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Home , An (Shinto), Asama shrine, Hanazono Shrine, Inari Shrine, Shinto shrine, Shrine

SACRED AND SOCIAL SPACE: A IN ,

A THESIS

Presented to

The Faculty of the Asian Studies Program

The Colorado College

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree

Bachelor of Arts

By

Anika Grevstad

May 2018

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On my honor, I have neither given nor received any unauthorized aid on this assignment.

Anika Grevstad

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STUDENT THESIS ADVISORS

Each Asian Studies Major must have two readers for the thesis. One of these must be Asian Studies CC faculty member*; the Second Reader will be chosen from among CC faculty. In the event that there is a non-CC faculty member who is more appropriate as a second reader, the student must make a special application to the Asian Studies Committee to have this person designated as the Second Reader.

This page must be signed and submitted by the end of Block 2 if the student is graduating in May. If the student is graduating mid-year, this must be signed and submitted by the end of Block 7 of the previous academic year. If the student has not chosen a Second Reader by the designated time, the Asian Studies faculty members will appoint the Second Reader in consultation with the student.

Student Name: Anika Grevstad

Name of First Reader: Joan Ericson

Signature of agreement by the First Reader

Date

Name of Second Reader: David Gardiner

Signature of agreement by the Second Reader

Date

* Tamara Bentley, Tracy Coleman, Joan Ericson, David Gardiner, Hong Jiang, Vibha Kapuria- Foreman, Purvi Mehta, John Williams, and Peter Wright.

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Table of Contents

List of Figures……………………………………………………………………1 Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………2 Introduction………………………………………………………………………3 Section I: ’s Visitors …………………………………………9 Section II: Social Exchanges and Interactive Community………………………17 Section III: Third place as Ritual Space and Ideological Community …………26 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………36 Appendix (Figures)………………………………………………………………38 Endnotes …………………………………………………………………………43 Bibliography .……………………………………………………………………45

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List of Figures Figure 1: Satellite image of Hanazono Shrine side entrance ……………………………….38 Figure 2: Map of Hanazono Shrine …………………………………………………………38 Figure 3: Map of Shinjuku from the ……………………………………………39 Figure 4: Aerial Photograph of Hanazono Shrine, 1947 ……………………………………39 Figure 5: Aerial Photograph of Hanazono Shrine, 1963 ……………………………………39 Figure 6: Aerial Photograph of Hanazono Shrine, 2017 ……………………………………40 Figure 7: Photograph of the line to main shrine on New Years, 2018………………………40 Figure 8: Photograph of the line stretching to the street on New Years, 2018………………41 Figure 9: Photograph of the line to main shrine at night, 2018...……………………………41 Figure 10: Photograph of New Years food stalls, 2018 .……………………………………42

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Acknowledgements I would like to thank the Asian Studies Program at Colorado College. I would especially like to thank Professor Joan Ericson for her knowledge and advising throughout the past four years and during this thesis process, and Professor David Gardiner for his feedback as my second reader. I would like to extend my gratitude to the Gaylord Prize in Asian Studies and the Keller Family Venture Grant for funding my research, to Mari Young and Ben Kieklak for their support in the field, and to the 2018 Asian Studies Seniors for their comments throughout the process. As always, thank you to my family and friends for their continued support throughout my academic journey.

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Introduction

On a warm summer evening in late June of 2016, as I began to meander from the heart of Tokyo’s Shinjuku district to my lodgings in the nearby Yotsuya san chome neighborhood, a curious sight caught my eye from across the busy street. Tucked between tall concrete , convenience stores, and upstairs offices was a narrow tree-lined alley (Fig. 1). The end of this alley, I soon found, opened into a wide space housing leafy trees, many red , and a long staircase up to a main shrine. I could still hear the rush of cars and commuters no more than twenty feet away, but it felt as if I had stepped through the torii gates into another world. This shrine, called Hanazono Shrine (, Hanazono Jinja) stood in sharp contrast to the bustling, high-tech, metropolitan center in which it sat.

What I found most surprising as I watched the sun set behind the shrine’s red was the number of people who continued to come and go as the sky turned darker, walking up the to pray, sitting on the steps to look out across the grounds, and talking in hushed voices to their families. I began to wonder, how has this shrine, which hails from the days before Tokyo was called Tokyo, dating to the first shogun and feudal lords, kept its place in one of modern day

Tokyo’s busiest urban areas? As I watched families and groups of friends talking to one another as they walked the grounds, I also began to wonder if perhaps the role of urban could be not only spiritual, but also social. How might the and social intersect amidst otherwise largely individualistic lives in a dense urban setting?

My approach to these questions has been shaped by the concept of “third places,” places outside of home and work that foster day-to-day social interactions. Ray Oldenburg coined this concept in his 1989 book, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers,

Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and how they Get You through the Day. My examines how the qualities of third place that Oldenburg lays out apply to Hanazono Shrine and expands Oldenburg’s idea of a third place to include public spaces that also hold a ritual role.

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Oldenburg defines “third places” as “core settings of informal public life,” “a great variety of public places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work” (16). These third places counter what Oldenburg sees as the “two-stop model of daily routine” in America, that is, the focus on solely home and work that comes about because of increasing individualism and privatization of living (9). In urbanizing societies, new businesses tend to “emphasize fast service, not slow and easy relaxation” in a reflection of this “two-stop model” (Oldenburg 9). The trend towards a

“two-stop” life model might occur anywhere where small towns, with their pedestrian-friendly streets and local hangouts, are replaced with skyscraper office-buildings and commuter train lines.

Tokyo, especially, is notorious as a city of office jobs, long work hours, and long commutes; according to a survey by the NHK Culture Research Institute, the average Tokyo citizen spends over an hour and a half commuting each day, and over 40 percent of men work 50 hours a week or more (Murata and Aramaki 2016). Presumably, such long hours spent at work and in commute leave little time for frequent social activities elsewhere.

Oldenburg’s examples of third places are social, conversational places including pubs, barbershops, cafes, and beer gardens in America and Europe. These sorts of lively spaces certainly exist in as well: Starbucks, izakayas (Japanese pubs), Pachinko parlors, and even cat cafes. Oldenburg does not include religious spaces among his list of examples. As I will show in this paper, however, while shrines and pubs are seemingly quite different, they in fact share many of the same characteristics of third place that make each of them valuable in public life. In many ways, Hanazono Shrine is in fact more inclusive and accessible and hosts a wider variety of people and public activities than many of the examples of third places that Oldenburg sets out.

It is important to note that the religious climate of Japan is quite different from that of the

United States; the differences in attitudes towards and accordingly toward religious spaces might be one reason that Oldenburg, who drew his examples of third places from America and Europe, did not include any religious spaces among his examples. In recent surveys on

" 5" religiosity in Japan, only around 30% of respondents affirmed religious beliefs while 65% denied having religious beliefs (Reader 6). While religious belief in Japan is low, self-reported religious belonging and participation in religious activities is high (Reader 6, 10). The tendency in

Western religious studies to focus on doctrine, theologies, and beliefs has led some scholars to classify Japanese traditions as non-religious; however, in this paper I refer to “religion” as a term that includes “ritual, practice, and custom,” and is “readily intermingled with cultural and social themes in which belief and doctrine can play a part but are not essential” (Reader and Tanabe 4-

5).1 As this paper deals with religious space within the context of Japan, it is important to note that a Western lens on religion and religious spaces falls short; the distinct Japanese religious context within which Hanazono Shrine is situated shapes who visits the shrine and how they interact with the space. It is also because of this religious context that I find the concept of third place to be applicable to Shinto spaces in Japan, though it may not apply in the same ways to religious places in other cultural contexts.

