The Japanese Gohei and the Ainu Inao Author(S): W

Home , Gohei

The Japanese Gohei and the Ainu Inao Author(s): W. G. Aston Source: The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 31 (Jan. - Jun., 1901), pp. 131-135 Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2842789 . Accessed: 16/06/2014 11:21

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.79.149 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 11:21:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ( 131 )

THE JAPANESE GOHEI AN) THE AINU INA O.

By W. G. ASTON,CM.G.

[READ AT THE MEETING, JUNE 19TH. WITH PLATE IX.]

SIIINTO, the old native religion of Japan, though it contains other elements, is substantially a nature-worship, the chief deities of which are the Sun-goddess, the Moon-god, the Thunder-god, the Wind-gods, and various gods associated with growth and the production of food. These natural powers are conceived of as having human sentiments, and their worship colnprises the offering of such objects as would be acceptable to human beings, in order to testify the gratitude of the donor or with the object of bringing down future blessings. Probably the more enlightened worshipper is well aware that the gods make nlo use of the things presented to them. But this does not affect the real object which he has in view, namely, to make his hopes or gratitude visible to gods and men. Shinto offerings are of the most varied character. They include weapons, mirrors, tools, agricultural implemueints, lands, temples, slaves, riding-horses, jewellery, food and liquor, and wearing apparel, whether in the form of pieces of cloth or of the raw material for their manufacture. It was out of this last descriptioni of offerings (called nusa by the Japanese) that the gohei were developed. The clothing of the ancient Japanese consisted of silk, hempen fabrics, and yuft, a stuff woven from the innler bark of the paper-mulberry. At first the offerings consisted of so many ounces of heiup or bark-fibre or so mnanypieces of cloth. But later they assum-eda more specialised and conventional form, of which the accompanying drawing (Fig. 2) will give an idea.1 These were called Oho-nutsa or " great offerings,"and are still in use on importanlt occasions, though for ordinary purposes they have been superseded by the simplified form (Fig. 3), known to us as gohei. The Oho-nusa consist of two wands, placed side by side, from the ends of which depend a quantity of hempen fibre2 and a number of strips of paper. One of the wands is of the cleyera japonica, or evergreen sacred tree. The other is of bamboo. Their use is connected with an old Japanese rule of etiquette that presents to a superior should be delivered attached to a branch of a tree, the

I A slightly different form of Oho-nusais figured on p. 35 of a valuable paper on " Ancient Japanese Rituals," contributed by Dr. Karl Florenz to the Transactionsof the Asiatic Society of Japan, December, 1899. 2 Reminding us of Homer's urE',uaa OEOoo, which was of tufted wool attached to a wand (aKi7rrpov), Iliad, I, 28. K 2

This content downloaded from 185.44.79.149 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 11:21:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 132 W. G. ASTON.-The Japanese Gohei and the Aint Inao. object of which was no doubt to mark a respectful aloofness of the giver fronmthe receiver. The paper-strips represent the yqmf, or mulberry-bark fabric. The use of yufm for clothing having become obsolete, owing to the introduction of cotton, paper, wvhichin Japan is made of the same material, was substituted for it. In the Gohbei,the lhemp and one of the wands are omitted. Another form of nusa, called Ko-nbusa(little nusa), or Kiri-nusa (cut nusa), consists of paper, with leaves of the sacred tree, chopped up and mixed with rice. Travellers in ancient times carried this mixture with them in a bag, and made offerings of it to the local deities along their way. It was also used when in danger from shipwreck. The reason for the prorminencegiven to the gohbei almost to the exclusion of other kinds of offerings is to be looked for in the fact that the materials for clothing which they represent were the currency of ancient Japan, in which all values were estimated. They have therefore a representative character. We are told, for example, that in A.D. 1151 a wild boar for offering,at a certain Shinto festival' being unprocurable, eight pieces of cloth (its estimated value) were substituted. The representative quality of the gohei is further illustrated by the circumstance that gohei made of copper cash (Fig. 5) were known in later times. Alona with the alteration in the form of the nstsa to the present gohei, there came a change in the mental attitude of the worshipper. Originally mere offerinos, they were at length by virtue of long association looked upon as representatives of the deity. Scholars like Moto6ri and Hirata denounce this view as a corruption of later times, but it is no doubt at present the prevailing conception. Hepburn's Japanese dictionary knows no other. It is illustrated by the fact that instead of the worshipper bringing gohei to the shrine, these objects are now giveni out by the priest to the worshipper, who takes them home and sets them up in his private Kcami-dana (god-shelf) or domestic altar. A further step is taken when it is believed that on festival occasions the god, on a certain formula, called the Kami-oroshi or " bringing down the god," being pronounced, descends into the gohei and remains there duriing the ceremony, taking his departure at its close. In the vulgar Shinto of the present day this belief in a real presence of the god is associated with hypnotism. The subject or practitioner holds a gohei in his hands, and the violent, unintentional wobbling of the gohei, as well as the hypnotic, inspired condition of the subject which ensue, are attributed to the presence of the god, which enters his body by this channel. Mr. Percival Lowell has given an interesting account of this and associated practices in his OccuttJapan. Associated with the belief in an actual presence of a deity in the gohei is their use in the Elarai or purification ceremony, when they were flourished over or rubbed aoainst the person to be absolved of ritual uncleanness. It is stated by Mr. Fukuzawa, in his recently published autobiography, that when the late Duke of Edinburgh visited Japan in 1870 he was subjected to this ceremony before being admitted to the Imperial presence. No such ceremony could possibly have been permitted in their presence by the British officials concerned; but at a

