The New Year’s holidays passed rather quickly yet again this year, but the Shinto rites I attended to mark the beginning of the Year of the Rabbit left a particularly strong impression on my mind.
　　　Between New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day each year, I make it a rule to visit – as often as I feel like it – the Akasaka Hikawa Jinja, a Shinto shrine with a distinguished history near my Tokyo residence. First, there is the “O-harae” purification ceremony starting at dusk on New Year’s Eve, in which the chief priest, clad in pure-white ceremonial silken long-sleeved coat and pleated trousers, exorcises visitors to the shrine of sins and impurity accumulated over the past year to prepare them for the coming year. On this New Year’s Eve, I once again found myself among a huge crowd of visitors and was quite satisfied to see the happy faces of many of my acquaintances, noting that all apparently went well for them – and for me, too – in the Year of the Tiger.
　　　Close to midnight when the bell starts ringing out the old year, I get dressed warmly enough to withstand the midnight chill of the megapolis in midwinter and head for the shrine again – this time for my first visit of the new year to the shrine, founded in 1730 by Tokugawa Yoshimune, the eighth shogun. The year’s first visit to the shrine is always fun and fascinating because one can admire some of the finest samples of exquisite Japanese cultural assets nurtured during the Edo period (1615-1868). The shrine is dedicated to Susanoo no Mikoto – the mythological Shinto god of the sea and storms who is the younger brother of Amaterasu Omikami known as the Sun Goddess and one of the principal Shinto deities. While in the heavens, Susanoo was described as a notorious daredevil and villain. However, after his descent to Izumo, one of the more important sacred spots of Shinto, he made himself known as entirely different from his past – brave, ingenuous and peace-loving.
　　　Susanoo eventually conquered the “Yamata-no-Orochi” eight-headed dragon – and came to the rescue of Princess Inada, who had been offered as a human sacrifice. Later, as the legend has it, he married her and fathered the “Okuninushi-no-Mikoto” divinity popularly believed to be the original ruler of Izumo Province. The Akasaka Hikawa shrine is also dedicated to these two deities.
　　　This year, an impressive marionette of Yamato-Takeru-no-Mikoto, the legendary prince of the Yamato Dynasty, was unusually on display disguised as a woman. Skillfully made towards the end of the Edo period, the marionette depicts the prince lying in ambush. As I stood in line admiring the tall marionette and the twinkling little stars in the dark wintry sky, my turn came to enter the shrine and offer a prayer before the altar. I put my hands together in front of me in prayer, took a deep bow to tacitly extend my heart-felt thanks to the Shinto gods for having protected me and my family during the year that had just gone by, took a sip of the traditional “amazake” sweet drink made from fermented rice, and picked an “omikuji” lot to tell my fortune. Afterwards, I headed for home while keeping myself warm from the flaming bonfires placed here and there alongside the long approach to the shrine.
　　　Early on New Year’s Day, I got dressed promptly and headed back to the shrine one again to attend the New Year’s rite there. All visitors take a deep bow in concert with the chief priest. Japanese attach profound meaning to the act of bowing. Following the “shiho-hai” worship of the four quarters, a norito – an invocation of the gods participating in a Shinto ritual – was intoned by the priest who prayed for the peace and happiness of the nation and its people at the onset of the new year.
　　　At the end of the New Year ritual lasting about an hour, chief priest Yoshiaki Egawa told us visitors: “I sincerely appreciate being able to hold the New Year ritual year after year and pray for your good fortune in this manner. However, I would like for all of you to bear this in mind – that on this auspicious day the emperor got up earlier than any one of us priests and already prayed for the wellbeing of the entire nation in the wee hours long before the sun rose. I can’t help being humbly appreciative of his gracious gesture of affection for the people.”

