Kekkai: The Boundary That Lets You Cross

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.

Next, shimenawa are hung at the main hall, the grounds, the sacred trees, and the iwakura of a shrine. A shimenawa is now a rope twisted of straw with lightning-shaped paper called "shide" hanging from it, but before the war most were made of hemp. The shimenawa not only serves as a kekkai dividing the sacred place where the god rests from the outside but also has a spiritual function of keeping evil spirits and pollution out of the god's realm. That is, by hanging a shimenawa, the message "inside this is a clean, sacred realm, and the entry of the unclean and the evil is held back" is made visible, and people compose their hearts anew and join their hands toward the sacred ground.

Further, a tamagaki is set at shrines, running especially around the main hall, the innermost part of the shrine's architecture, dividing the inside from the outside. Outside the tamagaki is the secular world where humans live, and inside it is the sacred realm where the spirit sits. The number of layers of tamagaki differs by the scale of the shrine, but at the Inner Shrine of Ise Jingu there are as many as four layers of fences, and it is an interesting structure in which sacredness rises with each layer, the innermost fence being called the "first tamagaki (mizugaki)." The tamagaki is said to have originated as a hedge of thick "sakaki" enclosing the sacred ground, and, as the Japanese character for sakaki, 榊, combines "tree" and "god," it has been a sacred tree indispensable to rites.

Further, the modern philosophers of religion Shogo Tani and Toji Kamata have also pointed out that the space of a shrine both divides and joins "hare and ke (the sacred and the profane)." At a shrine set off by a kekkai from the secular world, people face an extraordinary sacredness and gain a chance to purify themselves anew. In this way the concept of the kekkai in Japanese shrine architecture holds a rich range of thought: awe toward nature, a consciousness of the sacred and profane as two, and communion between people and gods.

The spread of low-cost carriers and the tide of globalization were, in a sense, attempts to democratize that way of seeing the world. Entangled with the explosive spread of social media, however, the current has reversed, to the point where people now seem to travel as if to drive silence from the face of the earth.

Turning this experience over in my mind as I considered what comes next, it struck me that the wise can immerse themselves in silence without taking a single step. That is because silence is not something discovered, but something created through one's own will and craft. Seen from another angle, a doubt arises: no matter how far we travel in search of silence in the outer world, if we have no silence in the unseen inner realm of our own mind, is it not all just a temporary detox in the end?

The decisive point in building Heian-kyo, this new capital in Kyoto, is that before the city itself was raised, onmyoji (陰陽師) — masters of onmyodo — first laid down kekkai in every direction, and only within those unseen walls of protection was the capital built.

The onmyoji were not chanting magic spells. What they practiced was a thoroughly logical form of systems engineering for the invisible world: stretching an intricate kekkai across the microcosm of the capital, maintaining it day and night, and defending internal order against external chaos. … This, I believe, is the single greatest reason Kyoto has held its historical continuity down to the present day. Even now, unseen kekkai are stretched into every corner of Kyoto. Whenever I visit the city, I move along those kekkai and never step outside them.

That is why we must update the concept to match our age. I redefine modern silence not as something given to us, nor as something built by someone else, but as an invisible fortress that we can construct nomadically for ourselves in the midst of chaos, in any place and under any circumstances. What I want to offer here is the wisdom of an ancient Japanese technology: kekkai (結界).

That is precisely why I insist on building your kekkai yourself rather than entrusting it to others. Do that, and there is no danger of being swallowed up by dubious spiritualism.

To raise a kekkai may sound spiritual, yet it is no spiritual escape. It is a fiercely active, defiant act: saying no to the noise of the world and creating an order of pure silence within yourself, at any time and in any place.