I have grounded my research in a number of books on Shinto and Japanese religion in society. Of the many books about Japanese religion that I consulted, three in particular have been central to my understanding of the symbolic significances of Hanazono Shrine: Ian Reader and

George Tanabe’s Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan

(1998) explains how Japanese provide benefits to people in their human lives. Karen

Ann Smyers’ The Fox and the Jewel: Shared and Private Meanings in Contemporary Japanese

Inari (1999) describes the evolution and polysemy of the Inari , one of the most famous of the Shinto and one of the deities enshrined at Hanazono Shrine. Stephan

Turnbull’s Japan's Sexual Gods: Shrines, Roles and Rituals of Procreation and Protection (2015) expands on Smyers’ work, delving deeper into the sexual beliefs about Inari and other deities or ritual sites in Japan. Each of these books explores an aspect of that manifests itself in some way in my examination of Hanazono Shrine.

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While there are many books from the past centuries that address Shinto beliefs, practices, and implications on a broad scale, in recent decades a number of works have been published that focus on specific religious sites, inspiring my own research. Stephen Heine compares the religious activity in two contrasting Tokyo neighborhoods in his book Sacred High City, Sacred

Low City: A Tale of Religious Sites in Two Tokyo Neighborhoods (2012). John K. Nelson focuses on rituals at ’s in a book called A Year in the Life of a (1996).

Kawano Satsuki looks at religious practices in in her work Ritual Practice in Modern

Japan: Ordering Place, People, and Action (2005). The way that each of these scholars uses anthropological research methods to focus on specific sites as a lens through which to view larger phenomena influenced me in my decision to focus on Hanazono Shrine and to use semi- structured interviews and observations to do so.

Throughout the past forty years, works addressing Shinto’s role in contemporary urban

Japan have emerged that address the dynamics of social change over time. A number of scholars have taken interest in how religion in Japan has changed in response to the nation’s modernization. For example, as early as 1975 the question of how urbanization was changing religious traditions had arisen: Shinto and scholar Sonoda Minoru published an article titled

“The Traditional Festival in Urban Society,” which notes changes in festival culture, a component of many Japanese religions. In a 1992 essay, “A Tokyo Shrine Revisited,” A. W. Sadler explains how one Tokyo shrine changed over twenty-five years. A 1996 essay by John K. Nelson, called

“Freedom of Expression: The Very Modern Practice of Visiting a Shinto Shrine,” delves into motivations behind shrine visits. More recently, Ian Reader, Erica Baffelli, and Birgit Staemmler edited a collection of essays that discusses religion in the Internet-age, Japanese Religions on the

Internet: Innovation, Representation and Authority (2011). All of these studies, written over a span of four decades, center on the ways in which Japanese religious practices have changed in response to an urbanizing environment.

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Although the study of Shinto has widened in recent decades to include anthropological, sociological, and space-based approaches, there are as of yet, to my knowledge, no English publications about the history or contemporary role of Hanazono Shrine. on the set by the large volume of literature on Shinto, case studies of religiosity at particular sites, and analyses of Japanese religions in modern contexts, this essay aims to examine the way in which the role of Hanazono Shrine, both sacred and social, reflects dynamics of contemporary

Tokyo.

While one might imagine that Tokyo’s rapid urbanization throughout the past century has rendered the city’s Shinto spaces of the past, Hanazono Shrine still plays an important role in the lives of Tokyo residents, largely because of its role as a third place outside of home and work. As a third place, Hanazono Shrine provides a multifunctional space for social interactions, therefore contributing to interactive community building within the busy city. Although some third places have diminished as urban lives have become increasingly individual, Hanazono

Shrine has likely kept its place because of not only the flexibility of shrines’ physical grounds but also the flexibility of the Shinto tradition itself. Visitors to Shinto third places both interact with one another socially and also interact with the space and each other in a ritual way, playing a part in the evolution of the ever-adapting Shinto tradition and becoming a part of the ideological community that tradition continually creates. This study of Hanazono Shrine exemplifies how, in the religious and cultural context of Japan, Tokyo’s urban religious spaces are an intersection of the sacred and social, both of which might contribute to their continued importance in the lives of

Tokyo residents.

In Section I, I examine four of Oldenburg’s eight characteristics of third place: social leveling, accessibility and accommodation, a low profile, and a home away from home, showing that because of these characteristics, Hanazono Shrine is an inclusive and welcoming space that attracts a wide variety of visitors. In Section II, I discuss Hanazono Shrine in terms of four more characteristics: conversation as the main activity, neutral ground, regular visitors, and a playful

" 8" mood, qualities which provide a lens with which to explore the large range of different social interactions that take place on Hanazono Shrine’s property. In Section III, I move beyond

Oldenburg’s criteria to explore how shrines play a distinct role as a third place rooted in a religious tradition, and how these spaces play a part in building not only interactive social communities but also ideological communities, therefore contributing to the continued evolution of the Shinto tradition.

Throughout this study, I have incorporated pieces of my own research from fieldwork at

Hanazono Shrine from December 29, 2017 to January 19, 2018. During my many visits to

Hanazono Shrine, I made observations and conducted short semi-structured interviews with shrine visitors in Japanese about daily shrine activity and the New Years activities that occurred during part of my observation period. I have incorporated quotes from my interviewees, which I have translated from Japanese to English, and details from my observations that illustrate important aspects of shrine activity.

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Section I: Hanazono Shrine’s Visitors

Hanazono Shrine sits on bustling Yasukuni Street just a few blocks northeast of the world’s busiest train station, Shinjuku station, which sees over 3.6 million travelers a day

(Hornyak 2017). Tucked among skyscrapers and department stores, near Shinjuku’s Kabuki-cho neighborhood and next to the street of small bars known as Golden Gai, Hanazono Shrine takes up a half city-block of space. Within the grounds there are three distinct shrines. A main shrine sits at the end of the path from the main entrance, with a grand red roof covering an interior where preside over ceremonies and hanging bells and a coin box sitting in front of the building where most shrine visitors pray. The Itoku , a small shrine dedicated to the

Inari deity, takes up a smaller space on the grounds and is comprised of a long path of red torii gates leading to an on a rock mound. Another small shrine, the Geino , has an even smaller altar tucked in the far corner of the shrine grounds, nestled up against the behind the service road; this shrine is primarily for prayers related to entertainment professions. A map of the shrine grounds (Fig. 2) shows that all three of these distinct shrines sit within the

Hanazono Shrine complex.

Within these grounds, the types of visitors throughout one day ranges greatly. For example, in my observations on Saturday, December 31, 2017, I observed the following people within a half hour time frame: three young adult tourists rolling suitcases down the path, a mother with three young children, a group of four teenagers with dyed hair in a variety of bright colors carrying instrument cases, an old man who looked to be in his 80s carrying a plastic bag, two young women in fur coats toting shopping bags, a few businessmen in suits, and two old men with cans of alcohol. Some of Oldenburg’s descriptors of third place: social leveling, accessibility and accommodation, home away from home, and a low profile, help to explain why Hanazono

Shrine hosts immense range of visitors on any given day. In this chapter, I will discuss the extent to which each of these four qualities of third place applies at Hanazono Shrine and how, all together, they create a space which welcomes in a wide variety of visitors.

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Social Leveling: Contemporary Inclusivity and Historical Hierarchy

Third places, Oldenburg argues, are socially leveling. One of the central characteristics of a socially leveling place is that there are no “formal criteria of membership and exclusion”

(Oldenburg 24). One might expect religious spaces to have membership criteria based on religious affiliation or belief; however, because of Japan’s religious climate, this is not the case with Shinto spaces. The number of people who claim institutional membership to religions in

Japan is nearly two times larger than Japan’s entire population, because people in Japan often identify with more than one religion (Keizai Koho Center 1990).2 That the idea of multiple religious affiliations might seem strange to a Western reader indicates that a Western lens on religion falls short when looking at the Japanese religious landscape.

Shrine visitors might classify themselves as nonreligious while still participating in

Shinto rituals, or might affiliate with both Shinto and . This does not necessarily mean that these visitors see Shinto as non-religion, but rather that many Japanese people “resist limiting their religious feelings to one particular teaching” (Ama 1). Neither affiliation with Shinto nor adherence to Shinto beliefs is necessary for participation in Shinto rituals or use of a Shinto

Shrine; Hanazono Shrine is religiously accommodating and inclusive.

