If You Meet The Buddha On The Road, (he'll be with the lads...)
By John Billingsley from Northern Earth 76
The Japanese Buddhist sect of Shugendo is an old-established sect mingling Buddhist precepts with some shamanistic techniques predating the introduction of Buddhism to Japan in the 6th century. It enjoins strict religious practices of asceticism on sacred mountains1, such as Mt Omine in Nara Prefecture. It has also adhered to the traditional Buddhist belief in the spiritual inferiority of women; as a result, the mountains that are sacred to Shugendo have been off-limits to women for centuries.
The slopes of Sanjogatake, a 1719-metre peak in the Omine range, have been forbidden to women since about 1300. Now, a mountain-climber/runner, Mr Komori Shigenori, is challenging this tradition and canvassing opinions of other climbers through the Internet. A report in The Guardian of 22-10-97 said that the temple of Ominesan-ji is considering reversing the ban as part of its 700th anniversary celebrations in 2000.
In May 1996, Komori organised a four-day running and climbing event, covering a 90-km route in the area. One would-be participant was a woman from Tokyo, and Komori accordingly asked permission from Sensoji temple for her to take part. However, the traditional bar was confirmed, and the route of the event had to be changed to allow her to attend without entering the forbidden zone. Carmen Blacker, a Cambridge professor who has done the principal research on Japanese shamanism1, was similarly not allowed into the area when she was doing fieldwork with Shugendo ascestics.
Komori points out that Sanjogatake contains places of both historical and scenic interest which women naturally would like to be able to visit, and in October 1996 launched a petition to challenge the gender bar.
The path up Sanjogatake begins at Dorogawa, which has some twenty or so B&B houses and inns. The boundary of the men-only zone is about five minutes' drive from here, and is marked by a stone with an inscription reading 'No women allowed beyond this point'. In all, there are four points on this track where such signs exist. According to locals, En-no-Ozu, the founder of Shugendo, 'opened' this area about 1300 years ago, and ever since the local temples and parishioners have denied access to women. Okada Ikuo, chief priest at Ryusenji temple, claims that women would disturb the severe ascetic practices of the yamabushi, as the male Shugendo adherents are called. Among these austerities are being dangled upside down over a sheer precipice, while reading scriptures and pleading repentance. The sight of the opposite sex, he says, would distract the yamabushi - "this is not sexual discrimination, but as long as men and women exist, there must be some distinction between them".
This is not the first time such a campaign has been raised. In 1946, an American woman attacked the bar as archaic and attempted to climb the mountain; she was dissuaded by temple officials who pointed out that the rule was equivalent to that barring women from Christian monasteries. Ten years later, in 1956 a Japanese woman tried to walk up the mountain, but over a thousand Shugendo adherents and local residents constructed a barricade and prevented her access.
In 1970, the no-go zone was reduced in area; the boundary moved 2 km further from Dorogawa, and 16 km from another access point. This was not a relaxation of the gender bar, however, but an economic decision caused by a shortage of male labour in the area - women villagers were needed in the mountains for forestry work. There was some talk in the newspapers of local expectations that special hiking routes might be established to attract women walkers.
Every year, approximately half a million people visit Tenkawa-mura, the district in which Dorogawa is situated, and many families are included in this number. Tenkawa is famous for its spring water, reckoned by the Environment Agency to be among the hundred best waters in Japan, and has twenty camping sites to accommodate the visitors. By contrast, the number of religious visitors is going down, from around 100,000 a year in 1960 to 60,000 in recent years.
Japan once had many such sacred mountain areas which were barred to women, but in 1872 the new 'democratic' regime of Japan demanded that women be allowed access to such places. Indeed, Shugendo itself was proscribed by the nationalist government, being an unacceptable hybrid of indigenous Japanese religion - in its veneration of sacred mountains and non-Buddhist quasi-shamanistic techniques - and the foreign faith of Buddhism. The bar was generally lifted, except for Sanjogatake and Ushiroyama or Kozan in Okayama Prefecture, which persist today. Kizu Yuzuru, of the Japan Shugendo Society, has criticised this ban, which is based on a Buddhist tradition that women are unclean, and insists that it is a case of sexual discrimination.
Komori is finding a lot of support for his campaign, though many hikers also claim that the traditions of the Shugendo sacred mountains should be respected and not dismissed as sexual discrimination.
Other areas of Japan in which women are barred include sumo tournaments. Sumo is the national sport, and is accompanied by many Shinto religious trappings, including a rope ring (denoting sacred or liminal space), purification of the ring with salt, and sacred emblems in the wrestlers' garb. In 1990, Chief Cabinet Secretary Ms Moriyama was expected to deliver the prize to the champion, but was rejected by the Sumo Association on the grounds that it was inappropriate for a woman to fulfil that role. Similarly, a girl Sumo wrestler was denied participation in the national children's championship in 1991, though she was a local children's sumo champion.
It is also thought unlucky for a woman to enter certain tunnels in Japan, but in this case it is because the mountain deity is a goddess who is said to be jealous of women. Women journalists, photographers, lawyers, labour standards inspectors and local councillors have been affected by this belief and denied access by contractors. The Japan Road Corporation in 1990 asked road contractors to relax this attitude. These attitudes must be seen as akin to British fishermen's taboo on women coming on board their boats, and clearly, being deeply rooted in long-standing cultural practices and beliefs, must be evaluated differently from the simple sexism employed by, say, the MCC at Lords until recently. This is not to say however that such traditional practices are not now outmoded; it is surely time for both men and women to give up their absurd claims to gender-based preference of any kind, including especially those who claim it on behalf of God, Goddess or Buddha. To categorically deny access to sacred and visionary lands on such grounds requires careful soul-searching.
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