a good way for a Buddhist to purify
himself and die. Other good ways included living for a
hundred days within a cave or walking 50 kilometres a day
for a hundred days. However, he assured Vince that Buddhism
was a very user friendly religion and that only a handful of
fanatical believers undertook such ventures.
If Vince had offended all Japanese Koreans earlier in the
day, he now succeeded in offending all non-Korean Japanese.
At the fourth and final sekibutsu, which had been most
recently carved in 1906 although it looked older and more
dilapidated than any of the others, one of the women on the
tour had asked him what had been the most interesting thing
he had seen that morning. Vince thought for a moment and
then replied that the bell at the Korean temple had caught
his imagination. It had after all been the only hands-on
experience of the day, even if it hadn't been intended as
such. The woman's face was crestfallen and Vince, always
wishing to please others, realised that he had just been on
a pilgrimage and had valued most highly not the ancient
religious artifacts but a newly imported bell from Korea.
She would never understand why he hadn't said the three
monkeys on the second sekibutsu or the place where Genyubo
had buried himself.
Vince's favourite Japanese temple was in Kamakura and called
Zeniarai Benten. It was set in a grotto in the hillside and
had a large number of otorii gates which had been presented
to the temple by grateful businesses which had presumably
become successful after prayers had been said on their
behalf. It was said that if you washed some money in a
little basket with water from the stream and dried it over a
small and smoky incense fire that you would become rich.
Vince had tried it and it had never worked for him. Maybe,
it was because he only washed and dried a handful of coins
while he saw others drenching bundles of 10,000 yen notes.
It gave him one of his many insights into the extent to
which money and spirituality were linked in Japan. Maybe,
success was clearly a sign of the beneficence of God as it
clearly had been in Old Testament times.
On another occasion, Vince had visited Shinmei Shrine in
Hodogaya Ward. It had been established some thousand years
before, in 970 A.D., when the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu of Ise,
appeared in the mountains of Hangayai in the province of
Musasi. In 1225, it was moved to Miyabashi and was finally
constructed on its present site in 1619 or so Vince had read
on the English information pamphlet.
The priest was Mr. Mitsuru Izuka, who seemed very busy, that
afternoon, taking new born babies to the shrine to introduce
them to various incarnations that could help them along
until they reached an age when they could be blessed in the
Shichi Go San Festival. This was on 15th. November and was a
celebration for girls of seven or three and boys of five.
Mr. Mitsuri was a calm-mannered man who seemed particularly
adept at handling babies. Over a cup of green tea, he
explained to Vince that, in the west, architecture was more
important than in Japan.
"In Japan, temples and shrines represent sacred places and
it is the place, the natural surroundings that are most
important not the buildings."
It took Vince some minutes to digest this thought, but he
realised immediately the truth of Mr. Izuka's statement. How
often had he visited a shrine which was reputedly over a
thousand years old , only to discover that the buildings had
been constructed two years earlier. This was certainly true
of Shinmei Shrine. It also explained the Japanese disregard
for contemporary architecture. A building was old after
seven years and it was likely that many quite tall buildings
wouldn't even reach that age.
"In olden days," Mr. Izuka continued, "the Japanese islands
were completely covered in forest. Cutting back the trees
was a way to the sky and therefore to heaven and God. The
temple forest is a very important concept in Japan. People
move from place to place and the shrines or temples go with
them."
Mr. Izuka was not just a priest. He was trained in
electronics and had his own computer business on the side.
Vince gradually became aware that Mr. Izuka had not
prostrated himself before any divinity, that he had not
wrestled with his soul to see if he was worthy of the
priesthood.
No, the shrine was the family business that had been run by
his father and grandfather before him and now it was his
turn. Vince would come to know several priests just like Mr.
Izuka, who knew other trades or had lucrative business
opportunities outside the shrine, but who had returned to
the priesthood when it became their turn. He knew that many
first sons had turned down the opportunity to become farmers
and he could only assume from the personalities of these
priests that there was a sizable income in religion in
Japan.
Over the road from Shinmei Shrine was the Nomura Business
Park, a shrine of a different kind, a grand sky scraper
towering over the rest of the neighbourhood as part of
Yokohama's plan for the 21st. Century. It housed companies
like Sony, Omron and Digital Equipment Corporation (Japan),
but had a series of show rooms with art exhibits on the
bottom floor. The centre piece was a shallow pool called
"Water Gallery" surrounded by pergolas with plastic vines
until the real ones grew tall enough and a Colloseumesque
amphitheatre.
This was the brain child of Mario Bellini and the sculptures
reflected the surrealistic nature of the place - an enormous
rock with wings, another rock held tied by a vertical chain,
a huge red iron segment of cheese and a gigantic door bolt
set in concrete. Connie loved the safari jungle best with
Klaus Kammerich's tiger, Izumi Ando's rhinoceros and
Nobuyuki Akechi's elephants. Her favourite was a line of
bronze dogs running in and out of a wall called "Every Dog
Has His Day" by Satoshi Yabuuchi.
Such was the attention to detail in the Business Park that
Vince found himself wondering if the Japanese, contrary to
Mr. Izuka's words, had not decided to take up the Western
love of Art and Architecture. It may have been hard to find
a building in Yokohama between 25 and 100 years old, but it
was also impossible to conceive that the Business Park would
be committed to rubble as quickly as most of the tall
buildings around the extended Tokyo area.