In a socially leveling third place, “a transformation must occur as one passes through the portals […] Worldly status claims must be checked at the in order that all within may be equals” (Oldenburg 25). This leveling process is abundantly clear at a Shinto shrine, at which one enters through the torii gateway in a transition from the mundane city streets to the spiritual home of . In the eyes of kami, each worshipper is on an equal playing field. Equality in the spiritual world, and the availability of shrine grounds to all, render shrines a third place in that they are “an inclusive place,” that is “accessible to the general public” (Oldenburg 24). The space is just as much available to a salaryman coming from downtown Shinjuku as it is to a bar hostess going to

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Kabuki-cho. Both are welcome to enter Hanazono Shrine, and, once there, there exists the underlying notion that all spiritual concerns will be treated as equal.

However, the layout of the shrine, with the main shrine much larger and more prominent than the two smaller shrines, raises the question of whether or not all spiritual concerns have always been given equal weight. The distinction between the three different shrines on the grounds says much about the hierarchies that this shrine might have historically embodied.

Sociologist Zach Richer argues that it is important to examine “how physical space and status hierarchies give shape to one another” because “the physical landscape” can “reflect and reproduce status hierarchies” (Richer 352). The Geino Asama Shrine on the Hanazono Shrine grounds is so far out of the way of the main buildings and so as almost to be an entity entirely separate from the rest of the grounds. This small shrine’s area has a low wall surrounding it, and it is separated from the rest of the shrine grounds not only by the service road but also by a low chain fence that one must either step over or walk around; if one walks around the fence, one in effect leaves the shrine premises and re-enters through the service road. The historical social segregation of actors from other castes of society contextualizes this relegation of the Geino

Asama Shrine, dedicated to entertainment, to the far corner of the shrine’s grounds. Prior to the middle of the Period (1868-1912) in Japan, kabuki actors were “relegated to a caste so low that they were not permitted surnames and were listed as ‘nonpersons’ (, hinin) in the census” within Tokugawa Japan’s strict caste system (Bach 264-265). In fact, kabuki actors “were officially prohibited from fraternizing with the citizenry” (Bach 265). Since the Geino Asama

Shrine is accessible by the service road and far removed from the main shrine, kabuki actors could likely patronize this small entertainment shrine without interacting with the worshippers from higher castes visiting the main shrine. The present day layout of Hanazono Shrine provides physical proof of this historical segregation. These social structures dissolved in the mid-Meiji period because of a new progressive bureaucracy and “the liberalizing influence of the new

" 12" civilian population” in Tokyo (Bach 265). All of the visitors to the Geino Asama Shrine whom I interviewed said that they also planned to pray at the main shrine, showing that, while the shrine areas are still geographically divided, the social dividing line between entertainers and main shrine-goers no longer exists.

The Itoku Inari Shrine in the Hanazono Shrine complex also caters to a specific social group, as it is designated as primarily for women worshippers. The “shrine grounds” (, keidai) webpage of Hanazono Shrine’s website states that the Itoku Inari Shrine is “highly popular among female worshippers” (Hanazono Shrine). In my observations, I found that while men occasionally prayed at the Itoku Inari Shrine as part of a couple or family group, solo visitors to this shrine were primarily women. The fact that a shrine designated for women worshippers is significantly smaller than the main shrine implies a gender discrimination that favors men. Like with the Geino Asama Shrine, Itoku Inari Shrine worshippers in the present day often also pray at the main shrine. The women and performance artist worshippers are not limited to praying only at these smaller shrines, yet the physical difference between the main shrine and the two smaller shrines is a physical representation of historical inequalities, and the continued designation of

Itoku Inari Shrine as a place primarily for women to worship furthers a division of space in what is otherwise largely an inclusive and socially leveling place.

Accessibility and Accommodation: Physical Access

To return to Oldenburg’s qualities of third place, third places are accessible and accommodating to everyone, a quality that has long been present at Hanazono Shrine in physical accessibility and also in spiritual accessibility. Visitors may come and go as they please, and supervisory shrine workers and priests generally stay within the shrine office, the ceremony room of the main shrine, or elsewhere behind the scenes. According to Oldenburg, “the third place accommodates people only when they are released from their responsibilities elsewhere” (32). In

" 13" order to accommodate these people outside of their responsibilities of work and home, third places are open “long hours” (32). While not all shrines in Tokyo are open at all hours, Hanazono

Shrine has no gates to its grounds, and is thus open for visits at any time of day. Because of long open hours in third places, “the timing [of visits] is loose, days are missed, some visits are brief, etc.” (Oldenburg 32). Although Oldenburg says of third places that “one may go alone at almost any time of day or evening with assurance that acquaintances will be there” (32), Hanazono

Shrine offers a different sort of communal space, in which running into acquaintances is not guaranteed at any or all hours but the physical space is open nonetheless. Because of this, many business people can be seen on their way home from work, and even after dark one might expect to find worshippers.

Shrines have long been accessible and accommodating spaces in Japan. The early Meiji period example of komori, indentured child-care workers, and their use of shrine compounds shows that the availability of shrine grounds is neither unique to Hanazono Shrine nor to the present day. Komori, who were usually young women from the lower class in rural Japan who took care of the children of laborers, “were one of the most marginalized groups because of their class, gender, location of work, and age” (Tamanoi 59). Usually, the families of komori’s charges did not want their children or the komori in the home or workplace, nor did komori, who were often children themselves, have a workplace of their own. Thus, komori “spent most of their days with their charges in ‘public’ places such as shrine compounds” (Tamanoi 56). The example of komori entertaining their charges in shrine grounds because of the unwelcoming nature of home and the absence of a workplace shows that shrines have long functioned as a third place, particularly in their accessible and accommodating nature.

Hanazono Shrine in particular was physically accessible hundreds of years ago, as illustrated in an old map of the area. This map (Fig. 3) shows the shrine in the Edo Period (1603-

1868). The shrine sits between two pieces of land owned by the powerful Owari family, on a plot that was once a family garden but was given to Hanazono shrine when the shrine was forced to

" 14" move from its previous location 250 meters to the South (Hanazono Shrine).3 Although the shrine occupied land that had previously been within the powerful Owari family’s estate, it was not a private institution within the estate as the map shows a road leading between plots into the shrine’s premises that would have made it accessible to any visitors.

Home Away from Home: Psychological Support

Oldenburg argues that third places are also welcoming because of their position as a

“home away from home,” in that they can provide comfort and psychological support (38). The psychological support that Hanazono Shrine and other Shinto spaces provide is one of these shrine’s main benefits. In a sociological study on religion in Japan, Roemer found that

Japanese people’s religious affiliation correlated with their subjective wellbeing, citing increased feelings of emotional and social support and higher self-rated health. Roemer argued that a likely cause for the self-reported wellbeing is Japanese religions’ focus on “wellness in the human world” (414). Many scholarly analyses of Japanese religion focus on the way in which Japanese religions promise worldly benefits, such as Reader and Tanabe’s book, Practically Religious:

Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan. Ritual activity at Hanazono Shrine, whether in the form of purchasing driving safety amulets, writing one’s desire on a wooden prayer plaque

(, ), or praying for good health at the shrine, focuses on success and wellness in one’s life. These ritual actions emphasize personal and communal wellbeing, “provide tangible structure in life,” and buffer the effects of stress (Roemer 414-415). Therefore, it is likely that even Japanese people who do not affiliate with a religion but participate in religious rituals have benefits of psychological support, and the physical space of the shrine provides the space for that support.

A Low Profile: Come as You Are

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Oldenburg writes about how third places often have a low profile. While Hanazono

Shrine, with its bright red roofs, torii, long lane strung with lanterns, and lavish wall coverings, does not visually have a low profile, especially in contrast with the skyscrapers that surround it, an elegant shrine does not require that its visitors dress up or make a large occasion of their visit.

As with most third places, visitors do not need to dress up; “rather, they come as they are”

(Oldenburg 37). I observed a come-as-you-are environment at Hanazono Shrine especially in people’s dress, which ranged greatly within each of my many visits. On any given day, one could expect to see men in T-shirts and workpants, groups of business people in sharp black or blue suits, high school aged girls in school uniforms, families and friends in casual clothes and women in heels and fur coats, among many others. School and work uniforms especially suggest that visitors come to the shrine wearing whatever they were wearing at their previous engagement.

