Homecoming

I have been back home from Japan for a couple of weeks as of writing this. I didn’t really feel like jumping onto writing this immediately. I had a lot of stuff that has been kind of waiting to be done since last autumn, and I wanted to clear those things out before doing that. I’ve also wanted to take things more easy. Last year I went straight from six weeks of travel to getting back to work and experiencing some kind of inverse cultural shock. This year the return has been much smoother.

I’ve also re-read Forbidden Scrollery over the past three weeks, and I really loved it. I already did when I read it the first time, but having more context really made it a lot better. I think it might be the best Touhou manga and the 2nd best official print work, the eternal favorite of mine being Symposium of Post-mysticism. I took a lot of notes while re-reading it, and I will be writing some kind of an analysis of it in the near future, which will be part of a larger text looking at youkai-related narratives in Touhou and how the setting resonates with broader themes from youkai history.

Another thing worth mentioning is that I have finished up my very first video script. I have for a very long time wanted to give making videos a shot, and I found a topic that I found simultaneously interesting enough yet manageable enough for a video. I will hope to be done with it in about a month or so.

With that said, I would like to write about some places I visited and things I experienced in the later half of my stay in Japan.

Tetsugakudou Park - Enshrining Inoue Enryou

I discovered that a place deeply related to Inoue Enryou, the “Youkai Professor”, was near Nakano Broadway Mall and Shinjuku, both which I had been intending to visit anyway. The place in question is the Tetsugakudou Park, or “Park of the Philosophy Shrine”. If you have read the long youkai history text I wrote, you might remember Inoue Enryou. If you haven’t, here’s a quick summary that explains why a park with a “Philosophy Shrine” is associated with him.

Inoue Enryou is considered the father of Japanese philosophy in the Western sense of the word. He is these days perhaps best remembered for his youkaigaku, youkai studies, which were essentially paranormal studies with a debunking angle. Inoue was a Meiji nationalist and a keen supporter of the educational reforms of the era. For him, youkaigaku and debunking was part of the modernization process that would clear away old superstitions and delusions and turn Japan into a powerful, rational nation capable of competing with the West.

One might expect such a person to be a staunch materialist, but Inoue was not such a person. It’s actually kind of hard to place his exact positions into a strictly Western framework, as he was also deeply influenced by Buddhism and Confucianism. He believed in the existence of some kind of profound “true mystery” and was critical of people who outright dismissed paranormal and spiritual topics. Inoue worked hard to prove Buddhism as a religion was compatible both with the Japanese nation state and modernism. He had great interest in the workings of the human mind and how it related to the external world. I personally found his philosophical synthesis of Eastern and Western ideas more interesting than his debunkings, but mainstream philosophy seems to these days consider his philosophical work to be full of “metaphysical speculations”.

Whichever the case maybe, the Tetsugakudou park is a rather tangible example of his legacy. This park was originally established by Inoue Enryou for cultivating philosophical thought. This is reflected in the layout of the park, and how different parts of it were named. There was for example a “Cave of the Mystery”, a tiny dark cave that was intended to symbolise the unknowable, truly mysterious aspects of reality. In a sense the park was intended to be a kind of philosophical mandala, which I found a rather intriguing manifestation of Inoue’s Buddhist background. There’s even a gate styled after Buddhist temple gates which would be usually guarded by the Nioh or similarly fearsome figures, which are here guarded by a ghost and a tengu. This I believe is supposed to reflect the power of philosophy to take “youkai”, in Inoue’s view, delusional interpretations of phenomena.

The “Philosophy Shrine” part of the park’s name isn’t just a name, and there are actually several shrine or temple-like structures dedicated to philosophers there. There is the Shrine of the Four Sages which enshrines the fascinating mix of Buddha, Confucius, Socrates and Kant. There’s also the Pagoda of Six Wise Men of the East, enshrining figures such as Prince Shoutoku, Zhuangzhi and Nagarjuna. Prince Shoutoku was also prominently enshrined in a meeting hall, featuring a statue of him looking towards the audience seats. A temple-like structure in the central area enshrined not philosophers, but a kind of cosmogram depicting the emergence of the world from the primordial true mystery. After Inoue’s death, a series of sculptures were added to the park, depicting various philosophers and religious figures from both West and East. An arrangement of four figures facing a round orb representing the primordial true mystery was particularly striking.

One could say that over time one more philosopher has been enshrined in the park, and that is of course Inoue Enryou himself. There is a small museum dedicated to him, and he is indeed remembered as the establishing figure of the park. Based on what I could coax machine translation tools to translate, his original mission of introducing philosophy to visitors appears to be still ongoing. Considering the rather spiritual, borderline religious undertones (overtones?), as well as Inoue’s fierce nationalism (the park also enshrines some kokugaku nativist scholars), I couldn’t help but wonder if the fact that this is a city-owned public park has ever caused political controversy.