Praying for the Good Fortune of the People
　　　These words of the priest suddenly awakened me to a fresh realization that, sadly, most Japanese know very little about how much Akihito, the Emperor of Heisei, cares for the people; how little most Japanese are conscious of the fact that their emperor prays for their wellbeing from time to time; and that the most important function of the Imperial Household is to conduct rituals now and then to offer prayers for the peace and happiness of the nation and the people. Most Japanese don’t even bother to want to know about this fact.
　　　But then, in what manner does the emperor actually pray for the nation? Let us take a look at “All in a Day’s Work for the Emperor” (Kodan-sha Gendai Shinsho;2009), an enlightening book authored by Masato Yamamoto, a reporter with the mass-circulation daily “Sankei Shimbun” who was formerly assigned to the Imperial Household Agency. The author admits there was a huge perception gap regarding his image of the emperor before and after he came to have the honor of seeing Emperor Akihito on a daily basis as a reporter charged with covering the Imperial family, explaining he decided to pen this book as he thought the average citizen most likely must feel the same way as he once did about the emperor. Deriving most information from general news involving the Imperial Household and its members, Japanese generally surmise the main task of the members of the imperial family would be to “just to greet well-wishers on occasions like the New Year and Emperor’s birthday visits to the Imperial Palace or during occasional visits to local areas.” Actually, that is far from the truth. The most important task for the members of the Imperial family, especially the emperor, is praying for the happiness of the people, but their prayers are viewed by the mass media as the private activity of the members of the Imperial Household and are rarely reported, if ever. Although having gone mostly unnoticed by the press – and therefore by the people – the prayers the emperor offers for the people’s wellbeing have consistently been regarded by the Imperial Household as their single most important activity – theirs raison d’etre.
　　　According to the afore-mentioned book, at 5:30 a.m. on New Year’s Day the emperor proceeds to the front garden of the “Shinka-den” sanctuary standing alongside the three “Kyuchu Sanden” palace sanctuaries. The “Shinka-den” is a gazebo-type simple structure in the middle of the garden on the palace grounds with nothing more than pillars and a roof supported by them. Sitting on a new tatami straw mat under the roof, the emperor offers his “Shiho-hai” prayers to ancestral gods who are enshrined in the distant Ise Grand Shrine in Ise City, Mie Prefecture, wishing the nation and the people peace, happiness, and good harvests.
　　　With the sun slated to rise at around 6:30 a.m. on New Year’s Day in Tokyo, the emperor offers his solemn prayers in severe cold as darkness surrounds him.
　　　Yamamoto introduces a 31-syllable tanka Empress Michiko composed while seeing Emperor Akihito off as he left the Imperial Palace and headed for the Shinka-den in the wee hours one New Year’s Day:
　　　“Each year, while watching your back as you set out to perform the New Year ritual, I cannot help looking up at the moon hoping it is bright enough to light your way.”
　　　Prior to the ritual, the emperor scrupulously purifies himself at the Imperial Palace and dresses himself properly for the occasion. The empress must have anxiously watched him – as if to breathe in union with him – as he meticulously prepares for the ritual long before he actually offers his prayer to the ancestral gods. And then, finally the time comes for him to depart, leaving his wife behind. One can easily imagine Empress Michiko looking up at the sky from the serene darkness of their wooded palace, wondering if the moonlight is going to be bright enough for her husband to find his way.
　　　Emperor Akihito is said to attach particular importance to these ancient rituals which Japanese newspapers and television barely report on. He is also said to perform more than 30 such involved rituals a year that call for him to resort to abstinence and wearing ancient attire. This he readily does without any corner-cutting while conducting a host of official duties, such as receiving foreign visitors in audience, which are getting increasingly tougher each passing year for a 75-year-old emperor with some serious health problems including prostate cancer surgery in 2003. In pre-war Japan, Shinto festivals and politics were both called by the same name – “matsuri-goto” – with the emperor serving as the leader in both. But General MacArthur’s General Headquarters (GHQ) changed this altogether in its zeal to create a new Japan.