Some visitors may choose to dress up for shrine visits on occasion, particularly for events or holidays. I observed some visitors dressed up in traditional for their hatsumode (New

Years shrine visit). In a two-hour in the afternoon of January 1, 2018, I saw six people who were wearing kimono. Even on this special occasion, only six of the hundreds of the visitors in the shrine premises wore kimono, showing that, while for some people Shinto holidays and special shrine visits might be occasion for a specific outfit, most visitors will indeed “come as they are.”

Conclusion

Four of Oldenburg’s aspects of third place contribute to the inclusivity of Hanazono

Shrine as an urban space: while the physical layout of the shrine indicates historical social stratifications, the present day shrine is, for the most part, socially leveling and spiritually inclusive; Hanazono Shrine is physically accessible at all hours and accommodates visitors of a great variety; it is a home away from home in that the ritual actions that take place on its grounds can provide comfort and psychological support; and while it may not have a low profile visually,

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Hanazono Shrine can be visited as part of everyday activity, requiring no special preparation or attire. Although one might expect religious spaces to be exclusive, these four qualities of third place show Hanazono Shrine in the present day to be a highly inclusive type of space. The openness of the shrine allows almost any visitor into its grounds, providing the opportunity for interaction and community building to all who enter. In the next chapter, I will use the

Oldenburg’s remaining four qualities of third place as a lens through which to discuss how these shrine visitors interact with one another in social ways, and in doing so form the basis of interactive community.

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Section II: Social Exchanges and Interactive Community

Tokyoites engage in social interactions in shopping centers, bars, coffee shops, and even convenience stores or train stations, and one might be surprised to find that similar interactions also take place in Tokyo’s urban religious spaces. Shrines in fact host wide range of public activities, perhaps even more than those commercial spaces. Hanazono Shrine is not only notable in its inclusivity towards a wide range of visitors, but also in the many varied interactions that it facilitates between visitors, especially those visitors who come to the shrine in pairs or groups.

There are four more of Oldenburg’s qualities of third place that can help to contextualize the social interactions taking place on a daily basis at Hanazono Shrine: neutral ground, conversation as the main activity, the regulars, and a playful mood. As Tokyo has urbanized rapidly during the past century, the social role that central public spaces like Hanazono Shrine can play in building connections between city residents has come to hold much weight.

One of the main assets of Hanazono Shrine as a third place is that its grounds provide a physical space for the building of interactive community. Canuto and Yaeger define interactive community, in their book The Archaeology of Community, as “an ever-emergent social institution that generates and is generated by supra-household interactions that are structured and synchronized by a set of places within a particular span of time” (5). According to scholar

Monica Whitham, gathering places facilitate “gather place networks,” which are “ties between residents who visit local gathering places and thus have the opportunity for interaction; it is a network of informal interpersonal sociability among community members” (444). Third places like Hanazono Shrine, which facilitate the gathering of a variety of people, act as such gathering places. Supra-household interactions among community-members take place both in special events and in the shrine’s daily use.

Conversation as the Main Activity: A Shrine’s Many Uses

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Conversation as the main activity might seem at first to not apply to shrines; one might assume that worship is the main activity and that worship is a solemn activity rather than a social one. However, visiting a shrine is often a social event as much as a ritual one. Through my observations I found that the number of visitors who came to Hanazono Shrine with other people outnumbered solo visitors. For example, nine business people from a corporate department came together at their boss’s request, and they stood chatting amongst themselves while waiting for others to arrive; five middle school-aged girls in uniforms walked around the shrine together, talking and laughing with one another as they waited in line to pray, and then purchased omikuji and stood in a tight circle to read them to one another; a family of tourists took pictures of one another in front of the main shrine’s stairs. Trips to sacred spaces are not always quiet and individual experiences; these groups exemplify that visitors often visit in groups and interact with those groups throughout their time on the shrine’s grounds. Rather than a solitary, silent space,

Hanazono Shrine is indeed a social and conversational space that facilitates supra-household interactions.

Furthermore, while some shrine visitors come solely to pray, many visitors to shrines, especially younger visitors, have other motives. In a survey at in , graduate student Michael Kostelik found that while a majority of older visitors (36-65) said they had come for “ritual” purposes, nearly a quarter of the young people were there on a date (40). This,

Kostelnik argues, implies that the role a shrine plays in a Japanese person’s life changes over time.

For example, older Japanese people with families are more likely to pray for their family’s health once a month, whereas a younger visitor might be more inclined to make a heritage tourism visit once a year with a friend or significant other (Kostelnik 42). Shinto shrines provide a variety of uses for people at different stages in life, allowing shrines to remain relevant to each individual by serving a range of purposes over the span of many decades of life for each specific visitor.

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When I asked shrine-goers why they usually went to shrines, more than half of my interview participants included sightseeing (, kankou) in their answer. Kostelnik found that

64% of young visitors at Yasaka Shrine, in Kyoto, answered that they had come for “tourism”

(40). Domestic tourism in Japan with a focus on “historical creations” has risen in popularity in recent years; these “historical creations” have appeal “in their ‘traditional’ aesthetics and their atmosphere of bonhomie in an ever faster changing urban world of high pressure jobs” (Graburn

50). This suggests that the growing disparity between the aesthetic of an old urban shrine and its surroundings could in fact contribute to the shrine’s success as a destination for domestic tourism.

Sightseeing visits, however, are not necessarily separate from visits with ritual value. For example, one woman who said she usually visits shrines because of sightseeing later mentioned,

“more than the goal of sightseeing, I want to pray to kami.” In some observed visits at Hanazono

Shrine, components of ritual and sightseeing seemed to overlap, with many visitors taking a picture in front of the main shrine or stopping to read one of the shrine’s informational signs before or after going up to pray.

Some shrine visitors use the Hanazono Shrine space with hardly any acknowledgement of its religious meanings. Hanazono Shrine is right next to Shinjuku’s Golden Gai district, an area with many small bars open into the early morning, and close to Shinjuku’s Kabuki-cho entertainment district. According to Lonely Planet’s information page about Hanazono Shrine, “at night, despite signs asking revelers to refrain, drinking and merrymaking carry over from the nearby bars onto the stairs” of the main shrine (Hanazono-jinja, Lonely Planet). I found this to be true even on a cold night in winter: though temperatures hovered near freezing, a group of eight young adults sat on the steps of the shrine engaging in lively conversation around 10:30 pm on

December 29, 2017. On a warmer evening in the middle of the summer of 2015, when I visited the shrine around dusk, I saw a businessman eating a konbini (convenience store) dinner on the steps of the shrine, watching the activity around him. I observed a number of people at the shrine

" 20" who stood waiting to meet a friend, and when the friend arrived, neither bothered to pray; instead, they used the grounds as only a recognizable meeting place. These three examples of social uses of the space show that the shrine is not only used to fulfill its religious intentions but also serves a variety of purposes as one of the few public open spaces in crowded, downtown Shinjuku.

The multiplicity of motives behind shrine visits, whether ritual expression, sightseeing, a date, a social engagement, or some combination of these and many other motives, show that some shrine visitors may indeed come to a shrine with a more playful mood in mind than one might expect to find in a religious space.

Neutral Ground

The multiplicity of uses provided by a shrine can be explained in part by another characteristic of third places: their role as a neutral ground on which people can meet. Of

Oldenburg’s characteristics of third place, this is perhaps one of the most applicable in Japan, where the average space per capita of a home is less than half that in America. While an average American home has 77 square meters of floor space per person, an average Japanese home has only 35 square meters per person (Wilson 2017). This statistic illustrates that the average Japanese home is significantly smaller than the average American home, implying that third places outside of the home might be more necessary in Japan for spending personal time or entertaining guests. Third places, “where individuals may come and go as they please, in which none are required to play host, and in which all feel at home and comfortable,” are then useful places for dates or hangouts (Oldenburg 22).

