Small-Town Buddhist Ritual and the Joys of Second-Graders

Continuation of the epic winter break trip to resume sometime in the near future with the conclusion recounting more than a week of sightseeing in Kyoto.

In the meaning, we return to our regularly-scheduled real-time blog.

Last weekend I had the rare opportunity to participate in a small-town festival. About 3 kilometers away from Hitakatsu, the metropolis of northern Tsushima (sort of the Maine equivalent of Fort Kent if nothing south of Bangor existed), is a small hamlet called Izumi. It's home to a tiny Tendai Buddhist temple that put on an early Setsubun festival. I was told that the temple only has one monk, but other monks from all over Tsushima gathered for this ritual, about 6 of them all together.

Setsubun is celebrated on the day prior to the beginning of a new season, the biggest celebration happening in spring. It's usually February 3rd according to the Japanese calendar. In order to prepare for the new season, people and homes are ritually cleansed. In order to send oni, or demons, away, beans are usually thrown outside or at some festivals thrown at someone wearing an oni mask. (See wikipedia for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setsubun).

The Setsubun ritual I went to started with everyone crowding inside, maybe 100 people kneeling on tatami mats before the temple's raised platform and altar. Babies were cradled on laps, children sprawled everywhere. One monk chanted a short sutra, and then it morphed into a chant with the other monks joining in with musical instruments. There was a small sending-vibrations-into-your-soul drum and a monkish-travel-staff shaped mini rattle among other things. The room was pretty packed and I was in the back, so I couldn't see very much. Once the chanting got going, at periodic intervals the main chanting monk would add wooden sticks to a small, contained fire in the middle of the platform. People had written their names and perhaps other information on the wooden sticks prior to the ritual; I think it was supposed to be a cleansing activity. The fire got pretty high, and it was beautiful to see the fire and candlelight dance across the monks' faces. All the other lights had been put out. I'd never seen a Tendai ritual before, and it was very different from the minimalist Zen rituals I'm more accustomed to. At times it seemed so raw, almost shamanistic. Of course I had no idea what they were saying, but there was a very powerful feeling coming from all the energy they were raising. I felt it even from the back of the room... intense and amazing.

The chanting lasted quite some time, maybe 45 minutes altogether without a break. In the middle, the main monk left the platform and ritualistically took out what looked like a sutra. It was an accordion-bound book that he skillfully fanned down, almost like a slinky, and neatly caught. Using this holy item, he purified/blessed a number of men sitting on cushions in front of the altar by tapping the book on different parts of their bodies while chanting. I got the feeling that they were important people and had paid a lot for this service. At the end of purifying them, the monk hit them on the back twice, very hard. I could hear the thumps. After all the men sitting on cushions were purified, the chanting resumed. When it finally stopped, I thought the ritual was complete, but then all the monks came down from the platform armed with accordion-bound sutra books and started purifying everyone. I was a little bewildered and not sure quite what to do-- I could've made a run for it or pretended that I'd already been blessed-- but then thought, what the heck. This could be my only chance to have a monk hit me with a sutra-book. If I get blessed in the process, why not? ...and thus I, too, got hit by a sutra-wielding monk last weekend. The last two thumps surprised me by their strength, and I felt like they really did something.

After everyone got whacked with a sutra-book (even the children and babies, although I think their last two whacks were a little less intense than mine), everyone went outside for the bean-throwing portion of the ritual. It had been raining in the beginning but thankfully stopped by the time everyone had been blessed. Instead of us throwing beans at someone dressed up like a monster, which was more along the lines of what I had been expecting, the monks threw packets of beans at us. It was like running for 4th-of-July candy thrown from parade floats; hands scrabbling everywhere and everyone trying to fill their little plastic baggie regardless of how many beans they actually wanted. Midway through the madness, I plucked a bag from where it had landed on an obaachan's back (she'd been hunched over going after the ones on the ground), felt a little guilty, and tried to hand it to her. "No, no," she said, hardly standing up from where she was still grabbing bean-bags off the ground, "that one's yours."

Eventually all of the bean-bags thrown and had been snatched out of the air or picked up from the ground, and it was time for another fire event: burning old mamori, charms of luck and happiness, wealth and fortune. I was surprised at how many had been collected; everything together made a bonfire the size of a small car. Watching the charms burn, everyone had a little tea and miso soup, chatted a bit (perhaps the Japanese version of post-church snacks and socialization?), and left. All in all, a fully-satisfying spiritual experience and one I won't soon forget.

In other news, this morning I went to one of my favorite schools, Hitakatsu Elementary. Just going into the school is fun; I bring along Miss Caterpillar, an insanely long stuffed animal with the alphabet printed over her different segments. Coming in from the parking lot, the kids see Miss Caterpillar from their classroom windows and wave to us. It's so amazing seeing their excitement before I'm even in the building. Going to the teacher's room, I can hear the kids talking to each other in the hallway-- "Kimberly-sensei! Kimberly-sensei's here!"

I ate lunch with the second-graders, which was a blast. I entered the classroom to applause. During lunch, all I had to do was look at them a little funny and they'd burst out laughing. One boy challenged me to try using chopsticks with my left hand, which provided more amusement. Although my taiko sensei/sempais say that doing things left-handed like using chopsticks will fine-tune my left arm muscles and make me a better taiko player, the 2nd-grader I was sitting across from agreed that it was impossible. Towards the end of lunch, as the stragglers munched on their little bits of apple, a crowd gathered around me to marvel at the color of my eyes. The majority of Japanese people have dark brown eyes-- although they insist on calling them black-- so any lighter color like blue, green, or hazel is rare. It's not the first time I've had staring contests with my elementary kids, but it was particularly fun to do with a few girls who almost got nose-to-nose with me.

Departing from the classroom was an event all in itself. There was the all-class "Thank you! See you!" which included mad two-handed waves, and then a few brave souls came over to give me high-fives. Making my way towards the door (still surrounded by the swarm), everyone else decided they wanted high-fives, too, and some repeatedly. Heading back to the teacher's room, I ran into a bunch of 3-4th graders who were cleaning up dirty trays, and they all wanted high-fives. The braver of the bunch, including a few of my kendo kids, jumped on my back for rides about, and then wanted to see how flat I could smoosh my nose. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe it was a contest... they could really get their noses pretty flat. I think my nose cartilege is fairly well-defined at this point and in no mood to go about taking on different shapes. But I did try.

Then it was time to head over to the Board of Education to pick up my paycheck, pay bills, and do other assorted tasks, so I gathered my stuff together, flung the oversized English-alphabet Miss Caterpillar (also known as "Kimberly-sensei's friend") around my neck, and attempted to leave the building. Of course then I ran into a bunch of 1-2nd graders who absolutely love Miss Caterpillar and spent long moments trying to remember her name. Miss Caterpillar waved back, got settled in the backseat (her head sticking out the window a la drooly dog), and off we went, the mad excitement of children waving good-bye from the playground receeding in the rear window.

Some days I really love my job.