Musings on belief and ritual

(Fushimi-Inari Daisha, Kyoto)

Dear hypothetical readers, I really have no excuses. I have been recovering from my months abroad (i.e., slacking off) at home for nearly ten days now; it's high time to do a little more reflection.

First, a brief disclaimer: I have been raised as, and remain, a nonbeliever. I am convinced that organized religion, particularly those that usurp social and cultural power to the extent that they attempt to exclude alternatives, can be extremely pernicious. At the same time, I have great admiration for what has already been created under such would-be spiritual monopolies, viz. music involving pipe organs, enormous marble statues and mosaics, oil paintings with perhaps unnecessarily sumptuous draperies, etc. Also, it is more than obvious that materialist histories that place intangibles like belief aside are simply lacking--they just do not touch upon the psycho-emotional world that human life cannot be without. For all that, though, attempts to read any doctrine inflicts upon me a throbbing headache, followed by the urge to nap for a couple of hours. [Read: the following may be incredibly shallow and/or somewhat offensive, despite my intention otherwise. Then again, what else is new?]

With that out of the way, onto the post!

Traveling in Japan during the summer meant encountering massive clumps of tourists, of course. I mostly paid visits to Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, but these too were crowded with people, from the pimped-out glitter of Ieyasu's shrine/tomb to the relatively subdued Touji temple. Observing the people and the surroundings, the following points were immediately obvious:

1. Ritual observed at temples and shrines were distinctly similar, featuring the same hand- and mouth-washing, coin-tossing, bowing, and clapping. For tourists, of course, there was also frantic photo-taking (or complaining about not being able to take photos in areas that forbade it). And, aside from the peer pressure of hundreds of other tourists in close quarters, authorities put up signs with multilingual "NO PHOTOS" signs at every point that a photo-crazed person might get the urge.

2. Ritual materials also overlapped considerably. Ema (wooden placards with pictures on one side and blank spaces for wishes to be written on the other) and o-mamori (protective charms, usually wooden or paper, the latter folded and inserted in a cloth pouch) I had thought the special province of shrines, but were also offered for sale (and offering) at temples:

(Ema praying for romance.)
(Ema of various designs, Hakodate Kokoku Jinja)
(Fox-faced ema, Fushimi-Inari Daisha, a kitsune, or fox-spirit, shrine)

3. Which leads me to the next characteristic: money was evident everywhere. Money tossed at small stone Buddhas for luck; money stuck into the trunks of ancient trees planted by long-dead, famous emperors; price labels for every charm, stick of incense, candle, and paper fortune on sale.

(Piles of dough at Kinkakuji, Kyoto)
(Coins lodged in the trunk of this old tree Go-Shirakawa of Heike Monogatari fame was supposed to have planted)

Of course, this high profile for $$$ is not limited to Japanese places of worship. But a votive candle or the Pietà seem like quite different ways of displaying sociocultural capital while simultaneously expressing belief. For one, the sensation of being in some of the more tourist-laden shrines was more like strolling through an amusement park or even a department store of gifts (お土産) to buy for friends and family back home. Yet these were indubitably "places of worship"-- on the personal level, there were certain quieter spots and moments of sensory in which I felt something spiritual.

(Kinkakuji again. Not so many people snapping shots of this!)

Moreover, there were people partaking in ritual processes and material consumption of a level that probably seems rather more "faithful" than chucking your 5-yen coins at a stone Bodhisattva of Mercy. One particularly impressive scene: a family was seated in the "Shogun's Room" to the right side of main shrine of the Toushouguu 東照宮 at Nikko, accompanied by a Shinto priest who walked them through making offerings and prayers. This extremely formal occasion occurred less than ten feet from the hall where all we tourists shuffled about making noise and wishing we could blast the place, complete with its portraits of the 36 Japanese "Immortals of Poetry," with photos.