Shrines are indeed used for this purpose, whether as a place for a date or as one of many stops in a day of social outings. One group of three women told me that they were on their way to eat lunch in Shinjuku; an older woman mentioned that she was meeting her daughter at a public bath in the area later; and a group of three older men said that they often visited shrines together, and on that specific day chose to come to Hanazono Shrine because they were on their way to a

" 21" drinking gathering for New Years. These examples illustrate how, for many, Hanazono Shrine serves much the same role as one might expect a coffee shop or public park to fill; it is a stop on the way to other social engagements with friends or family and provides just one more neutral ground on which people can enjoy each other’s company.

Regulars: Teaching Others How to Use the Space

Another notable form of interaction among many visitor groups is an exchange of information, as more knowledgeable or experienced shrine-goers explain to their friends or family how to interact with the space and engage in ritual practices. Oldenburg points to the importance of regulars at third spaces, saying, “it is the regulars, whatever their number on any given occasion, who feel at home in a place and set the tone” (34). There are certainly regulars at

Hanazono Shrine; many of the visitors whom I interviewed had come to the shrine before. One woman mentioned that she came often because her work was nearby, and another said she came often before or after her theatre rehearsals in the area.

At an urban shrine, regular shrine visitors set the tone in that they have a systematic way of interacting with the space, and because their ritual practice is public, they demonstrate that mode of interaction to everyone on the shrine’s grounds. I observed some visitors explicitly explaining to the others they came with how to participate in ritual. For example, at the Itoku

Inari Shrine, parents crouched down and explained to their two children the different steps of prayer, which include dropping a coin into the receptacle, ringing a bell, clapping, and bowing. In a group of schoolgirls, four of the young women explained the process to the fifth as they waited in line to pray, getting in a small dispute over the proper order of the steps. Visitors also learn traditional practice through observation; tourists, especially, spent time watching people pray and observing their actions, even if those tourists did not pray themselves. By sharing how to engage in ritual practice at a shrine, either through verbal communication or non-verbal display, shrine regulars reproduce the traditions of how people interact within that space.

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A Playful Mood: Holidays, Festivals, and Special Events

Oldenburg writes that in a third place, a playful mood “is of utmost importance” and gives visitors the “urge to return, recreate, and recapture the experience there” (38). A playful mood at Shinto shrines is most apparent in the many festivals (, matsuri), Shinto holidays, and special events held on their grounds. These community-based customs facilitate the interaction of large groups of people through shared rituals in a shared space.

Much of Shinto practice revolves around seasonal holidays throughout the calendar year.

Anthropologist Theodore Bestor relates Shinto holidays to “days more like Halloween or St.

Valentine’s Day than Rosh Hashanah or Ash Wednesday” (231), implying that Shinto holidays are popular cultural events more than activities based in religious belief. The bustling activity at

Hanazono Shrine that I observed around New Years showed the role of New Years as not only a spiritually significant holiday but also a social and playful one.

Hatsumode (), the first shrine visit of the New Year, is a significant seasonal Shinto activity that takes place primarily in the first three days of the year. Participation in these shrine visits is widespread; according to the Japan Times newspaper, almost 3 million people participate yearly in hatsumode at Tokyo’s Meiji Jingu Shrine alone (“A Celebration of Japanese

Traditions”). On New Years at Hanazono Shrine, crowds of visitors filled the grounds, with hundreds of people lined up six-across from the steps of the main shrine all the way out to the sidewalk (Fig. 7, 8). Two men in neon vests organized the crowds under the large white lights and hanging red lanterns. The crowds not only lasted well into the early morning (around 3 a.m., when I left the grounds, there were still hundreds of visitors waiting to pray) but also well into the week. In the first days after New Years, the line consistently held over a hundred people, even after dark (Fig. 9). While activity quieted down day by day, lines stretched down the stairs well into the fifth day of the year.

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Much of the New Years activity centered on social interactions; most of the worshippers stood in groups, talking to one another as they waited in line to reach the shrine. Groups of people shared amazake (, traditional fermented rice drink), beer, and food at picnic tables set up around temporary food tents (Fig. 10). Some appeared to be couples and others groups of friends.

One group of women told me that they had come to the shrine specifically to enjoy the food stalls, and they were planning on getting more lunch and going shopping in Shinjuku afterwards. A group of about ten young adults brought their own cans of beer one afternoon and stood around a table, drunkenly laughing and shouting. The shrine facilitates this social component of hatsumode visits by setting up the temporary food stalls and picnic tables, and the long line to pray at the main shrine provides a time and space for groups of people doing hatsumode together to talk while waiting their turn to pray. These social interactions illustrate that while New Years shrine visits in Japan may originate from the belief that going to a shrine is necessary for good luck in the year to come, they can be as much a social outing for families and groups of friends as they are a religious visit.

In addition to the celebration of national holidays like New Years, Hanazono Shrine also holds some specific festivals of its own. Festivals are widespread at shrines in Japan and differ greatly from place to place, from food or competition-based festivals to performance or divination-based festivals (Hardacre). Hanazono Shrine holds a version of a procession-based festival, in which “symbols of the Kami are carried in portable shrines” (Hardacre). This festival at Hanazono Shrine is called Reitaisai () and is held in the end of May; floats and two portable shrines that normally sit hidden away in a small, plain building, are carried from the shrine’s grounds around the streets of Shinjuku (Hanazono Shrine). Another festival, held at

Hanazono Shrine in November, is called Tori no Ichi (, Day of the Bird). Among many food stalls at this event, vendors sell kumade (), little decorated bamboo rakes that symbolize

“the raking in of money” and are “associated with business prosperity and wealth” (Reader and

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Tanabe 193). An estimated 600,000 visitors attend festivals at Hanazono Shrine (Hanazono

Shrine).

A connection between community-members is obvious in these local shrine festivals, in which there is often so much dancing, singing, celebrating, and drinking “that the individual forgets himself, becoming one with the group and its idealized image of human life vivified by the Kami” (Hardacre). Furthermore, in many festivals “communities petition local deities for all manner of benefits important to the health of the community at large” (Reader and Tanabe 202).

These festivals are communal both because large groups of people come to participate in activities that form a collective throughout the event, and also because everyone who participates is, in some way, buying into a shared spiritual goal, such as the success or health of the community. Holiday and festival activity thus create community interaction on shrine grounds, while maintaining a playful mood in the space.

Hanazono Shrine also hosts official events that contribute to social life in Shinjuku. In addition to the various social holidays and festivals throughout the year, Hanazono Shrine hosts a weekly flea market every Sunday, with over twenty vendors selling antiques. The shrine has also hosted public performances since its reconstruction after the fires of 1780 and 1811 (Hanazono

Shrine). According to the shrine’s website, “Hanazono Shrine, at which performances like Kara

Juro’s tent plays occurred, took on a role in cultivating Shinjuku’s new, full and culture after the war” (Hanazono Jinja). Hanazono Shrine is still connected with “Shinjuku’s culture,” as the grounds still host plays, circus performances, dances, and more. As participating in or attending a theatre performance and visiting a flea market are inherently social activities that foster conversation, these uses for Hanazono Shrine exemplify the way that this flexibility of physical space gives the shrine a social role in the city. While shrines might often be conceived of as quiet, reflective and individual spaces, Hanazono Shrine often actually creates a conversational space and is an important public space in addition to a religious one.

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Conclusion

People come to Hanazono Shrine for a wide range of reasons beyond solitary ritual practice; with visitors sightseeing, going on dates, waiting for friends, participating in festivals, celebrating holidays, or attending flea markets or temporary performances, the grounds are often buzzing with social activity. Hanazono Shrine, an accessible, inclusive third place in a fast-paced city center, provides an important public space that gives room for these many types of social interactions among Tokyo residents, and these interactions allow for the growth of interactive community between people. It is important that Hanazono Shrine has survived the centuries because in modern day Tokyo, where neighborhood associations have ebbed and many residents spend a majority of their time at work and in their , third places that provide neutral ground for gathering are increasingly rare.

