Kansai Cool. Christal Whelan

      CHAPTER 1

      Gratitude

      A Japanese Lesson

      When I first came to Japan, I was enchanted by the exquisite refinement of traditions such as the incense ceremony, and impressed by such singularities as the penchant to miniaturize—poems, trees, cars, and even whole landscapes. Like the sound of Basho’s frog—stunning and evocative. Above all, the extraordinary appeal that Japan’s religious traditions exerted on me remained a mystery to my Japanese friends and a veritable wedge between us. How could I explain my enthusiasm for the sheer abundance of forms of prayer, ritual, and meditation as found in the esoteric traditions of Shingon, Shugendo, and Tendai where mudras, mantras, and the 108-beaded juzu worked in tandem with cleansing waterfalls and purifying goma fires? All these seemed explicitly designed to engage the whole body with its myriad sensations and to quell busy minds and hearts through total engagement rather than austere renunciation. So swept up was I in new ways of thinking and feeling that I had room for little else. Only at unexpected moments—an incomprehensible phrase or a missed cue—would I realize with a shock that I was not Japanese after all and that Izanagi and Izanami were not my mythical matrix. I can easily link this cognitive dissonance to the puzzle that ancestor veneration posed for me. It was a stumbling block that I could not seem to surmount because I lacked the experience that would allow me to grasp it.

      During the year that I lived in the remote Goto Islands and did research on Japan’s “Hidden Christians,” I expected to find this community completely distinct from people of other religious traditions in these islands. The experience of persecution and secrecy had certainly isolated this group historically. But whether a Buddhist sect, a Shinto branch, a “Hidden Christian” village, a new, or a new-new religion, reverence for ancestors seemed perhaps the one common theme that could bind all these disparate strands and render them all transparently Japanese. Although ancestor veneration is a feature found in other civilizations as distinct as those of China and Africa, the puzzle that immediately confronted me was a Japanese one in all its concreteness. Closely related to ancestor reverence was the practice of “kuyo” or memorial services. I learned that just dying or being dead in itself, even for a very long time, would not automatically convert a person into an ancestor. According to some traditions, it took fifty years to become a true ancestor. During that time the potential ancestor was the object of great care, the recipient of numerous rites and offerings of fruit, incense, and scripture that would gradually refine the spirit and confer upon him or her the status of “ancestor.” That was precisely the point—to be an ancestor was a status to achieve but it could not be done alone. It depended on the collaboration and goodwill of one’s descendants. Various as they might be, these memorial practices constituted tangible links in a long chain that kept the past tightly fastened to the present.

      The shift in my own consciousness towards an understanding of this cultural puzzle was a gradual one that laid the foundation for a radical change in my relationship with my own father. I attribute the possibility of such change ultimately to the persuasive influence of ancestor veneration on my own way of thinking. As a point of reference, I can recall an incident that clearly exemplifies my original attitude. Returning to Hawai’i from Japan one Christmas, my younger brother, who was then studying to be a photographer, had discovered an old family photo. Enlarged to portrait-size, it became everyone’s Christmas present that year. Taken at dockside at the close of the 19^th century, this sepia photograph depicted our paternal ancestors. Headed for America from Ireland, they were dressed in old coats and odd caps, young and old, and surrounded by chunky leather suitcases. My first impression when I looked at this photo was: “Why on earth did my brother have to burden me with this?” The subtext to my annoyance was: “I have never met and never will meet these people, so I really have no relation to them.” I told my mother she could keep my photo, too, because I had no place for it.

      My little brother’s gift had certainly not been prompted by any strain of ancestor reverence, but rather by a combination of retro-fashion and a post-Alex Haley search for “roots.” In a country where nearly everyone originated from elsewhere, the demand to quickly shed one’s past in order to become “American” resulted in a severing of the ancestors. In exchange, the “self-made” man or woman became a model of which “self-reliance” was the virtue.

      One day my colleague at the pharmaceutical university in Tokyo where I was then employed asked me if I would be attending the “dobutsu jikken kuyo.” I had never heard of such a kuyo before, but soon learned that twice a year the university conducted a memorial service for all the laboratory animals whose lives had been “sacrificed” for the benefit of science. That afternoon, under the shade of a huge tree on campus, all the laboratory employees turned up in their white lab coats. Although no “religious” official was present, a master of ceremonies made a short speech and then read from a white scroll that listed the kinds and precise numbers of animals that had been killed: guinea pigs 400, monkeys 22, mice 700, and so on. University staff members from other departments also attended the service