Anyway, the point is that for wearing consumption so conspicuously on their collective sleeves, the shrines/temples/tourist hotspots could not be derogated as not being sacred centers of belief and faith in some way. Which leads me to the principal question that I pondered (half-assedly) as I sweated my way through Kyoto, Nara, and Nikko: to what extent is religion fundamentally about conspicuous consumption and cash changing hands? This is not meant to be disrespectful (though the question is probably not one any devout believer would ask); in what sense are belief, ritual, and commerce one and the same?

(Nara mascots...)

In the broadest view, the three concepts could be understood as one. Commerce and ritual involve a fundamental faith in the continued significance of all social, symbolic, and material elements involved; what good could it do to trade a pear for an apple if one has not some deep belief that there is something meaningful in the trade--that will remain meaningful a hour, a day, or a week after the trade occurs? Similarly, ritual could be called a commerce of a particular stripe, and without sustained belief in the world remaining unchanged enough to give one's ritual act meaning, it could not stand. Such belief can be called faith, for its contents are not known to be a priori fact. (Unlike some atheists, I hold that trust in the scientific method and other positivisms should properly also be called "faith," of the same species as faith in ritual practice.) On the other hand, perhaps faith also requires such rites and exchanges to define it. Could any of the usual dogma of a given organized religion be explained without some idea of exchange included? Rather than denying the intangible of belief a place in more concrete and statistically measurable venues, it seems pretty clear to me that such spirituality must of needs rise from physical origins, for instance the acquisition of a new object or the swinging of a censer. Of course, there's a biological explanation for this, as senses tingling and muscle fibers twitching are inseparable from cogitation.

That was a long detour to the real point, which is that for all the apparent weirdness of shrines that look more like shopping arcades, such consumption is in fact a crucial element of belief and worship in these specifically Japanese instances and, I believe (punny!), in all organized religion at large. It's easy to condemn the "lack of spirituality" in things like these polylingual, obviously tourist-targeted fortune-selling machines,

but is it really so bad to acknowledge openly the inseparability of belief and trade? I for one thought it was refreshing to throw my coins into the collection boxes before bowing, clapping and praying to the gods and Buddha. It would help the priests and monks preserve their historical buildings and lovely landscaping, and maybe help get the attention of the divine, too.

(Touji, Kyoto)

Comic Books, Old School Chinese Style

The term's finally coming to an end, and so I guiltily update a horrifying two months since my last entry. To make up a little for this transgression, I've got some juicy stuff to share.

While doing some poking around in old books earlier this year, I ran across illustrations in some late Ming (early 17th century) gongan xiaoshuo, or "court-case tales." (NB: xiaoshuo is the Modern Chinese word for "fiction," but the fictiveness of the genre in late imperial times was not nearly as clear-cut as that label might imply. Thus I use a zillion synonyms, but never "fiction.")

Anyway, these pictures take up about a third of the page;

(This and all following images from the Mingjng gongan, or Bright Mirror Cases. )

block-printed like the text, they are not exactly the pinnacles of late imperial Chinese artistic genius--in fact, they are frequently quite stereotypical in their graphic vocabulary, with all the women looking like one another, all the magistrates much apparently cloned from one man, etc. Not unlike Lego characters in the recent series of popular films adapted into Lego-based action games, even when these figures' heads are lopped off they retain more or less the same expression--one of slight bemusement:

(Oh dear, it looks like this evil monk, being unable to seduce me, has lopped my head off in his fury. Teehee?)

Nonetheless, the presence of these illustrations suggests something of how the vast majority of Chinese people might have accessed stories that literate folk could read at length in the body of these xiaoshuo. The stereotyped images also have the flavor of the courtroom drama, put on and accessible to even the most "rootless" of illiterate rural people. As one would expect from the Cops of 17th-18th century China, most of the stories are pretty sensational, with lots of blood, sex, and plot twists. Notably, I've found two stories in this collection alone with women who have sex and impregnate each other.

But just about all gonagan xiaoshuo end with the successful, clever resolution of the case by a righteous judge, and, often, most unpleasant punishments for the guilty parties. More than occasionally, these sentences far exceeded the statutory regulations.

