Anker's Away

Japan Trip: Adventures in Nichirenland

Sunday September 27th in Tokyo. Honestly, the only thing on my mind that morning was how good it'll feel to get out of Tokyo. But we've got a day to kill before that. I haven't been practicing hard or much at all really, or thinking much about buddhism though I have been reading a biography of Nichiren called Nichiren: Buddhist Reformer.

Jean and I have talked about going to the SokaGakkai Headquarters and to the temple built where Nichiren died, but we don't know where either of them are and are a bit scared of getting lost on the subway. The day before, during a business a meeting, the subject of my vacation came up and the woman who works with me started to explain some of the places Jean and I are going, in particular Minobu. People generally seem to have heard of it, sort of, but no one seems to actually go there. Gernerally it elicits very quizical looks. Like why would anyone want to go there? So, Mayu explained that Jean and I are Nichiren Buddhist. The guy we were meeting with lights up and says, Oh you should come to my neighborhood, there's a big temple there where Nichiren died. Called Honmon ji.

He encouraged me that it wasn't hard to find, so remembering that conversation was the stimulus I needed to figure it out. While doing that I looked up Soka Gakkai and figured that out too. The Soka Gakkai was closer so we decided to go there first. I drew a map based on the directions I found online (now I'm a cartographer!) and off we went. We got off at the Shinjuku exit, got out of the subway station and tried to figure out where we were in relation to my hand drawn map. Looking around quizzically a nice woman on a bicycle stopped to help us. (This happens all the time in Japan, most helpful people I've ever met). She looked at our map and told us that the address we were looking for should be across the street and straight ahead. Now we felt good. Adventuring out into the unknown and finding our way!

We found it easily and went in. The first thing that struck me was that it felt just like our community center in the San Fernando Valley. Well, not exactly, but the color of the carpet the layout of the lobby and the sort of mid modern industrial park look of the decor were disconcertingly comforting. It reminded me of a an experience I had when I first started traveling for buisness. I was away from home. I was in the exotic city of Bakersfield, CA. Only 90 miles from home yet a world away and feeling lonely. I had to get something at the mall. Walking in I suddenly realized that wherever you are, and no matter how different it is from where you live, shopping malls are the same everywhere. It lifted my homesickness and made me feel a bit queasy at the same time.

There was a friendly young woman at the Soka Gakkai HQ who spoke excellent english. We were asked if we had a letter of introduction, which we didn't, but no big deal. We just filled out a form saying where we were from; district, chapter and Zone (which I'm embarrassed to say I don't know anymore so I just wrote LA). We were given a bag of gifts from "Sensei", which included some origami, incense, a little japanese lamp, some magazines and various other tchatchkies. We had our picture taken with a giant photo of President and Mrs Ikeda, and the photo was given to us as a souvenier. It was fun. We wanted to chant so we asked about that and were given a map showing the various SGI buildings on this street, at the end of which was an actual Kaikan, which they said we could go chant at.

We left amid warm goodbyes and continued down the street. As we walked we noticed small SGI flags in many of the resaurants and shops and we realized that this whole long street was SGIville. We next arrived at the Minon Culture Center and went in there. Once again we were warmly greeted and were told that there was an exhibit of piano and music boxes upstairs.

The music box exhibit was interesting. The theme was lullabyes. There were different types of music boxes ranging from the typical small, intricately designed boxes playing simple melodies which one normally thinks of, to elaborate instruments which were a cross between a player piano, a gramophone and a cuckoo clock. Some of these had beautifully crafted wooden cabinets, played nearly full orchestral scores and had animated scenes of various sorts that played out along with the music. It was quite impressive. There were pictures of young children playing above the displays of music boxes. These pictures were done in a strange photo realistic/cartoon style which reminded me of the movie Polar Express. Jean whispered to me that the pictures were creeping her out. I explained a concept called "the uncanny valley". Look it up.

After the lullabyes we went to an exhibit of pianos throughout the years. There was a pleasant young woman explaining the history of each of the pianos to a group of people. It was all in Japanese so we have no idea what she said, but after each explanation she sat down and played a piece of music that was exemplary of the music composed for those instruments during their heyday. All in all a very pleasant hour spent and yet everything was a bit on the uncanny valley side. Friendly and perfect and safe to the point of weirdness. At least to me.

We then went looking for the Kaikan where we could chant some daimoku with people. I was really feeling a need to get away from the presentations and shiny facades. There were Gakkai stores all around the area. Butsugu stores, flower and greens shops, and restaurants with little gakkai flags. We found the Kaikan, went in and were kind of overwhelmed by the number of people in the gohonzon room, plus the fact that with all these people no one was leading. Maybe 200 people all sitting around chanting daimoku at their own pace. It was packed and people were standing on the periphery chanting and waiting for seats to open up. It was rowdy, cacophonous and kind of fun at first as I tried to get into a rhythm with the people around me, , but after about 20 minutes it became too much of an effort to chant in that environment and we decided to leave.

From there we got back on the Subway to see if we could find Honmonji temple in Ikegami district, the Nichiren Shu temple built on the site where Nichiren died. We found our way to the subway stop listed for the temple but had no idea how to get from there to the temple. As were trying to figure it out another woman on a bicycle stopped to ask us if we needed help, and gave us direction to the temple. We followed her directions and found ourselves walking through a graveyard. It was nearly dusk and the day had been gray anyway so the quiet, subdued creepiness of entering a temple through a graveyard was pretty interesting and in strong counterpoint to the SGI experience we just had. Jean didn't like it. I thought it was kind of trippy and in keeping with the fact that Nichiren had died here. I couldn't help but think of the criticism that SGI has against other forms of Japanese Buddhism, i.e that they are funeral religions. We kept walking and finally came upon the temple itself. It had just closed and was nearly deserted adding to the sense of sadness. The buildings were beautiful and we walked through and found a big and powerful statue of Nichiren. From there we wandered around until we found a big gate and an impressive series of steps leading out of the temple. My fiirst thought was that it was weird that the exit to the temple was so much more impressive than the entrance, when I realized that this was of course the entrance and we had come through some weird back way through the cemetary. D'oh! We walked down the steps and found ourselves in a bustling and quaint little town which felt lively indeed. And I realized how easily I had been forming judgements based literally on ass backwards perceptions. How different my initial thoughts would have been had we entered through the main gate! And how much more so had we come when the temple was still open.

Posted by bill at December 29, 2009 07:02 PM