How to Choose a Shrine: By the Lineage of Its Kami

In fact shrines have many lines of descent, and they divide broadly into the shrines that suit you and those that do not. This is the basic point.

And unless it is a shrine that suits you, however early you visit, it will bring no good effect. One indicator is the line of the deity.

The gods who appear in the Kojiki (completed in 712) and the Nihon Shoki (completed in 720), the oldest surviving books of myth, number over 300. Each of these gods has a particular line of descent, bound closely to the places and the people who have venerated it over the centuries. This particularity must not be ignored.

For example, the few Japanese who understand visit shrines only in the early morning. Some shrines they visit every day, others only at particular times of the year. A shrine is not something to visit whenever you please.

It may sound a little harsh, but travelers visiting Japan for the first time would do well not to hurry into the grounds of a shrine. Without entering the grounds, a single bow before the torii gate at the entrance is enough.

For a particularly good shrine, I go only to worship in the early morning, and at times, following old custom, go after at least three days of abstaining from meat (especially of four-legged animals).

"The genealogy of the gods" may sound strange. I consider it as important as the roots of one's own ancestors: if ancestors are the visible roots, the gods are the invisible roots. … Not every shrine is a shrine to worship at. I begin by looking at the main deity enshrined there, the deities enshrined alongside, and the traditions handed down, and by judging whether they are compatible with my own genealogy of the gods.

That is why I think the better route is to leave the difficult talk aside and begin with the spring water, whose effect the body knows most clearly: judge from it the land that suits you, and worship at the shrine of the god enshrined there.

The Japanese of today too have forgotten such old manners, but for worshiping at Izumo Taisha in Shimane Prefecture on this trip, I made "a certain preparation" and worshiped this morning. It was "three days without meat."

In Shinto, eating meat is tied to taking an animal's life and touches its blood and death indirectly, so it was believed to bring a "kegare (穢れ)," a pollution unfit for standing before the gods.

The concept that matters here is "shojin kessai." It refers to the Shinto practice of cutting off meat, alcohol, and lust and purifying body and mind by bathing and purification.

So, to worship at Izumo Taisha once more according to old manners, I avoided four-legged meat for the three days before, spent that time drinking sacred spring water, put body and mind in order, and worshiped in the early morning. I had worshiped at Izumo Taisha many times, but today, having worshiped by the proper manner, I felt a strong spiritual power of the god unlike the usual.

There are a few exceptions. They are the shrines that enshrine gods who came across the sea. The history of each such god is tied to a particular land, so a person who feels a bond with that god can worship at these shrines without trouble. Even so, without a deep knowledge of Japanese history, it is hard to tell them apart.

After the Great East Japan Earthquake, from around the 2010s, a trend called the "power spot boom" was loudly promoted in the media in Japan, and crowds of people went to worship in search of the spiritual power of particular shrines.

As a result, many fell ill, or came to a dead end in their later lives. They had been swept along by the media and visited places that were not shrines suited to them. The gods are admonishing people who seek the answers to life outside themselves.

At its core, the power-spot boom that accelerated in the twenty-first century was a force that cut the lineage of what earlier generations had done on each piece of land and turned spirituality upside down into a generic world that ignores context. Take Ise Grand Shrine, the Naiku or Kotai Jingu, which modern Shinto placed at the very summit of Japan's shrines. Pilgrimages to Ise flourished from the medieval period on, and the shrine became the womb of faith for aristocrats and commoners alike. But being famous does not mean that Ise suits everyone. Precisely because Japan is full of countless shrines rooted in their land, we need to judge, each time, whether a shrine truly suits us. If a shrine enshrines a god who does not suit you, or if the land has a history of enmity with your ancestors, a visit, however well meant, raises the risk of misfortune.

Even within Kyoto alone, where you go depends on whether your line is Taira or Minamoto, Southern Court or Northern, and the more spiritually sensitive you are, the more places there are where you must not go. Reading this historical background through your ancestors and your spiritual lineage turns a journey into a rest for the soul that fills both body and mind. If, on the other hand, you visit for your own convenience and the place does not suit you, at worst you will suffer a curse.

