A Shinto Wedding

A Shinto wedding

Despite having to wake up before 6 a.m. on my day off, and despite traveling over an hour to get to the shrine, I felt incredibly excited about what lay ahead.

One of my husband's best friends was getting married.

Not only that, it'd be a Shinto wedding.

And we were invited to that wedding.

I could not miss this.



Religion in Japan 
Shinto, in case you're not aware, is one of the religions Japan practices, probably the main one. The main belief of this religion is that there is a god in everything. Not just living things, but everything. (If you re-watch Pocahontas singing the beginning of "Colors of the Wind" in the Disney movie, you'll get the gist of it.)

I took a course on religions of Asia during college in preparation for Japan, and it was in this class that I learned what I now can only vaguely recall of Shinto, but I'm fairly certain it's because of this belief in everything having a god within it that Japan is pretty hardcore about just about many, many things. The rituals of a tea ceremony, for example, are not to be contended with.

However, as I talked to some of my husband's friends after the wedding, I heard them say that it was also because of this belief that they could so easily weave in and out of other religious practices.

There is a saying about Japan that you are born in Shintoism, you marry in Christianity, and you die in Buddhism. I heard this during my religion course, and our professor said that is because Shinto doesn't deal with death at all. Shinto cares about life. The Christianity part has a lot to do with Western culture seeping into Japanese life, and Buddhism is all about reincarnation and letting go of worldly possessions, which seems to make it fitting for death.

So if you're in Japan and you can't figure out if you're at a Buddhist temple or a Shinto shrine, look around for a red gate (torii) at the entrance (Shinto) and a cemetery (Buddhist).

My husband's friends said that Japan can do this kind of buffet style of religion thanks to Shintoism. Because everything has a god in it, you should be open-minded to as much as possible because everything is sacred (I would like to throw in: Within reason. Don't use Shintoism as an excuse to bungee jump without a cord attached to you or something).

Japan is close-minded about many, many things. They will, for instance, happily tolerate foreign tourists, but things can get hairy if you plan on living here. Just take a look at some of the sensational news out there to get some sort of idea of how they treat women who want to have children and still work in this country.

However, religion is what I think about when I think of Japan's open-mindedness. While I've had friends in America get into fights over their brand of Christianity being better than the other's, in Japan, no one seems to think their religion (let alone their brand of a particular religion) is better than someone else's. They don't care, because they think it's all the same, which is to say, sacred.

The priestesses

The Shinto Wedding
 We got to the shrine grounds by 8:30 a.m. and were ushered down into the basement of one of the buildings there. It looked like a hotel small conference room that smelled like an old trailer.

The bride and groom came into the room and sat at the head of the room at this little banquet table facing us, the bride in a white kimono with the hood on while the groom was in the traditional kimono for men.

Their mothers were in kimono while their fathers were in full tuxedos. Everyone else was in a suit and tie or a dress.

Relatives sat in the middle of the room while us friends and non-relatives sat in the periphery.

A man from the shrine who came in wearing a suit and tie proceeded to explain what was about to happen. He told us that when someone said, "Onaori kudasai," it meant to stop bowing your heads. No one seemed to have heard that expression before.

The man walked everyone through the ceremony using a well-practiced speech, talking almost a little too fast at times as he breezed through what the two priestesses would be doing and how the bride and groom were to present a part of a tree to the gods of the shrine. The groom, clearly nervous, fumbled it a few times and ended up looking at how his future wife smoothly moved her hands to point the end of the branch in the right direction.

After about ten minutes of this, I began to wonder if the ceremony was going to take place in this conference room that smelled like an old trailer. However, the man wrapped up his speech and said we'd be going back upstairs in just a few minutes and that this was the time to take photos (though we would be allowed to take photos in the shrine, too).

My husband went over to the groom, his friend, and asked if they'd gone through what would happen at the ceremony beforehand.

"No," said the groom, clearly flustered, "that was the first time I've heard what's going to happen."

"Wow, you're definitely going to mess this up," my husband said, being a good friend.

In contrast to the disheveled, too-nervous-to-smile-for-photos groom, the bride was radiant in her calm. She was like a rock in the rapids the groom was steadily creating.

We were all ushered upstairs into the main area of the shrine, and I was truly, deeply moved to see we would not have to sit on the floor. All these years in Japan has yet to teach me how to kneel on a tatami mat for hours on end, nor has it helped my back when there's nothing to lean against. There were little fold out chairs with no back to them, like you'd use for camping.

About a minute after we were all settled into our chairs, someone from the shrine started banging against a taikou drum. The main priest of the shrine rang the bells of the shrine to wake the gods up so they'd listen to him, and then he started saying things I couldn't understand in a sing-song voice. (Neither my husband nor his friends could apparently figure out what the guy was saying either.) At one point I could make out the names of the bride and groom, along with their dates of birth.

We were told to bow our heads at random times, and all of us suffered when we were told to bow our heads...and bow them...and keep them bowed...and just a little more...and ok maybe now it was ok to raise your head again. Your neck muscles get a sudden workout.

At one point the bride and groom got up, drank sake, and went up into the main area of the shrine. They presented their branches of a tree (at least, that's what I think they were) to the gods, and then the groom read aloud their names and the date, proclaiming that they are now married.

The priestesses really grabbed my attention throughout the entire ceremony. They never once smiled, nor showed any hint they were even human. I began to question their humanity even more when they began moving in perfect unison...all the time. At one point they went up a few steps into the main part of the shrine (where the gods dwell) and did a ritual dance in such unison that pop stars the world over would wilt with jealousy if they ever saw it. It was just not normal.

Most eye-catching, for me at least, was when they poured sake into these little plates for everyone to drink. Two little tables had been set up in front of the lines of relatives lining either side of the bride and groom (who were in the center) with the little plates on them. These priestesses started in the center of the room in pouring the sake, and they tilted the little pots containing the sake in unison. They would tilt it once, twice, three times and then would take a single step away from the center of the room to pour sake into the next plate. It was mesmerizing to watch.

I asked anyone who would listen to me why Shinto weddings always involve drinking sake, and no one had an answer. The man at the beginning of all of this had mentioned something briefly about a play on words (the word for avoiding someone or something in Japanese is "sakeru" and he said drinking sake prevents you from avoiding because you're drinking away that avoidance tendency) but I don't know if that's true.

Throughout the entire ceremony, I felt lost. The beginning felt like wading into a pool, and toward the end of the ceremony I felt like I was in this turbulent sea of culture I couldn't begin to navigate. This was all way beyond what I could comprehend of Japanese culture. It was so ancient and so far removed from what I normally see in everyday life here that I was kind of dizzy from it all. My small comfort was in hearing my husband and all of his friends wholeheartedly agreeing that they also had no idea what was going on.

And during all of this, from the priest waking the gods to the groom announcing their marriage to the priestesses pouring sake in better unison than robots could achieve, behind me I could hear the familiar sound of people outside throwing coins into a box set outside the shrine followed by two loud, resounding claps. To me, it kind of felt like having a wedding in a church with a small, separate service going on in the back. Interesting.