Gods Help Us!

Last year we met a guy in the Philippines who lost his faith in Catholicism because of Frodo Baggins. It was hard to deny his logic: if Tolkien could create a world so vivid and steeped in history as Middle Earth, then of course the , could be just that – especially when people stood to gain from its telling. We shrugged and conceded that perhaps he had a point.

It took less than the machinations of hobbits to bring down my faith: Chinese Whispers. “If a childhood game of passing simple messages around a room could be corrupted in five minutes,” I said to myself as a 14-year-old, “How could there be any hope of accuracy with a lifetime of stories told over thousands of years, translated through dozens of languages and dialects?” Once that thought got in my head, religion had lost me forever.

Travelling is not conducive to building faith, either. Visiting religious ruins, or sites of massacres from religious wars, or the temples of doomed civilisations, always leaves us feeling the same: heavy with a kind of sadness that so much effort and resources and, in some cases lives, were lost in order to worship myths.

But just because we are goddless heathens, that doesn’t mean we’re not fascinated by faith. In fact, we’re almost religion tourists. The buildings, the outfits, the religious fervour… It’s always interesting – the people especially. Even though we often find it bamboozling, there’s something very special about watching pious practitioners caught up in ecstasy. Maybe it’s because we’re jealous of trusting so completely in something so invisible, but we seek it out in every country we visit.

Alongside the devotion, we really like the architecture; religion has turned us into design dweebs. Because they’ve been given so much by their followers – and in some cases taken it – religious buildings tend to be palatial, ornate affairs that are undeniably beautiful. Pick almost any faith in the world and you’ll find a spectacular HQ. The indigenous Japanese faith of Shintoism is no exception.

Arguably* the country’s most important, Ise Shrine, in Mie prefecture, is a sprawling complex consisting of 125 individual shrines. It is the centrepiece around which the entire city is built.

For its part, Shintoism seems a lot less dictatorial than many other religions. It’s one of the benefits of polytheism: you can pick who you listen to and when. The pre-Christian Romans had a similar set up. They followed gods depending on their needs: pray to the god of war before the battle; pray to the god of forgiveness as you clean the viscera out from under your fingernails.

Things a good deal more sedate with modern Shintoism, though. Pray to the god of harvest, pray to the sun, and to the moon, pray for love, happiness and a big family… It’s vaguely similar to the native religions of the Americas, where people made offerings to the powerful spirits of nature in the hope of a better life.

In short, even though this sometimes literally means worshipping a rock, it’s hard to hold too many grudges with Shintoism, especially if you’re willing to ignore the whole Emperor-is-a-god thing (although it’s worth noting that the right to divinity was relinquished after the Second World War).

*I say it’s arguably the greatest shrine, because we would argue very strongly that it’s not. Why? Because we’ve no idea what it looks like. Very few people do: this is one of the most secretive, exclusive structures in all of Japan. While the “inner” shrine receives an eye-watering 8.8 million tourists a year, less than 0.01% of them get to see much more than a few smaller buildings (many of which are selling religious trinkets) and some roofs of other buildings beyond a giant CCTV-watched fence. Inside lies Kotaijingu, the main shrine where the sun goddess Amaterasu is enshrined, and where the hoi polloi are not welcome.

That’s what you can (or can’t) see on a good year. As the rules dictate that the shrine must be disassembled and rebuilt every 20 years (the next one is scheduled for 2013) there is currently quite a lot of maintenance going on. From the wrong angle, it looks more like an unfortunate building site than a home of the divine.

Yet most visitors are happy with their lot. There’s a beautiful park to walk around, lovely bridges, and some of the biggest trees in the country. Gods or no gods, it’s a pleasant place to bring the family. And there’s no entrance fee.

Except there kind of is. If you’re willing to pay (we heard the figure of ¥5000 mentioned) then you can pass beyond the outer wall and into the sanctum beyond. We didn’t speak to anyone who had ventured so far (though we did see a small group coming out) but it’s unlikely they saw a great deal more than the hoards outside.

However, if you’re the right person, it is possible to see more: the other four chambers that lead towards the centre are reserved for figures depending on their importance: members of government, priests, the royal family… To see the innermost sanctum, home of the sacred mirror, an item that was said to have been given to the imperial line by the Amaterasu herself, you can be no one less than the emperor.

