Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (19 page)

N
O ONE KNOWS
exactly how Shint
got its start. It most likely evolved over hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, as successive waves of immigration settled in the Japanese isles. Shint
is thus not the inspired teaching of a single person in possession of a vision who wrote down one sacred text, but a collection of practices with regional variation.

For the ancient Japanese, life was suffused with a marvelous power they called
kami
. I like to describe the
kami
as ancestor spirits, mythological creatures, gods, demons, the wind, unicorns, the Force—everything powerful but invisible—all wrapped into one. Sometimes a
kami
was felt especially strongly in a specific location: a tree, a rock, a waterfall. Occasionally, a human being could also house
kami
, since people are simply one part of the natural world. Over time, shrines were built on or near these locations to allow humans and
kami
to commune.

It is commonly accepted that there are about eight million gods and demons operating in Shint
at any one time. This is an awful lot of power, and if you consider that not all of the gods get along, and that some are in the air, and some under the earth, in the ocean, on the wind, and elsewhere, and that none are really good or bad, it makes for a land mine–laden spiritual terrain.

Shint
is the reason why, when Nissan first launched its Infiniti car, the advertising campaign included lots of shots of nature, without a single image of a car, a strategy that worked far better in Japan than in the United States. Shint
is the reason why, when you are walking through the woods in Japan, you might see a particular rock or waterfall marked off by a rope and piece of white rice
paper, signaling that a god either lives there or once appeared there. Many gods fly in and out of shrines, the most famous of which is Ise, dedicated to Amaterasu, the sun goddess, and from whom the imperial family is said to be descended. But the gods of Japan can be sensitive, and if they are offended, they can cause humans harm.

To ward off this kind of offense, Shint
requires its practitioners to behave properly and to be as clean as possible. Shint
is why you remove your shoes before entering a home in Japan—to leave outside filth “outside.” It is why once a year needles and scissors are blessed in Ueno, so the unruly scissor and needle gods do not cause their owners mischief by unnecessary cutting or poking.

The world is alive. If you listen to Japanese, it is full of onomatopoeia. A fire does not just burn; it burns
kachi kachi
. Ice is not crunchy; it is
kori kori
. Glue is not just sticky; it is
beto beto
. As my three-year-old son works his way through Japanese children’s books, he is learning a predictable array of cultural manners and customs, but he is also learning more than this. Everything has a face and a sound. Each of the Japanese letters he learns has eyes and a mouth. In the book titled
Ii Kimochi
, which I roughly translate as
Ah That Feels Nice
, by the Japanese children’s author Gomi Tar
, the shade of a building has a face; in the summer, when it is hot, one is grateful for how good the shade feels and one can thank the shade as one thanks a person.

The animistic quality of Shint
is why videotape can be haunted, as it is in the horror classic
The Ring
. It’s why the single most popular character among young children in Japan today is known as Anpanman, or “red bean bread man.” Anpanman flies around the world feeding hungry children pieces of his head. When he runs out of power—when his head is nearly eaten—his caretakers, the baker Jam Ojisan (Uncle Jam) and Batakosan (Ms. Butter), simply bake him a new head. In his adventures against his mortal enemy, Baikin Man or Germ Man, Anpanman is assisted by, according
to the
Guinness Book of World Records
, the largest cast of animated characters ever assembled. There is Hamburger Kid, whose eyes peer over a mustache of lettuce that is wedged between the two hamburger buns that form his head. There is Melonpannachan (Melon-Bread Girl), dressed all in green, and Shokupanman (White Bread Man), whose head is shaped like a perfect piece of toast. The Anpanman empire is vast: toys, books, four theme parks, a TV show, and restaurants serving, what else, bread with numerous faces and fillings.

The love of
things
, the belief that the world is alive, is in part what informs modern Japanese design, where things are sleekly, cleverly shaped, almost as though they are repositories for a soul.