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.