Why are the primitive beliefs of the Japanese so y rooted?

The yin and yang masters, who combine divination, rituals, summoning gods and other sorceries, the Ito Junji manga, which has ghosts and monsters popping up from time to time to frighten people, the Natsume anime series, in which you can see both monsters and gods, and the horror movies, such as "Spellbinder," "Midnight Murder," and "Hanako the Ghost Doll," which make you shiver when you see the title, are the primitive beliefs that have been a part of Japan's popular culture, which is not lacking in rituals, sorceries, and incantations.

Poster for the movie "The Undertaker"

Stills from the movie "Dreams"

All over Japan, various festivals are held throughout the year, from the "Ninen Matsuri" festival, which is held to pray for a good harvest before the start of the spring plowing season, to the "Shinsengumi Matsuri" festival, which is held to give thanks for a good harvest at the time of harvesting in the fall. Various festivals are held throughout the year throughout Japan.

Famous festivals such as Tokyo Kanda Matsuri, Kyoto Gion Matsuri, Osaka Tenjin Matsuri, etc. are held in which people dressed in ancient costumes parade through the streets to the sound of kagura music.

Even the foundation stone of the Atomic Energy Research Institute was laid in the "Jijin Matsuri" festival, and when we modern people witness the witchcraft-like rituals being held in the most advanced cultural facilities of modern science, we can't help but marvel at the vitality of the primitive ideas that have been ingrained throughout Japan's history.

The Jijin Matsuri of Japanese Shinto

There is a popular saying in Japan that "Matsuri is the purpose to human life -- the purpose of life is the festival." Matsuri is the purpose to human life - the purpose of life is matsuri". As the form of matsuri is carnival, matsuri is in fact the expression of the y repressed truth of the human heart, the ultimate expression of life: "Life is carnival".

So where did the primitive beliefs reflected in these popular culture and rituals come from? And how did it look in the early days? Why are the primitive beliefs of the Japanese so y rooted? In his book "A Cultural History of Japan," the famous Japanese historian Saburo Ienaga explains:

Witchcraft permeated every aspect of human life in the primitive era

Today, we have great difficulty in understanding the content of the spiritual life of Stone Age people. From these historical relics, we can imagine that the huge stone pillars, which seem to show the shape of male genitals and are not practical, and the pottery figurines of women with breasts protruding from their bodies, were used for witchcraft, which permeated every aspect of human life in that era.

Pottery figurine of a female from the Stone Age in Japan (illustration)

In addition, instances of teeth on the skulls of Stone Age people that have been processed by sawing or extracted indicate the existence of the fact that the human body was processed with the background of witchcraft, which brings to mind that irrational beliefs of witchcraft had a transcendent dominating power in human life. If one understands the flexion burial of a body with its limbs bent and then buried in the ground in connection with the example of having the body embrace a stone, this may reflect primitive thoughts of fear of the return of the dead.

Recently, the idea has also emerged that the shell mounds, where the bones and shells of animals were piled up for food, were not just dumps, but altars of some kind, where people sent the souls of the various animals they used for food back to heaven and prayed for them to reappear on the earth, thus enriching their diets.

Sex God Matsuri: Sex and Witchcraft

The Japanese in the early days of antiquity had an extremely open view of sex. This can also be seen in the relationship between sex and witchcraft. As I mentioned earlier, in primitive societies, people believed that the genitals were a symbol of the power of spells and charms, and they used stone pillars and terracotta figurines, etc., to represent the form of the genitals, and farming rituals inherited this tradition, where the genitals were regarded as symbols of agricultural productivity and became objects of belief.

An example of genital worship is the festival of Gobune Shrine (illustration)

This ancient custom has been passed down for more than 2,000 years, and even today, genitals and idols showing genitals, which are regarded as the gods of the gods of Taoism, still exist throughout the country. In addition, at the Sex God Festival at Gobune Shrine in Gyokata-gun, Ibaraki Prefecture, rice seedlings are planted and hung with straw in the shape of a man's root and a woman's vagina, so that they are united by the spring breeze (photo above).

In a rural area of Akita Prefecture, there is also a very realistic practice of having hired men and women have sex after rice-planting, and it is said that the practice of praying for a good harvest through the performance of sexual intercourse is widely spread. This custom, along with other forms of witchcraft activities, reflects a side of the ancient national religion that has survived in later generations.

Tang: Witchcraft and the Judgement

(In early antiquity) judges also used a witchcraft technique known as "tang," in which witnesses put their hands in boiling water to prove the truthfulness of their testimonies. "In addition to being a religious witchcraft for removing impurities, hobnobbing was also a criminal law for confiscating the property of criminals.

Honjue Seoncho said that "sin" refers not only to the evil deeds of people, but also to calamities such as sickness and diseases, as well as filth and ugliness, and that everything that is detestable to people is "sin". This understanding, along with the interpretation of God mentioned earlier, is an example of how Seon Ch'ang has accurately grasped the characteristics of ancient thought.

Sorcery was once the ruling political force

Rudu-Go in the Tenjin Festival

Among the artifacts unique to the Yayoi period, bronze swords and bronze gobos have been found in various parts of western Japan, centering on Kitakyushu, and bronze doxies have been unearthed in various parts of central Japan, centering on Kiuchi. These are large bronze objects of no practical value, such as weapons and musical instruments, which were supposed to have been used by the village*** community for witchcraft rituals, and which also symbolized the political authority of the "king.

Japanese national religion has also absorbed elements of primitive beliefs

Whether it is the songs, dances, music, purification, and purification of funerals, or the burning of deer bones for divination, or the possession of spirits by witches, all of these elements have been handed down as real-life religious practices for a long time, and they have given us a clear picture of the original face of Japanese national religion. All of these elements have been passed down to future generations as actual religious practices, giving us a clear picture of the original face of Japanese national religion.

What we must note is that the main body of the national religion, so far, still has the ritual of witchcraft as its only content. Obviously, the witchcraft activities recorded in the Wei Zhi Japanese Biography are the original form of national religion. We can infer that a large number of these elements should have been inherited from the witchcraft in the primitive society in the era of the gathering economy, but the national religions after the Yayoi era had the rituals of farming as their essence, and all the activities of witchcraft undoubtedly had the ultimate purpose of praying for the smooth progress of farming.

Traditional culture, rooted in real life,

has a strong vitality of its own

Japanese culture is characterized by the remarkable fact that traditional ancient cultures did not die out with the development of new cultures, foreign or domestically created, but in most cases merged with each other and **** survived. As mentioned earlier, the island nation of Japan, which is separated from the mainland by the sea, has been greatly limited in the depth of its acceptance of overseas cultural influences.

Traditional Japanese Wedding Ceremonies

The Japanese are always eager to absorb advanced overseas cultures and have exerted a superb ability to assimilate highly developed foreign cultures, and usually the influence of foreign cultures has not reached a deep and widespread degree to fundamentally change the real life of the Japanese, and traditional culture has been y rooted in real life since the beginning, and we must pay attention to this point

Because of the natural barrier of the sea, the Japanese people received overseas culture only through a small number of people traveling to and from the sea, and there was no widespread contact with overseas peoples (unlike in the latter half of the 20th century), and the production technology of agriculture, which was the basic industry, did not completely escape from the backwardness of the Yayoi era, and the rural ****samese mode of living survived without a fundamental change. Can we say that the above conditions are the basis for the wide and continuous transmission of the traditional contents of Japanese culture?

To understand Japanese culture, one can start with the small book "History of Japanese Culture". As the cultural textbook of the Emperor's history teacher, and the treasure of Iwanami Bookstore, A History of Japanese Culture has been out of print for many years, and now it has been newly translated by scholars invited by Translation Publishing House, and the binding design is by a famous artist, which is a good example of a small book for everyone.

Author: (Japan) Saburo IENAGA

Translator: Zhao Zhongming

Price: 48.00

Publication year: 2018.1

Saburo IENAGA (1913-2002) was born in Nagoya, and graduated from the University of Tokyo, majoring in Japanese history. He was a professor and head of the history department at the Tokyo University of Education.In the 1950s Emperor Akihito, who was then the Crown Prince, devoted himself to the study of Japanese history under Saburo Ienaga. Saburo Ienaga was opposed to militarism, and because of his lifelong fight for historical facts, he was called "the conscience of Japanese historians" and was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

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Stay tuned for more questions to be answered in the next installment of A Cultural History of Japan.