suijin of lake michigan
Having pneumonia is a strange thing. It attacks the lungs and fills them with fluid. You'd thing someone as interested in the mythic qualities of water as I am would welcome flood-like lungs, but no. I lay in bed with a fever and then chills. Everything aches. I have a hard time concentrating on anything. So I have been reading a bit on Shinto belief while being ill. I am looking for people who worship lakes. It passes the time.
I must state right off I do not think there is a lot of lake worshiping going on in Shintoism. True, there are sacred lakes in Japan; at the foot of Mt. Fuji there are five — Lake Yamanaka, Lake Kawaguchi, Lake Sai, Lake Shoji, and Lake Motosu. But they are not deified the way Mt. Fuji is deified in Shinto belief; or at least as far as I can tell from my current research.
But, you might ask, what is Shintoism? In a nut shell, a form of Japanese animism; that is, the worship of the spirit world found in the natural world all around us. Shintoism involves the worship of kami, meaning an object or entity that has, "divine, sacred, spiritual … quality or energy [to it] … virtually any object, place or creature may embody or possess the quality or characteristic quality of kami." (Bocking, 84) Thus, in Shinto belief, a mountain like Fuji would not only possess kami-like qualities, but have a kami-spirit that resides in it. Or, to put it slightly differently:
Kami is often translated as "deity," but in fact it designates an extremely wide range of spirit-beings together with a host of mysterious and supernatural forces and "essences." In the Kojiki … it is said that there are eight million kami … these include countless vaguely defined tutelary divinities of clans, villages and neighborhoods (ujigami); "spirits of place" — the essences of prominent geographic features, including mountains, rivers and waterfalls; and other natural phenomena … (Littleton, 24)
This interests me because I am going to be moving closer to the shores of Lake Michigan, one of the five largest bodies of fresh water in the whole world and everyone I know treats it as just that — a resource at best, a play or dumping grounds at worst. It is hard for me to understand people who can be in the presence of such splendor and still claim there is nothing sacred about Lake Michigan.
In short, even if I do not call it by that particular name, I want to find the kami of Lake Michigan.
But is that possible? Several critics have stated in no uncertain terms that Shinto "is a racial religion. It is inextricably interwoven with the fabric of Japanese customs and ways of thinking. It is impossible to separate it from communal and national life of the people … Although non-Japanese may pay great respect to the Emperor Meiji, for example, it is inconceivable that they should ever regard him as a kami in the same sense as do the Japanese. Therefore, this phase of the kami-faith is not suitable for dissemination abroad." (Ono, 111)
I wonder about that, that whole inconceivable stance, that such a thing as "race" can define a religion. In the year 2006 I find it strange to think of people claiming that it is unimaginable or impossible for non-Japanese people to worship kami. And this whole nonsense of "racial religion"? Is that like saying anyone not born Italian cannot be Catholic? It is this type of thinly disguised fascism that gives religion a bad name. I believe the human power of belief is much stronger than that but who am I, really?
What I hope to find is not just any kami, but the Suijin of Lake Michigan. That is, Mizugami or water-kami; "[who] recieve frequent worship under various names, particularily from women in agriculture communities and often at a small shrine set up near the water-source. The main water-kami found in large shrines and widely worshipped is Mizuhanome." (Bocking, 189) As is the case with my understanding of the world of kami, deities such as Mizuhanome no kami, Mizugami, Suijinsama are all water spirits but attached to different bodies of water. Who, then, is the kami that looks over Lake Michigan?
Who here submits to a thing? Our nature
cannot see still water as anything
other than this: a body of water
to swim, piss and play in. Not puzzling
then how there are no lake shrines, no praying
to the spirits that remain in the lake.
What sort of nature does not pray? doubting
if the lake has any spirit to make
things right. Take this bread, go to the shore. Break
it, now throw it in and say: "I'm ashamed
of all the harm we do." Do not forsake
this still water, the spirits that remained
to the very end. Feel the call, admit
it in. This lake spirit calls, now submit.
Works Cited:
Bocking, Brain. A Popular Dictionary of Shinto. Lincolnwood, Ill.: NTC Publishing Group. (1997)
Littleton, C. Scott. Shinto: origins, rituals, festivals, spirits, sacred places. Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press. (2002)
Ono, Sokyo. Shinto: the Kami Way. In collaboration with William P. Woodard; sketches by Sadao Sakamoto. Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle Co. (1962)