On June 12th and 13th I had the opportunity to visit Jingū (神宮) in Isë and participate in the Okihikigyōji (御木曳行事). Translated literally, that is something like “Honourable Tree-Pulling Formal Event”, which is obviously a terrible translation. I have already written about the ceremony held to mark the start of these events, and the reason I said I would write about the events themselves later was that I knew I was going to be participating.
In this post, I will write about the background to the tradition, and explain its significance, and next time I will write about my experience. (It would be much too long if I tried to do both in a single post.) I was able to participate as part of a Jinja Honchō event aimed at the media, which meant that we also got presentations on the history and significance of the event. This summary is based on those presentations and on an article in the June 8th issue of Jinja Shinpō, with reference to Jingū Shigaisetsu (神宮史概説) by Kamata Jun’ichi for the general history of Jingū.
At its core, this event is about getting the timber from the forest to the place where it is worked to build the new sanctuaries, and so in that sense it has always been part of the Shikinen Sengū (式年遷宮), and goes back over 1300 years. For much of that history, however, it seems to have been a purely practical part of the process, rather than a special event, and was carried out by the people who were employed to do the general work of rebuilding.
The first reference that survives to this being done by the local residents is from 1452 or 1453 (the two sources mentioned above give different dates…), and that record says, roughly, “as usual”, which implies that it started at least twenty years earlier. However, this record is unclear on whether the residents were simply employed to do this, or whether they were offering their labour to the kami. The first reference to the process as an offering is from 1459, which seems to have been associated with the last Shikinen Sengū before the hiatus caused by the century of civil war and anarchy in Japan.
I think that this may explain why the first records of a special event are from this period. Before the mid-fifteenth century, there is evidence that Jingū was prosperous, and could afford to pay not only for the Shikinen Sengū, but for significant maintenance in the intervening years to keep the thatching on the sanctuaries fresh. However, as the country fell apart, so did Jingū’s financial base, and so at this point they may have needed assistance from the local people to complete the ceremonies.
In any case, when the Shikinen Sengū were restarted in the mid sixteenth century, the participation of the local people is again recorded, and the event is referred to as “kihiki”. At least at this point, “local people” were specifically defined — they were the people who lived in the area controlled by Jingū, under the shogun and Tennō. These people were called the “Shinryōmin” (神領民) — “People of the Kami’s Domain”.
During the Edo period, the process became a definite event, taking place over many days, with traditional songs, special designs for the carts with the timber, and matching outfits for the people involved. The Shinryōmin were divided into groups based on where they lived, and each group was responsible for pulling timber on particular days. Because the timber was delivered by sea to the mouth of the Miyagawa river, it was pulled upstream to Jingū. The Inner Sanctuary is on the river, so my understanding is that the timber could be pulled upstream all the way there, while the last bit of the journey to the Outer Sanctuary had to go overland.
With the Meiji Revolution in 1868, the government took over the Shikinen Sengū, and said that it no longer needed the services of the former Shinryōmin (Jingū’s domain had also been abolished). However, the people who were resident in those areas asked that they be allowed to continue their service, and the government relented. Photographs from the early twentieth century imply that this was still practical, with dozens of logs being hauled at once. However, as transportation systems developed, it became more symbolic.
After World War II, it seems to have become entirely symbolic, and it certainly is now. Timber is still dragged upstream through the river to the Inner Sanctuary, but only one log is on the sled, and it is delivered by road to the point where people start pulling it. Similarly, there is one log on each of the wagons dragged to the Outer Sanctuary. Another important change was that the event was opened to people living outside the old domain of Jingū. At first, they were known as “One-day People of the Kami’s Domain”, but now they (we) are called “Special People of the Kami’s Domain”. These people always participate in drawing the timber for the Outer Sanctuary. (It is possible for people who live outside the area to participate in the work for the Inner Sanctuary — if they have personal connections to someone running one of the groups doing that and get an individual invitation. Someone who got such an invitation wrote about the experience in Jinja Shinpō.)
The Okihikigyōji is organised by the residents of Isë City, with the cooperation of Jingū, and one of the presentations was from the man in charge this year. He pointed out that the twenty-year interval means that one individual’s experience is very different every time. He was two at the first one he was alive for, and away in Tokyo at university for the second, so he didn’t participate. Last time, he was involved, and it seems that the whole thing was run by a very forceful and efficient individual. This time, there is no-one who can do it the way he did, so it has been much more of a team effort, and a lot of younger people (in their thirties and forties) have been actively involved. This is very good, of course, because next time they will be about the age that he is now, and in a good position to take the lead.
In the next post, I will tell you what it was like to pull the tree.