This content downloaded from 185.44.79.149 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 11:21:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions W. G. ASTON.-Tlhe JapaineseGohei and the Ait Inao. 133 convenient distance, rites with gohei and other Shinto appliances were performed in order to exorcise any evil spirits or influences which might have accompanied the Prince from abroad. There is a still further stage of belief, not, in so far as I am aware, illustrated by the gohei, in which the object which has begun by being an offering ends by being a distinct god. The gohei, however, are not the only material receptacles for the Shinto diviinities. Almost every shrine contains a Shintai or " god-body," also called a Tarna-shiro or "spirit-representative." The Shintai has points of resemblance to the Greek AtyaXBa,which was originally, as its derivatioin shows, a votive offering. It is usually packecl away in a box, the contents of which are sometimes unknown even to the priest, and may consist of a mirror, a sword, a string of beads, a curious stone, a pot, a bow and arrows, etc. Somneof these objects, which it is clear were originally merely offerings, have attained to the rank of independent deities. Thus the inirror, which is the Shintai of the Suni-goddess,figures in the ancient mythical records not only as an,offering stispenidedto a branch of the sacred tree but as an emblem or representative of the goddess and even as "the great deity worshipped at Ise." It is also the object of a separate cutlt unider the name Ame Kaklasu no Karni. The sword Futsuntushi, presented by the Sun-goddess to the first Mikado, Jimmu Tennd, has numerous shrines dedicated to it. Another sword, called Kntsanagi or "the herb-mower," has been worshipped for centuries at Atsuta, lnear Nagoya. It was this sword which Susa no wo found in the tail of the great serpenit slaini by him to rescue a Japanese Andromeda, and sen' as an offering to his sister, the Sun-goddess. The history of the gohei and Stintai lends strong confirmation to Mr. Herbert Spencer's view that fetishism is a later religious development. May we not trace some sort of analogy between these Japanese ideas and the Christian conceptions of the eucharistic bread or wafer as a sacrificial offering, an embleni, the seat of a divine presence, or as le bon Dieu Himself ? The history of the Indian god Soma also presents points of analogy. The inao are to the Ainus of Yezo what the gohei are to the Japanese. They are mriadeof willow wands whittled at the top into a mnassof shavings in the manner shown in the illustr ation (Fig. 4). If they are compared with the Oho-nusa (Fig. 2), it will be seen that there is a general resemblance of form, the differences being attributable to the different material used. The inao nio doubt had their origin among a ruder and poorer people, wit;h whom paper was difficult to procure. That they are directly traceable to Japan is further shown by the fact that the alternative Ainu name for inao is the Japanese word nusa. This is by no mealls the only evidence of a close relation between the Ainu religion anid Shinto. The important Ainu words Kamni (god) and ongamni(prayer) are also of Japanese origin. Another point of agreement is the pre-eminent position given in both religions to the Sun-goddess and the recognition by both of a dual principle in the pairs of spirits-the aratama (rough spirit) anid nigitama (gentle

