Alexander Ulanov. Souls of needles

Souls of needles
Alexander Ulanov

Publication date: May 17, 2000

A.A. Nakorchevsky. Shinto. - St. Petersburg: Petersburg Oriental Studies, 2000.

Buddhism is a world religion, Confucius is also revered in many places, and Shinto is Japan and only Japan. Shinto - "the way of the gods" - has no creator. No god came, no prophet, no teacher. Shinto exists just like the mountains or the sea, and is not chosen. This is not an appeal to the mind, fear or conscience of an individual - it is a tradition of the community. No scripture, no theology, no universally binding creed, no code of commandments. Ideas about the afterlife are vague - either it is somewhere in the mountains, or on an island across the sea. There are rituals and traditions - different in every corner of Japan.

Gods? - deities of heaven and earth, spirits, people, “birds and animals, fields and grasses and all other nature, everything that is rare and unusual, that which has exceptional qualities and inspires awe ,” wrote the Japanese philologist Motoori Norinaga. And he did not forget to add: “Exceptional is not only what is venerable, good and good. Bad and strange too...” A three-thousand-year-old tree or Mount Fuji are unusual, but also the winner of Tsushima, Admiral Togo or the founder of National Panasonic, Matsushita also cause admiration and awe - and also deserve veneration. Moreover, since the emperor is a divine person, a direct descendant of the goddess Amaterasu, he is in a sense senior to many lower deities and can assign them certain ranks and set the volume of offerings.

Mythology is vague. Gods are born - and drop out of the further narrative, having accomplished nothing and not being “responsible” for anything. The god of the wind, who knows how, turns out to be the ruler of the underworld. The classification of gods did not go further than dividing into those to whom food is served on the table, and those to whom it is displayed directly on the tatami mat. And the gods are not heroic. Susanoo defeats the dragon by drinking sake rice vodka and then cutting it into pieces. More like hooligans: the same Susanoo tore the skin off the stallion and threw it into the Amaterasu Palace, breaking the roof.

But every stone is alive (it was discussed whether stones and trees can become Buddhas). The difference is only in the speed of life (stones also grow - although very slowly), in the degree of animation. Not only the one who breathes has a soul ("soul" is derived from "breath" in Sanskrit, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek). In a prestigious cemetery there is a grave of broken needles belonging to a garment factory. A company that produces chemicals for killing insects, atonement for its sins, erects a monument: “Termites, sleep well.” They try not to throw away even old dolls, but burn them in churches on special days. In Russia, this attitude was applied only to icons that were not bought, but “exchanged for money,” and after they became dilapidated, they were floated down the river. And in Shinto, any human action is also a ritual, communication with the spirit of the material with which you are dealing. There is practically no religion as a separate sacred sphere - because everything is sacred to one degree or another. Until now, at the start of any construction - a power plant or an airfield - the consent of the deity of the corresponding plot of land is asked.

Such gods can do without names: simply “god of Mount Katsuragi”, “god of the rice field”. A temple is a place, a tree or a mountain, rather than a building. Such gods also do not need images too much. Although depicting them is not prohibited, this is done more often for figures of non-Japanese origin, since they received their appearance somewhere in India or China.

Nothing disappears, the ancestors simply live in their own special world. Memorial Day is not sad, “on the contrary, it’s a lot of fun - grandma has arrived!” . The local deity visits the surrounding residents who worship him on holidays, supplying them with energy and strength. “Letting go of the brakes” during the holidays is a fairly common phenomenon. But the Japanese are serious to death here too, in the most literal sense. Some holidays involve such mountain cross-country treks that a couple of broken necks are common.

Of course, they also have their own water kappa. And the devils (emphasis on the first syllable), which are also useful: when driven out, they take away all the sins that have accumulated in the community over the year. Their own werewolves - only usually they turn not from people into animals, but on the contrary - into people from animals. And even from things. “Peeping Screen”, “Singing Cauldron”, “Umbrella Frame”. Everyone has a soul. And a deity can turn into an evil spirit or a monster - if it is not revered enough.

Attempts at communication, systematization, “why?” - did not have. These are not the Alexandrian philologists or the scholastics of the Sorbonne. When asked by a Catholic theologian how they think about God in Shinto, the Shinto priest replied: “And we dance.” Shinto is open to the “stranger” - and managed to include both the Buddha and the Chinese Taoist sage. Another "postmodernism" in the past? Moreover, what was borrowed was altered beyond recognition. If for a devout Buddhist, achieving Buddhahood requires enormous effort and few people succeed, then for the Japanese a Buddha is a deity, every dead person becomes a spirit, therefore, every dead person is a Buddha. Buddhism was perceived - and is perceived - rather as magic; they argued not about Buddhist philosophy, but about the effectiveness of Buddhist rituals of making rain.

The plasticity of Shinto preserves the ambiguity of interpretations, accommodates many meanings, allowing them to freely transform into each other. The whole world is animated. It seems that for art such a religion is simply a gift. But there is no question of individuality in Shinto. Even the names of the gods change depending on the current activities: the god Hoderi (Lighting Fire) is engaged in fishing, and his name is Umisati (Lucky at the Sea). Nakorchevsky notes that one gets the impression that there is no “idea of ​​the presence of some permanent core, nature, “ego”, which is given one constant name once and for all . ”

Shinto is a rather materialistic religion. That's what the gods do, to give a person happiness, longevity, money - in this life, and not in some other. And for spiritual searches there is Buddhism. Repentance is unknown to Shintoism. “The Japanese for the most part do not feel remorse for what they did during the war, perceiving all the horrors that happened then as some kind of fatal inevitability, a “disruption of order” that has now been eliminated” - through economic assistance to the affected countries, for example. What happened was left on the water, as the Japanese say. There is no distinction between physical and mental purity; they try to rebuild sanctuaries after several decades, and there must be running water nearby for ablution. If only sins were washed away so easily... But Shinto focuses on the power of the deity, and not on his morality. Focuses on the tangible: there is practically no myth about the creation of the world - there is a myth about the creation of the Japanese islands itself.

And we can remember that community religions, excluding individuality, existed several thousand years ago in a space closer to us. Maybe in Japan, archaic thinking that unites people has simply been preserved - as events show, very successfully? After all, in Europe, the gods lasted the longest as vague forces, relationships with which are quite pragmatic (“I give so that you give”) and strictly regulated by the community, lasted precisely in Ancient Rome, which created an empire. And the religion of this empire included the Iranian Mithra and the Egyptian Isis. And poetry flourished. But this was not enough for further progress. Or are all personal gains associated with losses? And Japan - like the Shinto deities - is what it is.