 Hello and good evening, my name is Fabio Gigi, I'm the chair of the Japan Research Centre here at SOAS and it is with great pleasure that I welcome you to the last and perhaps judging by the audience, the most illustrious event of the JRC and also the last one of the year. Now our speaker tonight will be known to most of you. He indeed told me that he last spoke at SOAS in 2006 in a talk that was organized by Professor Lucia Dolce, who's also here tonight. Professor Yosef Kibort is a senior research fellow, now retired, of the French Centre Nationale de la Recherce Scientifique and a member of the Centre de Recherce sur les civilisations de l'Asie Oriente à la Collège de France. His PhD thesis on the religious life of a Japanese rural community was based on several years of ethnographical fieldwork in a mountain village of central Japan. He also holds a degree in ethnology and another one in Korean studies with concomitant fieldwork in Korea. During his academic career, he taught at the University of Paris Nantes and was guest professor at Chunnam University in Korea, the University of Zurich and Hose University in Japan. He also was the president of the European Association of Japanese Studies as well as the Société Francaise des Etudes Japonaises. His repeated fieldwork in Korea in Japan and Korea bore on popular creeds and cults in the last few years, particularly on amulets and talismans in far eastern culture. So we will follow a traditional academic format for tonight with the lecture first and then ample opportunity to comment and ask questions. For the people online, thank you for joining us. You can already start feeding your questions into the Q&A function as the talk goes on, but you can also raise your hand afterwards and we will unmute you. The talk tonight bears the title, the talisman of visa emblem of the Japanese Empire, but I understand that there has been a slight change already. So please join me now in welcoming Professor Josef Kibbutz to the JRC. Thank you very much. It's an honor to be here. Yes, Fabio just announced a possible change in the title of this talk. Actually, on the website, the easy talisman is called an emblem of Japan. Now, I changed the title to Japan in a talisman, which seems to me better to show that this talisman is not only an emblem on the surface, but it is a very deep axis or core of the Japanese soul, so of Japan as such. Now it has also a political dimension which makes it even more important, but you will see that in the course of the lecture. Yes, there is one other thing. The term of talisman as such. Now there is an article, for example, by one of our colleagues, John Bream, on the same talisman on the same in Japanese. There is the encyclopedia of Shinto studies of the Kokuga Queen, which has an English version. In both cases, the term is amulet. John Bream uses amulet and the Shinto, the encyclopedia of the Kokuga Queen studies, has amulet. Now there is, for people who study, who take charms or magical objects of this kind, there is a clear distinction made between a talisman and an amulet. For if the commonly accepted distinction is stated in the standard dictionary of folklore by the funk and buginals, or folklore, mythology and legend, and there you find this difference stated in the following terms. A talisman is a wonder-working object, a charm possessing and transmitting certain qualities as opposed to an amulet, which is a passive protector or preventive charm. The amethyst worn to protect its wearer from the effects of alcohol is an amulet. I've never tried it. I want to draw the magician's wand from the magician's wand and transforming one of the fairies are talismans. The active principle of the talismans clearly distinguishes it from other charms, so often talisman and amulet, like in the present case, both usually small and carry on the person of the possessor, are confused in common usage. Okay, now this already gives you some position of what this isetima is. It is a talisman. It is not something that protects you from bad influences, but it is an active outgoing power, an energy, so to say. Okay, some time ago, when reading Engelbert Kempfer's history of Japan, my attention was caught by the observation this German physician in the service of the Dutch East India Company made in the early 1690s in a chapter in this book in the history of Japan called the pilgrimage to Iset. Iset, he transcribes, as he calls it. Okay, please bear with me for a rather lengthy quote. Can you, is it readable from, yes? Okay, every honest shincha, shincha is a believer, in other words, but in this particular case, a shintoist believer, right, of the kami for Kempfer. Every honest shincha, or every, or other, every patriot, whatever his belief should visit this sacred site, Iset annually, or at the very least, once in his life, to show due gratitude to the God and founder of this nation. I don't know if I, okay, okay, where was I actually, or at least once the founder of this nation, also cleansed by this act of all sins of the purification, so to say, he may enter a happy state after death, or in the naive eyes of the uneducated masses, he may be blessed with bodily health, food and drink, money, clothing, children, and the family. To strengthen this belief, every visitor personally receives from the Tayu, which is a title I will explain later, a box with a letter of indulgence called Ofari, which means great purification. People who are unable to obtain this personally, because of their occupation, illness or age, can buy one annually. In addition to the above shinsha, this is the plural of shinsha at the beginning, it's shinshu is the group. One also sees other buddhists, so followers of the way of the Buddha, because they wish to claim the right to be called honest patriots, so one goes to Ise to have in the quality of an honest patriot, and therefore visit this place of their founder once or several times in their lives. You have also the statement that in Ise is the foundation of Japan, the essence of it. There are also many, there are also other buddhists who stay at home, but annually purchase the Ofari from Ise, and in addition a letter of indulgence from their priest. Again, new quote. Pilgrims, we have another slide over there. Pilgrims wear a white brimmed traveling hat made of a plated split wreath, which is marked with their name as well as that of their birthplace or residence, so that they can be identified when they suddenly die on the road. He is taking all events in account. Others wear a short white robe without sleeves over their clothes, on which the above names are printed on chest and back. Now what you see here, I wasn't able to get a white robe of an Ise pilgrim, but these are the Namu Amida Daishi, so the 88 holy places on Shikoku, so it's a different thing, but the government as such is the same in its essential points. Okay, one meets several hundreds of such pilgrims daily. Now he's talking in 1692. If other parts of the country were visited without the pass, people would run into considerable trouble to the point of risking their lives, but everyday custom provides the liberty that the Ofari serves as a good passport and is considered enough. Please notice the importance of this robe. It's like now a passport, in other words. Okay, again, after the pilgrims worship at the shrines has been completed, this Kanushi, he is now what he called before the, what was it, the Taiyu. The Taiyu is a title. The Kanushi is actually the official title of a shrine, intended to shrine priest of the Shinto creed, right? Okay, after the pilgrims