It has been snowing hard across most of Japan yet we are now officially
in Spring. Celebrated on 3rd February,
Setsubun - 節分 - ushered in the new
season in Kunisaki and across Japan. Throughout the nation roasted soya beans were cast outside in their hundreds of millions from windows and front doors to ward off evil
spirits and welcome good fortune. A simple act, yet ever since I first
arrived in Japan 25 years ago, I do not think I ever see so many,
children and adults, so happily engaged as on this day.
For this year's Setsubun, I set off in my battered but ever feisty
keitora - 軽トラ - a 4-wheel drive, dinky little truck - along snowy, mountain roads to Futago-ji, the principal temple on the peninsula. The head priest's son had invited me along to join in the service of gomaki - 護摩木 - held at Setsubun. Goma are small oblong pieces of wood on which are written votive offering, family prayers for the living and dead, that are burnt with mystic ritual. When most non-Japanese think of Buddhism and Japan the image conjured up is probably the austere aesthetic of Zen. However, most Buddhism in Kunisaki and much of the rest of Japan takes its cues from mystical sects, such as Tendai and Shingon. These were brought to Japan in 8th Century, arriving several hundred years earlier than Zen. Kunisaki is a Tendai stronghold and its earthy mysticism imbues the peninsula and its people.
The Gomaki service was held in the smokey, gloom of a slightly dis-organised but homely temple hall. Flames rose, flickered and fell back into the crackling, ember-spitting pyre of votive offerings, lighting the fanged, wrathful face of the destroyer of delusion, Fudo-Myo - 不動明 - a very popular Bodhisattva character in Kunisaki who oversaw the proceedings. A booming drum kept rhythm as the small congregation, which I had joined, repeatedly recited a short prayer; each phrase was left hanging momentarily on our breath in the frigid air. While chanting words of mostly impenetrable meaning (at least to myself), my friend, the duty priest, kept feeding more goma into the pyre; then rapidly twisting his hands into symbolic gestures; then quickly ringing a bell. He repeated the process over and over as we provided the backing mantra. An hour or two later - time really lost meaning in the atmosphere - we found ourselves on the veranda of the temple hall cackling happily as we threw our beans for good fortune.
Although the weather is still wintry, spring has already brought a fecund smell to the air, flower buds are subtly burgeoning on the
ume plum trees and the days are lengthening into the evenings. P.S. The sharp eyed may have noticed that the monk is one of the Oni from my previous post.