(If "a wicked monk buries the woman [he murdered, see above] and plants a tree atop her grave" isn't pretty sensational, then you, dear Reader, have probably watched a little too much true crime TV, especially since the monk is apparently a late Ming version of the Hulk or something, able to uproot entire full-grown trees.)

Here I want to post a complete graphic account of a case so you can pretend to be an illiterate person--little kid, young wife, old codger, bandit--of your choice and follow along, just like an episode of CSI as a comic, except Old and Chinese, which can only make the experience better...right? Thus I present "Lord Governor Chen Solves the Case of a Rape and Murder."


A local gentleman, Deng Kui, treats the scholar son of an acquaintance, Zhang Wenli, to a meal.

(Thebpody text notifies us that Deng Kui's young wife, Yu shi,* is "flowerlike in complexion and moonlike in radiance, more beautiful than Xishi and Imperial oncubine Pan of old, with hands delicate as new-sprung lily-buds and brows as fine as willow-leaves just appearing on the branch." During the Pure Brightness festival, Deng and his old mother go out to pay the customary tributes to his father's grave, leaving Yu shi home alone. BAD IDEA.)


Zhang Ba [Zhang the Eighth] tries to rape Yu shi and, failing to overcome her, murders her.

(The body text describes the young idler Zhang the Eighth, who had long lusted after Yu shi, and, when he saw the young woman's husband and mother-in-law both heading toward the graves on Pure Brightness, decided to make his move. Unfortunately for him, Yu shi shouted invectives at him and tried to flee. Suddenly realizing his difficult situation, and espying some fancy jewelry and cltohs, Zhang the Eighth grabs a kitchen knife, kills the poor Yu shi, and seizes some of the cloths and jewels before running and hiding in the hills behind the house.

Coincidentally, the young scholar Zhang Wenli passes by the Deng household and heads inside to say hello--with the ulterior motive of maybe catching another glimpse of the beautiful Yu shi. He ends up discovering her "corpse, saturated with fresh blood and lying on the floor," which scares the soul from his body. In terror, he leaps on his horse and dashes away. Zhang the Eighth, still crouched in the hill, sees all of this clearly. You may see where this is going.)

Kui returns home, sees his wife's murdered corpse, and begins to weep uncontrollably.

(The mother-in-law and Deng Kui report matters to the local headmen immediately. Zhang the Eighth makes a timely appearance, saying that he had been chopping wood in the hills and had seen Wenli ride in, then leave a short while later in a panic. "His family is rich and just has the one son," Zhang suggests to Deng. "You should take this body and carry it to their door, otherwise they'll probably try to bribe the officials with all they've got."** But Deng is reluctant--the Zhangs might send people out to grab Yu shi's corpse and thus eliminate the evidence, so he takes matters to court.)

Deng Kui turns in a petition to the county magistrate accusing Wenli.

(The text reproduces Deng's accusation as a standard "petition" form--perhaps as a way to satisfy armchair detectives who should have been studying up on the Book of Odes or the Spring and Autumn Annals instead, so they could become a magistrate and read real, but probably much more boring, petitions.)


The magistrate sends out constables to arrest Wenli.

(The magistrate, Shen, is "an impatient and harsh man" equipped with "a steely sense of justice." He's furious after reading the plaint, and straightaway sends off constables. I do like this dude's pose with those manacles--can you hear the Cops theme music in the background here?)

Zhang Shimao, Wenli's dad, sets out some wine and goodies for the two constables.

(The next morning, having deflected the police for the evening, Shimao has Wenli file his own petition, accusing Deng Kui of making false accusations: "last year Deng lent my father some silver as startup capital, which we have not yet repaid. Thus he is plotting to cheat us of money.")

Magistrate Shen conducts the inquest of Yu shi's corpse.

(The corpse has a wound on the side and another on the neck[--this does seem obvious, considering the picture shows her decapitated...]. Magistrate Shen calls in the local headmen and Zhang #8 for interrogations. I wonder what that weasel's going to say?)