worship at the shrines has been completed, this Kanushi hands everybody an indulgence. It is a poor small square box, the length of a fan, or one and a half spans, two inches wide and the depth of one and a half thumbs made of thin boards tacked together. Inside it has a bundle of thin small sticks of the same material and length, some of the clean paper strips tied around. All of it is miserable merchandise purchased for a miserable sum to commend to people that humbleness and purity are virtues esteemed by their gods. A printed piece of paper is pasted on the front of the box. Again, the name of this temple, Daijingu, meaning temple of the great god, is written in beautiful characters, and at the end in small characters is the name of the Kanushi who has issued this Ufarae with the added title of Taiyu, which means ambassador or evangelist, an horrific title commonly used by those serving at Mia. Tempura is obviously using vocabulary that comes from his European background. As soon as the pilgrim on foot has received this Ufarae with the greatest deference, he attaches the same under his traveling hat over his forehead to protect it from the rain. For convenience's sake, a bundle of straw and of the same weight is attached to the other side, to balance that. When people return home with such an Ufarae, it is kept as a sacred object throughout the year. After that period is over, it is relegated to another honours place, as if its potency had evaporated like smoke. Every year, it is put on a board above the height of the man, attached to the wall of a clean room for this purpose, a clean room. In order to render service to those who desire this sacred object and wish to, but cannot travel as described above, the Kanushi from Isie annually send large packs and boxes of this merchandise to the cities and villages of all provinces. It is taken by certain emissaries who arrange their journey so that they reach the most important places at Tsangatsu, is a mistake by the translator for Shogatsu, the New Year celebrations, a festival of the most solemn rites of purification. At the same time, they bring almanacs who can be made only by the Mikado and can be printed only at the above location. The envoy gets one maze, roughly about one shilling, or 12 pence, about half a pound, or one bou for pieces and sometimes, but rarely more, according to each person's wealth and preference. Okay, this much for Kemper. On reading this report, I became suddenly aware of how deep rooted the feeling of national identity must have been at the time, even allowing for the fact that Kemper sees this situation, describes this situation with the eyes of the contemporary European. Europe is a collection of states and different nations already. It seems reasonable to assume that the literate start of society, nurtured on the Chinese classics and ethics, were aware of other countries, you must not forget that you are an archipelago, were conscious of living in Japan, a sovereign land and independent civilization. But it is somewhat surprising to learn that something like a patriotic feeling, in the words of Kemper, seemed to infuse down to the common man, for such was mostly composed, for of such was mostly composed the constant stream of pilgrims who traveled on the Tokaido, the great highway above along the seashore between the old and the new capitals. During the two years he stayed in Japan, Kemper's life was confined to the port town of Nagasaki, far down in the southernmost part of the country, more exactly on a small man-made island called Dishima, chatting out into the bay. However, in his quality of physician of the Dutch East India Company, he was called to follow the director on the official mission, the trading post of the VOC, the Verenigte Dutch Company, was obliged to dispatch to the Chokunl court. In this case, this happened twice in the years 1691-62. During a short stay in Batavia before being sent to Japan, Kemper had amply perused the accounts of the Cheswitz, the accounts the Cheswitz missionaries had given of the Japanese people and public life in the few decades before and after 1600 during what is sometimes called the Christian century. You have noticed the word of indulgence, right? Now, if you know the Christian Reformation in 15th, 16th century, you will know what in his head an indulgence is. Okay, so this must be added to the personal observations he had occasions to make during his two years stay on the Dishima, where notwithstanding the strict confinement with a small compound of slightly more than two acres, he had some contact, however, tenuous with the local town population. His principal informants, however, there as well as on his travels to the capital can only have been the handful of official interpreters appointed by the government authorities to handle the intercourse with the foreigners. What he has to say about the pilgrims and the pilgrimage to Ise must therefore be considered a firsthand report of what he had witnessed on his two journeys to and from Edo in 1691-62. Like most local travelers to and from Ise, the mission had to proceed on the Tokaido, the official highway connecting Edo and Kyoto. Tempuru was a keen observer, all right, but he could only have understood the significance of what he saw, because he must have been explained to him by his interpreter, one Imamura Genemon, a young man of 20 by that time, who accompanied the delegation all the way from Nagasaki to Edo and back. The German physician gratefully admits that he owes him the greater part of his knowledge of the country. Now I must mention that there is a Kemper explains in a footnote that this Imamura Genemon, hardly 20 years old, was the son of a so-called Yamabushi, which is a wandering asset or something, but nevertheless conversant in making amulets and talismans, right, which was one of their main occupation or one of their main jobs actually. Okay, Ise is quite a distance away from the Tokaido and laid therefore of the authorized itinerary of the Dutch delegation to the capital, so the Kemper hasn't seen Ise. So all is what he says now comes from what he has heard and in connection with the pilgrims he sees on the highway. He later resumed what he had seen and heard on this matter in the history of Japan in chapter four of book three devoted to the Sangha or pilgrimage to Ise, which is our source here, which I quoted for, right. Sangha is undoubtedly a mistake again for Sanghu. Me, I'm going to Ise on the pilgrimage. Even though the facts therein described to go back to the 1690s, some 330 years ago, we can trust the veracity of Kemper's report because as we shall see nothing has essentially and little formally changed to this day, which is the reason I have cited him in detail. Here we are specifically interested in what Kemper calls the Ofarai. Oh yes, okay. From other sources we know that in the 17th century still the or some of the vowels were more voiced than it is now. So this is probably quite good translation or transliteration of what he heard at the time. Okay. From native sources we know that it was only known as Oharai Taima or among the common people as Oharai San. The stem of the word here is Arau, standing for everything related to the intrinsically Japanese notion of purity, purification. Basically, it applies to the act of purifying or an exorcism, Arai, or exercising the surrounding space and everything therein, cleansing it of all contamination, harmfulness, pollution, unwholesomeness that affects indistinctly the body and the mind, the material and the spiritual realm. Now, there are of course