The lunar new year has begun, and it's the year of the Snake. While both Westerners and modern Japanese celebrate the new year on the 1st day of the Western calendar year, there still remain important and popular traditions that revolve around the old Lunar calendar.
I've also myself found that there is something nice about thinking the Lunar New Year as the ”real” new year, or maybe rather a kind of second new year. It leaves a kind of liminal time between the solar and lunar new years. This roughly month-long stretch constitutes one of the worst parts of the year here where I live. Many people start the new year with big resolutions, and they just fall flat on their face because they exit into one of the darkest, coldest and most miserable seasons of the year. It's like trying to start a car stuck in an icy swamp. The end of January isn't still great, but at least there's noticeably more sunlight.
I've tried to embrace this liminal period and be merciful to myself after having an extremely intense 2024. I haven't been completely ”bed rotting” as the kids these days say though. I have put a lot more effort into learning Japanese, and I think it will occupy me for a long time. Going to Japan in 2025 was really my new year's resolution, and I wish to make sure that I will be in the best possible position to get most out of the experience when I go there. The plane tickets have already been bought.
As the season is what it is, and since I have limited resources as a human being, this has meant I haven't put that much effort in a whole lot of other things. Thankfully, where I've had to conserve energies, others have stepped up. Lately this site was updated, and I have Apollo Darkside, who also wrote quite lenghty piece on his experiences, to thank for this. Since I made the decision to start publish content provided by others, I have also received a very good look at Touhou's connections to Shingon Buddhism, as well as archived a series of very informative posts on Shugendo. I'm very thankful for these contributions, and all the new friendships I have built since the start of this all.
As part of my studies into Japanese language and the folklore, culture, history and religion, particularly tied to Touhou, I have decided to start browsing Twitter again. There's certainly been a number of rather interesting discoveries that I've made there. A crucial one is that there appears to be a number of people who are engaged in semi-regular pilgrimmages to holy sites referenced to in Touhou lore. What this means is of course always up to the individual, but there is a very real and not at all uncommon intersection of Touhou and religion in Japan.
There have even apparently been at least one instance of a religious institution taking part in some kind of Touhou-related promotion. While the details of it are still hazy, there still remains a...rather fascinating artefact of this collaboration that goes against a lot of Western notions what is aproriate at a religious institution. I don't think everybody in that community was happy with this one either. That said, Japanese Buddhism has in recent years come up with some things that would be considered rather unusual from Western point of view, such as a sutra-reciting android and a collaboration with a denpa artist. Whether this is renewal through skilled means or desperation is up to those with more intimate knowledge of Japanese Buddhism to judge.
The slit navel visible through the fabric is really the cherry on top.
Setting old collaborations aside, I witnessed at least two Touhou fans taking part in a Matarajin festival that took place between the 19th and 20th of January in Motsu-ji temple. This temple apparently gives out the goshuin stamps of Matarajin, a kind of proof of visit to temple or shrine only during this particular festival. In the past they used to be given out in exchange for donating a sutra you had copied. Later on they became a kind of proof of visit and participation in both Buddhism and Shinto. A belief developed that after you died, you could present your collection of goshuin to the deities as a proof of faith.
Interest in the goshuin dwindled over time, but recently there has apparently been quite a boom of renewed interest in the goshuin. Apparently this has develop a kind of hobbyist element that might be removed from piety, but the full signifigance and meaning of such acts is always between the individual and the faith. Many of the Touhou fans taking part in these pilgrimmages also gather these goshuin. I must admit, I have in the past confused goshuin with ofuda, a type of talisman given out by shrines that is thought to embody a bit of the enshrined deities' power. Perhaps the act of goshuin collecting is a bit ”softer” way to take part in Shinto and Buddhism, be it merely cultural or with some kind of spiritual interest behind it.
It does however appear that some kind of Shinto revival is happening in Japan. Besides goshuin collecting, there appears to have been some kind of uptick in shrine visits and interest towards proper etiquette. Within the Touhou fandom, there also seems to be interest towards the mythologies and tradition that are manifest within the games. Once again, it is very hard to say what exactly it is that people are interested in and what way. But this all does seem to line up with the general spiritual revival that the world has been going through lately.
You can just literally go and translate things written by actual Shinto practitioners.
