SJ147.TXT2025-06-1912KB

京都の夏越の祓（見出し行なし。英語の H1 から付けた題）Nagoshi no Harae in Kyoto

Today I continue from yesterday and look at nagoshi no harae (夏越の祓). In this piece I want to show how the rite looks, with photographs I took when I once visited Kyoto to attend it.

Held, since the Meiji era, generally on June 30 of the Gregorian calendar, nagoshi no harae is an important Shinto rite at the turn of the year’s midpoint. It purifies the kegare (穢れ), the impurity accumulated until then, sets body and mind in good order, and prepares us to live out the remaining half of the year. Yesterday I put this in the phrase “detoxifying spiritual impurities.” Let us now see the scene of the rite through the photographs from that day.

This is Kitano Tenmangu, where the plants used for the chinowa (茅の輪), the ring set up in the grounds that nagoshi no harae cannot do without, are laid out with care. The plant traditionally used for the chinowa is chigaya (茅), cogon grass, which grows wild all over Japan. It is familiar to people in Japan, long used for the roofs of traditional houses and for thatching (茅葺). Since ancient times chigaya has been regarded as sacred, and it has a long history of wide use in daily life for its power to ward off evil and misfortune. In regions where chigaya cannot be had, susuki (Miscanthus sinensis) or ashi (common reed), similar in shape and texture, are sometimes used instead.

A chinowa is made from these plants and set up, for instance, at the entrance where worshippers enter the grounds. Like a torii, it marks a kekkai (結界), a sacred boundary made only at this time of year.

Behind nagoshi no harae lies the Heian period, when the court in Kyoto held many rites for averting misfortune and driving off evil spirits as a defense against the epidemics that broke out each summer. For this reason, shrines around Kyoto, the site of Heiankyo, still keep parts of the old forms from that time. After Meiji, nagoshi no harae took root at shrines across the country, but the ceremony was standardized under the Meiji government, so it is much the same wherever you go. In brief: a chinowa is set up in the grounds; after the priest recites the oharae no kotoba (大祓詞), the priests pass through the ring first; worshippers then pass through it three times, tracing a figure eight, and in doing so are said to be cleansed of misfortune.

Here the priests of Kitano Tenmangu recite the oharae no kotoba before the chinowa set up in the pure grounds of the worship hall (拝殿).

When the recitation of the oharae no kotoba ends, the priests pass through the chinowa first. On the day, worshippers are forbidden to pass through the ring before this ceremony takes place.

After the priests pass through, they circle the grounds in a wide loop and the worshippers follow. By passing through the purified chinowa and completing the rite according to the form, worshippers cleanse six months of impurity, then move on to the worship hall to pray to the main sanctuary (本殿). This is the general flow of the rite.

Shrines other than large ones like Kitano Tenmangu cannot hold anything this elaborate, so they gather only local people and hold the rite quietly on a small scale. It is a sight you meet here and there when you walk among the shrines of Kyoto on June 30. And since the rite at Kitano Tenmangu takes place at 4 p.m., no fire is used, whereas at other small shrines you can see a fire lit and worshippers listening to the priest’s words. That is the more local form of the rite.

Fire was originally bound up closely with the Japanese harae (祓). Today we must take into account influences such as the Buddhist goma (護摩), but since ancient times fire has been held sacred in Shinto too. In the Kojiki, Izanami is said to have returned to Yomi no Kuni after being burned giving birth to the fire deity Kagutsuchi, and this mythic background is thought to be rooted in impurity.

Among shrines that carry on the old way of holding nagoshi no harae at night with salt and fire, both indispensable to Shinto purification, Kamigamo Shrine in Kyoto is the famous one.

At Kamigamo Shrine, after dark, torches set in the stream that runs through the grounds are lit. After the priests carry out various rites on the spot, paper cut in the form of a person, a hitogata (人形), is floated down the river, a custom by which impurity is cleansed on one’s behalf, still observed today.

After the priests finish the rite, the hitogata paper is sent down the river below.

Acts of “purification” and “warding off misfortune” have existed not only in ancient Japan but in the religious cultures of the world. What I personally feel, though, is that the real meaning of this rite lies not just in removing six months of accumulated impurity but in creating an opportunity to face honestly the causes of that impurity and to look inward.

In an age like ours, when everyone lives in a hurry, the chance to face oneself in introspection is lost all the more, and I feel Shinto rites can serve, for people in Japan, as a modern way of turning inward even a little. In daily life I sit in stillness at night and practice introspection, taking care not to let body and mind fall into disorder. But impurity is not limited to its ancient forms. Today it is many-sided and inescapable: a flood of information, the decline in the quality of food, environmental toxins.

History keeps changing like a living thing. What, in the end, is the essential message that Shinto rites convey to people today? My inquiry is always set on that question.