notions of the contrary of dirt or whatever, but we are completely now in a mind, how do you say, in a state of mind that takes purity is pure things are of different conception. White is pure and as you can see afterwards there are other elements that is contained in this concept. It designates the ritual. Yes, I just said that and in our context the Arai, this is the instrument used for purification, but it is also called Oharai, the same thing as the talisman we are talking about, right? Then next one, okay, here you see it again, if you can read down the Jingu Oharai Taima. So there are two different concepts, three different concepts in the word Ohara, right? Purification as a ritual, the ritual itself and an instrument that serves in the ritual and in the last instance the talisman as such. The talisman of Issei is more specifically known exclusively known as Taima, which came from Lycans as had already done the missionaries a century before to the indulgence of European reformation fame. The term actually derives from the implement consisting of a vand, can you write what you see on the right in this case, the paper streamers attached to a stick in this case. The term actually derives from the implement consisting of a vand with paperpans attached called Onusa, alternatively pronounced Taima and Kohei. So you see this immense confusion of different things that go under the same name. Of course, you don't follow here the Chinese characters, the scenographs. You have a purely Japanese word appended to it, so to say. Okay, already at home in Nagasaki, that means, can first one to have noticed and probably also inquired about what he describes as a poor small square box the length of a fan or one and a half spans two inches wide and the depths of one and a half thumbs made of thin boards tacked together inside. It has a bundle of thin small sticks of the same material and length, some with clean paper strips tied around. This, the old one you see here, this corresponds in fact to one of the two basic forms by which the Issei talisman has been known throughout the pre-modern period and to a lesser degree up to our own times. The talisman itself consists of the thin sticks contained in the wooden box like the one we see here. On the right side you see a very thin stick inside. Okay, so the talisman itself consists of a thin stick contained in the wooden box like the one we see here. Hence the name of Hakko Fuda, so talisman in a box. A rather technical term but which adequately describes what it actually is and looks like, a boxed talisman. The Isetima is rarely seen in this form today but we know from a practitioner of the rural Shugendo cult of northeastern Japan, a scholar and high-ranking Yamabushi himself, that this type of Fuda was still manufactured and distributed in the area of the three holy mountains of Deva, in the Yamagata prefecture in the 1970s. And if we judge from his indications, the measures given by Kemper of a box of about 13 and a half inches, some 35 centimeters long, two inches five centimeters wide and almost a steep approximately 4.4 and a half centimeters have not significantly changed over the three centuries. Neither has the material of which it is made, the thin talisman sticks being of cypress wood of Hinoki, while the container is made of thinly plain sheets of approximately two to three millimeter thick pine wood glued or tacked together within bamboo nails. The box itself is nothing more than a receptacle, a kind of shrine containing the talisman properly speaking. Between three to five centimeters deep, it was not only a rather voluminous object to carry, but also quite fragile, which explains the custom of carrying it tight under the pilgrims hat, counterbalanced with some other things in the back. It was there well protected and most of all in the most honorable position raised above the head, rather cumbersome and fragile, the Hakko Fuda appears to have been paralleled by a variant called the Kopa Fuda, which is what you see on the far right. In which the timer was laid down between two fine shingles, Kopa, in other words wood shavings, thus taking in much less space and being easier to carry. Thicker flat, the wooden object was in either case wrapped in a paper envelope inscribed with the name of the deities of Ise and their respective shrine, for example the Dai Chingu or the Toyo Uke, the Geku. The talisman itself consists in this case of a bundle of two or more, yes you see it here in the right on the far right again, the bundle of two or more thin sticks of cypress wood tied together with a white paper strip around the top. The stick and the paper strips attached may be considered to be an elementary representation of the traditional purification implement called Onusa, or Onusa, they're both now seeations are possible. The wooden band with the white paper streamers attached is waived left and right by the priest as he performs purification ritual called Oharae, which you remember, which is in turn another name for the talisman. With this purification right of cleansing the here and now, the space around and the assistance within, we touch one of the basic elements of the Shinto worldview, the characteristically Japanese notion of purity that participates of the essence of Shinto. It is incarnated here in the cypress wood, in the white paper, or in the hemp cloth, asa or also pronounced ma, both in their natural color called white, but which is not really white, but it simply means not dyed, right. The name Taima, the Shino Japanese reading of the two Seinograms derives from the fact that it was originally not paper that was attached to the band, but strips of hemp cloth, like in the one you just, can you go? Yes, okay. Which brings us to the other, the now common style of Oharae, known by the name of Issei or Chingu Taima. It basically comes in three types named on account of their physical form or material substance. One is shaped like the tip of a sword and is therefore called ken-barae, ken the sword, right, harae in the sword shaped. The other variant is of the rectangular or four-cornered shaped called kaku-barae, kaku is a corner, so what is important here is the right corners, right, it is made up of right corners, so to say. So kaku-barae, the third type is a simple white paper, white paper slip bearing the name of the deity or of the sanctuary, which is called kami-barae, kami is paper, right. So in other words purification at talisman made of consisting in paper, of paper. The talisman as such consists either in the old type wooden stick in the more recent wooden tablet or of the inscription of the deity's name usually endorsed by the sanctuary's vermilion seat. The talisman itself or its container are wrapped in a white paper envelope inscribed on the face with the name of the deity and or of the sanctuary, which amounts to the same thing since the shrine and the place are consubstantial with the deity they host. With the industrial age, the handmade model has given way to the mass produced product now made of a more or less thick wooden tablet of the same proportions rectangular or sword tip shaped. But what turns the material substance the wooden tablet into a talisman, what empowers it so to say is the deity imminent in and therefore identical with the name and the title inscribed on the tablet. Otherwise the inscription is the one thing that empowers the wood tablet to become a talisman, right. It is the Arctic principle. The Hakko or the kopa type would be the one that the pilgrim going to easily in a personal capacity or as a delegate of his own