In Japan, in fact, people have long called a land that agrees with their fudo "a land whose water suits one," and a land that does not agree "a land whose water does not suit one." The phrase originally referred to climate, soil, water quality, and the other conditions of a place, and to whether they are ideal for the plants and crops that grow there. It then came to be used of human beings too.

Taking this idiom literally, I drink and compare the spring waters of the regions I visit. If a water feels right to my senses, I judge that I am compatible with the land; if it does not, I judge that I am not. Even among springs, water quality differs greatly with environmental conditions, and I attach great weight to its mineral content and to whether it is a water my own gut flora favor. I believe these conditions are directly tied to spirituality, and I have kept up my research on them.

I travel extensively myself, and I would like to offer a shift in perspective that might serve as a breakthrough: not "going," but returning to being called; not merely looking, but returning to deep contemplation. I deliberately call it a return, because there is no need to invent anything new. If the opportunity arises and readers are interested, I hope to publish an essay of personal notes and photographs centered on this idea of being called by a place. For readers in the English-speaking world, this sense of being called is difficult to convey through words alone, given how thoroughly English insists upon a grammatical subject.

Is what we truly need right now really to "go" to some new destination? Or should we instead reclaim the capacity to be called?

Not "going," but being called. This sense is the key to breaking free from the tyranny of the subject. In my own travels, stopping somewhere on an impulse, I have often felt an indescribable ease and nostalgia. Experiencing this again and again, I realized that I had not chosen the place; the place had chosen me. This is closely bound to the ancient sensibilities of Shinto. In my field research I visit countless shrines, and often I can only feel that I did not choose to worship there, but was brought there by the call of the kami. One can visit a renowned shrine and feel nothing at all, yet turn into an obscure village shrine and be met by an overwhelming spirituality. This is what it means to be called by the divine. Here lies a path beyond the era of overtourism: relinquishing the arrogant subject and surrendering to something greater.

This peculiar feeling, which words do not convey, is produced by the "kekkai" (結界), the barrier set at a shrine. Kekkai was originally a Buddhist term that points to the boundary line dividing "sacred ground" from "the secular world." At a shrine too, structures such as the "torii," the "shimenawa," and the "tamagaki" mark the division between the sacred realm and the outside, and by them a "sacred space" is shaped.

Among them, the torii, symbol of the kekkai, is the gate that stands at the entrance of a shrine, a symbolic boundary that divides the sacred realm from the human world. Passing under the torii at the start of the approach means stepping from the everyday into the sacred realm. So when the Japanese worship at a shrine, there is a manner of bowing once before the torii and only then entering the grounds, and of walking off to the side, since the center of the approach is the god's path. The inside of the torii is the "shiniki," the clean sacred realm, and outside it spreads the secular world of daily life. A structure that looks simple at a glance seems only to divide space in two, but the Japanese hold the awareness that "from here on is a special place," and naturally straighten themselves and feel the sacredness.

First, "kegare" refers to an unclean state, a stain of body and mind, a state in which spirit and vitality have grown weak. The typical example is the kegare of death. When a family faces a death, for example, the bereaved were thought to come into a state in which their "spiritual power (vitality)" has "withered" from deep grief. This is known in Japan as "kegare (穢れ)," which has the meaning of "ki withering." Since in the old days kegare was also thought to be an invisible force that spreads to others, Shinto gave rise to a custom called "kichu," in which the bereaved, for a certain period, cut off contact with the outside, keep quietly to themselves, and recover their spiritual power. During kichu the bereaved must refrain from worshiping at shrines and taking part in festivals, and devote themselves to purifying themselves. This was a consideration so as not to bring the kegare of death to others or to the gods, and an important custom for keeping the community going.

"Imi," on the other hand, refers to restraining one's conduct in a particular period or situation in order to avoid kegare. Imi is a taboo that individuals or communities set voluntarily, an attempt to keep purity by limiting what one does around oneself. Now that community has been lost, imi has a strong side as a taboo that an individual sets by himself. The kichu above is also imi in the broad sense, but in daily life too there are examples handed down in many places, such as the festival's person on duty living a life that avoids impurity before the festival. In festivals it has been believed that if those concerned neglect "saikai," abstinence, divine punishment or ill-omened events will occur. In the Shinto worldview, kegare is a negative state of "ki" that clings to a person for a time, and it was thought that to purify it a certain process of imi and cleansing is needed.