Yukatado

Religion in Japan

E. Kenney

Monday, November 24, 2003

 

Japanese Religion as Expressed and Presented in Japanese Animation

Japanese animation, otherwise known as anime, for the last sixty years, has been an integral part of modern Japanese society serving both as a means by which the Japanese express and present their culture and as an agent of social change. Narrowing the field to focus on anime as a medium for the expression and presentation of Religion in Japan by the Japanese, its various formats help to reveal the nature of Japanese religious belief and practice. Anime takes three major forms: television series, both long and short – some are only one season, or thirteen episodes whilst other are many seasons long, running for upwards of two-hundred episodes; movies, for example Hayao Miyazaki’s various films such as Mononoke Hime; and finally, Original Animation Videos (called OAVs), which can be movies or short series, and in either case, went straight to video and never enjoyed television air play or a showing in a theater.

Three anime I would like to discuss are especially relevant to the topic of religion in Japan, and one in particular is specifically about religious figures using their religious power to fight evil or perform incredible feats. They are: TV-Tokyo’s Asagiri no Miko (朝霧の巫女), meaning Shrine Maidens of the Morning Mist; Rumiko Takahashi’s Inuyasha: Sengoku Otogi Zoushi (犬夜叉：戦国お伽草紙), translated by Viz Communications as Inuyasha, a Feudal Fairytale; and finally, Key the Metal Idol. These anime all contain religious themes, not simply to achieve an exotic aesthetic but to genuinely explore religion in Japan, with major characters portraying miko. They also contain examples of modern Japanese attitudes towards religion.

Something that is very important to note is that, with the exception of the religious community, i.e., the shrine priests and the Buddhist monks, most Japanese really have very little understanding of what they consider to be their own religious practices and therefore probably not a very great understanding of why they might believe the way they do. For example, Mieko Katou[1], when asked, said that she went to a shrine and temple as a child, took her own children to shrines and temples, and her children do the same; however, no one ever told her why she should go to a shrine or temple, simply that she should. At a death ritual, she prayed at her mother-in-law’s Butsudan to her father-in-law following along with the Buddhist monk, but she later admitted that she only prayed along with him so as to keep up appearances. No one ever asked or encouraged Mrs. Katou to read the Kojiki, the Lotus Sutra, or learn anything about her religious beliefs and practices. This is very much unlike the predominately Christian Western culture where one is highly encouraged to study the Bible and understand one’s own faith. In Japan one tends to grow up going to shrines and temples without much of an explanation as to why, other than it being tradition. Therefore, once someone is no longer required to go to shrines and temples or pray to a kamidana (神棚) or butsudan (仏壇), but they go or pray of their own volition, their spiritual belief becomes very personal and thus becomes open to personal interpretation.

It is this personal interpretation that I find to be the basis for the manner in which various Japanese religions are expressed in anime. Part of this personal interpretation seems to be headed toward a much more fundamental form of religious practice unconcerned with much of the ritual of either Shinto or Buddhism as it had evolved over the centuries. In anime especially, this seems to be the case, as the Shinto and Buddhism presented tends to bear little resemblance, other than on a purely aesthetic level, to Shinto and Buddhism as it exists.

Why might one say that the producers – meaning all those that had a hand in the creation thereof – of the various anime are harkening back to a more fundamental form of Shinto or of religion in general? To answer that question, one needs to delve into the annals of Japanese history as far back as the Jomon (13,000 BC to 300 BC), Yayoi (300 BC to AD 300), and Kofun (AD 300 to AD 710) periods. During these times, the Yamato (大和) peoples were still coming into the archipelago from either Korea (most probably) or through the Philippines. These Yamato were still establishing themselves on the islands of Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku, and they had their own religious customs, the rudiments of Shinto. Obviously, Buddhism had not yet been introduced. Often, a shaman or shamaness would be at the center of this or that natural wonder that had been ascribed power and thus had became a Kami (神), and he/she acted as the diviner of that Kami’s will. As Japan was originally a matriarchy, most often, this shaman was a woman, and of course, the proper translation of miko (巫女), which is now simply ‘shrine maiden’, is ‘shamaness’. They served the Kami; they served as the medium, through which one talked to the Kami – that communication sometimes took the form of sexual intercourse, for a fee of course; they served as the voice of the Kami; and finally, they placated the Kami, doing spiritual dances called Kagura (神楽) to please and appease the them.

Later, as Japan transformed into a patriarchy, male priests took on many of the roles of the miko, many of the shamanistic practices died off or evolved, and miko were placed in a lower but nonetheless important position in shrines. When a priest was called upon to exorcise a possessing spirit of one type or another, the miko’s job was to be the vessel into which the possessing agent was transferred and confined. The priest would then speak to the possessor through the miko and finally exorcise it from this world. Incidentally, this practice survived all the way into the Meiji period where Miki Nakayama had to take the place of a Yamabushi’s[2] absent miko in order for him to exorcise the evil spirit possessing her son. It was during this ritual that she was possessed by Tenri-no-Mikoto-no-Kami. Today, the miko still does spiritual dances for the kami, and she will often be seen behind the counter of a shrine’s shop selling fortunes, Omamori (御守), Ofuda (御札), Ema (絵馬), and kamidana – if the shrine sells them as some of the larger ones do. The fortunes are a definite harkening back to the original purpose of the miko; the Omamori and Ofuda are protective charms, although the Ofuda are to be placed in a permanent location such as a kamidana and contain the name of the Kami or shrine from which they came.

Concerning Shinto in Anime, the miko has become the center of attention and can be seen in each of the three examples: Asagiri no Miko, Inuyasha: Sengoku Otogi Zoushi and Key the Metal Idol. In all three, there is no shrine priest at all, but only miko. In the first example, Asagiri no Miko, there is a shrine attended by three miko, Kurako, Yuzu and Tama; all three are also sisters. Not once is a priest ever shown, however, they do have a father living with them on the shrine grounds that seems to have a different job outside the shrine. Their cousin, Tadahiro, or simply Hiro, comes to live with them, and upon his return he is immediately attacked by the villain of the series, Ayatachi, who seems to serve as a priest for an evil kami. Hiro is attacked because he holds the key to connect the living world to the land of the dead, thereby allowing the resurrection of the evil kami, Yagarena-no-Mikoto.

This anime has a somewhat different theological take on the evil spirits as well as even the Kojiki itself. When the other girls at Yuzu’s high school become fellow miko and undergo the spiritual training, they learn from the Kojiki – that is, the Kojiki according to the animators – that:

“It all started in the Kojiki. The Izanagi-no-Mikoto and the Izanami-no-Mikoto groups pledged to protect this falling country (the islands of Japan fell from the tip of Izanagi’s naginata). And with that, they took the order of the heavenly [kami], and made the essence of rain, which let the [kami] with power over plants be born. On that end, those vestiges that did not take the oath, in other words, those souls that could not find a proper conclusion remained in an isolated temple. Left in an unsorted pile, those souls amalgamated. If it unstablizes, their true form materializes. We call those abnormalities Youkai (妖怪)”[3].

 

The miko are taught that they are to be channels for the heaven’s power, and that they are not actually innately powerful. Furthermore, there is a set of “evil” miko that serve Yagarena-no-Mikoto. One of them, Kukuri Shirayama, actually does perform the original task of a miko, that of the vessel through which a Kami can communicate with others. Ayatachi acts as the priest who summons Yagarena-no-Mikoto into the body of Kukuri. Yagarena-no-Mikoto then speaks through her. In the end, the most powerful of the miko in the series, Yuzu, is made to become the permanent vessel in which Yagarena-no-Mikoto will reside.

Of interesting note, as it will be of mild importance later, Carmen Blacker[4] in her “The Catalpa Bow,” speaks of the original miko. She says that miko originally carried bows and arrows, wore magatama (勾玉), as well as bell-decorated mirrors, amongst nine different instruments that might have been used. Similarly, Kurako uses a bow and sacred arrows, Tama uses the bells (though not on a mirror) and the other miko are given other sacred implements, most of which are mentioned in “The Catalpa Bow.”

In the second example, Inuyasha: Sengoku Otogi Zoushi, the miko Kikyou is so spiritually powerful that she is assigned the sacred task of purifying an evil jewel and protecting it from the evil youkai[5] who are the Japanese equivalent to demons and who would attempt to use the corrupted jewel in order to make themselves all powerful. Kikyou’s sister, Kaede also became a miko, although with limited power by comparison has power nonetheless. As the story begins, Kikyou is the miko of a local village shrine in a small town located outside of Edo before Tokugawa ever built his capital there. Unlike Asagiri no Miko and Key the Metal Idol, Kikyou’s power does seem to originate from within. It is because of this power that she is given the task of purifying the evil from a jewel, the Shikon-no-Tama (四魂の玉), literally, the “Ball of the Four Souls.” She fights demons protecting the jewel as she purifies it as well as using her powers to heal the sick. As with Kurako from Asagiri no Miko, Kikyou’s weapon of choice for fighting demons is a bow and arrows. Furthermore, Kagome also learns how to use a bow and arrows. It was with a sacred arrow she used her dying strength to shoot that Kikyou sealed Inuyasha to the Goshinboku (御神木) or Sacred Tree.

The explanation of the Shikon-no-Tama introduces manga artist Rumiko Takahashi’s own interesting theological perspective on the nature of the human soul. The Shikon-no-Tama was created when a very powerful miko did battle with an incomprehensibly powerful youkai. In her final attempt to destroy it, she combined her soul with it, sealed within this glass ball that fell from her corpse. It is called the Shikon-no-Tama because Takahashi explains that a person’s soul is made of four separate by equal parts that when in balance, allow a person to live in harmony and be healthy; however, when they become imbalanced, the person becomes corrupt, and consequently, the parts can become imbalanced by corruption, resulting in a vicious cycle.

In the Inuyasha universe, youkai are able to amalgamate to form stronger youkai, usually when a person is so consumed by anger or desire that they allow a myriad of youkai to possess them. The main villain of the series, Naraku[6] is one such person who has allowed youkai to possess him, and he seeks the Shikon-no-Tama in order to become a full youkai. Originally named Onigumo, he was a thief and a murderer who was badly burnt and unable to move. Kikyou shows compassion for all people and cared for him despite his past deeds. He so lusted after her that he became Naraku in order to have his way with her. She, on the other hand, had fallen in love with Inuyasha, a half-human/half-youkai; and, the youkai that possessed Onigumo-turned-Naraku had an ulterior motive: to get the Shikon-no-Tama. Naraku tricked the couple into killing one another, and the series begins fifty years afterwards. Later in the series, Kikyou is resurrected by a Yamauba (山姥), or old mountain witch. Now a pseudo-living un-dead doll made of earth and the ashes of her original body, she was resurrected by the witch’s attempt to transfer the soul of Kagome – Kikyou’s reincarnation - back into the life-sized doll. However, the spell is broken in time for Kagome to have her soul returned to her, leaving only a small part behind, all the hatred Kikyou had for Inuyasha for what she believed to be his betrayal.

Kikyou is an especially interesting character with regards to religions in Japan. In the beginning, she is a miko, however, after her resurrection, she becomes something else entirely. In Buddhism, a person’s goal is to reach Nirvana, literally the snuffing out of the soul, which allows them to escape the karmic cycle of death and rebirth into one of the six realms. Furthermore, Buddhism teaches that women, because they are innately inferior to men, must be reborn as men before they can attain enlightenment, and that even the best Buddhist woman will, at best, be reborn as a man. Herein lays Takahashi’s subversive reaction to this teaching in the form of Kikyou. In order to survive, Kikyou now has to “feed” off of the souls of dead women. These souls, as they leave the women, are taken by her soul-collecting youkai and brought to her. She absorbs the soul, destroying it. At first, this would seem to be an evil thing to do, however, these women no longer have any worry of being reborn in the cycle of reincarnation, nor did they have to be reborn as men to attain, instantaneously, and without any effort on their parts, what most Buddhist monks spend their lifetimes attempting: instant, free Nirvana. In essence, Kikyou has gone from being the compassionate care-giver of this world to becoming the ultimate Bodhisattva; and, she still finds plenty of time to care for the sick and wounded aplenty of her era, the Warring States period.

In the third example, Key the Metal Idol, Key’s mother was a miko at a shrine in the countryside that had no priest. She was able to channel the villages’ spiritual faith into feats of telekinesis and she was a general miracle worker therein. Key – who, throughout the series is searching for, well . . . the “key” to unseal the lock on her growth and power – sporadically displays amazing feats as well, i.e., the power is passed down from mother to daughter.

The main character Key is presented as a female robot that was supposedly created by a brilliant puppet maker/scientist who found a way to create the ultimate doll. However, the scientist’s dying words to the doll were that if she found thirty-thousand friends, she would become human. As silly as this may seem, it makes much more sense in the end when one comes to learn that Key was in fact born human but her grandfather, the scientist, found a way to stop her physical and emotional growth. His wife had been the miko of the village shrine. As with Asagiri no Miko, her power was not her own, but she was a channel that amalgamated and magnified the emotional power of the village. During festivals, she would do a sacred dance and, because the whole village was pouring their rapt attention upon her, she was able to make a child-sized doll mimic her movements with precision using telekinesis. When the scientist extracted the physical embodiment of her mother’s power in a gel and then injected it into Key, it caused Key to stop growing and loose her memories. Thus, Key believed that because she was emotionless and her friends had grown and moved away while she remained a child, she must be a robot. It was for that reason that Key needed thirty thousand friends – or more precisely, at least thirty thousand people all concentrating on her at the same time, providing an emotional power volume sufficient to cancel the effects of the gel that was injected into her so many years before, allowing her to resume her humanity.

Of course, Key’s own innate ability to channel power is sporadic and only manifests when large volumes of people are paying attention to her situation. For example, in one scene a man thrice her weight is perilously dangling from a building, and yet, as the massive crowd below grows larger, all awaiting the man’s inevitable fall to his death, her power manifests and she literally causes him to float to the safety of the roof.

Key the Metal Idol is also a good exposition of the Japanese feeling towards the new religions. There is a very strange man who dresses in what looks like a clown outfit, carrying a metal ball with cast snakes on it. He claims that Key is his little cult’s savior figure, the vessel for their god, a snake god. Many of the original miko-centered cults of nearly 2000 years ago were worshippers of snake deities, rather than the typical special rocks or trees, mountains or rivers.

Today that which regularly goes on in a Shinto shrine or a Buddhist temple would not make for the most exciting television or movie. Likewise, a real miko may have a somewhat mundane job at a local shrine, selling charms or performing an occasional sacred dance. However, in anime, miko enjoy the higher status they lost so long ago: powerful shamaness, self-sufficient demon-destroyer, reliable nurturer, and yes, even the object of men’s erotic fantasies. Perhaps in this form, the cult of the miko may help to elevate, in the religiously flagging minds of the Japanese, the real miko to the status that they ought to be.