Lit by lanterns and fireworks, Shinto festival carries on centuries-old tradition in Japan, where religious beliefs have flexibility.
In this Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2019, photo, men stand on top of a lantern-covered float as fireworks light up the sky during the Chichibu Night Festival in Chichibu, north of Tokyo, Japan. Moving six towering floats up a hill and into the town center is the culminating moment of a Shinto festival that has evolved from a harvest thanksgiving into a once-a-year meeting between two local gods.
This two-day festival has its roots in an older tradition of villagers giving thanks to the nearby mountain god for helping them during the planting and harvesting season, said Minoru Sonoda, the chief priest of the Chichibu Shrine and a former Kyoto University professor of religious studies. In 2016, it was designated a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage.
Many Japanese freely mix religions depending on the occasion, visiting a Shinto shrine at New Year’s, holding a Buddhist funeral or getting married in a Christian wedding, a popular option even though only 1% of the population is Christian.RELIGION SEEN DIFFERENTLY “It’s a religion of life,” said Sonoda, the chief priest, in an attempt to summarize Shinto. “It’s something inherited from ancestors that provides a spirituality passed on from parent to child. And this isn’t just for humans, but we are also linked to animals and all living things. It’s because of them that we’re alive.”There are no definitive numbers on Shinto believers in Japan simply because there’s nothing definite to count. “We don’t use the phrase ‘believers,’” Sonoda said.
Last month, newly enthroned Emperor Naruhito spent the night in a makeshift shrine built with public funds in a ceremony called Daijosai, or the Great Thanksgiving. According to authorities, in this most important succession rite, he gave thanks for harvests, prayed for the peace and safety of the nation and hosted the imperial family’s ancestral gods.
Others said they believed Naruhito was fulfilling his duties as symbolic head of the country and that spending public money on such rites was acceptable so long as Shinto isn’t imposed on people. That includes official visits to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, where Japan’s war dead, including war criminals, are memorialized. Politicians have avoided visiting Yasukuni because China and South Korea say that doing so glorifies Japan’s wartime leaders and past.
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