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Section III: Third place as Ritual Space and Ideological Community

Along with rapid urbanization, “familiar gathering centers are disappearing rapidly”

(Oldenburg 9). Hanazono Shrine, however, is a third place that has survived over 400 years in the heart of the rapidly developing Shinjuku city center and continues to thrive (Hanazono Shrine). 4

When many other third places are being lost in cities that focus on individuals at home and at work, why has Hanazono Shrine remained? The answer, in part, might lie in the intersection of the social and sacred, as shrines are not only social centers as the past two sections have shown, but also centers for the Shinto tradition and its many longstanding rituals.

As physical spaces that uphold the Shinto tradition, shrines facilitate the construction of a second type of community: imagined community. Whereas interactive communities, as described in the previous section, center on actual interactions between community members, imagined or ideological communities, as described by Anthony Cohen in The Symbolic Construction of

Community, have a broader base. Cohen describes imagined or ideological communities as made up of people who “(a) have something in common with each other, which (b) distinguishes them in a significant way from the members of other putative groups” (12). This broadly defined community does not require that people share space or experiences with one another; rather, one can feel a part of this sort of community simply by “thinking about” it (Cohen 98). As an example, all residents of Japan form an imagined community in that they are unlikely to interact with every other resident of Japan, but they have their place of residence in common, setting them apart from people who live anywhere else in the world.

Shrines facilitate ideological community because visiting a shrine or participating in even a solitary ritual connects visitors to the long history of the Shinto tradition and to the ideological community of Japan, to which Shinto is intimately tied. Rituals, “both private and public, are so much everyday events that very few Japanese are not involved in one way or another” (Reader et al 34). Ritual practice in Japan often identified as a component of traditional Japanese culture as

" 27" much as or more than a component of any religion (Anderson 372), so ritual practice also ties a participant into the imagined community of Japan as a whole, past and present.

Shinto, which has its roots in agricultural Japan, has likely survived the years in large part because of the flexibility of beliefs about deities and the worldly benefits those deities provide, which I will discuss in this chapter. According to John K. Nelson, through Shrine Shinto, “ancient religious institutions, some of which have origins in prehistory, have managed to convey to the present day a body of ritual practices essentially agricultural in design and animistic in content yet which somehow manage to attract participation from among urban-dwelling Japanese” (7).

According to H. B. Earhart in Japanese Religion: Unity and Diversity, “The heart of Shinto, defined by agricultural rhythms, is threatened in an industrial-urban setting” (209). Still, urban

Shinto spaces and their enshrined kami remain.

The dynamic and adaptable nature of the Shinto tradition and the flexibility of belief and practice at Hanazono Shrine in particular are important reasons for Hanazono Shrine’s continued success into the present day. The religious role that Hanazono Shrine has played in visitors’ lives varies by visitor and era. This chapter will show how Hanazono Shrine carries forward and continues to shape Shinto traditions and how the ever-adapting nature of those traditions allows urban religious spaces and Shinto to maintain relevance in an ever-changing social world.

Shinto Belief Systems: Kami and Worldly Benefits

The theme that Shinto centers on actions rather than beliefs runs throughout much of the modern day literature on Shinto, but Shinto is by no means devoid of beliefs. While there is no one omnipotent God at the center of Shinto, Suwa Shrine priest Uesugi Gūji says “there is something stronger which has its source in the mountains, rivers, and lakes from which our life is given […]” (Nelson 188). This “something” is kami (), “spirits of a particular place or natural forces like wind, rivers, and mountains,” which “are everywhere, or could be anywhere”

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(Hardacre). Shinto () translates directly to “the way of the kami.” The world of kami and world of humans exist in a delicate balance, and kami can “help human beings harmonize with elemental balances of the natural cycle of life” especially during times of transition (Nelson 30,

208). Shinto does not center on strict religious doctrines or a singular God but rather on belief in many kami and their role in the human world.

These kami “are constantly invoked for the benefits they are believed to provide,” benefits like good luck or protection from harm that help a person in the human world (Reader and Tanabe 13-14). For example, the prayers (, gokito) page of the Hanazono shrine website promises a wide range of possible benefits that come from shrine prayer, including prevention of misfortune, business success, vehicle safety, industrial safety, academic success, finding a lover, and many more (Hanazono Shrine). The page also offers a variety of ceremonies available, some at the shrine and others off-site: first shrine visits for 100-day old babies, anniversaries of life on auspicious birthday years (e.g. 60, 88), and groundbreaking ceremonies, among others (Hanazono Shrine). These types of ceremonies are primarily concerned with benefits in this world rather than focusing, as some religious ceremonies do, on the afterlife or other worlds.

In the previous chapter I discussed how hatsumode visits to Hanazono Shrine are very social events; however, the cultural and social practice of New Years shrine visits are deeply interconnected with the Shinto belief system. During first shrine visits, one can thank the Kami of years (, Toshi-gami-sama) for bringing a new year, and, according to priest Uesugi Gūji, hatsumode participants “want to purify [their] blunders and sins and cast off whatever evil influences [they] may have accumulated in the old year” (Nelson 207) Behind these New Years activities lies the larger Shinto belief in the power of the kami to “orient […] individuals during important periods of transition” such as coming-of-age, 7-5-3 children’s ceremonies, and, of course, New Years (Nelson 208). New Years shrine visits are thus a social cultural activity that

" 29" express the connection of Shinto participation with worldly benefits - in this case, the desire for a good year to come.

Do the Deities Matter?

Although kami are central to Shinto rituals, research indicates that the identity of the specific kami residing at a shrine is less important to some shrine visitors than one might imagine.

John K. Nelson found through his research that an overwhelming majority of visitors (86%) did not know which deity was enshrined at Kyoto's despite the many informational signs spread around the shrine’s grounds about this deity (Nelson 126). Nelson’s results imply that people do not necessarily find specific kami a crucial component of all shrine visits.

However, at Hanazono Shrine, I was surprised to find that the specific kami present in the smaller shrines on the grounds were of importance to visitors. The large main shrine on the premises is dedicated to Yamato-takeru-no-Mikoto, a legendary prince from the Yamato Dynasty said to have been born in 72 CE, who is enshrined alongside two other deities (Littleton 259).

While the main shrine consistently had the most worshippers, none of the visitors whom I interviewed mentioned specific interests in the deities or benefits offered by the main shrine, while a number of visitors expressed their interest in the smaller, specialized shrines on the premises.

Many visitors whom I interviewed were concerned with the specifics of the enshrined kami at Hanazono Shrine because they hoped to pray specifically to a kami of performance at the smaller Geino Asama Shrine. For example, I interviewed a group of four women, all wearing colored contact lenses and carrying instrument cases, who turned out to be members of a rock band who had come to pray to the entertainment kami for their band’s success in the year ahead.

Another young woman who frequents the shrine explained that she was on her way to practice for a play. Yet another young woman, a first time visitor, explained that she had decided to come because she wanted to pray to the theatre deity, though she was not yet sure which of the shrines

" 30" on the grounds to pray at. An older man said that Hanazono Shrine’s “colors are a little bit flashy and loud,” and wondered if this bright orange and red coloring might be because of the enshrinement of an entertainment kami. These conversations led me to realize that although at some shrines visitors may find the origins of the deities enshrined of relatively low importance, at

Hanazono Shrine, the presence of the small entertainment shrine and its deities draws many visitors, both first-time visitors and regulars.

Inari and the Evolution of Deities

The other small shrine on the premises, Itoku Inari Shrine, is dedicated to Inari (), a traditional kami that has maintained its popularity from the days of Shinto’s agricultural roots into the present day.5 Inari exemplifies that deities might be given many different meanings over time in order to remain relevant to individuals and their needs throughout different periods of history.

Inari has adapted with great success, as in the present day it has “the greatest number of shrines of any Shinto deity” (Smyers 216). A knowledgeable visitor would be able to identify Hanazono

Shrine as a place of Inari worship immediately because of the symbols associated with Inari that are present on the grounds: red torii gates, red worship , rock , and fox statues. These, together with jewel symbols, fried tofu, rice, cedars, and prayer flags, all have come to represent

Inari worship in some way throughout its long and diverse history (Smyers 6).