　　　As William P. Woodard explains in detail in his book entitled “The Allied Occupation of Japan and Japanese religions” (Simul Press; 1972), the GHQ tackled wholesale reform of Japan based on directives from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Its main pillar was the “separation of Shintoism from the state,” along with the “removal of Shintoism from the Japanese education system.” More specifically, GHQ wanted the emperor to declare himself a mere mortal while implementing the “Shinto Directive” aimed at abolishing State Shintoism. The former obviously needs no explanation. Meanwhile, the latter meant the “abrogation of a system which had made Shintoism a state religion, establishment of a principle of the separation of state and religion, and removal of militarism and ultra-nationalism from religion and education in post-war Japan.”

Imperial Household: The Core of Japan’s Culture and Civilization
　　　The U.S. State Department thought, very wrongly, that Shintoism was the root cause of Japan’s militarism and that the Japanese government had long forced Shinto worship on its people. Based on this gross misinterpretation, the United States developed policies and measures that have ended up by drastically changing the culture and the shape of Japan – for the worse. The drive to remove everything and anything that had to do with Shintoism from the Japanese way of life, by defining Shinto rites as private activities the Imperial family should pursue, constituted a significant part of such policies and measures.
　　　Another example is the naming of Japanese national holidays. For instance, February 11 in pre-war Japan was the day to celebrate the accession of Japan’s legendary first emperor Jimmu, and was called “Empire Day” until the end of the war. In their vigor to eliminate Shintoism, the occupation forces refused to recognize February 11 as a public holiday, vowing never to “sanction Empire Day even if the national diet should vote for it.” How can any nation be allowed to deny a foreign counterpart the anniversary day of its national founding –as was demonstrated by the U.S. in this case?
　　　Incidentally, February 11 was eventually recognized as a public holiday in Japan by a new name, “National Foundation Day,” in 1966 – 21 long years after the end of the war.
　　　A full year in Japan – traditionally an agricultural nation – revolved around seasonal festivals in which the emperor prayed to Shinto gods for the peace and wellbeing of the people, as well as a bumper harvest. The people’s lives and national holidays also revolved around such prayers. After the New Year’s Day rite comes National Foundation Day (February 11), followed by the “Shunki Koreisai” festival (the March 21) for the spring equinox, “Obon” ( August 15 ) to honor the spirits of one’s ancestors, the “Shuki Koreisai” festival (September 24) for the autumn equinox, the “Kanname-sai” ritual (October 15) to thank the gods for the great blessing of the harvest, and the “Niiname-sai” rite (November 23) to express gratitude to the gods for helping bring about a successful harvest.
　　　After the war, however, these historical days of great cultural significance were turned into mere national holidays called, for example, “Spring Equinox Day,” “Autumn Equinox Day,” “Culture Day (November 3),” and “Labor Thanksgiving Day (November 21)” with no historical or cultural importance attached and having no real connection with Japan’s four distinct seasons. And the prayers offered by the Imperial Household have up to the present day been trivialized as inconsequential private activities pursued at leisure by its members. That was precisely what was spelled out by chief priest Egawa of the Akasawa Hikawa shrine in his remarks following the New Year Day rite he officiated on January 1 this year.
　　　The Imperial Household is confronted with a grave crisis today, including the problems of imperial succession, amid growing national indifference and absence of knowledge pertaining to the functions of the Imperial family. In fact, this is same in nature as Japan’s national crisis. At this juncture where Japan has started drifting aimlessly, it would seem more than worthwhile to ponder the question involving the past, present and future of the relationship between the good people of Japan and the Imperial Household, which has constituted the core of the nation’s culture and civilization over centuries. By the same token, I am strongly desirous of seeing the proposed revision of the Imperial Household Law expedited as a pertinent step towards maintaining the stability of imperial succession.

(Translated from the Renaissance Japan column No. 443 in the January 13 , 2011 issue of The Weekly Shincho.)