Tenjin kagura mask

Tenjin is known as the kami of scholarship. If you want help to pass exams you go to a Tenjin shrine.

Originally Sugawara no Michizane, a high-ranking government minister and poet in the late 9th Century, he died in virtual exile in Kyushu after falling from favor due to the machinations of his enemy Fujiwara no Tokihira. After his death a series of plagues and calamities befell Kyoto which were blamed on Sugiwara'a "angry ghost". To appease his ghost he was posthumously restored in rank and enshrined as a kami.

The Tenjin dance is a straightforward sword fight between Sugawara and Fujiwara, with Fujiwara being killed. The video I posted here is from the Tenjin dance.

Kagura Mask Index

Kinnyamonya Matsuri

This draincover is from the island of Ama, one of the Oki Islands lying off the coast of Shimane. It depicts 2 villagers dancing at the annual Kinnyamonya matsuri, the largest matsuri on Ama.

Among the many matsuri activities is a dance with more than 1,000 people that includes banging rice spoons.

The Oki Islands were a place of exile, and are still removed from mainstream Japan. The people are very friendly, the waters around the islands are clear, clean, and beautiful, and life there is slow and relaxing. It's one of my favorite places in Japan.

Splendid Monarchy

Splendid Monarchy
Power & Pageantry in Modern Japan

T. Fujitani

University of California Press

ISBN 0-520-21371-8

305 pp

The Meiji Restoration of 1868 is inaccurately named. There was no restoration of a previously existing imperial system, but a complete reinvention and manufacture of a new imperial system. At that time the vast majority of Japanese had no idea who, or what, the emperor was.

Faced with creating a modern Nation-State out of a diverse collection of horizonatally seperated domains and provinces, and rigidly separated vertical classes, the new leaders of Japan chose to build an imperial system to serve as the unifying paradigm.

As with so much of the new Japan, they looked to the West for models, and in the case of the imperial system, to European monarchies, especially Britain's.

Fujitani focuses mainly on the external public forms, the new state ceremonies and great public buildings, but there is a lot of fascinating background on the creation of the new religion of State Shinto,- the destruction of local nature-based shrines, the suppression of "superstitions", the creation of national shinto ceremonies, Yasakuni, the enshrinement of emperors, and so on, as well as the rewriting of history to make the imperial system central to Japanese history.

All Nation-States have used "invented traditions" in their creation, but what comes across in Japan's case is not only the extent and number of these invented traditions, but the fact that they are so widely believed, by Japanese and foreigner alike, to extend back into Japan's past.

Perhaps the clearest example of this is the "traditional" Shinto wedding. I personally have asked more than one hundred Japanese of all ages when this "ancient" ceremony began, and so far I have not been given a single correct answer. The very first Shinto wedding was held in 1905, scarcely 100 years ago, and it was modelled largely on the Christian Royal Weddings of the British monarchy.

A fascinating book for those who wish to learn more about just exactly how modern Japan is, and the massive disjunction between modern Japan and its past.

Mountain Whale

Looking into the eye of a whale..... a Mountain Whale,..... which is also known as inoshishi,.... a wild boar. It was called mountain whale as a way to circumvent the proscription against eating meat. A whale is a fish and therefore exempt. Rabbits are classified as birds for the same reason.
Monks and buddhist priests, and devout buddhists, ate no meat, but most Japanese ate any meat they could get,... frog, snake, badger,.... dog was popular in Edo.

Inoshishi are classified as a pest as they destroy many gardens. My own gardens have been raided several times. Last autumn my neighbor set a trap next to one of the tracks that the boar were coming out of the forest on. In 3 months he caught 3 full-size boar.

We no longer have a hunter in our village, so a friend from another village was called and he dispatched the beast with one shot.

The tail is cut off so a small bounty can be gotten from the town council.

I have read that in parts of Japan many boars are killed as pests but the carcasses just burnt.

Round here inoshishi meat is prized, and from each one caught I got a leg and the ribs. Fresh boar meat is tender and very tasty.

I caught these little guys on the road a few years ago. They were just standing, waiting for their mom who was down in the rice paddy. Maybe one of these little cuties, a few years older, was what we ate :)

The good guys versus the bad guys

Yesterday was the annual Gotsu Kagura festival. 7 hours of exciting entertainment for less than the price of a movie ticket!