community would have taken back to his place of origin. The sticks were supposed to be pieces of the timber of the inner and outer shrines said since antiquity to have been freshly rebuilt every 20 years. Cyprus is the construction materials that becomes available for this purpose as the old buildings give away to totally new but identical structures erected on the same ground and using trees from the same dominial forest reserve in the Kiso district now in Nagano prefecture. All wood of used in Issei or whatever comes from these reserves from the from the Cyprus forest in this area. The simple tablet or paper strip inscribed with name and style is by the far the most common type than is now. It is in this form that the Isetima reaches the households of the country towards the end of the year. Like practically all talismans and amulets of this kind its validity corresponds to the natural cycle of the four seasons and must therefore be replaced with a new one for the year to come. This is absolutely common in Japan of all what we call these of food talismans and amulets. They are valid the cycle of four seasons. Everything in this kind of again one of the essential Shinto notions is probably that it must be new because new is clean from the beginning right and as it goes over one year it takes on pollution and dust and whatever right which must be again exercised away. So which you will see this is very important this fact that it has to be renewed every year is very important from another point of view. Now ideally every household as the basic element of the nation we Japan like many countries still now reckon in households rather than individuals right. So all the quantities we're going to cite are households. Every household as the basic element of the nation should have an Isetima in the house and they pay reverence to the total deity of Japan. The notion of deity of Ise is for the inquisitive and analytically inclined Western mind a conglomerate of elements difficult to apprehend as a whole. The first problem arises when we try to find a translation for kami to which the closest we come in a Western language would be deity that is gendered and semantically limited term we can find even though in this particular case the kami of Ise is represented in gender and depiction as a female. The deity also has a dual aspect combining in one and the same idea the goddess named Amaterasu Omikami the great deity shining in the sky in the heavens and Toyuke Omikami the deity of fertility and abundance in nature and indeed what is called the Isegran shrine the Isetai Jingu consists of an inner shrine the Naiku dedicated to the great heaven shining deity who is also styled ancestors of the imperial house the Koutai you see here but that's another matter we'll hear about later and the third one to the outer shrine now Koutai yes I think I have a very good term in English of what in this case means the ancestors of the imperial line it's in other words it's the founder of the house of Japan as you know the the imperial house of Japan has no what we call first name or a family name right the family name is Japan okay both of them are facets of the same essence of the supreme and utilitarian deity of Japan now Amaterasu Omikami is the Uji gang of Japan right Uji being the clan or the a social group or in this case going as far as nation probably of the land of the people and of the nation as such the Isegran is at the apex of a pyramid of minor shrines that follow the administrative structure of the nation from the provinces or perfectures to the districts and down to the village shrines housing the utilitarian deity of the local community something like in the Christian church in Europe with its center in Rome and the network of local parishes parish churches all over the territory there are basically two ways we now come to the distribution of it there are basically two ways by which the Isetima like the charm of a few other major sanctuaries reaches the worshippers throughout the country what I'm going to say about the distribution system is also the same for Kumano for example or the Usa Hachiman we will see about that the first the one come for himself met with and described describes here is through the intervention of the pilgrim who makes his way to ease in person to procure the coveted talisman on the spot for his own good or on behalf of the other members of the home community in other words there are two ways one you heard about before it is the duty of the patriots so to say of the Japanese fields obliged to at least once in his life go to Iseg and he also can go there as a deputy by his village community so they send him to easy on a special errand or something like that and pay by pay for his journey hmm okay but as a rule the Ohara was distributed to the country's households through the agency of a body of semi-religious ministers families of low-ranking priests directly attached to the Iseshura Kemper says that these agents were known as I quote Kannushi hmm with the added title of Taiyu which means ambassador or evangelist an orific title commonly used by those serving at Mia Mia being the Shinto shrine up to the early 1870s some major shrines and temples of the country like Kumano and again Iwashi Mizu Hachimangu the Hie ginger also had such missionaries in their permanent and usually hereditary service but they were more widely addressed with the title of Oshi master a guide which is difficult to find an appropriate word which in the case of those affiliated to the Iseshurain turned into the more honorific on she now this I wouldn't guarantee that it actually was they were all called on she at the time but it is now theoretically of course hmm it looks good if that these these particular on she would have been distinguished from the other lower ones by an honorific on instead of a no right okay most of them resided in the neighboring villages of Uji of Issei of course Uji Yamada Mia Tamaki Watarai and others they're all was to act as intermediate intermediaries between the shrine and their respective parishes their Dandaba so to say dispersed of the rural and urban areas of the country in Issei they served their parishioners the Dhanka that came on pilgrimage as guides spiritual as well as touristic accompanying them on the rounds of the sanctuaries advising them on ritual procedures of the sanctuaries plural here because there are some 160 odd sanctuaries differ of different size and importance affiliated in the neighborhood among themselves affiliated in the neighborhood of Issei of the the main shrine the role was to act as intermediaries between the shrine and their respective parishes dispersed over the country in Issei they serve their parishioners as guide already said but also they provided food and accommodation under their roof for the pilgrims during the sojourn in Issei all this against the modest modest but appropriate consideration is a word country uses a small price a small part of which went as a tribute to the shrines the rest providing for their families livelihood for the the kanushis or the Taiyus livelihood right and of course the shrine takes quite a percentage office which find which is to a large part the the the the the livelihood the shrine is living on this being said among the numerous professional occupations the one that interests us in particular is the production and distribution of the Oharae as I have just mentioned the hundreds of onci families settled around Issei subsisted on the services rendered to their parishioners to whom they attended generation after generation