While Inari was originally viewed as an agricultural kami, its role as a deity has changed to maintain relevance in an urban setting. Inari has taken a multiplicity of meanings since its early days, becoming a highly individualized kami that represents different things to different people throughout time. For example, Inari was famous as a deity to pray to for fire prevention in urban

Edo in the early modern period, and during this same time Inari was also becoming famous as a fishing kami in coastal regions of Japan (Smyers 21). Although Inari originated as a kami of rice fields, Inari has since come to be “concerned with growth, change, and increase in all spheres,

" 31" including the human, social, and financial,” and it is now “one of the main kami of business prosperity” (Smyers 214). This connection to business prosperity is especially significant in

Shinjuku, as there is a plethora of businesses of all sizes in the area whose workers visit

Hanazono Shrine to pray for success in their jobs and financial endeavors. I found that in the late afternoons, Hanazono Shrine filled with businessmen coming as individuals or in groups to pray, probably because of the correlation between Hanazono, Inari, and business prosperity.

Inari has long been associated with the symbol of a fox, an association strong enough that some might be inclined to think that Inari is actually a fox and vice versa when in reality the fox is only Inari’s messenger (Smyers 59).6 Fox statues “almost always flank the altar and guard the front of an Inari shrine” (93). Hanazono’s Itoku Inari Shrine has two such fox statues at the end of a long line of red torii gates. One fox is male and the other is female, and both have cubs, a style popular almost exclusively at Tokyo Inari shrines – fox statues at shrines in Kyoto rarely have cubs (Smyers 133). Although many priests in the present day find that foxes have become so close to Inari as to often be incorrectly conflated, Smyers argues that having the fox as an icon might be one of the factors that led to Inari worship’s continued success, as “without the fox,

Inari might have been just another agricultural kami unable to adapt to the changes in Japanese society” (97).

Another component of Inari worship is the connection of both Inari and foxes to fertility, which is visibly manifest in sexual symbols at Hanazono Shrine. The physical symbols of sexuality might at first go unnoticed, tucked away as they are in the smaller Itoku Inari Shrine on the Hanazono Shrine premises. These sexual symbols are among a few significant physical remnants of a long tradition of sexual beliefs in Japan;7 the government had police remove most of the obvious sexual symbols in the early Meiji period (Symers 134). At Hanazono’s Itoku Inari

Shrine, one finds that “a prominent phallic symbol hangs in a horizontal position from the eaves of this shrine just above the spot where more worshippers stand” and nearby another small stone phallus sits on top of a mound of rocks (Turnbull 132). These masculine, phallic symbols

" 32" surround a fox hole, in which “female genitalia are powerfully evoked” (Smyers 127). Fox holes are rock openings that signify fox dens and simultaneously represent both and wombs

(Smyers 135, Turnbull 127). All of these sexual objects of worship, both masculine and feminine, typically represent fertility, whether agricultural fertility on a large, community scale or more personal matters concerning fertility, such as “match-making, marital harmony, the cure or avoidance of sexually transmitted diseases, successful conception and the safe delivery and nurture of children” (Turnbull 118). It is likely that this space at Hanazono Shrine is often used for prayers related to personal matters around fertility.

Through observations of the Itoku Inari Shrine I found that some people did not notice or did not acknowledge the large phallus in the rafters; however, a number of visitors did. One couple stood waiting in line to pray, and the woman of the pair noticed the phallus and pointed it out to the man she was with, and they shared a small laugh. Aside from this couple, most visitors who interacted with the phallus seemed to be already aware of its presence. A cement block on the ground allows visitors to step up and reach the wooden phallus, and many women stood up on the block to rub the phallus after their prayers, presumably praying for fertility or other personal matters.

The sexual symbols have a historical meaning at Hanazono Shrine as well, because of the area’s history as a red-light district and Inari’s connection to prostitutes. Shinjuku was a center of entertainment from its early days as a stop for samurai lords, and by 1931, when an undergraduate student from a local university crafted a detailed map of the neighborhood, Shinjuku was already home to a wide variety of eating and drinking establishments, theatres, and department stores

(Smith II 158). Shinjuku was also home to a red-light district until prostitution was made illegal in 1955 (Smith II 159). As mentioned earlier, Inari has a multiplicity of roles as a kami; one such role that Inari has taken on is that of “the guardian of prostitutes,” perhaps because “kitsune,” meaning fox, is also “used as a derogatory term for a prostitute,” likely because of some of the ways that foxes are represented in – though there is great variety in their

" 33" representation in (Smyers 127, 132). Thus, the sexual objects of worship at Itoku Inari

Shrine might have once served as symbols of guardianship to workers in Shinjuku’s red-light district in the early- to mid-twentieth century.

The plurality of roles that Inari worship at Hanazono Shrine has fulfilled over the years shows that a shrine’s surrounding environment shapes both its significance and the significance of its kami. For example, as I have shown, Hanazono Shrine has served as a place for workers to request entrepreneurial success, a stop for women to pray for fertility or safe childbirth, and a center for the protection of prostitutes. In the case of a kami as multi-faceted as Inari, “places can

[…] give a deity a distinction that sets it apart from similar deities” as places “add charisma and spiritual uniqueness” to a deity (Reader and Tanabe 165). At Hanazono Shrine, physical context has defined the types of worship that take place, showing how Shinto shrines can adapt to the conditions of their current time, place, and people, and in doing so provide a place to pray for a wide range of worldly benefits.

Evolution of Worldly Benefits

The worldly benefits that one can pray for at shrines, too, change over time. Shrines have capitalized on people’s desires for practical benefits from religion by creating a sort of “benefits market,” an exchange of the promise of worldly benefits for prayer or the purchasing of shrine merchandise. Within the benefits market, “there is a constantly modernizing dynamic, and new forms of benefits related to contemporary needs appear with regularity and with great speed”

(Reader and Tanabe 53). Reader and Tanabe give the example of travel safety rituals and prayers, which have evolved rapidly in recent years to include car and airplane safety (53). Driving safety is one of the many benefits that Hanazono Shrine advertises on their website, which was likely not the case when the shrine was founded in the sixteenth century (nor was it likely that the shrine had a website then). In addition to reflecting the modernization of Japan, the benefits that shrines offer often reflect current social or political events in the nation. For example, one shrine that had

" 34" traditionally offered prayer for sexual diseases adapted to include AIDS-specific amulets as AIDS spread in Japan in the 1980s; another shrine encouraged prayers for the election of ones political party before an important election in 1996 (Reader and Tanabe 57-58). The adaptability of the worldly benefits that Japanese religions provide illustrates one of the ways that Shinto has managed to remain relevant within modern, urban lifestyles.

Both the evolution of deities and the evolution of the benefits those deities can provide in worshippers’ lives show the dynamic nature of the Shinto tradition. Although one might be inclined to think of tradition as a static remnant of the past, the multiplying meanings behind the

Inari deity and the evolution of the so-called Shinto “benefits market” throughout modernization speaks to the fact that traditions are, in fact, flexible and dynamic. Eric Hobsbawm speaks of traditions as often “actually invented, constructed, and formally instituted” as “societies have naturally been obliged to invent, institute, or develop new networks of […] convention or routine”

(2, 3). When I use the word tradition, I reference the sort of tradition that Hobsbawm defines, which often “establishes continuity with a suitable historic past” but by no means carries that past forward unchanged (Hobsbawm 1). By participating in either solitary or communal ritual activities, visitors to Hanazono Shrine both establish continuity with the history of Shinto and also further the conventions of the tradition, re-constructing, re-inventing, or re-instituting those conventions.

