Posted on: Saturday, January 8, 2005

EXPRESSIONS OF FAITH

By George J. Tanabe Jr.

Japanese New Year's is a time when everyday things suddenly are transformed into objects of deep religious meaning. Rice is commonplace. Mochi, or rice cakes, are available in markets throughout the year — but at New Year's, mochi suddenly becomes an offering to the gods, a request for blessings, and food that nurtures the soul as well as the body. Stacked two high and topped with a tangerine, kagami mochi (mirror rice cakes) are placed on fern sprigs and saiwai-gami (good fortune paper) printed with images of cranes, fish, Shinto gods and other symbols for longevity, good luck, health, prosperity and other blessings in life.

Bamboo and pine needles become kadomatsu placed at doorways and entrances to welcome the new year and all who enter with best wishes. To make a kadomatsu, you must cut three pieces of green bamboo cleanly at a sharp angle and wrap them at one end with heavy twine and pine branches. Or you can buy them at various outlets. Thousands are sold in Hawai'i at New Year's.

Beans are beans, but on New Year's mame become symbolic health insurance. In Japanese the word "mame" has two meanings — beans and health. A popular saying has it that if you eat mame (beans) you will become mame (healthy). But this assurance is available only on New Year's.

When eaten on New Year's Eve, noodles are called toshikoshi soba. Toshikoshi means crossing over from one year to the next. Eating noodles on New Year's will bring longevity, a life as long as noodles.

The list of ordinary things that become extraordinarily special objects filled with symbolic meanings at New Year's includes much more. It is a time when people's imaginations, fed by a profound desire for a good life, invest everyday things with religious meanings. Even people who do not think of themselves as being particularly religious engage in New Year's customs.

In Japan, the custom that is most explicitly religious is hatsumode, the first visit to a temple or shrine. For the first three days of the new year, shops close, businesses take time off, government offices shut down, and people go in droves to Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. The Meiji Shrine in Tokyo and the Kawasaki Daishi Temple each receive more than 3 million worshippers. The road to Kawasaki Daishi Temple is jam-packed with a million people a day, slowly making their way in a massive line to the temple. New Year's transforms the Japanese, the majority of whom report that they are not religious, into a nation of people praying to the gods and buddhas.

It is a remarkable, though temporary, transformation repeated every year. Japanese religious imaginations respond to and reflect ordinary life and actual experiences. As one year of life comes to an end, never again to be recovered, people turn on the fires of the religious imagination and see in the most mundane things the best and the brightest hopes for the new year.

May our lives be as long as noodles!

George J. Tanabe Jr. is a professor of religion at the University of Hawai'iiManoa.