often on a hereditary charge their main besides taking care of the individual pilgrims during their visit to the sanctuary their main function was to provide their parishes in addition to the Issei Taima with the new Issei Goyomi the almanac or calendar issued by the shrine we we already passed um yes yes there is okay there's the the next one is there okay so I know going backwards okay oh yes here is the Goyomi this is the Issei Goyomi we talk about right the 23 the almanac or calendar issued by the shrine for this distribution to the to the countryside the onci towards the year personally made the round of their beat to their danaba or nababa yes some call it so it was that the kanushi from Issei send and annually sent large packs and boxes of this merchandise to the cities and villages of all the provinces it is taken by certain missionaries who arranged their journey so that they reach the most important places at Shogatsu the newest celebration festival of the most solemn rites of purification so because after Shogatsu after Shogatsu the new talisman becomes active right is new in other words at the end of the Edo period according to a reasonable estimate there were no less than eight some 800 onci families playing their trade in the towns of Uji and Yamida alone and about 80 percent of the country's households are supposed to have had a nohari under their roof so 800 onci families I think there was one before yes here that this is the onci and this the these families had around Issei this kind of hostel where the pilgrims stayed over three or four days and had served food and the master of the house guided them for on the rituals and among the important shrines around Issei against a small fee I suppose I very much where was it appreciated campus and apparently also the English term of what did I say Peter you remember the consideration a consideration right do you still use now yes okay okay um for purely practical reasons it was hardly possible to send or carry hundreds of the voluminous and fragile Haku food on their journey of several weeks to the country or city parishes nor could they have manufactured them on the spot it was easier to transport quantities of the flat and light or harai of sticks in a paper envelope or indeed produce them as the circumstances required on demand for specific occasions such as for example in the case of this particular charm the purification ritual performed for a man at the critical age you call the Yakudoshi for someone born in the Usinotoshi in the year of the ox you can read that down there there's something I have translated somewhere here oh yes okay Watarai no Kanushi so Watarai is one of the neighboring towns of Issei and it's called Kanushi here but also these onshi also have usually or had or even now after their first name they had the title of Taiyu right in Kappukiyu often here Taiyu or it's an official rank also right um the following Jingu Taima quite likely dating from the 1860s and found in a house situated in a remote area of central Japan where I did my fieldwork well illustrate Kempfers which means Kenyumon's description of the state of things when he writes the name of this temple Dai Jingu meaning temple of the great god is written in beautiful characters and at the end in small characters is the name of the Kanushi who has issued this ovarai with the added title of Taiyu which means ambassador or evangelist non-nerific type of the common commonly used by those serving at the mea serving in Issei indeed the name we find at the bottom of this ovarai time of the in the shrine on the right tells us that it has been issued by one onshi of the junior fifth rank Osaki no butoki priest from Watai this also shows you that Issei is considered as an imperial shrine so the priests had official ranks right the uh the onshi of the junior fifth rank the point that interests us most however is a statement that the Jingu Taima could be accepted as a free pass we are going back to what Kempfers had to say in place of the official passport every traveler was indeed obliged to carry a paper certificate or a wooden tablet Teigata issued by the authority of the place of residence stating the the pilgrims identity purpose and destination of travel failing to produce this document at the checkpoints of the major thoroughfares could bring people into considerable trouble to the point of risking their lives as Kemper had also been taught which I don't know if it would be true but in all the movies the Gidae movies we see now it seems to have been the case right um without the regular Teigata the outlaw could only try to bypass the barrier but if caught risked being put into death even if it is likely to have been exceptional the talisman seems to have been held by the inspectors in enough esteem to let the Issei pilgrim through on its face alone the talisman meant that its bearer was a follower of the native deities that he revered the kami and foremost the supreme amaterasu the tutor lady of Japan in other words as Kemper says that he was a patriot he doesn't seem to know however that there wasn't even more important reason for the authorities indulgence in the different sense this time that there wasn't carrying this talisman proved that the bearer to be proved the bearer to be a true Japanese a believer in the native gods and therefore not one of those heretic Christians whom the control of the berries were destined to uncover actually which is very important in so far as um there's another very typical characteristic of the Japanese mind in this case is that even the Christians they could of course have had a talisman as such right but in the Japanese mind this is not just not that this does not occur in anybody's mind to cheat in this way right you do not cheat so there's absolute trust in this kind of thing um okay with the absolute value of representing of even incarnating the supreme and founding deity of Japan the tutor lady kami of the country and its population the tingu timer is indeed nothing less than a symbol and tangible proof of what me of what may be called japaneseness worship worshiping at the isishrine in person or worshiping worshiping sorry the kami through the talisman at home was an act of gratitude and homage to the quote god and founder of this nation even the buddhist's emphasizes Kemper because they wish to claim the right to be called honest patriots visit this place of their founder once or several times in their lives available data indicate that at least as far as man are concerned to go to easy at least once in the life was no empty word the timer takes on a new dimension with the major restoration then easy becomes the axis of the new nation the focal point of the trinity of the sun goddess the emperor and the state is ahead of course always counted as the ancestral shrine of the imperial house but in the newly created chinto this became a fundamental ideological tenet or element of the conception of japan as a divine nation of a living organism with the emperor at its head the system of distribution which at last it's arrived the age of period took an end officially at last at least in 1871 in the transformation process of the cult of isi into a quasi national or state religion in its wake the status and professional occupation of onji was dissolved as the major government department of matters divine the jengikan took control of the cult of isi over its ideological ritual as well as administrative aspects now the onji they don't fit into this concept of the state which goes directly from isi to the emperor and has to be taken