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Manidoo Envoy
- University of Nebraska Press
- Chapter
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63 Manidoo Envoy Shinto is a native persuasion and an active animistic religion. The participants celebrate nature, honor their ancestors, and, for a time, surrendered to a fascistic emperor. The kami, or the spirits of a vast, eternal nature, are venerated at many shrines. The kami are honored at shrines and courted as unworldly visitors. There are no monotheistic creators, no grave founders, no sacred scriptures, no authoritarian doctrines, and no sincere notions of almighty dominance . The raison d’être of the shrines ‘‘is to promote, through ritual activities referencing transcendent powers, a sense of continuity, stability, and the management of uncertainty,’’ John Nelson wrote in Enduring Identities: The Guise of Shinto in Contemporary Japan. Ronin is a master of uncertainties and survivance. He revels in the stories of the kami, the spirits and shrines, and savors the sensibilities of a religion that has no missionaries, but he spurns the divine descent of the emperor. Royalty, he told me, is a depraved convention of cruel separatism and mannered dominance. The Shinto movement in the nineteenth century centered on the ‘‘reverence of the emperor,’’ and the ‘‘cult of the imperial ancestors ’’ became ‘‘more nationalistic and eventually came to seek a new unity under symbolic imperial rule,’’ wrote Edwin O. Reischauer in The Japanese. Shinto honors the kami, the mountains, animals, rivers, stones, and more. The kami spirits are ancient and superior. ‘‘These numinous presences have been the principal objects of worship’’ for centuries, wrote Carmen Blacker in The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan. ‘‘They are difficult to describe, because they are elusive, enigmatic, heterogeneous.’’ The kami ‘‘are best understood perhaps as hierophanies, manifestations of sacred power in the human world.’’ Ronin creates personal connections to nature in his stories, and, at the same time, he could be seen as ‘‘unclean’’ because he associates with lepers, and teases the memory of blood as a presence. Shinto notions of pollution include the avoidance of blood and death. People considered unclean were once ‘‘prohibited from participating in 64 religious rituals, mixing with other people, and even returning home from a funeral without being purified,’’ wrote Susan Hanley in Everyday Things in Premodern Japan. ‘‘Salt, water, and fire are all considered purifying agents and used both in religious ritual and to clean and purify.’’ Ronin told me that animals talk to him in dreams, and the way of the kami has a real presence in his stories. Animals, birds, and nature are not separate creations in his tricky metaphors and view of the world. He was native by dreams long before he learned about his father. The White Earth Reservation elders were aware that he was in touch with animal spirits, and that convinced them he was native, the anishinaabe son of Nightbreaker. Ronin was rightly embraced by many families partly because he told animal stories on the very first day he arrived at the reservation. Many natives remember his nanazu stories. ‘‘The Shino kami and the anishinaabe manidoo are common ancestors in my dreams,’’ he told me. He is certainly not a religious scholar, or even a student of comparative cultures, but his stories are wise, heartfelt, and inclusive of the natural world. He is a mongrel , a roamer, and his stories are a worthy tease of nature, culture, and empire dominance. Ronin is a dreamer, and his creative memories of hafu samurai are no surprise to those who know him and who have heard his wild, passionate stories. Animals and birds are the primary source of his visions. He imagines and presents the sentiments of humans, animals, and birds in the same sense of moral reality. Ronin strongly resists any association with cults or the mythic concoctions of animal tenancy. Animals do not haunt him, or by guile penetrate his body. Clearly, his creative, perceptive powers are innate, similar to the poses of an ascetic or shaman, and his tricky visions are not imitations or derived from others. He is the animal of his mind, a spirit by stories not by the possession of sorcerers. He is a unique and ironic healer, a trickster by stories, not by character simulations. ‘‘I am hafu, a ronin trickster by chance of my conception ,’’ he told a journalist, and explained that his presence is not secured by a pure originary moment. His native stories evade closure and victimry. The Japanese traditional theater is ‘‘living theater,’’ wrote Karen Brazell in Traditional Japanese Theater. The ‘‘kabuki dance,’’ [44.212.39.149...