And there lies one of the biggest fundamental problems we have with religion: that it tells some people that they are not good enough, and rewards others who have arrived on earth through nothing more than a fluke in the their parents’ genes. To us, that kind of cruelty and favouritism sounds more like the work of man than any god. Nevertheless, we’re looking forward to visiting more religious sites and, yes, more shrines – we just hope we can see them next time.

 

去年フィリピンを旅している時、“フロド・バギンス”によりカトリック信者としての信仰を止めたという彼に出会った。もしトールキンが中つ国として素晴らしい世界を築く事ができるのならそれに耳を傾けたらよいのではないか、と。私達は肩をすくめて、彼の意見を容認するしかなかった。

それは私達の信仰を改めさせようという策略ではないが、まさに伝言ゲームだ。“子供に簡単なメッセージを伝えると言うゲームをやらせたら５分でぐちゃぐちゃになってしまう”ならば、何百年・何千年と語り継がれ、多くの言語に訳されてきた物語の信ぴょう性はどうなるのだろうか？と、私はその疑問に14歳の時に直面し、その後宗教が私の中で重要になる事はなかった。

旅をする事が信仰を深めるきっかけにはならないが、宗教関連の建物や、宗教戦争によって多くの命が奪われた場所、そして文明の進化を決定づけるようなお寺などを訪れる旅に、多くの人の全てが神話の崇高さの為に失われた、その重みと悲しみを感じる。

しかし無宗教だからといって、信仰に興味がないわけではない。それを証拠に私達は宗教旅行者のように、それらの建物や着るもの、宗教にまつわる全てのものを常に魅力的だと感じるし、時としてそれがペテンだとしても、人々が夢中になって祈りをささげる姿には特別なものを感じる。それはもしかしたら、そこまで深く何かを信じられる姿に嫉妬しているのかもしれない。どこの国を訪れても目にするそれらの人々に・・・。

信仰と並行して、私達はそれらの建築の素晴らしさにいつも目を奪われる。多くの信者に支えられているそれらは宮殿のように、華麗で否定の余地なく美しい。世界中のどんな信仰を例にとってみても、それらには驚くほど素晴らしい“本部”があり、日本の神道においてもそれは例外ではないようだ。
おそらく三重県にある伊勢神宮は日本のなかでも最も重要な場所で、全国125の神社が連なる。その神宮がここ伊勢市にあるのだ。

神道は他の宗教に比べて、独裁的な側面は非常に少ないように思う。それは多神教の肯定的な点でもあるかもしれない。時と場合によって別の神様のお力を借りる。キリスト教の一部にもそういった考え方があった。彼らは必要に応じて別の神に祈り、教えを乞うたのだ。神道はもっと落ち着いたものだ。豊作、太陽や月、愛情や幸福、家族などのために祈りをささげる。それは自然の神々に祈りをささげて豊かな生活を望む、アメリカに昔から根付いている宗教になんとなく似ているような気がする。

　（私が“おそらく”最も素晴らしい神社だと記載したのは、伊勢神宮を訪れはしたものの、ほとんど見る事ができなかったからだ。ここは日本で最も特別な神社で多くの場所は足を踏み入れられないようになっている。内宮には年間880万人が訪れるが、その内0.01％の人のみが、防犯カメラで覆われた特別な場所への立ち入りを許されるのだ）

伊勢神宮は20年ごとに再建することが決められており（次は2013年）、多くのメンテナンス工事が行われている。見方によっては神聖な場所と言うよりは、問題の多い建物のようだ・・・。
とは言え、多くの参拝客は皆幸せそうだ。美しい公園に囲まれ、美しい橋がかけられ、日本有数の大きな木が植えられている。神が居ようと居まいと、そこは家族で訪れるには最高の場所だし、入場料もかからない。

しかしもしあなたが特別な人ならば、特別なエリアへ足を踏み入れる事を許される。政府関係者、聖職者、皇族など・・・だが最も奥の部屋に収められている、天照大御神から与えられたという鏡は、天皇陛下以外見る事ができないそうだ。

私が思う宗教の最も根本的な問題は、往々にして人を“ダメ”だと判断し、そして何の努力もせずに親の遺伝子だけで成功を成し遂げているような人たちを素晴らしいというような“えこひいき”の側面で、それはとても神の言葉とは思えないからだ。
だが、これからも宗教建築には足を運ぶし、もちろん神社も訪れたいと思っている。できれば次ではもっとたくさん見る事ができればよいのだけれど・・・。