Magic
Everything in Japan seems to be alive in its own way. There is something about Japan that breathes
life into old legends and myths. They
live on even after the modern world has begun to replace the old ways.
Some areas of Japan cling to the old faiths and make them a
daily part of their lives. My house is
such a place.
There are deities on selves high in the kitchen; one is to
the God of Fire and one to the God of Money.
Both are there to help protect the house from all back spirits and
welcome in the good ones. There are
Buddhist alters next to a Shinto one in the main living room. Every day these are prayed to and new offerings
are given to them. To watch over the old
and protect the young.
One of the most interesting religions I have ever come
across is Japanese Shinto. It is
fascinating to me in a way that is hard to word correctly. Everything in Shinto is given a spirit; a
spirit that you could unthinkingly anger with simple actions. The God of the River would be very angry with
you if you were to block its path, and the spirit of the animal you are eating
would be insulted if you weren’t to thank if before you were to eat it.
It’s things like that, that thankfulness for everything,
that I think shaped the Japanese into the people they are today. There are plenty of papers written by far
smarter people on how Shinto and how the growing of rice shaped the Japanese
people has the culture formed. I really
like the house I am currently in because of the mixture of religions in
it. I like studying religion, but
Japanese Shinto, it’s purely magic in a sense.
I understand the stories of how demons would roam the
nights, how a god could pin a giant carp to the bottom of the ocean, and how
all the stories seem to have a life of their own. Japanese folklore is colorful in every sense
of the word.
I studied cultural anthropology in high school as just a fun
class, something that I could spend an hour a day relaxing with. It explained to me how many religions are a
way for people to explain the unknown to themselves. Why does the sky light up and create those
ground shattering noises, when does the earth move at seemingly random times,
how do the mountains fog in a way they seem like they are on fire.
Early in the morning I can watch wisps of fog rising from
the mountains. It was and is, one of my
favorite things to see here. I love the
strangeness of the weather that surrounds me.
The mountains have my imagination.
Sometimes the clouds hang low and cover the tops, sometimes the rain
clouds swallow them whole, and sometimes I can see them clearly in the
afternoon light.
I am in the middle of a bowl of mountains filled with
rivers, forests, and nature in strange places.
There is an uneasy balance between them that sometimes shifts to favor
one more than the other. It creates
beautiful weather patterns and things that I have only seen in pictures.
Rains storms here, tsunamis really, are powerful. I can understand where the belief that the
gods caused it. It’s something else to
see the awesome force of nature at work.
The thunder above that backlights the mountains, the puddles so deep on
the road that they swallow them whole, and the feeling you get when you can
feel the boom of thunder go through you.
Just plain rain storms have an added edge to them, I can’t really place
why, but I like to watch them when I can.
Festivals too, have a magic to them. I love Japanese festivals and going to shrine
to see the sights. I feel like the air
there is charged with something, maybe the human spirit. Japanese traditional festival music sounds a
lot like heartbeats to my ears. The
thrumming of the drums and the high pitches of the flutes. There’s something in that music, maybe
history, which gives it the edge of what I would call magic.
Maybe it’s just my fascination with the history and beauty
that this area has, maybe I’m just imagining things, but it’s something that pulls me back to Japan. I waited three years to feel it again and I can say it hasn't let me down once. It had drawn me to the mountains, the temples and shrines, to the common
sights I saw every day. Now that I'm back, I'm looking for those sights again, those feelings, that ambiance of sorts. To the people I
am surrounded by, it is their culture, their world, and their history. To me, as an outsider looking in, I see the
beauty, the mystery, and just flat out wonder of the world I live in.
It is as alien to me as I am to it.
I like how uncomfortable it makes me on occasion.
Magic lives in Japan.
I think this time away from home has taught me that even back home,
there is a kind of magic. Maybe magic is
the wrong word but it’s the one that I feel suites in best in my vocabulary.
Japan, you take my breath away, you know.
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