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Chapter Two: Freedom of Expression: The Very Modern Practice of Visiting a Shinto Shrine
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22 C H A P T E R T W O FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION The Very Modern Practice of Visiting a Shinto Shrine Cultural forms may not say what they know, nor know what they say, but they mean what they do—at least in the logic of their praxis. paul willis, learning to labour Why do people come to visit Kamigamo Shrine? Is it the allure of history and the chance to walk and worship where emperors and shoguns have passed? Is it the respite from urban pressures the shrine offers with its leafy canopies, winding paths, and murmuring brooks, framing buildings listed as “important cultural treasures”? Or are there powerfully personal reasons that dictate obeisance to and acknowledgment of a thunder deity once thought vital to the stability of the Japanese state? Despite surveys, observations, and interviews with shrine visitors, it is daunting to propose one or two all-encompassing motivations for the continuing viability of the shrine in modern life. The quote from Paul Willis that opens this chapter points to the ways individuals shape and often transform the cultural forms they inherit—often interested, goalorientedactivitytobesure ,butnoteasilyreducibletorationalcalculations (1977:125). Were one to play with this quotation a bit and substitute “human beings” for “cultural forms,” one would render Willis’ concept a more suitable epigram for a discussion of visitations to contemporary Shinto shrines. The emphasis is less on the received norms, beliefs, or values (cultural forms) and more on how men and women render these resources into an experience of the world that, for them and no one else, makes some kind of consistent, coherent, and predictable sense. That the institution of contemporary shrine Shinto allows sufficient freedom for individuals to make such choices during their infrequent encounters with it is, I believe, absolutely vital to the continued relevance of this ancient yet in some ways very modern tradition within one of the world’s leading industrial societies. While considerable scholarship has corrected the West’s assumptions about the development of ancient, medieval, and early modern “Shinto,” surprisingly little has appeared about the present-day actors, issues, or cultural practices of the Shinto institution and its often novel uses of inherited or, some might say, invented traditions (see Ueda 1979). I have elsewhere discussed the institutional politics, cultural performances, and motivatedactorswithinthisbroadtradition(Nelson1996b,1994,1993a, 1992). Continuing one theme, I hope to show why this allegedly “crystallized ” religious tradition (Grapard 1983) demonstrates a vital dimension of modernity: the assumed ability of average individuals to shape their own futures via subjective rationales and practices of the present. How seemingly traditional religious institutions such as Shinto have adapted to this aspect of the contemporary moment must be taken as seriously as the structures and practices that preceded it. Rather than imposing “the pure gravity of categories” sanctified by their embeddedness in the past, the contemporary religious institution, with all its complicated actors and orientations, is neither a departure from nor a betrayal of its traditions. It is, instead, “symmetrical” to them at every point of analysis (see Red- field 1996). Just what is a Shinto shrine in this day and age of mass transit and cyberspaces ? What is the cultural logic behind a shrine’s operation and active players?Whataesthetic,religious,oremotionalsaliencedoesashrinehave for modern men and women? Since there are so many shrines in Japan (eightythousand,accordingto“official”estimates)andbecausetheyareoften centraltothewaysinwhichneighborhoods,urbancenters,orruralareas have constituted themselves historically, politically, economically, and territorially, their physical presence alone provides a point of reference for a region’s populace and an easy first answer to the opening question. Particularly for local residents, a shrine is rarely referred to by its of- ficial name; instead, as if one were addressing an individual or personal acquaintance, the honorific “-san” is added after some derivative of the of23 FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION [3.229.124.236] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 03:13 GMT) ficial name (for example, “Tenjin-san” for Kitano Tenmangū, “Suwa-san” for Suwa Jinja, or “Kamigamo-san” for Kamo Wake Ikazuchi Jinja.) Keith Basso has observed that places and landscapes “can be detached from their fixed spatial moorings and transformed into instruments of thought and vehiclesofpurposivebehavior...eminentlyportablepossessionstowhich individuals can maintain deep and abiding attachments” (1992:223). They may just as often treat these “possessions” in an offhand manner, but that they constitute and organize part of one’s immediate social reality in Japan serves as a referential pivot grounding present to past in one’s own neighborhood. A shrine’s...