The Way of the Gods - Part II

This is part two of a three-part series.  Part one can be found here.

After fighting through crowds of tourists laughing childishly at the "Takeshita Street" sign, Nigerians hawking hip-hop wear and shouting "Yo! Genki!?" at passersby, and the strangely-coiffed, various in-groups of pre-teens clustered around Harajuku Station, my be-dressed wife and a be-suited I made our way past scattered, camera-wielding foreigners and Japanese alike down the long, wide paths beginning at the quiet and stately entrance to Meiji Jingu.  Fifteen minutes later we arrived at a boring administrative building near the honden (main hall) of Japan's largest shrine.  

We entered a lobby of sorts that would have been indistinguishable from a hotel reception area but for the giant chrysanthemum seals ostentatiously displayed everywhere.  After simmering for fifteen minutes or so, we were escorted by a high shrine baba to a modern-looking, pink-carpeted room with ordinary chairs placed flush against all four walls.  Shallow, white china teacups were arranged on brown industrial folding tables set in front of these chairs; a gold-leaf folded screen lay auspiciously at the far end of the room.  At a table in front of the gilded screen sat the couple to be married, with the groom's guests trailing off to the left and the bride's guests stretching to the right.  My wife and I sat at the terminus next to the door in the exact middle of the far wall directly facing the couple.

There were about forty people in the room altogether, almost all of whom were family members, including the younger sister of the bride, who was also our friend and had recently given birth to an apparently quiet, well-behaved baby.  Of the forty allowed to attend the ceremony, there were five non-Shinto priest non-family members: my wife, me, and three other friends of the bride.  The groom, who grew up at Yasukuni Shrine, had no friends who were not also Shinto priests.  My wife had never met him, despite the fact that one of her best friends had dated him for ten tumultuous years; my wife's friend had deferred to all-encompassing heiwa in consciously choosing to never introduced them to each other.  Go figure.

The groom wore a navy blue and black, unobtrusive kimono, versions of which all other male family members wore.  There were some kind of insignia attached to various kimono, the meanings of which lie beyond my knowledge of Japan's sacred practices.  I imagined the insignia connoted rank or concentration or something.  I will admit I'm projecting my understandings of the high ceremonial attire of ancient Western institutions - specifically military, university, and Catholic - but the differences may have been simply coincidental or left to okonomi - the insignia were, perhaps, the traditional Japanese equivalent of the necktie.  

The bride wore the brightest, largest in terms of total cloth area (especially the "tail"), and most intricately adorned and folded kimono I have ever seen: this was bright red and covered with flowers of all colors.  Various attendants obsessively adjusted and readjusted its nooks and crannies.  The bride's hair was up and back in the traditional style but set slightly to the side, and she wore ample yet refined opaque white makeup and bright, shimmering rouge on her lips.  Her face held a blank expression: I couldn't tell whether she was annoyed at having to stamp and sign so much paperwork, whether her copious base had rendered the movement of facial muscles near-impossible, whether she was making every last effort to embody prevailing Japanese notions of expressionless beauty, or all of the above.

I cautiously took my camera out of its vulgar orange case, winked and grimaced awkwardly at the baba presiding over the ceremonial signing and stamping, and whispered to my wife "Is it okay to take pictures?"  I learned that there would be a ten-minute window where it might be moderately acceptable to take shots from certain angles and that where I was sitting just happened to fall into the acceptable range.  After making sure I was not violating any ceremonial stipulations (Cameras were not around when Shinto was codified, so generally their use in recording Shinto ceremony is okay; but sometimes it inexplicably isn't.  I'm sure there's a whole body of philosophical literature on the topic - it being Japan, and the likelihood of ritual and cameras meeting approaching one.), I set up my garishly electric-blue mini-tripod on the brown industrial table in front of me, and got about fifty or so shots of the bride and groom signing and stamping paperwork before I was told that pictures were no longer pleasing to the gods.  The whole thing was over in thirty minutes or so.  I had been served cherry blossom tea (or maybe cherry blossom sake?), but I was too busy taking pictures, consciously trying to be culturally sensitive, and letting my mind wander at the profundity of it all to consider drinking this undoubtedly delicious beverage.  

"Now off to the reception?" I asked my wife.  "No, first we have the ceremony," she answered matter-of-factly.  "Wasn't that the ceremony?" I asked.  "No, that was a pre-ceremony."... Everyone stood up and began to form two parallel lines - one for the bride and one for the groom.  We got in the back of the bride's train and proceeded to follow the procession through the sunny courtyard of Meiji Jingu, past hundreds of aggressive tourists taking aggressive pictures aggressively.

Leading the procession were several Shinto priests holding various ceremonial artifacts such as a club-like object and a broom-like object. (I was a Catholic altar boy for like ten years, and I have no idea what the bell-thingy and the candle-snuffer-thingy are technically called, so lay off.)  These high priests were followed by the bride and groom richly protected in the shadows beneath the kind of big, red, paper umbrella that just screams Japan.  The bride's kimono was held by three or four diligent attendants.  After the bride and groom came family members in order of decreasing immediacy; finally, friends made up the rear.  

Shinto priestWalking in ceremonial procession in front of so many tourists made me feel more than a little self-conscious, like I was outside myself looking at myself.  Most of the foreign tourists were either puzzled at why the Lonely Planet guide didn't have a section on how to participate in Japanese Shinto weddings or pissed off at me for ruining their authentic Japanese experience.  I felt like I had travelled back in time to when I was a altar boy, where every detail of procession was codified down to hand placement and walking style.  

I remembered specifically when I was around ten years old a Pentecostal friend of mine had accompanied us to mass.  When it came time to receive the Eucharist, we just didn't have the heart to tell him he was not welcome to consume the real, non-metaphorical, transubstantiated flesh-and-blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (nor that he would go to Hell-where-there-is-weeping-and-gnashing-of-teeth for being a shameless heretic).  When it was my friend's turn to receive the Eucharist, he totally mucked it up, snatching the flesh of God from the flabbergasted priest with his left hand like a greedy vulture.  The local crazy church lady's jaw dropped at his insolence, and this was all in liberal, godless Massachusetts.  

I didn't want the same shameful fate to befall me here in Japan, so when I noticed my hands automatically folded in the good Catholic manner, I began searching the other procession members to ascertain the correct hand-placement for Shinto procession.  I found no clear answers and so had to rely on my own atomist intuition: it couldn't be that I was supposed to put my hands in my pockets, since there were no pockets when Shinto ritual was first codified.  The Sand People always walk in single-file to hide their numbers.  I tried a sort of default, minimalist stiffening, like Sam from accounting always does, and then switched to a cool-guy, dip-cum-arm-swinging style.  I wondered whether I should look at some of the other foreigners in the crowd and smile or wink or something, but I eventually decided it'd be better to just look vaguely at the ground and be solemn.  I tried putting my hands behind my back like Morpheus before finally just giving up entirely on the very notion of posturing and choosing to put aside my neurotic cultural sensitivity concerns to take in the moment by contemplating the shrine architecture.  My awkward dance had been videotaped by hundreds of people and probably looked like a Mr. Bean sketch. 

I was brought back into the concrete human world by the sound of a taiko being beaten progressively louder and faster over the course of about ten or fifteen seconds, and then I saw the same directly in front of me as the procession entered the sacred matrimonial chamber.  We fanned out along the sides of this heavily-pillared, noticeably claustrophobic room and took our seats on canvas stools to either side of a column of tables facing a tiny altar at the top of a steep staircase.

The next twenty or so minutes comprised a ceremony which has been performed without alteration for thousands of years.  The bride, being a professor of Shinto, and the groom, being a Shinto priest, went through it with aplomb.  Failure to observe correct protocol might mean an evil stamp on the marriage.  I hope my presence didn't mess anything up.

The ceremony started with a general cleansing of the room.  A Shinto priest shook a white paper broom-like thing at the couple and then at us; there was a blessing of the married couple with a golden, shaky-bell thing that generally defies description, but it looked like a small, hand-held Christmas tree.  Shaky sound emerged via one ninety-degree turn of the wrist, followed exactly four seconds later and after a stout bodily swaying to the side by a ninety-degree turn of the wrist in the exact opposite direction.  This blessing was repeated over the reverently bowed heads of the guests - including us - and then again over the couple, by two Shinto priests in perfect temporal concert.

After a variety of readings from Shinto scripture, which required repeated standing, sitting, bowing, and more standing, sitting, and bowing before standing, sitting, and bowing some more, the high priest ascended the steep staircase slowly and right-foot-first on the extreme right-hand side of each stair to the high altar in order to communicate with the gods in ritual form beyond our powers of contemplation, our vantage point being that or mere mortals.

Next it was time to drink Nihonshu, or Japanese sake ("sake" literally means "alcohol").  Red and black, lacquerware saucers were placed in front of everyone, and from a golden kettle priestesses poured small amounts of Nihonshu into each cup with prescribed ritualistic precision.  As musical instruments - including a taiko (drum), koto (like a classical banjo plus harp), and fue (small, wooden flute) - began to connote pleasant chords, first the bride and groom and then all drank small saucers of Nihonshu reverently using both hands.  The still ceremony closed to minimalist, traditional Japanese music in D-minor, with the aforementioned musical instruments accompanied by throat-singing.   

It was time for another procession back to the place where we had the pre-ceremony.  I don't really remember this one so well; my mind was lost in D-minor.