Kagura is sacred dance, and its home is in the local shrine, but here in Iwami, kagura has become so popular that various opportunities exist to see it outside of the shrine matsuri. Many towns now have an annual festival held in school gyms or auditoriums. Rather than seeing one group perform all night, up to 10 groups each perform just one dance. It's a kind of showcase where groups can see each other.

Being performed on a large stage rather than the usual small kagura space in a shrine means that dances with larger numbers of participants can be staged.

One of the common features of most kagura dances is combat. Bows and arrows, halberds, and swords are used. The theme of many dances is the triumph of good over evil, and in many cases this means the the Yamato defeating their enemies.


With the faster 8-beat kagura of Iwami some of these sword battles can be quite exciting, as can be seen in the short video.

Matsuri procession

The annual matsuri for a shrine will usually include a procession. The details differ a little from shrine to shrine, but the format is basically the same. This procession is being led by a Tengu, a kind of forest goblin commonly associated with yamabushi.

Next up is a Shishi, chinese lion. This was the first time I'd seen one in a procession.

The taiko is normally carried suspended from a stout piece of bamboo by 2 men, but this was pulled in a purpose-built taiko cart. I was particularly impressed with the seatbelt that the drummer is wearing.

The children's mikoshi comes next. The kids get half a day off from school for the matsuri.

Next come the larger and heavier mikoshi(s) carried by the village men, and occasionally women. Nowadays, if the village is large and the population dwindled, the mikoshi sometimes are carried by small pick-up truck.

After the mikoshi come the priests and shrine assistants, followed by the Miko who earlier danced for the kami.

Sometimes the mikoshis will stay at different spots around the village so that further ceremonies may take place.

All these photos are from the Tsunozu matsuri held in the local Otoshi shrine in the first few days of November.

Typical Japanese Landscape 6

This could be a danchi, or it could be a mansion. The distinction between the two is now very blurry. Danchi were originally created by the government in the 1950's to solve the severe housing shortage in the cities that were filling up with people moving in from the countryside. Danchi could only be rented, not bought, and the blocks tended to be plain concrete.
The private sector responded by creating "mansions", which were often slightly larger apartments (but still tiny) that could be bought or rented. Typically the buildings exteriors were clad in tile.

Otoshi Shrine, Miyoshi.

Like so many shrines and temples, Otosho shrine in Miyoshi is at the top of a flight of steps.

Otoshi, one of Susano's many sons, is a tutelary kami of grains, and therefore Otoshi shrines are fairly common.

It was New Year when we visited, so the mikoshi were on display.

Like all the old-time kami, Otoshi sired many kids by many mothers. A good proprtion of his offspring are kami that were known to be worshopped by immigrant groups in ancient Japan.

It was here that I first really noticed shimenawa (sacred rope) made of artificial materials. The traditional material for shimenawa is rice straw, but nowadays one sees more and more made from various types of plastic.

Shrine Index

Nima Sand Museum (inside)

The centrepiece of Nima's sand museum is the largest sandtimer/hourglass in the world, 6 metres in height amd 1 metre wide, it contains more than 1 ton of sand that takes a year to flow through the narrow gap.

Every New Years Eve the timer is lowered from its position high up in the main glass pyramid of the museum and invited guests turn it 180 degrees to begin a new year.

Other than the sandtimer there is not actually a lot to see at the museum...... there are a few artworks using sand, and a collection of sands from around Japan, but not much else.

The outside of the museum, designed by local architect Shin Takamatsu, is more interesting.

See the outside

September harvest

The gardens continue to produce an abundance of tomatoes, both large, and cherry. Most of my neighbors trim their tomato plants to a single upright vine which soon dies. I make a cage of steel mesh and let the plants spread like a jungle. I'll be picking tomatoes until the first frost in late November, and then there will be kilos of green tomatoes to have too.

The bell peppers continue to fruit. I let them ripen now into sweet red peppers. They too will kepp producing for 2 more months.

Had a small harvest of swedish turnips, known as swede in the UK, and rutabaga in the US, no-one here has seen any before. The tops started to rot, probably due to the excess ofrain the past month, so they should have grown a few more months and gotten bigger.

Still more eggplants to pick everyday.

This years sweet potato harvest will be small again this year. The vines were doing great yesterday, but sometime during the night wild boars (inoshishi) dug up and ate a lot of the fattest.