Zhang the Eighth stubbornly testifies against Wenli, who is injustly condemned.

(At first resistant to confessing, even after forty strokes of the bamboo rod and collapsing in a faint, Wenli eventually confesses after being trussed up in the leg-press and having his head knocked with sticks. Even though he still denies any knowledge of the clothes and jewels, Magistrate Shen ignores him and writes up a case summary.)
Shimao appeals the case to the Provincial Judicial Commissioner's office.

(There's another "plaint" here recording what Shimao filed on the provincial level, going over the prefect's head.)

Luckily for the hapless Wenli, the Nanjing-based Governor Chen is on a tour of inspection and arrives in Huizhou prefecture at just the right moment.

("A youthful holder of the jinshi degree [the third and most advanced in the bureaucratic tests]," Chen is "bright as a mirror, able to see as clearly as a vase of ice, and careful in the details, down to matters as fine as the new-grown autumn down of birds and beasts.")

The Governor interrogates the murder in detail.

("Lift high the bright mirror, Sir," pleads Wenli, "and shine through my injust condemnation." Zhang #8, though, maintains that he had seen the entire rape-attempt-cum-murder from the hill where he was chopping wood. The Governor asks if he, being at such close range, had heard the woman screaming, which she must've done as her murderer attacked. "This humble person did hear," says Zhang #8. "Well, if you heard her cries, why did you not report the matter, instead waiting for Deng Kui to do so? Your words seem unreliable." Zhang #8 has nothing to say.)

A crow flies in and pecks the head of Zhang the Eighth.

(Just as the Governor is hesitating over Zhang #8's inconsistent testimony, a crow flies right in, pecks Zhang #8 on the head once, then flies off again. Everyone's shocked, until Governor Chen sternly shouts that it was Zhang #8 who had done the deed. The fellow refuses to confess until he's gotten two rounds of the leg-press and a hundred knocks from the sticks. When he finally does admit to his crime, he adds that "Heaven couldn't allow my stubborn accusation and injustice toward Wenli, and now you, Sir, are as just as the blue sky. I am resigned to paying with my life.")

The great Governor sentences Zhang the Eighth to the death penalty.

(The Governator also declares that, because Yu shi had resisted rape to the death, she would be commemorated as a chastity martyr, which probably means some silver distributed to her husband's family to erect a paifang, or arch, and a likely biography in the local gazetteer--though such institutions are much better documented as well as a lot more extensively maintained in the Qing than the late Ming.)



Wenli is cleared of the crime and sent home a free man.

(I dig his jolly look here. The blob in the sky could be anything--a comet? A dying bird? A melting sun? A cloud? But those little dark marks near the horizon are definitely supposed to be bamboo. Bamboo shoots, probably. Yum. What a lush landscape they have in Huizhou.)

The gentry and the common people alike praise the righteous, moral governance of Lord Chen.

(More blobbity things in sky, and either a really "mad cursive" inscription*** or a surprisingly postmodern representation of Lord Chen's justice. This last page of the story is taken up by an eighteen-line poem. I quote, "Emperor and lords rule with righteousness and the four seas are clear/the star of virtue hangs high and the eye of Heaven is open." Aha! Those blobs must be THE EYES OF HEAVEN. Do these lines sound a bit apocalyptic to you too, dear Reader?)

Golly, that was an epic post. No commentary--just the observation that these could be awesome if some competent people decided to make 'em into a TV series.

Next time, on THE STAR OF VIRTUE, join us for mutually impregnating lesbians and patron deities of literature--all in the name of JUSTICE, of course!



*shi has sometimes been translated as "woman," [for instance Spence's Death of Woman Wang] but it literally means "of the clan of". If only one surname is mentioned before shi, it is the woman's father's name; if there are two given, for instance Zhang Wei shi, the first is her husband's and the second her father's. Oh, the delights of Cofnucian patriarchy.
** Lest Zhang #8 seems maniacal here, this tactic was actually practiced often enough that it entered a substatue in the Great Qing Code.
***Behold: