The previous post described living conditions in our house in northern Japan; this post looks into my work completing a doctoral dissertation on Japanese religion.
My first year at Tohoku University in Sendai in some ways resembled my first year at the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. In both cases I was unprepared for the task, and struggled to find direction and make progress. At Chicago my problem was trying to “eat the whole fish,” attempting to figure out the nature of all religions. Not until I met Eliade and read his books did I make headway with my studies.
In Japan I faced another huge problem, figuring out the nature of “religion” in Japan. Throughout Japanese history, most people did not belong exclusively to one institutional tradition, but held beliefs and practices drawn from a number of heritages—especially Shinto and Buddhism, and also Confucianism and Taoism, as well as a panorama of folk beliefs and customs. Joseph Kitagawa, who taught courses on Japan at Divinity School, advised me to study the set of beliefs and practices known as Shugendo, to see how all these elements came together to form one meaningful pattern.
The word “Shugendo” means the way of mastering religious power, in connection with sacred mountains. Shugendo draws on all the previously mentioned traditions to create its own spiritual message. When Professor Kitagawa advised me to focus on this topic, I thought that would be a manageable task for a dissertation. The same way that I had used Eliade’s approach to interpret the worldview of the Zuni Indians, I could interpret the world (or cosmos) of Shugendo.
When I arrived in Japan and tackled this topic, I was overwhelmed by the fact that Japan had numerous sacred mountains, and many centers of Shugendo, each with its distinctive beliefs and practices, and complex terminology. Here is just one concrete example of my dilemma. Every Shugendo center used pilgrimage as part of their ascetic practices on sacred mountains. The ordinary Japanese word for pilgrimage is junrei, but in Shugendo it is usually called toso. A specialized Buddhist dictionary linked toso to the Sanskrit term dhuta, and defined it as “ascetic practice or precepts to purify one’s body and mind and shake off adherence to clothes, food, and dwelling.” The dictionary set forth a precedent in Indian Buddhism for twelve kinds of dhuta, each with its own particular practice.
I was scrambling from book to book, dictionary to dictionary, and still did not know exactly what this “pilgrimage” meant. Some days at the university, when my translating and deciphering of Shugendo did not go well, I would ride my bicycle home. Then I would try to get the attanburo going, and if the fire didn’t catch, I’d have to empty the little stove and start all over again. Those were the times when I had to ask myself if it was such a smart idea to choose Japan and a difficult subject for a dissertation topic. But once the fire got started, and the water was hot, my son and I would wash and then get into the ofuro, and all those troubles melted away.
Because Professor Hori could see me sinking in frustration and despair, eventually we had a heart to heart talk. His brilliant suggestion was not to study and write on all Shugendo in Japan, but to concentrate on one local center, such as nearby Mount Haguro, which was still active, and where he had contacts who would let me observe their practices. Once Haguro Shugendo became the heart of my project, it moved ahead.
Eliade had taught me to focus on sacred and profane time and place. Most Shugendo centers observed four ritual periods, which they called “peaks.” The major ritual period was the fall peak. In the fall of 1963, I participated in Haguro Shugendo’s ten-day confinement in a mountain temple. Lining up in front of a temple at the foot of the mountain, prayers and actions symbolized our “death” and the beginning of our spiritual regeneration. The many rituals and prayers symbolized our entry into the womb of the sacred mountain and gestation.
While confined in a mountain temple, following a vegetarian diet, and reciting Buddhist sutras, we nourished our newly forming selves. Buddhism values asceticism as a way of driving out impurities and hardening one’s spirit. The most demanding practice was carried out in the dark of night within the closed space of a temple. The priests poured red pepper onto glowing charcoal hibachi, fanning the coals to create a cloud of fumes that stung nostrils, mouths, and eyes. “Breathe deep,” the priests said, encouraging us to drive out inner evil.
During the days, we went on long walks to shrines on the mountain, coming into direct contact with the kami (deities) and Buddhas dwelling there. At the university, I had wondered what defined Shugendo pilgrimage, and looked for it in dictionaries under the terms of toso and dhuta. Walking with these Shugendo practitioners to their sacred sites, I saw firsthand the meaning of the term—coming into contact with transcendent power.
At the end of the ten-day confinement in the mountain temple, we descended the mountain and returned to the Haguro main temple at the foot of the mountain, where we had begun our period of death and gestation. Everyone crouched down, and then all together jumped up, yelling, “gyaa,” the Japanese imitation of the birth cry. We were reborn!
At the end of the fall peak, the head of Haguro Shugendo inscribed on my straw hat the generous (and maybe undeserved) rank of “Enlightened One.”
H. Byron Earhart 