3.b Unwrapping the layers of the Shrine

The toya proceeds to remove and burn old paper and old ropes from last year. He also collects the money. With the help of a sodai, he collects the coins, drinks and rice thrown to the deity during the year. Then, they wrap the rice in white paper and write down the amount of money collected. After this, they finally open the Shrine and any annexed buildings. This can be understood as unwrapping the first layer of a Shrine. The Shrine, like a gift, is now open and ‘the objects inside’ ready for people to see and use. The atmosphere is one of pragmatism and conviviality, villagers greeting each other with words of omedetou gozaimasu, (congratulations) and going to work hard and silently. The first layer of unwrapping is done. The Shrine is opened. From inside the Shrine sodai remove ritual regalia, wrapping clothes, the danjiri (musical stand) and the mikoshi (portable Shrine). Men and women enter and leave the open Shrine with ease, always leaving their shoes outside.

Sodai and toya meet in the kitchen and have a discussion about the presentation of the ritual prestations. They check the Shrine’s information and arrange the trays and prestations. The toya explains while preparing it:

‘[you] take the tray, and find its front. The prestations must be given to the deity by the front. Then [you] put a layer of white paper around the bottom of the tray, and put the ritual prestations on it. The ritual prestations are seven: one for each of the products [of the environment]: rice, fish, plants from the sea (seaweed), plants from the garden (vegetables, daikon, lettuce), fruits from trees (mikan, apples, bananas), household produce (rice cakes).

An additional prestation of salt, water and sakaki leaves is also kept ready with two white ceramic jars with water and sake. These prestations correspond to Bloch’s symbolic consumption of the environment in festivals, and they are the main prestations to be offered to the deity.

Sodai start by wrapping the building of the Shrine, mikoshi and danjiri structures with the cloths they have removed from inside the Shrine buildings. Ropes are put up to define the boundary between the reception area where people leave gifts and the kitchen, and the ascension area towards the deity. Sakaki leaves and branches, wrapped with a cord around a second altar in the forest, empty at this stage. Sakaki is used as a ritual prestation that signifies the presence of deities. Sakaki also wraps or defines the boundaries of the place of a deity. People say that: ‘sakaki leaves trap deities with their move’ or ‘they show the presence of the deity with their move’. A huge blue and white striped cloth is put up around the Shrine, wrapping its face, paper lamps are made, the name of the village and deity is written on them and they are hung. Exceptionally, in some villages sodai cut the paper strips that symbolise the sacrality of the place, auspicious flags, and set them ready for later. Finally, the sodai takes a tray with one of the seven prestations to each of the smaller Shrines and other representations of strength and luck such as statues of horses.

In the meantime, more villagers and other sodai arrive. They walk with their wrapped bottles of sake under their arms. The toya leaves his job and bows to them: ‘omedetou gozaimasu’, they greet each other. By now all the buildings are wrapped and people begin to bring their gifts of sake, although some enter through the kitchen and some gifts were left there the night before. The toya makes a gesture of humbling himself before he takes their gifts. Another sodai will be writing down the names, noting the sake and amount of money, and placing the gifts in the altar. The sake with the name of the household represents its donor and is given as both ‘thanks’ and a petition for help to the deity and to the man who organised the event. One of the sodai goes to the kitchen to pay his fees. Hastily, the toya counts the money. Some sodai come to tell the toya that he should set some money aside for the ritual specialist’s fee. The Sodai or toya brings an auspicious envelope for this money and the envelope is kept out of sight.

The contents of the first layer of the Shrine are now on display for all to see. Much time is spent assembling the wooden parts and the structure of the mikoshi and danjiri, and wrapping both with cloth, sakaki leaf, and paper. The danjiri men also wrap their bodies with blue and white tapi, and proceed to ascend into the danjiri and start playing. In the next three hours eight to twelve men from the neighbourhood will arrive. They are the mikoshi carriers. Sodai will help them to wrap their torsos, legs, head and feet with white cloth. They will also wrap a second portable stand with a large barrel of sake, a gift from the sodai to the festival. This is wrapped in white strips of paper symbolising the deity and its auspiciousness. In some festivals, children’s mikoshi and children’s danjiri are also prepared (if there are enough children). From now on only sodai will stay inside the Shrine and proceed to further unwrap the distance that separates them from the kami. This is crucial if gifts are to be offered. During this stage, the essential aspect of the ritual is to unwrap the gifts so they can be symbolically consumed. The wrapped Shrine has become the path through which prestations will travel from villagers ‘up’ to the deity. Wrapping provides the ritual context for gifts to be unwrapped, given to the deity, and later returned to the sodai, toya, and the rest.

What most villagers experience at a festival is that after the arrival at the Shrine they cannot unwrap their way further into the Shrine. Instead, they must surrender their gifts into the hands of sodai who will pass them on to the deity. Gifts are left between certain layers of wrapping and at a certain distance from the deity. The relations with the sodai are here formal and polite, with a great degree of ritualistic behaviour such as bowing and a hierarchical understanding of the ‘distance’ or layer where people are. Entrance in to the wrapped Shrine, although the prerogative of the sodai, is not restricted to them. Guests enter with the sodai’s permission when families want to make direct petitions for good luck and health to the deity. They must make a substantial gift of sake and money to the sodai and pay an additional fee for the kannushi. They receive wrapped talismans that contain the name of the deity, which they can take home and place in the domestic altar for protection as they do at New Year. In some villages, two symbolic guests are also invited to the Shrine. Two villagers, masked as the evil man of the forest tengu and otafuku or fortune woman, partake of the shinsen, naorai, and utage inside the Shrine. They are invited to enter as ‘guests’, and they are asked to offer a prestation of sakaki leaves. I was invited as a ‘guest’, too. Villagers always preferred to invite me inside the Shrine, rather than leave me outside. However, I was never allowed to bring any gift, as a sodai once put it:

No one expects it from you, you are not a neighbour and you have not paid the fees that neighbours must pay for the maintenance of the Shrine.

In my perception, the masked figures represented the primary couple[52], the centre of the household. They are the two sides of village order, drunkenness and prosperity, making a fundamental connection between sake as gifts and prosperity. As in the setsubun in chapter four, and the use of scarecrows, the neighbourhood is introduced into the Shrine, ‘masked’ as the honoured guests. By contrast, I was a foreigner,[53]I could enter but had no obligation to make gifts.

[52] The theme of the couple is also crucial in elder’s day and children’s day. The couple is also central to most legends and tales which they always have the elder man and woman as main characters (e.g. The crane that bestow its gratitude, fortune from heaven, fortune from earth). The couple as Robinson (1989) suggests is central to the understanding of the household. This is reflected in the invitation sodai make to have the two masked beings into the festival, and them as aspects of good fortune’.
[53] Yoshida (1981) has proposed that foreigners, stones, and drifting materials are conceptualised as marebito or foreign deities, and invited as such to participate of the festival. My experience was that I was always invited to participate in a festival as a matter of courtesy. I imagine that any neighbour would be also invited if he or she would spend time helping or being around the Shrine as I did. However neighbours do not want to be seen as ‘tiresome’ or ‘impolite’ so they leave as soon as they have made their gifts or the event is over. In this respect I don’ t think my inclusion owes much to the idea of marebito but my hosts sense of politeness. Only one in over 45 festivals I assisted I was formally asked to donate sakaki leaf to the deity. The gift that the symbolic guests and actual guest make to the deity. I think this is a very important aspect of the distinction between foreigner and outsider. As an outsider I could never make a gift. As a foreigner I could. This can also be seen in the fact that the masked couple and sodai are the only ones to make a gift. I think that only in this one occasion I was treated like something of a marebito. It happened out of the insistence of a very kind toya and everybody did not welcome it. The sodai accepted it because that Kamikatsu was getting ‘international’ and they had to include the new members, me. Only in this respect, the foreigner, the international being - from beyond seas - I represented was a marebito and as such it is included in the festival. Such symbolic inclusion I must stress only happens through gift giving. In the rest of festivals I was merely an outsider and the issue of internationalisation was never mentioned at all. The pair of guest otafuku and tengu may also suggest the dual nature of deity/society/household, although villagers can separate them individually as well.