Four Corners of Japan

On Sunday I enjoyed a magnificent spectacle at Takao, the mountain west of Tokyo that I’ve mentioned in earlier posts. I went out there on a warm spring afternoon with my friend Martine, a photographer, frequent traveller and blogger who’s been living in Japan for over five years now. We went to the same university in Brisbane, Griffith, the finest and easily the freakiest campus in Australia at that time. Martine wasn’t here when I lived in Tokyo from 2,000-2,003 and we actually met up again for the first time since Griffith when I came back here last year. She helped out with a floor to sleep on when I first arrived, and gave invaluable assistance when Chris and I began putting together massive song lists for our Four Corners iPods. She’s also offered to help out with switching my heavy winter gear to lighter versions when I get out of the Great White North, and hopes to meet up with one or both of us for a few days during the trip, “as long as you promise to slow down”.

Promise. By that stage I’ll probably be on all fours.

We were drawn to Takao this time by the annual Hiwatari festival that takes place at its base. This event consists of a colourful procession from a temple associated with the famous Yakuoin temple, dating from 744, near the summit, and after much pageantry and ritual, a spectacular fire-walking ceremony. The participants are Buddhist priests of the Shingon sect. I don’t know much about Buddhism, although I recall that Shingon is associated with Kobo Daishi, founder of the famous 88-temple pilgrimage in Shikoku (some of whose temples we will be visiting when we reach that mysterious island). My sensei Professor Wikipedia has this to say about Shingon:

According to Shingon, enlightenment is not a distant, foreign reality that can take aeons to approach but a real possibility within this very life, based on the spiritual potential of every living being, known generally as Buddha-nature. If cultivated, this luminous nature manifests as innate wisdom. With the help of a genuine teacher and through properly training the body, speech, and mind, we can reclaim and liberate this enlightened capacity for the benefit of ourselves and others.

But like most of the spectators (and there were a tonne, though it never got unbearably crowded), Japanese and western alike, we were there, cameras or camera-phones in hand, not so much as students of Buddhism as spectators to boistrously enacted vestiges of a primal, increasingly anachronistic past. We fluked prime positions for the beginning of the procession, as the participants engaged in some haunting chants in front of the temple, then quickly organised themselves into ranks, hurried along by the barked commands of a very cinematic sergeant-major type, for the march down to another temple building, conch-shell trumpets blaring. At this point my camera battery died with typical fantastic timing (the early shots can be seen via our Flickr link) and the pictures included here were taken with my phone.

Here are the conch-blowers in their white robes and animal skins at the second temple:

Watching the ’sergeant-major’ strut and bark through the forecourt, as the priests were assembled to his satisfaction, was a stirring spectacle in itself: 

With great solemnity, an older gentleman, apparently the head priest, was escorted, smiling placidly, to the temple, shaded by an enormous red parasol and accompanied by a small boy in a beautiful costume of matching orange: 

More prayers and chanting ensued. The whole event was beautifully choreographed and in less than half an hour the robed ones, and the throngs of spectators clustered about them, moved over to the fire pit nearby. We had trouble getting a glimpse of the action here, such was the depth of the sea of spectators enclosing it, and adjourned for a typical festival lunch of okonomiyaki ‘pancake’ rendered less typical by Martine’s (she’s a vegetarian) instructions in Japanese to an increasingly bemused vendor: “No, no shrimp please…and, er, no squid, thanks…oh, no dried fish flakes either… Oh, spring onions, yes please!” Even the neighbouring vendors were having a good laugh when we left. You wouldn’t think vegetarian food at a Buddhist festival would be such an outlandish idea, would you?

At last the massive pile of cedar boughs was set alight, flames metres high roared into life and oily plumes of black smoke belched skyward. Photographers crouched too close to the action reared in shock with their eyebrows scorched. Spectators cooed in approval; cameras and phones were held at arm’s length above heads, snapping furiously. Cords of wood were fed to the flames; towering figures from the Japanese Buddhist panthenon were unveiled at the head of the oblong pit. All the while chanting, amplified through loudspeakers, combined evocatively with the relentless pounding of a cermonial drum, and numerous spectators, all elderly, echoed the mantras with eyes closed and hands clutching devotional symbols.

When at last the flames had petered out, a few young priests began to flagellate themselves with green fronds:

And then the fire-walking — or ember-walking — began. After the priests had all made their way across, hundreds of spectators of all ages removed their shoes and queued to take their turn in the cedar ashes. Here’s an elderly lady making an inspiring sprint across the coals:

‘Arrow’ charms were plucked out of the float on which they’d been transported from the temple and sold off for a thousand yen apiece to eager spectators. Even the more solemn Japanese religious festivals display this unabashedly commercial flavour. I suppose all the priests’ salaries and the upkeep on those ancient buildings have to come from somewhere:

“Are you going to have a go?” Martine asked. “Nope,” I said without hesitation. Not out of fear of damaging those vital soles of mine — I’m just not a joiner. Japanese ceremonies which once undoubtedly had an explicitly spiritual dimension nowadays seem to be as much about affirming or re-imagining social bonds, or preserving traditions that are thought to be intrinsically ‘Japanese’. Stomping through the ashes with several hundred strangers would be fun, but it would be spiritually sterile for me. I’ve devised my own rituals and trials to help me make sense of my place in the cosmos, but mine are For Members Only — and there’s a membership of one.

Instead we strolled over to the base of the mountain, bought some beers and sat in the late-afternoon sun to enjoy them. “Sometimes Japan is great,” Martine observed. “We couldn’t do this back home — just walk into a restaurant and buy a couple of beers to drink outside.” It was beautiful there, savouring that Sunday afternoon languor so alien to the crushing urban clamour a few miles to the east. Parents relaxed on benches while unsupervised kids cavorted among the trees and memorial stones and ponds. Middle-aged hikers returned from hikes to the summit and unwound with stretching exercises in their knee-high socks and mesh vests and Tyrolean hats. It was my first time in 50+ visits to Takao  that I didn’t climb to the summit. I almost felt guilty, and then I just felt good.

There was a sudden cacophony of off-kilter conch blasts and a few remnant spectators, myself included, ran over to the road. The priests were heading back in somewhat less orderly ranks. The trumpets seemed to declare a triumphant conclusion to another successful festival: 

The orange-robed master, still shaded by the gigantic parasol, moved with an air of satisfaction into the temple compound. The spectators dissipated. I returned to Martine and our beers. A child cavorted in a little too carefree a manner and tumbled into a pond. His screams of betrayal as his mother attempted to restore his composure shattered the calm for a few minutes, but she was laughing and so were we. They departed and it was quiet again. We still had a half-hour of talk in the mellow light before our train out of the mountains, and the trees, and the distant, unknowable past.

~ GOAT