Silk for Sacred Treasures

In the Shikinen Sengū (式年遷宮) at Isë Jingū (伊勢神宮), the rebuilding of the sanctuary buildings gets almost all of the attention. There are a couple of reasons for this, I think. One is that the sanctuary buildings are the only part that visitors can see — although even their visibility is limited. The other is that almost all of the traditional rituals that happen before the transfer itself are connected to rebuilding the sanctuaries, including the ones I have already described on this blog. This indicates that it was always seen as the most significant part of the process.

However, it is not the only part. The sacred treasures of the sanctuaries are also all remade every twenty years, and new ones offered. The old ones are kept in a building within the sanctuary complex for one more cycle and then, historically, they were destroyed. Now, they are kept in museums, and sometimes loaned out for special exhibitions (I saw one such exhibition in London, before I came to Japan).

These items include clothes and furnishings for the kami, items that are used during the process of transferring the kami from the old sanctuary to the new, and items that are offered to the kami. The last category includes weapons and a very pretty model of a horsey. (The two most famous, or at least most photogenic, are a sword that is offered at the Inner Sanctuary, and that model of a horse, which if I remember correctly is offered at one of the secondary sanctuaries of the Outer Sanctuary.) This is a big job, because there are 1576 of them, of 714 different types.

A lot of these items use silk, and the plan appears to be to use silk raised in Japan, as well as manufacturing the items themselves here. As I discussed a few weeks ago, very little silk thread is produced in Japan these days, but there is enough to create the items for the Shikinen Sengū.

The July 28^th issue of Jinja Shinpō (神社新報) had an article about the start of this process. The spinning factory in Gunma Prefecture that will create the silk thread for many of the sacred treasures held a ceremony attended by people from Isë Jingū, silk farmers, and people at the company to mark the start of the process. The whole ceremony was conducted on the factory floor, next to the spinning machines.

The ceremony began by calling kami down for the ceremony. These were Amaterasu Ōmikami and Toyo’ukë Ōmikami, the primary kami of the Inner and Outer Sanctuaries at Jingū, three kami associated with silk rearing —  Ukemochi-no-kami (保食神), who is often identified as Inari Ōkami, Ōgetsuhimë-no-kami (大気津比売), who is often identified as Inari Ōkami, and Wakamusubi-no-kami (稚産霊神), who is identified as Inari Ōkami at one jinja, at least, if I recall correctly — and Ubusuna Kami, the local kami of the area. (No mention of whether that is an Inari jinja. I have a vague memory that there is an Inari jinja that enshrines Toyo’ukë Ōmikami, as well. But not Amaterasu Ōmikami. So at least one of the kami venerated in this ceremony was definitely not Inari Ōkami.)

After making the offerings, the presiding priest prayed that the process of producing silk would go smoothly, without any accidents. He then purified the area, and the spinning machines that were standing next to the ritual space, before the main attendees offered tamagushi.

When the matsuri had finished, the machines were ceremonially started, and this part of the process of the Shikinen Sengū got underway.