Inoue Enryou was a complicated figure, and I don’t personally have any final opinions on him or his work. But it was immensely fascinating to see and experience this kind of mandala-like, concrete expression of his vision of philosophy that would bridge the West and the East and revitalize Japan. Michael Foster wrote about how Inoue tried to change the "landscape of perception”, and in the Tetsugakudou park he seems to have done so in a very concrete form. The temple-like quality and clear influence from how Buddhist temples were constructed was fascinating. Inoue clearly sought a way to express new Western philosophical ideas using a kind of architectural and conceptual language that the Japanese could understand, and in doing so also drawing parallels between this new and unknown territory and what is familiar. It is most remarkable that this kind of process found such a concrete, physical manifestation.

Kamakura - Meeting Matarajin

I had the surprise and pleasure of realizing that over the past two years I had developed quite substantial social networks in Japan. I think I ended up meeting in total with seven people from the Touhou fandom who were interested in meeting up with me. We had a lot of fun, some of it being of the Bar UN Owen variety. But perhaps the most remarkable encounter was one I had while completely sober.

I had been invited to visit Kamakura by someone who is very deeply well-versed in Japanese religions and history and has lived in the country for many years. It was great to have someone so knowledgeable as a guide to this historic city, and I hate to reduce Kamakura proper to a near side-mention here. We visited the Great Buddha of Kamakura, which was an extremely impressive sight to say the least. Visitors could also visit the inside of the Great Buddha, and it was awesome to see the construction of this colossal statue. The craftsmanship that went into it and how it has survived throughout the centuries is extremely remarkable.

We also visited the Tsurugaoka Hachimangu shrine, which was an impressive and powerful place. If my memory serves correctly, this is the shrine where ZUN got married and where he was invited as a guest of honor a few years ago during the setsubun. The photos from that event, him looking almost like a shrine priest in his historical outfit, throwing beans at the crowd, are quite memorable. Hachiman-kami himself is a kami of war and archery, fitting for what was once the seat of the Kamakura Shogunate. We took part in the oharae ritual here, going together through the reed hoop and using the paper hitogata to take away our kegare. Perhaps something of the martial resolve Hachiman-kami is known for seeped into me, as I feel like ever since I have been somewhat better at making decisive choices.

The place that we went to which will be the focus of this text is however a much smaller, much more unknown location, to the point that our taxi driver got lost on the way there. I’m speaking of Jinmuji, a Tendai Buddhist temple in Nuna, technically speaking outside of Kamakura. It’s quite out of the way, located on a steep mountain, rather small and unmanned. After the taxi driver left us off, thanking us for the opportunity to see places she had never seen before, we were truly alone there.

While the shrine’s principal enshrined deity is Yakushi Nyorai, it also enshrines Matarajin in the area of the “back door”. The shrine’s architecture had some unusual features, such as three tiny doors on the top of the roof. What was however most notable there was, for the lack of a better word, the sheer presence.

Now I have been to a location that enshrines Matarajin once before, that being the Amida Hall at Nikko, but Nikko is a super popular and well-known destination which had quite a lot of people milling around. The presence of humans, perhaps that “human ki” as popularity is written with in Japanese, does something that tends to clog up more subtler presences. The complete absence of people other than two very earnest, sincere pilgrims that had come to revere Matarajin allowed the subtler presence to be very notable here. I have been to a lot of places where “it”, the presence of divinity, can be felt strongly, and this was one of the strongest places. Sometimes the sense of being in the presence of something else was so palpable, so hair-raising. When I prayed, I felt it so effortlessly, transparently and clearly. I was told something related to a friend of mine that turned out to be true.

Following a trail from the temple, we ascended a bit towards the mountaintop. The sense of being in the presence of something else than just the companion I had was especially strong in the woods behind the temple. While being there, my companion told me a story from one of the two times they had been visiting the temple before. They had felt strongly called to the woods, but had become completely lost there. Only after they prayed to Matarajin had they found a way out of there.

We slowly made out of the temple grounds, the hallowed ground soon giving way to a much less mysterious but quite pleasant neighbourhood that surrounded the base of the mountain. We ended up visiting a couple shrines in the neighbourhood that my companion lives in, as well as having dinner together. They told me stories of other people they knew, that I was not the only one whose life trajectory had been so dramatically altered after realizing that Touhou is built in divine foundations, and it was Touhou that had made them interested in Japanese spiritual traditions too. I wasn’t surprised to learn of this anymore, but rather that there were other people in somewhat similar situations that I had never been in contact with. It does make me wonder, how many of us truly are out there?

I returned back to my hotel in Tokyo with sore feet and a heart full of gratitude.

Suwa - Raising the Onbashira

I wanted to revisit Suwa for reasons that are partly obvious and partly deeply personal. Last year I had an unbelievably powerful experience there, a life-changing one I would say. I had prayed at Suwa Taisha Maemiya and asked for a sign, something that would show to me that I am not delusional, misguided or being messed around with other spirits pretending to be kami. For someone who had even by that point committed substantial effort to this site this might seem like an odd thing to ask, but I think I was behind all the textual swagger and fire and fury feeling confused. It is good to be open and honest in front of the gods, and my desire to know whether I was crazy, misguided or deceived or if I had really been called out to Suwa was the most open and honest thing in the moment.

