Japanese living gods
When you go to Nepal, you’ll be surprised by the sheer number of temples and the crowds of worshippers. Staying in the capital, Kathmandu, you’ll wake up at 5 AM to the sound of bells being rung by people praying. And every morning, without fail, I visit several gods, praying for the day ahead and expressing my gratitude. I mainly worship the gods of Hinduism, which is the dominant religion in Nepal. I am not Hindu. Even so, praying early every morning gives me a gentle, comforting feeling deep within my heart. Japan and Nepal are far apart countries with different cultures. Yet, what is this comfort I feel deep within my heart? It even feels somewhat nostalgic.
Did you know that Japan also had a living god who was a child? At Suwa-Taisya Shrine, there was a living god named Ōhōri. A boy who harbors Mishaguji, a deity worshipped as an indigenous god since the Jomon and Kofun periods, or even earlier, Suwa Myojin, was strictly forbidden from leaving the Suwa region and was revered as a living god until he reached adulthood. At Ise-Jingu Shrine, there were girls called Monoimi. They lived in the Monoimi House, isolated from their parents and the secular world, and served in the Inner Shrine, in the closest place to Amaterasu Omikami, the supreme god of Japan, taking care of the god’s clothing, food, and shelter. They were required to be pure, and when they reached menarche, their role was passed on to the next Monoimi. Although not a living god, their existence overlapped in many ways with that of a Kumari. The existence of these living gods changed and declined with the times, and was completely abolished with the institutional reforms accompanying the modernization of the Meiji Restoration, but even today, the connection between gods and children can be seen in festivals. The child participants in the Gion Festival are the prime example of this, becoming messengers of the gods, harboring Susanoo-no-Mikoto, the principal deity of Yasaka Shrine, only during the festival. The sight of the float, approximately 25 meters tall, carrying the child participants, swaying as it moves through the procession, is reminiscent of the floats in the Machhindranath Festival, the grand festival of Patan, Nepal. The child participants, forbidden from touching the ground and carried on the shoulders of the men called gouriki, are similar to the Kumari, albeit of a different gender. While living gods have been lost or abolished in Japan amidst modernization, they still exist in Nepal. Among them, the Kumari is the most important.
In Nepal, it is said that there are more gods than people, more temples than houses, and more festivals than days in a year, demonstrating how closely intertwined people’s lives and gods are. Daily prayers and expressions of gratitude are commonplace.
Being in Nepal makes me reflect on the relationship between God and humanity, and the meaning of people praying, and I find comfort in that. Was Japan like that in the past? Will the living goddesses of Nepal continue to exist and be passed down unchanged, even as times change?