into the hands the emperor as well as theoretically at least as the isi shrine into the hands of the government and we are now the state shinto is building up right we are in in the in the process of nation building or something like this right politically as well as okay socially at least in actual fact the timer was to play an important role in the organization of a loose ensemble of native beliefs deities and local shrines into a coherent structure and ideology initially called the great teaching in the development of shinto you know that what shinto lacked before the meiji period was a teaching in the in the same way in the same way it existed in in christianity or on most other religions but in shinto nothing like this existed before so the government first government department was created the taijyo the great teaching in creating what was to be gradually turned into state shinto the ideologists of the enlightened government realized early realized early on its potential as a national symbol the newly formed ministry of divinity the jingyi shou was no time in turning it into an instrument of state craft it was conceived of and produced as a tangible support through which to worship isi and the japanese nation with the aim of uniting the people in a common body and creed the first step in this endeavor endeavor was to do away with the onshi the traditional intermediaries between the isi shrine and the population at large the professional activity of which the distribution of the talisman was the mainstay was outlawed in 1871 the common name of o harai taima was changed into jingu taima uh you will notice the the question of purification which was at the same time a professional term for the the onshi or for the people at the time was the o harai question the ritual is now ousted also in favor of the the shrine it is not the o harai taima but this is now the jingu time or the isi time and it is controlled by um the by a government office the shrines which had up to the meiji restoration led an autonomous existence were declared state establishments and organized into a pyramidal structure with a grand shrine of isi at the apex presiding over a network of prefectural and district establishments which in their turn had authority over a myriad of village and hamlet giants forming the basis of kami worship in 1872 what had in the meanwhile become the kyo busho now the the element uh in state into the the element of kyo or shiru that means going outwards on the mission evangelizing the people is coming in in 72 declare the kyo busho declared the taima of the imperial grand shrine is now to be issued by the isi shrine office and distributed to all prefectural and provincial administrations the same does not apply to the distributions of charms from other shrines an adequate way must be found so that the whole population within the seas receives it every year and that everyone not only strives to welcome but also to revere it okay um you will also notice that talismans from other shrines which also carry the the name of taima they are they're not in question that they it's completely out right the isi cult is at the axis from 1872 on the jingu taima was issued by the successive organs of the shinto administration from 1873 by the jingu kyo in the institute of teaching again from 1899 by the jingu hosai kai which is a sub-governmental organization from 1927 by the zen koku chinsoku kai the association of the the shrine priest and ever since 1946 after the war by the central shrine office the ginger honcho which is no which is neither a government institution and not really on the other side a pure shinto institution even though it becomes out the same but this we will see a little bit later is because shinto is at this time propounded as a civic creed and not a religious creed right okay it was then delivered to the provincial institutions the taima the jingu taima to the provincial institutions which were then called the two medium and so kyo in the small of the medium medium and small teaching institutes on the prefecture and district level through which it filtered down to the base of the village shrines the sunshaw for example the local priest in the service of the tuturide of the village community iutikami finally distributed it to his parishes so in other words all the finance goes down to the pure shinto organization so we're close to the time limit okay the hierarchical system of the shinto shrines from the is a jingu down to the lowest level of the up okay i can leave this out to welcome in other words to obtain mukau the this taima in every household and worship it twice a day was declared in 1871 a civil and patriotic duty hmm but by 1878 a new decree of the ministry of the interior left its purchase up to the individual choice natural fact some of the more purist buddhist sects like the powerful jodo shinshu for example or the omoto kyo rejected such worship on doctrinal grounds and forcing it upon them would have created inadmissible discord on the patriotic front the jingu taima or uise san takes up we can okay um the identity of ise on japan of the people and the organic state of the sun goddess and the emperor became the principal tenet of the way of the gods the shinto as a national ideology and as the national identity focused even more on ise the taima became its material symbol the tangible certificate of japaneseness there was hardly no need for a law to have everybody except the jingu taima as a symbol of national identity so the the statistics are sufficiently telling in this respect already in 1777 in an a uh uh rukunen according to a survey of the outer shrine the number of parishionist nathenshin wide had reached some four million three hundred and eighty some uh thousand how households in other words ise talismans were being distributed to 89 percent of all families of the country at the time the number declined somewhat towards the end of the meiji period roughly five million units being given out in 1919 but the 1930s saw a very significant increase going up by one million yearly between 1937 and 1943 when 13 million eight and uh 85 000 taima were diffused in the japanese islands alone which represented 60 96 of all percent of all households to this must be added a further four uh million and some million uh further some millions units that went to the japanese population of the outlying territories what was called the gaichi at the time meaning chosen korea taiwan the refuse menturia sachaline hawaii and the pacific islands all together well exceeding 17 million for propaganda purposes these figures might have been somewhat exaggerated but even in the post war years in 1965 for example when the national consciousness and territorial expansion were at their lowest still almost uh six point eight million talismans were distributed distributed of which about 10000 to hawaii the year 1990 1992 marked the 120th anniversary of the meiji government taking the easy time easy taima under its control and during that year the number of charms handed out reached nine point two five three nine million 253 000 units the plan was to reach 10 million by the end of the 20th century this was announced by the jinja honcho it was one of their uh aims if there is ample reason to take campus view of the easy timer with a grain of salt there cannot be any doubt however that the religious authorities of the present day japan regard it as nothing less than a symbol of national identity in identifying the true japanese this is a mistake a mistake what the office of the grand shrine the official organ of the