This content downloaded from 185.44.79.149 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 11:21:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 134 W. G. ASTON.-The Japanese Gohei and the Ain' Inao. spirit) of the Japanese, the shziaclhc (rough uncle) and mo acha (uncle of peace) of the Ainus. There is, moreover, another curious link between the Ainu inao and the Japaniese gohei or nuscawhich has a special interest of its owii. We learn from the Makcrcano &5shi,a work written about A,D. 1000, that it was then the custom, during the spring festival, for the boys in the Imperial Palace to go about striking the young women on the loins with the potsticks used for making gruel' on that occasion. This was supposed to enisure fertility. It reminds us of the Roman practice at the spring festival of Lupercalia, alluded to by Shakespeare in his Jhtlius Ccesar-

"Forget not in your speed, Antonius, To touch Calphurnia; for our elders say The barren, touched in this holy chase, Shake off tlleir steril curse." Now the Japanese antiquary and novelist Kioden, in his work entitled Kottoshiu, written about a century ago, informs i1s that this customi was at that time still in vogue in the northern province of Echigo. He gives a drawing (Fig. 5) of the sticks used for the purpose, which, it will be observed, are in every way sinilar to the Ainu inato. For the explanation of this coincidence we are left to conjecture. It seems possible that the persons who first used these objects instead of the older potsticks were familiar with them as cheaper substitutes for the hemp or paper gohei or ntsca, and that the practice dates from a time when they were no longer considered as offerings but as embodiments of a divine presence, and therefore naturally possessed of greater potency than commion potsticks. One name for them is iqvai-gi. Iwci means taboo, religious abstinence, worship, sacred, holy, congratulation, blessing; and gi is for ki, wood or stick. Another name is Kedzuri-kake, which means " part-shaven." A Japanese book of the early eighteenth century informs us that sticks resembling the wands used for offerings at the purification ceremony were part-shaven, and set up in bundles at the four corners of the Gion shrine in Kioto on the last day of the year. The priests, after piayers were recited, broke up the bulndles and set fire to the sticks, which the people then carried home to light their household fires with for the new year. The object of this ceremony was to avert pestilence. These sticks were also called Kedzutri-kacke. Authorities are not agreed as to the precise character of the icnao. Most travellers, including Miss Bird, usually an accurate observer, describe them as household gods. On the other hand, the Rev. John Batchelor, who resided for eight years among the Ainus and was well acquainted with their language, says in his Ainu of Japan: " It is no matter for surprise that travellers have taken

I The gruel was of small red beanis. Red is a masculine colour and is calculated to correct the feminine (or gloomy) influences remaining over from the winter season. But this is perhaps a later hypothesis only.

This content downloaded from 185.44.79.149 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 11:21:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Journal of the Anthropological Institute, Vol. XXXI, Plate IX.

1.IWAI-GI. 2. OHO-NUSA. 3. GOHEI. 4. INAO. 5. GOHEI OF COPPER CASH.

GOHEI AND INAO.

This content downloaded from 185.44.79.149 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 11:21:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions W. G. ASTON.-The Japanese Gohei and the Ainu Itao. 135 the inao to be gods; in fact, it would have been a great wonder had they not done so. But enough has been said to show that in no sense can the willow-wands be called gods. They are merely offerings to the various deities.", Mr. Batchelor's view is doubtless in the main correct. At. the same time, when we remember the craving of some humanity for a tangible, visible, conacreteobject of worship, and the fact that in Japan and elsewhere the offering has been known to pass into the god, we may suspect' that the contrary opinion held by Miss Bird is something more than mere surmise. It would not be surprising to find that there are some Ainus to whom the mnao are actually gods.

I In a paper contributed by Mr. Batchelor to the Transactionsof the Japan Asiatic Society in 1895, he modifies the statement quoted above, and admits that in some cases the mnaoare direct objects of worship, or, to use his own words, "genuine fetiches."

This content downloaded from 185.44.79.149 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 11:21:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions