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Thesis Title: Shimenawa: Weaving Traditions with Modernity – Interdisciplinary Research on the Cultural History of Japanese Sacred Rope

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Thesis Title: Shimenawa: Weaving Traditions with Modernity – Interdisciplinary Research on the Cultural History of Japanese Sacred Rope Thesis Title: Shimenawa: Weaving Traditions with Modernity – Interdisciplinary Research on the Cultural History of Japanese Sacred Rope Shan Zeng, Class of 2019 I have not received or given unauthorized assistance. 1 Acknowledgements I would like to express my greatest appreciation to my advisors Professor Morrison and Professor Laursen, as well as Professor Sassin and Professor Garrison, without whose support this project would not have come to fruition. I also want to thank my Japanese instructors Hayasaka sensei, Takahashi sensei, and Cavanaugh sensei, whose exceptional language classes gave me the courage and competence to conduct fieldwork in Japanese. My thanks go to Professor Milutin for patiently sifting through emaki and ancient Japanese poems with me and to Professor Ortegren for sharing her experiences on ethnographic fieldwork. I would also like to thank my first-year advisor Professor Sheridan, and all the other faculty and staff from the Middlebury Department of Religion and Department of History of Art and Architecture for their valuable feedback and support. I extend my special thanks to the following people, who not only graciously accepted my interviews but showed me the incredible hospitality, kindness and patience of the Japanese people: Orihashi san and her fellow colleagues at Nawawaseya, Shiga san and his family, Nagata san of Izumo Oyashiro, Nasu san and his colleagues at Oshimenawa Sousakukan, Matsumoto San, Yamagawa san and his father at Kyoto, Koimizu san, Takashi san, Kubishiro and his workshop, and Oda san. My appreciation goes to all the other people who have helped me one way or another during my stay in Japan, from providing me food and shelter to helping me find my lost camera. I am particularly grateful for the Kellogg Fellowship for providing me with the funding to conduct my fieldwork in Japan. I would also like to thank the assistance given by Adam Lobel san (who connected me to many wonderful people in Japan), Kristen Mullins and Sami Lamont. 2 My special thanks are extended to the staff of the Shimane Museum of Ancient Izumo as well as the staff at National Museum of Ethnology. I offer my thanks to Abe sensei, Okaasan, and their cats, to whom I would like to dedicate my thesis to. They are my biggest my inspiration in the process and have helped me find a second home in Japan. My thanks also go to my family and my friends for their support and encouragement throughout my study. They have shown their understanding when I needed to take time off for fieldwork and occupy myself with the process of writing. Lastly, I thank my partner Rui for accompanying me to Toyama and Tokyo during Japan’s one of the hottest summers in recent history. 3 List of Illustrations Figure Page 1. Example of a shimenawa 6 2. An image of shimenawa and shide 6 3. Patterns found on Jomon potteries 6 4. Hand-woven straw ropes 6 5. Straw bales used to store and transport rice 6 6. Ropes samples for mundane and religious purposes 6 7. Ropes samples for mundane and religious purposes 6 8. Kinbaku or Shibari 6 9. A very simple shimenawa 6 10. Shimenawa are Z twist 6 11. A sake (Japanese rice alcohol) advertisement 12 12. Scene from My Neighbor Totoro 12 13. Poster of Hotarubi no Mori 12 14. Fan art of Kantai Collection 12 15. A very small shimenawa 13 16. The biggest shimenawa in Japan 13 17. The husband-and-wife rocks at Iwato, Mie prefecture 16 18. “Hiking to Nachi Taisha & Nachi-No-Taki Waterfall” 16 19. Michikiri rope at Taie village 17 20. A kanjo nawa rope 18 21. Shimenawa in Misomahajimesai 20 22. Incineration of shimenawa at Tondo Matsuri 22 23. 伊勢参宮略図并東都大伝馬街繁栄之 24 24. A meisho image depicting shimenawa being used at a festival 25 25. Shimenawa in front of a famous waterfall in meisho-e 25 26. Running Budai (Hotei) as a naked monk (Sutasuta bozu) 28 27. Yasukuni Shrine on Kudanzaka Hill 34, 35 28. Precinct map of Yasukuni Shrine 34 4 29. Official Commemoration Card: The Ise Shrine and the Yasukuni Shrine 35 30. Shinto Temple Shokonsha 35 31. The front page from the Yasukuni emaki, 招魂の儀 37 32. War scene depicted in Yasukuni Emaki, レンネル島沖海戦 37 33. Historical photograph of the ritual for the war dead in Yasukuni Shrine 37 34. 佐野一雄, Making shimenawa 39 35. Golden shimenawa at Asama Shrine 39 36. A sceen from the promotional video made by the Western Japan Railway 39 37. A shrine maiden praying next to the “Uzu” pillars within the Izumo Grand Shrine 41 38. Advertising material for Shimane Prefecture featuring Izumo Grand Shrine 41 39. Advertising material for Shimane Prefecture 41 40. Museum-like “big shimenawa production gallery” 44 41. Inside of the “big shimenawa production gallery” 44 42. Shimenawa used in a high-end fashion store in Isetan, Shinjuku, Tokyo 46 43. Shimenawa used in a restaurant 46 5 Introduction The term shimenawa, or "enclosing rope”, (most commonly written as しめ縄 or 注連縄 in Japanese), refers to sacred ropes used in the worship of kami or Shinto gods (Fig. 1). They are boundary markers between the sacred space of the kami and the mundane space inhabited by humans. Shimenawa are stretched before or around the residence or body of a kami, which can be a shrine, but can also often a magnificent natural structure, such as a waterfall, a large tree, or a monumental stone. Paper streamers known as shide 紙垂 are often attached to shimenawa (Fig. 2). Rope has a long presence in the cultures and history of Japan. The fascination with rope patterns found in potteries from the Jomon period (10 000 and 300 BC), which received its name from this characteristic pottery, embodies this deep and intimate connection. Some patterns on Jomon pottery can resemble shimenawa to a surprising degree, even though their connection with shimenawa can only remain speculative (Fig. 3). The mundane usage of Japanese ropes ranges from economic production to erotic preoccupation (Fig. 4 to Fig. 8). Indeed, many shimenawa do not appear significantly different from ropes used for non-religious purposes except for the direction of their twists (Fig. 9). Shimenawa are generally S twist (known as “left-turn” in Japanese) whereas ordinary ropes are Z twist (known as “right-turn” in Japanese) (Fig. 10). The humble appearance of shimenawa has often belied their long history and religious significance, leaving them easily overlooked as objects of study by outside observers. The earliest written evidence of the use of shimenawa in Japanese can be found in the famous story of Amano Iwato 天の岩戸 (“The Cave of the Sun Goddess”), which is described in the two 6 earliest chronicles, Kojiki 古事記 (“Records of Ancient Matters”) (ca. 712 CE) and the Nihon Shoki 日本書紀 (“The Chronicles of Japan”) (720 CE), written in differing hybrid writing systems.1 These texts recount the creation myths of Japan, establish the supreme status of the sun goddess, Amaterasu 天照大神, and document the divine descent of the Japanese imperial family from her. The story of Amano Iwato centers around Amaterasu and is believed to contain the "prototype" of shimenawa; this connection makes shimenawa both one of the oldest known Japanese religious objects and a crucial part of Japan’s most important creation myth. In the story, infuriated by the actions of her brother Susanoo 須佐之男 (god of the sea and storms), Amaterasu concealed herself in a rock cave, leaving the world in endless darkness. When she was finally enticed by a bawdy comic dance to come out of hiding, a rope was placed in front of the cave’s entrance to keep her from returning, thereby preventing the world from returning to darkness.2 It is believed that the shide paper often attached to shimenawa also have their origins in this story; they represent the blue and green hemp cloth offerings that were hung on the sakaki 榊 tree set up to appease Amaterasu.3 In the Kojiki, the rope placed in front of the cave is known as shirikume-nawa 尻久米縄 whereas in Nihonshoki it is known as shirikuhe-nawa 端出之縄.4 Given the closeness in their pronunciation, it is commonly accepted that the modern word “shimenawa” is a corrupted or simplified form of these two terms.5 1 Sashichi Ikeda, Shimenawa (Hiratsuka, Japan: Kouhansya, 2000), 2. 2 Amaury Saint-Gilles, Mingei: Japan's Enduring Folk Arts (Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle, 1989), 197. 3 Robert Clarke, Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013), EBSCOhost, 347. 4 Ikeda, Shimenawa, 2; Saint-Gilles, Mingei, 197. Basil Hall Chamberlain, A Translation of the “Ko-Ji-Ki” or Records of Ancient Matters (Lexington, KY: Forgotten Books, 1919), 65. 5Ikeda, Shimenawa, 2. Saint-Gilles, Mingei, 197. 7 For those familiar with shimenawa’s presence in the Kojiki, and its association with Shinto, the omnipresence of shimenawa - as well as other Shinto symbols - within Japanese society, has contributed to the romanticized image of Japan as a society that has uniquely preserved its timeless ancient culture while at the same embracing all the novelties of modernity (as defined by the West) effortlessly. 6 Many scholars and Shinto priests have claimed that the modern-day use of shimenawa, like other contemporary Shinto practices, have been unchanged for thousands of years. These ahistorical assumptions easily break down when we examine the various factors that have reshaped kami worship and Shinto from the late nineteenth century. These include the National Learning movement towards the end of the Edo period (1603-1868), the government’s forceful separation of Buddhism from Shinto Meiji (Jan 25, 1868-Jul 30, 1912), the creation of Jinja Honcho 神社本庁(The Association of Shinto Shrines) and shrine mergers that destroyed many local shrines and absorbed the rest into one centralized hierarchical system, the elevation of Shinto to a de facto “state religion” and the transformation of every household into a shrine up till World War II, the legal separation of Shinto from the state ordered by the Occupation government, and continued globalization and urbanization.7 A close look at these events reveals how the functions, materials, and meanings of shimenawa—far from being homogenous and timeless—have in fact adapted to changing social, economic, and political conditions from the late nineteenth century to today.
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