association of for the worship of the isegengu claims in its online presentation you now okay there's a link okay but i can't give it to you here it is a fact that the spread of the taima the charm of the isegine by its ministers had been instrumental in implanting the worship of easy uh all over the country to a point to bear at the end of the ad period 90 of all families had enshrined it in the house and paid reverence to it entering the area of the enlightened government the distribution system of the chain with taima was optimized and thanks to the august grace of the meiji emperor his people have thus become able to revere the august radiance of the omnipresent and boundless august goddess his uh what what this the the last sentence but a very important sentence his majesty the emperors ritual being the same as the shrine ritual has its parallel in the japanese people's worship of the shrine so that the whole system accounts to a beautiful unity of sovereign and subject in the state being thus an expression of the permanent ethnical solidarity the jingu taima must be considered as having a public character that transcends all individual religious affiliation okay thank you for listening to the end thank you very much for a very detailed and very in-depth presentation i think there's there's a lot to discuss a lot to talk about especially in the last sort of the last leading up to suddenly where we have this unity of of material object and nation state almost but i think as somebody who's very interested in material culture and the the circulation of objects i thought it was very interesting to see in this idea of newness and purification that started all out a kind of proto consumerist attitude so to speak with its renewal every year which sort of creates a larger circulation of objects that then takes on this national aspect yes and i think that's really something but as i very briefly pointed out in the japanese mind this dimension is non-existent it does not it does not mean because you have to renew it every year you have to buy a new one you can earn money which is a kind of capitalist or let's say typically western basis of reasoning right i was just to to mention this very shortly a few times i gave a conference in japan and on on talismans and amilets on or food and i always had mentioned the price now every time i said okay this and this food now costs 850 yen the audience was starting to laugh because this was not the price the price of the food is just not what is in the mind of the japanese if it costs a price the price is absolutely justified in so far as you you the the favors a deity or whatever does to you needs a compensation right it needs to be retributed so it is totally normal that some something costs something but kempfer also i was remarking this kempfer is the one to have asked for the price how much does it cost right so he states at one time the this object is of a miserable price of miserable quality etc etc so he has this value a monetary value system in the mind or a merchant sorry no not at all but it is sold right i'll open to the floor i think this is a discussion that yes we've had before so please questions from the floor yes thank you thank you for such a one of the my name is fassia and i'm also doing right and i had it from your thought i kind of get the feeling that he said oh harai timer was such a private thing rather than a public thing based on the oh harai by interview priest and also on she and then after major reformation and restoration the major government sort of picked it up as national symbol and made it public then i was wondering why specifically why they chose this rather private thing to symbolize national identity if you have any no then i'm afraid i haven't been clear enough it's not a private element the oh harai the oh harai is properly done can properly be done only by a priest or or whatever so has a a quality of of of something that allows him to handle of course if he handles in a purification ceremony an instrument of purification he himself must be pure right so a shinto priest is a pure person so to say i was also kind of inviting the in the house and then did the purification everything in the house rather than in the shrine so i was sorry not necessarily but um the isis shrine um all i'm talking of the grand shrine right which now involves okay that is not important the isis shrine um you do not you can first of all the difference of most other ones you cannot go inside you stay outside because it's a space of absolute purity that every thing from without would stay so to say so you you don't do a purification at the shrine itself but you get purified at the guide's house because that gives you puts you in the proper mind to visit the isis right right so in this case it's it's not a private element at all quite to the to the to the country thank you yes please hey thank you very much for the touch up just having some curiosity regarding um for example seeing on the screen now house so we have learned a little bit about how is this review that how is um sort of ended up with this course that's part of the government or institution i'll say about just wondering how would the household organize activity regarding this time up will be something i mean what we read chores are all about need considerations or attitudes towards in some household um first of all these things have uh you're not japanese are you okay these are always the kempfer also says at least twice that they must be above the head right they are he also says they are in a clean room of every household right so it's usually the i don't know the old said tomorrow whatever the the best room in in the house and it is on what to call a gold a gold shelf is really a house shrine so it is enshrined there now again this disposition of the different elements in there are subjected to rules the is a timer is always in the middle of course uh and uh to uh his left then is either the toy okay so the the the talisman of the outer shrine or the uh usually the talisman of the local of one's village of the place where one's lives the tutoring day and on the right side it can be the talisman of some shrine or place where the household has fields to have a special function of a special relation for example immigrants to Hokkaido who came from shikoku had the the uh what's his name again the great sanctuary of shikoku and for the tradesmen and sailors um uh okay so they they will have an amulet or talisman of the computer son on the right because it is connected with their origin for example now these are the the main rules right also of course you have you feed these entities so to say but you they are treated like we all uh irrespective of their body or form or or what they are they live in the same world so they behave in the same way uh they are of the same essence so to say plus that answer to to some degree the it's not just even though now um they are uh you know these things change of course they they must be uh some uh uh some people the children might even put on avatar cards or whatever of the um yes one thing also I forgot to tell you is that since the 80s the um distribution the the numbers are severely decreasing um nowadays I think there must be about um not even close to five million at least to half to what it was supposed to be in in the year 2000 one of the main elements is the breakdown of the family system the the Japanese have less and less children and of course a household the future of the nation the nation is only a good household if it has a prolongation if it endures