Speaking of revivals, I have stumbled upon something extraordinary which was so big news I got it from two directions at once, both through a regular of the Esoteric Touhou threads and another person who reached me via the Archive. Recently, a documentary called Shika no Kuni, or Deer Country, came out in Japan. This documentary is about the traditions and Shinto festivals around the Suwa area. The Suwa mythology is of course tied to to Touhou, serving as the basis for the characters associated with the Moriya Shrine. In the documentary, festivals related to the four seasons and the cycle of life are documented. Most remarkable, the crew reconstructed and performed a Shinto ritual that has not been performed for 600 years.
The purpose of this ritual? Two prepare young boys to act as messengers of the kami.
As I have yet to see this documentary (I don't live in Japan, after all, and it's only just come out), I don't know when exactly this ritual was performed. The website of the documentary tells of the young boys living in semi-underground conditions for three months in the middle of winter. Consider that film production requires time for post-production, preparation of materials, marketing etc, this leaves somewhere between November of 2023 and February 2024 as the most likely latest time.
This timing is rather interesting. After all, for me, all of this started around February-March of 2024. The kami who appeared to scrutinize me in my first dream of them was Kanako-sama, and her presence has been among the clearest, loudest ever since. It's also Kanako-sama who managed to reach out to two other people that I know of during 2024. The summer of 2024 also saw a slightly unfortunate chain of events which has seen an intrusive amount of Touhou fans flocking to the real life Moriya Shrine and leaving fan merchandise there, which the shrine cannot depose of, because it is technicaly an offering to the kami.
There is a thin line between devotion and littering.
Could the answer to what has been happening really be so simple?
Rituals are things which carry meaning and power behind them.
At 10 000 branch shrines, the Suwa Taisha shrine network is rather extensive. And while Touhou is in no official capacity associated with them, it has done much to spread awareness of this shrine and it's kami, even beyond Japan. The Moriya characters in Touhou can be seen in some way as the latest iteration of the rich and at times contradictory mythology that is found within that area. The Suwa kami has over the history been seen as a kami, a reincarnation of an enlightened Indian king, a boddhisattva, the warrior Koga Saburo turned into a dragon, a mountain, the nature of Suwa itself...who is not to say that the mythology could not host a further iteration? The kami enshrined within Suwa Taisha are after all a pair. Who says they could not have children? And beyond what is enshrined and told in legends, there is the old deity, said to be defeated, and the mysterious border-gods who dig the earth and bring fertility, Mishaguji...
Some wires have already been crossed when it comes to this Shika no Kuni business.
In Shinto, there is an extremely central idea that things can stay alive and kind of eternally young by renewing themselves. Tradition stays alive not only by being performed over and over again in rituals which take the participants to a timeless time where the cycle happens as it always has, but also by taking new forms, adapting to the times. In every era, every faith there have been those who have listened to the myths as mere stories, enjoyed the gatherings and festivities, displayed outward signs of faith and devotion for one reason and another. And then there have been those who have engaged with it more deeply. For those, there are more than mere mythologies and images and festivities, there is a hidden, spiritual aspect of reality, waiting for us to reach out to it and to receive it's teachings. Perhaps then it is not so ridiculous that one might be able to reach these very same things through Touhou, as far-removed as it's unusual and colorful depictions of these mythologies might be.
Is there a better symbol for this process of eternal renewal than the snake? It most certainly doesn't feel coincidental that a buildup to this kind of great renewal would happens just so that it could come to common knowledege just when the Year of Snake is about to begin. The Suwa mythos certainly mention a lot of snakes and dragons, and that association has carried over to Touhou's depiction of our beloved Moriya Shrine cast too. Not only they are associated with snakes, Kanako-sama has expressed the desire to renew her own nature to keep up with the times...
The recent events all feel almost like a singularity of symbolism, multiple seemingly unrelated things coming together, spelling out a single eternal message:
If you can not shed your skin you will die.
What ZUN deemed ready to ”pass into fantasy” seems to have instead passed straight out of fantasy and history and back into present day reality. The Suwa kami are alive and they want to be seen and heard. We are unfathomably priviledged to be alive and awake to witness this.
I can barely wait untill I get the chance to see and visit the ”Deer Country” myself.
In the meantime, I wish all readers a happy and renewing new Year of the Snake.
-Emissary