The return reply came later that night as a rapturously powerful visionary state I was taken into while trying to sleep. I had a vision of the surface of Lake Suwa growing infinitively wide, stretching open and sinking into the lake. I saw white snakes, golden mist and tree roots. I saw myself as a tiny baby again, and Kanako-sama was holding me. I saw a tree on which a single flower blossomed and I felt so impossibly connected and welcome and at home, and I understood I had been welcomed to be a very distant and unusual part of something very ancient, very deep and very wide. I felt like wherever I would be from that point onwards, I would feel at home, and this has held true. For these reasons I have the ofuda (or shinpu as they call it) of Suwa Taisha on the place of the ujigami shrine ofuda on my kamidana. This is closest to being part of a lineage that can be traced to Japan that I can imagine being.

So in some sense Suwa was a kind of strange homecoming. I didn’t have anything quite as drastic happen this time around, because there was no need for such. I did a one-day, four shrine pilgrimage of the Suwa Taisha shrines, visited Akimiya multiple times as I stayed close to it, I visited the Moriya Shrine in Okaya and the Onbashira and Harmo museums. I also enjoyed a local neighbourhood bath, got to drink local milk and sake and overall had a great time. I also experienced my first earthquake there. That all said, I did have a really wonderful experience of the numinous variety on the last night while I visited Akimiya after dark, being the only person present in the shrine. Rather some drastic revelation, it was rather a confirmation of being on the proper course for the time being.

I ended up talking quite a lot with the people in the guesthouse, which seemed to double as some kind of a neighbourhood gathering spot. I had a lot of difficulty discerning who was working there, who were family members of people working there, who were guests and who were just people from the neighbourhood hanging around. I guess that was the point of it all, and it was quite fascinating to see. People were curious about where I had come from and why I had come there, and some of them knew of Touhou Project. While I am not fluent in Japanese, I did manage to hold some semblance of conversation, even though sometimes people involved had to resort to using Google Translate. It also turned out that one of the people working in the guesthouse had travelled to my corner of the world. If I had 100 yen every time I had met someone from Suwa over these past two years who had been to where I live, I would have 300 yen, which is not much, but it’s a bit odd, and 300 yen buys you a drink or two from a vending machine.

Perhaps the most impactful single event in Suwa this time was visiting the Onbashira museum. Unsurprisingly, the museum is dedicated to the Onbashira matsuri, a notable festival of the Suwa Taisha shrines. During this festival, the onbashira pillars that surround the shrines are renewed. New trees are cut down, and people ride them down a hill. The festival is dangerous, and there have been people who have gotten injured, even died in it. It is also based on everything I saw in the museum, including a short documentary, absolutely spectacular, and it is my dream to witness the matsuri with my own eyes.

The festival is a demonstration of the “power of the people”, as the man who served as my guide told me. It exists because of the community, and for the community, and the cutting and moving of the trees using traditional methods is an enormous effort. It is extremely remarkable that such a living link to deep past persists and is treasured as a genuine, broad collective effort that the locals are proud of.

The salvatory power of collective effort is a cliche, and Japan is of course a country that also has tremendous loneliness in it. Yet when I look at Suwa, I can’t help but compare it to the kind of semi-urban, semi-rural places in my country, which are mostly just kind of dismal places. There’s no past, there’s no future, there’s just a thin, meager lifeline of remaining local industries and agricultural subsidies. Japan too has been deeply influenced by industrialization and urbanization, not everyone shares the interest in tradition or takes part in it, and there are many places there that are turning desolate. Yet they have something that places the focus on the land, on the people, on the continuity of life. There is a point of focus, a purpose for staying in places that are not glittering metropolises.

I could wax poetic about the differences between Europe and Japan, but I don’t think I will climb on that soapbox this time. What I will say is that this “raising of the Onbashira” is extremely relevant to Touhou, as ultimately the popularity, success and the kind of meaning Touhou Project brings to people’s lives is a collective effort. I sincerely wish that the fandom, even as the gachas and spin-off games become more popular, will not forget the co-creative doujin aspect of it. It’s really quite incredible how it connects different cultures, times and places together, how many different people have come together because of it and continue to come together because of it. It really is these deep connections that give it so much power and meaning. It is my sincere wish that in the future I could help to organize a more, broad collective effort to help people connect to the deep roots of Touhou.

Kyoto - Flight of the Hagoromo

Last year I stayed in Kyoto for six days, but out of those six, I was half-sick for a day and bedridden for two, recovering from the intense fever only barely in time to leave for Nagoya. There were a lot of things on this journey that seemed like little repetitions of things that happened last year, and I somehow managed to be sick in Kyoto again. What I had in Suwa dismissed as a nose irritated from air conditioning turned out to be a little flu. Thankfully I was over it with a single evening of fever in Kyoto during a day I had reserved for resting anyway.

I retraced some of my steps in Kyoto, visiting Seimei Jinja, Fushimi Inari Taisha, Gion and the shopping streets around Nishiki. Perhaps the most notable new places I visited in Kyoto proper were the Nue pond and the associated small Nue shrine, and the Nijo castle. Out of these two, the Nue pond was much more personally resonant. It was really fascinating to see this legendary encounter enshrined like this up to the present day in a rather unassuming little park. The place certainly had a vibe of its own for sure. Nijo castle was a very scenic place, and it was a nice experience to see the former seat of power of the Tokugawa shogunate in the old capital up close. I particularly liked the castle gardens.

The most impactful experience I had in Kyoto was however related to Noh. Last year I had wanted to visit Gion Corner, which offers 50 minute long events that present various Japanese traditional performing arts to visitors. It is admittedly quite touristy, but I felt like it was an opportunity to get touch with this side of Japan in an approachable form. If my journey last year was overplanned, this year it was a bit underplanned, and I had not found the time or energy to explore options for experiencing traditional performing arts in a proper manner. So the 50 minutes at Gion Corner would do. Unfortunately the kind of touristy nature of it all was reflected in the composition of the audience, and I felt deeply ashamed for people who were visibly disengaged or made unneeded noise during the performances. I can’t for the life of me understand people who travel so far to just be so disinterested in what is actually going on.

For me the highlight of the performance was a short Noh performance, the third act of Hagoromo to be exact. While it was the part of the performance that clearly went over the heads of most of the audience, as evidenced by the idle chatter, it had a power to it that could not be diminished by the disrespect shown towards it. Noh has a certain shamanic quality to it, with its supernatural narratives, the otherworldly chanting of the music, the masked performers and the deliberate moments. This isn’t just my interpretation, as I have seen this view presented in both an NHK documentary as well as a Japanese person on social media.

I was absolutely spellbound by the performance. It is extremely difficult for me to express in words what the appeal is, but I think it is that the lead actor managed to embody a spirit and bring it forth in front of an audience for a while. Hagoromo is a story that Touhou fans might be indirectly familiar with, as its basic plot was parodied in one of the print works. The plot of Hagoromo tells the story of a celestial maiden who descends to Earth. A man finds her veil, which allows her to travel to the heavens, essentially abducting the maiden. She pleads to return back to the heavens, the man feels regret over his actions and allows her to return, on the condition that he gets to see her dance one last time. The third act of Hagoromo is this last dance. In Touhou, this was parodied as Nagae Iku talking about celestial maidens abandoning their posts and the boredom of heavens by leaving “husband-hunting veils” on Earth.

So the spirit being embodied in the play was a celestial maiden. It’s all the more remarkable that this act of embodiment was performed so well and so gracefully by a man who was to my eyes rather tall and stocky by Japanese standards. So this act of letting this maiden descend among witnesses had absolutely nothing to do with surface-level physical characteristics, but was an act of some kind of deeper embodiment. It was remarkable, and there were tiny instances where I could almost see her, not the actor, but the maiden proper on stage instead. It had been quite a long while since I had any kind of apparitional experiences strong enough to even momentarily override external perception of the world, which made this all the more fascinating.

I returned to the hotel full of resolve to experience a proper noh play the next time I return to Japan. The experience was extremely impactful, but I still don’t quite know how to articulate it. I think it might just have been the first time seeing someone embodying something like this, and such of course broadens the horizons of possibility. I’m not sure if there is some great teaching to it. Hagoromo itself is arguably after all a fairly simple story of how you shouldn’t abduct women, with the subtext of finding enjoyment in the transient things in life, like seeing the dance of a celestial maiden. A few days later I had a dream where I saw the maiden briefly, but I barely remember anything of it save for her presence and how she looked. It was probably just a little parting gift to someone who was actually paying attention. After all, you miss the celestial maidens and other transient phenomena if you are not present in the moment.

Enryakuji - Microscope of the Heart

One of the places I had wanted to go near Kyoto last year was Enryakuji, the headquarters of Tendai Buddhism. Enryakuji is historically a very fascinating place. It was built northeast of Kyoto to protect it from malign influences, the direction of the “demon gate” per Taoist geomancy. Many important figures in Japanese Buddhism trained here, many of them going on to establish their own schools and sects of Buddhism. Enryakuji used to be a site of immense spiritual, political and even military power, as the temple had its own warrior monks. Considering the power the temple had, it is no wonder that Oda Nobunaga decided to put it to the torch in 1571 to better consolidate power in his attempt to unify Japan.

Tendai is doctrinally deeply fascinating, as it was an attempt at a comprehensive synthesis of the forms of Buddhism that existed back when it started to form as a separate school of Buddhism. Part of my interest towards Tendai comes from the fact that Matarajin was mainly a Tendai Buddhist deity. In fact, Matarajin used to be enshrined at Enryakuji. I guess one of the reasons why I went to Enryakuji was to look for traces of Matarajin, and perhaps in some sense I found them. But I found much more too.

It’s not that the journey there was entirely free of elements resonant with Matarajin though. I had initially planned to go to Nara on the day I ended up going to Enryakuji, but when I got to the Kyoto Station, I learned that a derailed train had led to cancellation of train service to Nara. So I hastily changed my course towards Enryakuji, doing perhaps the most underplanned leg of my journey. This lack of planning contributed to the sense of not knowing what I was even doing there. I think the sheer monumentality and power of Enryakuji and Mt. Hiei contributed to that too. The place certainly had a presence, and one that made my motivations for going there seem honestly very trivial and even childish.

I don’t know if I would consider myself a Buddhist. I attended a local Zen group and recited the vows to save all beings as part of the zazen, but I grew lazy and distant from the practice. I am a deeply, profoundly imperfect human being and Buddhism magnifies this feeling for me. It’s a good thing that it does, but part of the myriad imperfections is of course the desire to run away from hard things that need to be done. After some events that happened last year, I feel like I have an outstanding debt to Kannon-sama, which I don’t know how to repay. I find being compassionate to others exceedingly difficult. The one Buddhist deity I find most resonant is an obscure historical deity whose role was to be a deity of obstacles. I think it’s because when I look at my life, the vast majority of most valuable experiences have involved overcoming some kind of “obstacle” or hardship, or learning things the hard way. Unfortunately this has warped my sense of compassion, and I tend to think if everyone else would just go through hard and terrible things, then they would be better for it. It’s not like I have gone out of my way to torment people or make them miserable, but I have been excessively harsh to people seeking help.

I had been clouded by such an incident during my stay in Japan. I had been excessively harsh and unhelpful to a friend undergoing a difficult situation and I had made things worse. I hurt someone close to me and I regretted it deeply. This was not the first time something like this had happened, but this was the first time where I, for whatever reason, felt like I had done something indefensible. Maybe it’s because this person was able to articulate how I had messed up. Maybe I had grown distant from the kind of things that had caused me to assume this type of thinking and acting in the first place. Maybe reciting the vows a dozen times had actually changed something. I don’t know. But I know I did wrong and things would have to change.

Something in Enryakuji ripped this all to the surface from me. I had been able to shove it all aside for a while, but having arrived to this particular holy land, it was no longer possible. I wandered around the temples, and I wondered what was a person like me even doing there. There is really no need for me to flagellate myself over text, but I felt so out of place, lost and uncomfortable with myself.

I eventually left for a part of the temple complex that required about a 20 minute hike from the main area. During this hike I was most of the time all by myself. At some point I came to a simple conclusion followed by an equally simple resolution. There was no point in feeling bad over what I had done, because feeling bad about it wouldn’t really change anything. The only thing that would change anything was making a resolute commitment to not repeating past modes of behavior. Feeling guilty and bad is like an inflammation, a necessary signal, but it is not the cure. Only doing things differently is the cure.

As I arrived at the temple dedicated to Shakuyamuni Buddha himself, I felt that maybe I was exactly at the right place after all, that this macroscopic manifestation of Buddhism was some kind of microscope of the heart, and that as a person who has a very easy life I could suffer through acknowledging my faults and actually doing something about them. I bought a goshuincho, and as I made my way back I collected the goshuin seals from the temples which were handing out such, to make sure that I would have some concrete reminder of this all for myself.

Enryakuji is an extremely beautiful place, and there is something in there which can transform clueless tourism into something completely else if you allow it to. I hesitated to write this because it straddles a dangerous line between self-pity and self-praise. Neither of these is the point. The point is that places like these can change you if you let them.

Some visitors might have been disappointed to see the main temple under repair, but it gives me hope. As long as these places are treasured and taken care of, the potential for people to experience something life-changing here can exist. In a year or two, the scaffolding will be gone, and hopefully there won’t be another Oda Nobunaga in the coming millenia. I had the privilege of seeing the temple in a process of rebirth, as visitors could visit a temporary area set up under the scaffolding. I hope it endures for centuries and that many others will be able to have a look into themselves and find the resolution to do things differently.

Nara - Shadow of the Thousand-Armed Kannon

Nara was one of the places I had also wanted to visit last year while at Kyoto, but couldn’t because I got sick. I managed to get there the day after visiting Enryakuji and it turned out to be a very fascinating place. Much like Kyoto, it is a former capital of Japan, and known best for historical sites these days. Nara is older than Kyoto, and in fact it was the capital before Kyoto was. As such, one can find traces of things there which you can’t really find elsewhere, such as certain old schools of Buddhism which are basically extinct elsewhere in Japan.

My itinerary in Nara followed mostly quite established patterns. I visited Kohfukuji, went to Todaiji through the Nara Deer Park and then to Kasuga Taisha. I had interest in visiting the Nara National Museum, but ran out of time and energy for it. Despite sticking to such a well-worn route, the day saw two rather strange incidents unfolding. But before I get to those, I would like to start with Kohfukuji, or rather the museum that is adjacent to it.

Kohfukuji was the tutelary temple of the powerful Fujiwara clan and is the headquarters of a school of Buddhism that belongs to yogakara, a “consciousness-only” view of Buddhism. It’s a very small sect in Japan these days, and quite distinct from the later schools of Japanese Buddhism. The museum that is part of the temple reflects the long history the place has very well, and it was here that I saw one of the most memorable things on my journey.

There’s a huge statue of the Thousand-Armed Kannon in the museum. What made it especially memorable to me was the choice of lighting in the museum. I don’t know enough about these things to really describe how it was done, but the arrangement of lights cast really powerful and stark shadows from the various statues exhibited. These included the Thousand-Armed Kannon. I was mesmerized by the enormous and strange shadow it cast, the multitude of arms forming almost honeycomb-like structures emerging from a pillar of darkness.

