According to certain statistics, the total number of Shinto and Buddhism believers in Japan is about twice that of the country’s total population. Are the statistics wrong? No, no. The statistics mean that many Japanese people really believe in both Shinto and Buddhism. From other nationals’ perspectives, we appear to have strange religious views.
In Japan, when babies are born, parents take them to the local shrine. At the festival, people carry mikoshi (a portable version) of their local shrine. We exchange wedding vows in front of a shrine. Shinto-style weddings started in the Meiji period, and the majority of Japanese couples made vows in the Shinto style until the 90’s. However, it is believed when people die, they become Buddha and are buried in Buddhist cemeteries or temples. Therefore, in most cases funerals and memorial services are held in temples, not shrines. This system is quite natural to Japanese people, who take to it as everyday Japanese custom from the time that they are born. In this way, Japanese people are profoundly connected to kami and hotoke, shrines and temples, in various aspects of their lives, including ceremonial occasions.
Japanese people tend to be in awe of the nature, the surrounding environment, and spiritual things that they can’t see. We believe kami are the spiritual beings everywhere in the universe, and are always with us. Yaoyorozu no kami, which means “eight million gods,” are what we worship. Such belief has to do with a social structure in which the Japanese have lived as rice cultivating communities since ancient times. Maybe we have disciplined ourselves by worshiping nature and spiritual beings.
There are about 80,000 shrines in Japan. Among them is Ise Jingu in which Amaterasu Omikami, the ancestral kami of the Imperial Family and the tutelary deity of the Japanese people, is enshrined, and it is the most important shrine representing Japan. The shrine was constructed as Jingu, a prestigious shrine, about 1,300 years ago during the Aska period. The whole of Jingu covers an area of 5,500 hectares (ca. 13,600 acres).
Above all, the religious institution has kept its sacredness and has been protected by the powers of the day for 1,300 years without being attacked, burnt, or disgraced. It can only be called a miracle by historians or foreigners that the institution, a small and simple wooden house, has existed over the long history of Japan. In other words, Japanese people who believed the Jingu would be there forever should be the ones who lived in a paradise on earth, totally free from the history of killings and destruction the world has experienced. We lived in such a peaceful world even taking into account the distressing experience we had during World War II.
At Ise Jingu, there is a major event which has been ongoing since the Jingu was constructed. It is called Shikinen Sengu ceremony, a big festival held every 20 years. Shikinen Sengu is a large-scale and important event where all the buildings in the sanctuary, including the main buildings of the Jingu, treasure houses, fences and torii are reconstructed and relocated once every twenty years and the sacred apparel and treasures are renewed and carried to the new buildings. 2013 marks the 62nd Shikinen Sengu ceremony which will be held in October. Preparations for the big festival started eight years ago and the total cost will be 55 billion yen. Wow!
After World War II, State Shinto came to an end, and since then only a part of national taxes has been invested in the cost for Shikinen Sengu ceremony. Surprisingly, public donations cover most of the cost. Mr. Tsuneyasu Takeda, a lecturer at Keio University, who comes from the Meiji Emperor’s bloodline, has been making all-out efforts to ask for donations by holding free lectures all over Japan around 300 times a year.
Ise Jingu Official Website: http://www.isejingu.or.jp/shosai/english/index.htm
Reported by Yukari Aoike and Akiko Sugahara, Sugahara Institute