so that's one of the reasons why for example or or people that are not married but stay together in in the same house form a household so to say so that's one of the very uh important reasons for the uh diminution of uh of people who buy this or who have this talisman in their house right thank you any so yes please over there and then if at the end of the four seasons we are unable to return it to the shrine at the top of the spiral then what should one do today uh you don't if um that if you take it to the east of shrine then only when you go on the pilgrimage usually you take it to the local shrine that we burn it it will take care of at the end of the year but if you have less japan yes you you don't have less japan because i'm being funny i'm afraid is because at the end of the year this talisman has lost its power it's not accumulating no it just it it just becomes it it just becomes a material object it's not accumulating um no it is not a talisman eddy bar no it is the the time the time the time unit for this is the year for everything if in in pre-modern in pre-modern japan that's it thank you there's more one more question over there thank you now the force the the uh the cycle of the four seasons is a unit in itself right it does not go on it just goes one after the other in uh in japanese in japanese um there is no future there's no future tense as we know it right and in mythology or whatever in in the the native creeds there is no such thing as a last judgment or or apocalypse or whatever right the future it just goes on cyclically one after the other there every cycle is complete in itself and that's it you don't there is no destination where it it goes it is not a linear concept of time yes thank you tita thank you dis if that was uh wonderful it has brought back very many memories when i was first in japan in the 70s and i can remember seeing things like these in houses but of course in modern apartment blocks um everybody in space to have a kamidana that's going to be above the head but that's not really what i wanted to ask because when you were talking about the development of state shinto in the early major period what was coming to my mind was a recollection of the diary of the iwakura mission when they were in italy and in russia and in both cases kume the diaries wrote that our main impression of seeing the roman catholic region in rome was what a useful way this is to control the population right if you can get it under the state um then this will be a very good way to control the japanese people and they have exactly the same reaction when they're in russia and they see how the state was closely tied to the organization or the orthodox faith um is the mechanical distinction so closely related to these observations of course they are there is uh in the late kokugaku scholar isaba asiasi he realized that what made the the strength of the all these barbarians coming in what why they are invincible is because they have a teaching they have a religion and this this teaching which was sorely the absence was sorely felt uh in in the meiji period is what is shinto right how could we explain it to to um the foreigners for example so actually it's before the uf mission there are the germs of of these developments already in the adult period yes yes yes yes yes yes when they realized that it was if we want uh to meet these um the foreign powers invading us on equal footing we must fight with the same arms huh but he was perfectly right as astonishingly right because he had realized that all what has driven uh um european civilization was through the religion it was expansion of um uh going out and and um uh collecting uh territory and whatever right and that uh the missionary uh drive in in the catholic in the catholic church is exactly the same outgoing drive or or um uh endancy right thank you one last question from bill i look at the question very good thank you very much um it's kind of a great observation i think you i think you said at one point near the end well maybe you have to cut it out but point why this object why this material objects search this i mean obviously the purpose sort of changes that big apart from what you're saying why in particular does it serve this purpose in this politicized purpose uh as a sort of transmitter of national identity and and i and part of me is thinking because i'm kind of the um another problem is the religion um and i'm very interested into what thaddeo thought those are things that believe he's written about all my what it is sort of um these these active object very much the idea your notion of the tannism is an active object rather than a sort of passive thing um so part of me is thinking well it's it's going to be more than just a sort of transmitter of politics or political effects or national inspect and not just you were saying that then as i was thinking this in my head it's really it's definitely really it is actually ideal as as if there's an object portable it's it's it has a built-in object lessons it has to be renewed certainly so in a sense it is a perfect medium for the kind of for these for for sort of um cultivating sense you know nation-state a statecraft i mean beginning but it's like you know amazon election in your home you know what what this uh talisman has um a reason why it is so deep going is um we tend it of course a european or western there's even more than than modern japanese we tend to look at it in in a material as a material object um with a microscope and and looking at everything um i think i emphasized a couple of times but undoubtedly not enough that um the form already being in an instrument of purification implies a space particularly shinto and particularly japanese concept of the world around within which the divine dimension is purity is pure this purity is um this dimension is um in in in in the wood the the hinoki is a absolutely beautiful wood even for for for for anybody and moreover it has a smell uh of the both of them are particularly japanese things i mean if i smell some things made made with with ultimate craftsmanship with in hinoki or whatever you have to smell with or if you go into a newly built mansion with a japanese room the smell of it is already is japan so is the color uh so is um paper these papers the papers during the pre-modern period were actually made in ise it is ise washi uh part of they were not only on she living around ise under a batterai etc ise yama uji yamada were quite big towns they manufactured the calendars for example they were of course carpenters they were washi paper makers woodblock printers etc etc who had there was a whole emergent town at the same time and so all these ideas of white i said it is not white it because it's not died it is undied this is also a very particular japanese thing like um you have other elements like the salt tip for example uh you have things like the asa the hemp hemp is another extremely ancient and particularly um significant element in in in the shinto world right it symbol in it it not only symbolizes it is pristine purity not died nothing but extremely pleasant and noble to wear etc etc even caught people wore hemp cloth in summer of course woven in a particular way but nevertheless thank you very much i'm afraid we won't have any more time for questions we have a reservation to make so thank you very much professor kibbutz for your talk thank you for coming and do come back in january um when our first session will be with professor ike rott from the university of oslo on wales of power so do come back thank you very much