It’s hard to put into words what made it so fascinating. It wasn’t just how it looked. The choice definitively felt intentional, but I don’t know enough about yogakara philosophy and beliefs to really know what was being communicated. But I can give my own interpretation, which might be way out of line compared to what the people who created the museum intended.

My favorite Buddhist text out of the ones I have read (which is not that many to be honest) is the Lotus Sutra. In chapter 25, it is revealed that Bodhisattva Kannon is capable of manifesting in basically any form imaginable to suit the needs and circumstances of different people. I have interpreted this to mean that not only can Kannon manifest in different forms as the situation calls for it, basically anyone and anything - including you - is capable of acting in a way that brings forth Kannon-like qualities. So in some sense Kannon has an enormous “shadow” of sorts. At the same time, the various manifestations and representations of Kannon are just that, manifestations and representations, which have been subject to change over time. So the “true form” of Kannon, if Kannon even has anything like such, might “look” more like the shadow on the museum wall with its strange geometric structures than the statue which ostensibly casts the shadow.

Going through the Deer Park was a strange experience, as deer are something which I regard as wild animals, and it was strange to see them mingling with humans in such great numbers. Last year I visited Miyajima, which also had deer mingling with humans, but the numbers in Nara were much greater than in Miyajima. An old man was feeding the deer with acorns, and offered me one to give to the deer. I found that a nice random encounter.

I visited Todaiji, which houses an enormous statue of Dainichi Nyorai, or Vairocana Buddha. The statue was extremely impressive, and what often gets overlooked is that it has some extremely imposing attendant statues accompanying it. The school of Buddhism that runs the Todaiji temple is Kegon, once influential but now a small minority sect. It’s the Japanese version of Huayan or Avatamsaka Buddhism, centered around the Buddhavatamsaka Sutra. I have not read this enormous sutra which has been described with terms such as “holographic” and “psychedelic”, nor am I particularly versed in Kegon beliefs. I found it intriguing that it apparently shared the reverence for Dainichi Nyorai that Shingon also has.

Moving on, I visited a museum that is part of the Todaiji temple, and it’s here where the first strange incident of the day happened. Among the items in the exhibition were masks used in a gigaku performance that was held on the inauguration of the temple, which happened almost 1300 years ago. As I was looking at the masks one of them appeared to rapidly vibrate for a few seconds. I have no explanation for this, nor do I know what it was supposed to mean, if anything. I imagine something like a 1300 year old mask used in the inauguration of a temple has acquired quite the psychic patina. Perhaps it had just been a while since it had last been looked at so intently.

From Todaiji I moved to Kasuga Taisha, which is surrounded by sacred woods which people are not allowed to enter. If Tohfukuji is the tutelary temple of the Fujiwara clan, then Kasuga Taisha is the family shrine of the Fujiwara clan. It is a very serene and beautiful site, with paths surrounded by mossy stone lanterns that lead to the various shrines that make up the shrine complex. The shrine enshrines four deities, Ame-no-Koyane, Himegami, Futsunushi and Takemikazuchi, who are together worshipped as Kasuga Daimyojin.

It was this place where I had the second strange experience of the day. To enter the inner areas of the main shrine, you have to pay a fee. I did, as I was very curious to see what would be in there. Following the designated path, I eventually found myself outside of the shrine building, in an area that had simply an offering box and a torii gate opening out into the mountain woods. I made my offering and prayed, I don’t remember what for, but likely simply an expression of gratitude and wish that the shrine would endure. The forest looked beautiful and intriguing, so I decided to stay there for a while.

I started hearing a sound which was almost like an enormous but distant swarm of bees humming. I tried to figure out where the sound was coming, but it seemed to be coming simply vaguely from above and off to the woods. Several other people passed by the offering box and torii and made their prayers, but no-one else seemed to either or pay attention to the sound. As I stayed there, the sound seemed to grow louder and more diffuse. I eventually decided to move on, puzzled by what I had heard.

As I entered back the shrine itself, I heard the few last lines of a prayer being recited and saw a priest come out of the main building. So while I had been hearing the buzzing noise by the torii gate, a ceremony had been going on in the shrine itself. Later I talked about this experience with the friend who I had met up with in Kamakura, and they told me that bees are among animals considered messengers of the kami. They were of the opinion that the sound, whether it was a physical, distant swarm of bees or something else, was simply a way for the local kami to let me know that they had noticed me.

As of writing this, there has been a very recent announcement that a new Hifuu Club CD is coming out, and that it will feature some kind of adventure set in Nara. I can totally understand it as a setting, after all it has quite the deep history, was an enormous construction effort (playing on the “artificial utopia” theme of the CD) and it seems to have a certain magical quality even as it is a popular tourist site. Perhaps the lesson of the shadow of the Thousand-armed Kannon is simply that not everything is so immediately obvious, and that in proper light, material reality will reveal something astonishing.

Tokyo - Closing the Loop

I spent one full day and two half days in Tokyo before I returned home. By this point I was very tired from my travels and had done most of what I wanted to do in Tokyo the first time I was there this year. There was however one place I wanted to see before leaving, which I had planned to visit already last year, that place being Seitenkyuu temple in Saitama.

Seitenkyuu is the largest Taoist temple in Japan. It would stand out even in the Chinatown of Yokohama, but especially so in Saitama, surrounded by farmland and what looked like small industrial or business properties. Both the story behind it and the architecture are very striking. It was built by a Taiwanese businessman who suffered from a serious illness, but recovered after praying to the Three Pure Ones, primordial Taoist deities. It is customary to build a temple to the deities if they perform a miracle like this, and the businessman initially planned to build a temple in Taiwan. He was however instructed in a dream that he should build the Temple in Saitama, Japan instead, a place he had no previous connection to. Work began in 1985, and was completed in 1995. The age of miracles apparently didn’t end so long ago, if ever.

The place itself has an entry fee of 500 yen, which I found quite modest myself, but an exception to the norm of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines which are usually free to enter. I found it endearing that after paying the entry fee, I was not greeted with the kind of “o-mairi o youkoso”, welcome to the pilgrimage, as one would expect, but with “go-yukkuri gozaimasu”, a very polite form of “take it easy”. The richly detailed architecture of the temple is amazing, and I certainly see why Miko’s stage in Hopeless Masquerade was modeled after this place, even though this temple is a modern creation.

I think I had one of the most “I have left the tutorial zone” experiences in the temple itself. In the inner area, there was an old man who explained to me about the temple in Japanese. I found myself understanding a surprisingly large amount of what he was explaining, no doubt because of my interest in things like onmyodo. I even managed to ask him (albeit with the help of Google Translate), how I should pray in the temple. With a mix of Japanese, Google Translate and gesturing I managed to buy the incense bundle, light it and do the twelve bows, praying for the prosperity of the Tai Chi group I am part of.

As I made my way out of the temple, I saw a group of three very alt-looking Japanese young adults or late teenagers enter the temple. I had never seen people dressed up in a way that stood out so much in shrines or temples. I wondered if the place had some kind of appeal to people who found mainstream Japanese religions too formal, traditional and constricting.

Going back to Tokyo, I felt the detour to Saitama and Seitenkyuu was worth it, and felt quite accomplished. With that done, I had done everything I really wanted to do last year and this year. However, I still had some time, and decided to follow through on a plan I had thought of after I saw a familiar name at the youkai exhibition I visited on my first tour in Tokyo this year.

I had planned to check out two sites associated with Taira no Masakado, an infamous Heian-era rebel who tried to overthrow the emperor of Japan, and who had since become subject of one of Japan’s most famous stories of vengeful ghosts, as well as become deified.

After Masakado’s rebellion was crushed, he was executed. The emperor wanted his head to be taken as far as possible from the back-then capital, and his head was sent off to and buried in a small fishing village in the area of what is today Tokyo. Soon enough, the locals started reporting that an apparition of the severed head haunted the village. A shrine was built to appease the spirit of Taira no Masakado. The fact that some people considered him a kind of folk hero who tried to “stick it up to the man” also likely contributed to the decision to build the shrine. Over centuries it became told that whenever the shrine was neglected, natural disasters would strike.

Eventually the area of present-day Tokyo became the new capital as the Tokugawa shogunate consolidated its rule over Japan. Somehow, Edo castle ended up being built quite near the mound where Masakado’s head had been buried. The Shogun however grew uneasy over the idea of living so near to such a powerful and insubordinate spirit, and ordered the shrine to be moved further away from the castle. The shrine would end up in Kanda, and become known as Kanda Myojin. These days it is only about a 10 minute walk from Akihabara station, extremely close to the busy Electric Town. While the shrine these days also enshrines Daikokuten, a deity associated with wealth who is quite resonant with this urban hive of commerce, I wonder what Taira no Masakado himself would think of being enshrined right next to Akihabara. I had visited Kanda Myojin before, but it is a really nice shrine, so a retour there was quite nice. It also gave me the excuse to visit Akihabara again.

From Kanda I moved to where the burial mound itself is. As mentioned before, the Edo castle was built quite close, less than a kilometer away from this site. Well, these days this Edo castle is better known as the Imperial Palace. Yes, the gravesite of the head of the man who in the Heian era tried to overthrow the Emperor is now in the same neighbourhood as the Emperor of Japan! I think this is such an incredible twist and turn of history.

The mound is located right next to a towering skyscraper. It is immaculately maintained, and to my surprise it contains an offering box. The site had an astonishingly powerful presence for something so small and in immediate proximity to the urban core of Tokyo. A group of people were praying there very earnestly. One of them just kind of ushered me in to join them, and when it came my turn to make an offering and pray, I had absolutely no idea what to pray for. I had not come prepared for the eventuality that this would be a site of prayer, not just a historical landmark. I got the feeling that people would pray for things like peace here, so I prayed for peace for Japan and Tokyo.

I walked around the publicly accessible parts of the Imperial Gardens for a while before darkness fell on the city, and I made my way back to my hotel, thoroughly exhausted from the activities of the day. Soaking in the bath, I felt both very complete, but also that I had only barely started exploring the country, and that it would still hold many surprises for me.

The Homecoming

Whereas last year I experienced a kind of reverse culture shock when returning home, this year’s return was much smoother. I think some of the things I was upset about last year, the sense of people just having kind of given up, were and are still valid. But I have realized that there is very little or nothing I can do as a single human being. What I can do is not give up myself.

I made the conscious choice to try to find places that could be something like Kasuga Taisha or Suwa Taisha here. Of course we don’t have places like that, our holy sites were mostly either destroyed, defaced or repurposed until they became unrecognizable. But I have discovered there are places surprisingly close to me that carry something like what I felt in the great shrines. There is simply nothing there to enshrine them in a religious sense like in Japan. Rather than torii gates and shrine buildings we have nature trails and bureaucratic lines on paper dividing not “profane” and “sacred” but “general use land” and “nature sanctuary”.

This process of finding local sacred sites began earlier this year for me, with me becoming more familiar with local old traditions and shamanism, as well as exploring the city and the little islands of nature we have in the city through a bit of a different perspective. There are really quite incredible places here which I think a lot of people take for granted or don’t pay attention to. I really didn’t used to do so either. As I keep moving around the city, both more urban and more natural parts of it with new perspective and purpose, it starts feeling more like home, not just a human-consuming machine which I once felt it to be.

If last year’s journey was a kind of confirmation of the reality of what I have been going through (as much as I might have at times later doubted it), this year’s was about closing open loops, revisiting places, finding out that what was once strange is now familiar, and making the kind of connections I have been making more solid by actually meeting the people. While nothing in the journey reached quite the explosive phantasmagoric heights of last year, I had some really powerful experiences there.

I have returned with a new resolve to make the best of the time I have here, and to take better care of myself and people close to me. I feel like I gained so much clarity, and returned back much better aligned than I left. And I believe that I don’t need to go to Japan to re-align myself again should I lose my way. This doesn’t mean I don’t want to go again - I do and I plan to - but rather that I think I can maintain this connection better back here now. And the next time I go, I won’t have any open loops, and I can have an entirely different type of adventure, go to different places, experience something new.

I have been trying to better articulate “what’s the point of all of this” both while I was in Japan and back home. I still don’t have a definitive answer to this, but I think there is something just profoundly healing and realigning with connecting to the invisible world. My life was an absolute, complete mess before all of this, and while none of this hasn’t instantly fixed anything, the difference is remarkable. I think “this all”, whatever it is, allows you to connect to the eternal process of the co-creation of the world. Every single act we do is an act of reverence towards something, and I think it’s much better if we become conscious of this and start choosing what we revere, what we work towards, both as individuals, and as collectives. How to articulate this all better in context of this site is something I have to think about.

I’ve returned back home in a much more rested, grounded, centered state, with much less urgent things screaming at me on my to-do list. I have come to understand this all will take time, a lot of time, and I will have the time to do it. I feel like the hardest 80% of the work for this site to get the core contents to be where I want them to be is done. The big youkai history text was at times a too all-consuming obsessive push, but I am more or less gracefully over that hill now. What remains of the youkai section I think will be much more “fun” to do, consisting of things like youkai-related story analysis of various Touhou games and printworks. I don’t know when the next big section is done, hopefully by Christmas. I have already given myself the permission to take it easy from autumn onwards. Until then, there is still farming and harvesting to be done, not all of it related to the Archive though.

After I got home and settled down for a couple of days, I booted up Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom for the first time in two years. Back then I had only about a half year of experience with Touhou games, and found it completely impossible to play even on Easy. I think I got filtered by Doremy’s stage, not even her as a boss, but her stage. Trying it again, I breezed through all characters on Easy in a couple of days. Now, Easy is Easy and I found the Normal too much of a slog for me to start investing time in a pretty busy period of my life. Nevertheless, I was surprised by how much I had improved in these games over the past two and half years. There’s another thing which I have been doing for about two years now, that being Tai Chi, and I have gone from a stumbling beginner to a…somewhat less stumbling not-quite-beginner.

This has for the first time in my life really demonstrated the power of doing something and just sticking to it. Everything before this has been either things which have felt “natural” and “easy” to me or fitful starts and stops of intense effort and crashing out, where any kind of progress is very hard to see, if there is any. There’s also a few things I put effort into which I ended up largely abandoning. This got me thinking, how much more fit I would be if I seriously committed to going to the gym, how much I would change if I just kept making better choices, little by little. It’s given me a lot of resolve. I will prioritize my own health and well-being and things and choices that support those over anything else, and this includes the Archive. In the long term, I think this might mean that the updates will trickle in more slowly, but they will trickle. This will not be yet another crash and burn. This serves a greater purpose than my need to be seen and heard, transcends my own little whims and fancies. I need to be in the best possible condition to keep doing this as long as I am needed to do this. Eventually, I believe, there will be others raising the metaphorical onbashira too. It was deeply fascinating to witness places that are embodiments of higher principles and the divine, but ultimate our lives are the true monument to the gods. I need to, we all need to, make these monuments worthwhile.

Best regards
-Emi