Japanese Ceremony for Peace

ZHANG:
And in Jerusalem, a Japanese Buddhist association comes to pray for world peace. They are performing a ancient cultural ceremony for Israel's 60th Anniversary.

STORY:
300 members of the Japanese Agon Shu association arrived to Jerusalem in order to perform an ancient cultural ceremony, focusing on promotion of world peace and encouraging relations between different countries.

[Dr. Toshiki Mizuno, Associate Professor]:
For our Japanese we experienced a sad war in the second world war so war changes the mentality of our human life so it is very important to keep peace. Mr. Kiriyama told us that world peace is the most important thing so I came here to wish world peace.

The ceremony includes the use of the ancient Japanese language and colorful traditional clothing. The focus of the ceremony is a small campfire, where pieces of wood with wishes for world peace will be thrown in.

[Makoto Ishikawa, Student]:
One is actually saying, this is world peace from Israel, the other one is about write a wish of anything you like and what we do with this wish stick once it has been written is that when the fire ceremony starts over there we will throw these things to the fire and we believe that once we throw those things all the wishes on this wish stick will come true.

The Agon Shu Associations relationship with Israel also opened the door to increased Japanese tourism.

[Anna Garwolinska, Public Relations Consultant]:
We prepared in Japan a Campaign, advertising campaign which reached more than a hundred million people so in every station you have a big poster saying about Jerusalem, saying about Israel.

The Agon Shu Association holds this ceremony annually in Japan as well as holding similar ceremonies for peace all over the world. Amongst the places were Auschwitz, Paris and New York.


NTD, Israel.

Category:

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[milkey203]

You can see the ideal mixture of Shinto & Buddhism.

First, Shinto purify the sacred area, then Buddhist fire ceremony starts. In the front of alter, there are a golden stupa where a real Buddha's cremains in.

It is believed that the sacred relic bring a miracle to pass.

Pray for world peace.

[xBBrowser]

A Japanese Buddhist?

He is the believer of Shintoism of Japan.