Conclusion

Underlying all activity at Hanazono Shrine is the basic Shinto belief system around which the space was built: kami exist all over and can be called upon by humans to provide benefits and wellbeing. Hanazono Shrine is a unique example of third place because it not only provides space for social interaction and conversation, as all third places do, but it also provides a physical space in which the Shinto tradition is navigated and continually reconstructed. The interaction of shrine visitors with each other and also with the symbolisms and physical

" 35" manifestations of Shinto at Hanazono Shrine show that the shrine provides not only a space for the construction of interactive communities, but also the construction of ideological communities centered around Shinto as, by participating in rituals, visitors are continuing age old traditions that are always evolving.

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Conclusion

Hanazono Shrine provides a space for businesspeople to take a break, for families to sit in the shade of a large tree, for theatre troupes to hold a production, for young locals to go on a date, and for tourists to experience another side of urban Tokyo. It provides all of these uses and many more. Religious sites, especially in Japan, are often seen as a of the past. And while, to some extent, this is true – they carry a long history and continue forward an ever-evolving tradition of rituals, festivals, and holidays from centuries past, and are appreciated for their role in doing so – they are also important for their contemporary uses. While Hanazono Shrine stands in sharp contrast to the bustling urban streets from which it is sheltered, there is no sharp dichotomy between the “modern” Tokyo of Shinjuku station and the “historical” Tokyo of Shinto shrines.

Hanazono Shrine is every bit as much a part of contemporary Tokyo and contemporary Tokyoite lives as is a bullet train or convenience store.

Hanazono Shrine’s present day significance in the city stems from its ability as a third place to foster both interactive and ideological community. Because of its inclusive and accommodating nature and the physical space it provides for a variety of social exchanges,

Hanazono Shrine provides ground for interaction outside of home and work. The shrine grounds not only facilitate interaction from person to person but also interaction between people and the

Shinto tradition they come to interact with. Thus, Hanazono Shrine is a place in which it is not surprising to find two visitors laughing and taking pictures of one another on the shrine’s steps minutes before they go to pray.

Religious spaces were nowhere to be found among Oldenburg’s examples of third places in America and Europe; however, the religious climate in Japan, where religion often manifests in actions and affiliations more than beliefs, and religious spaces like Hanazono Shrine are open to all, allows for an inclusive type of religious space that Oldenburg may not have seen within his own society. The connection between Shinto spaces like Hanazono Shrine and the long history of the Shinto tradition is a factor that could make these third places more significant to Tokyoites

" 37" than an average pub or coffee shop, explaining in part why Hanazono Shrine has kept its place in the heart of Shinjuku for over four centuries.

While this study has illustrated the role that Hanazono Shrine plays in the present day, further studies on public Japanese religious spaces would be beneficial because of the wide range of such spaces and the even wider range of their uses. In order to understand more fully the effects of urbanization on Tokyo’s religious spaces, it could be important to compare central, larger shrines like Hanazono Shrine to smaller, neighborhood shrines dedicated to local deities.

Hanazono Shrine likely benefited from urbanization more than those small neighborhood shrines, because, as Tokyo urbanized, shrines have come to “cater more to the walk-in trade” and therefore “shrines that will gain the most are the shrines at the city’s famous crossroads” (Sadler

22). While Hanazono Shrine has a large enough space and a central location that allow it to prosper in both its religious and non-religious purposes, many of Tokyo’s shrines do not share those same characteristics. This study has focused on only one shrine of thousands in the Tokyo area, and because of the great variety within Tokyo’s urban Shinto spaces, there remains much to be investigated about shrines as third places and their role in this modern day metropolis.

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Figure 1: Google maps satellite photo of the side entrance to Hanazono Shrine, showing the large buildings that surround the grounds. Accessed April 17, 2018.

Figure 2: Hanazono Shrine Map, including the main shrine (8), Itoku Inari Shrine (6), and Geino Asama Shrine (2). Other notable features include the festival floats (7), hand and mouth purification station (5) and office building, which includes a window for purchasing shrine merchandise (10). (Hanazono Shrine 2017).

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Figure 3: An Edo Period map, with Tokyo’s modern day train and subway lines. Hanazono Shrine was in the box in which Sankoin () is written, between plots of Owari land. (See endnote 3 for an explanation on the name Sankoin and the syncretism between Buddhism and Shinto).

Figure 4: Aerial view of Hanazono Shrine, 1947 Fig. 5: Aerial view of Hanazono Shrine, 1963

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Figure 6: Aerial view of Hanazono Shrine (outlined in red), 2017

Figure 7: Guards direct visitors waiting in line to pray at the main shrine for hatsumode on Jan. 1, 2018.

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Figure 8: The line of hatsumode visitors stretches to the street and doubles back again. January 1, 2018.

Figure 9: The line to pray continued into the night on January 1, 2018. Photo by: Berlian Khatulistiwa.

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Figure 10: Temporary food stalls erected for hatsumode, which stayed on the grounds for three days. Jan. 1, 2018.

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Endnotes " 1 A number of scholars engage in longer discussions on the religious climate in Japan and the debate of whether or not Shinto is considered a religion; see, for example, Ian Reader and George Tanabe’s Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan, Ian Reader’s Religion in Contemporary Japan, or Winston Davis’ Japanese Religion and Society: Paradigms of Structure and Change.

2 A period in Hanazono Shrine’s history, during which the space held both a Buddhist and a Shinto shrine, exemplifies the inclusivity of Japan’s main religious traditions. Buddhism was introduced to Japan via Korea in the sixth century, and in the eighth century Shinto and Buddhism gradually grew closer. During Buddhism and Shinto’s many centuries of syncretism, most shrines were small and existed “as one component within a temple-shrine complex […] generally controlled by the Buddhist clergy” (Hardacre 14). This co-inhabitance of a religious space is evident in the case of Hanazono Shrine, where a branch temple of a Shingon Buddhist sect was enshrined with Hanazono’s Shinto shrine, and the Buddhist chief priest served as the manager of both (Hanazono Shrine). Figure 2, an Edo era map with an overlay of modern day railways, shows Hanazono Shrine during this period, when it took on the name Sankouin ( ) during its co-enshrinement with the . While the Buddhist aspects of the shrine were removed after a nationwide state mandated separation of Buddhist and Shinto at the start of the Meiji period (1868), influences of each religion on the other remain, as does the inclusivity of both towards each other.

3"Up until the Kan’ei era (1624-1644), Hanazono Shrine occupied the area that is now home to the Isetan department store. The shrine was moved for the construction of an estate for shogunal vassal (Hanazono Shrine).

4 Shinjuku was once far from the city’s center, as it was a stopping point on the Koshu-kaido highway for samurai lords journeying back and forth between Western regions of Japan and visits with the shogun at Tokyo’s center (Hornyak). Shinjuku’s name, which literally translates to “new lodgings” () references back to the era during which these lords would stay the night in the area outside of Tokyo. As Tokyo has developed, however, Shinjuku has become one of the city’s many city centers, now home to the world’s busiest train station (Hornyak). Figures 4, 5, and 6 show the rapid growth of Shinjuku after the destruction of the Pacific War, depicting aerial views of Hanazono Shrine (outlined in red) and its surroundings in 1947, 1963, and 2017, respectively. As the photographs illustrate, Hanazono Shrine has kept its place at one of Tokyo’s main crossroads while Shinjuku’s roads and buildings developed around it.

5 Inari worship originated at Fushimi Inari Shrine just outside of modern day Kyoto, but Inari shrines began to spread throughout Japan with the movement of feudal lords in the 1600s, around the same time that Hanazono Shrine was constructed (Smyers 21, 32). In fact, the Hanazono Shrine website mentions that the shrine’s deity was ceremonially transferred to Tokyo from , an area just outside of Kyoto, around 1590 (Hanazono Shrine).

6"The origins of Inari’s association with the fox symbol is highly debated, with possibilities including a simple play on words, Buddhist esoteric influences, or the fact that foxes were associated with rice because they protected rice fields by eating rodents and early Inari worship was related to rice farming (Smyers 75-86). " "

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" 7 Many authors have referred to this sexual worship as phallicism; however, as contemporary authors on the subject argue, this term does not account for the many feminine sexual symbols present throughout Japan, and thus Turnbull’s term “sexual beliefs” is more fitting (Turnbull, Smyers).

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