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Kami and the Ephemeral Nature of Place in Japan

Conference Paper · October 1997

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 Kami and the Ephemeral Nature of Sacred Space in Japan Kevin Nute

Kami and the Ephemeral Nature of Sacred Space in Japan

Kevin Nute

Associate Professor
Department of Architecture
Muroran Institute of Technology
Japan

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on what would appear to be an unusual feature of sacred space in
Japan—its dependency on time. The role of time in the Japanese sense of place is today well
known, but less so, it seems, its distant origin in early sacred sites. Unusual natural phenomena,
such as especially high mountains, waterfalls or strangely shaped rocks or trees, were believed
by the early Japanese to mark sites where kami, or spirits, emerged into the material world.
These yorishiro (literally ‘places where kami descend’) were revered as essentially gateways
linking heaven and earth through which kami periodically appeared and disappeared. By
marking these awesome natural objects with shimenawa (taboo ropes) a sacred precinct
reserved for the kami was created, from which the first Shinto Shrine, the simple four-posted
sacred precinct, the kekkai developed, and from it the basic unit of Japanese architectural
space.

These early Shinto sacred sites confirm that the original Japanese sense of place was object-
centered, and that the early Japanese perceived ‘space’, if they did so at all, as essentially
the non-eventful interval between physical objects. Moreover, because the sanctity of these
sites depended on their occupation by kami, and the kami were believed to visit only
intermittently, the Japanese sense of place was, from its very beginning, dependent on time.
The early Japanese sense of sacred space, or place, then was centered on ‘events’; both
objects in space and occasions in time. It is argued here that the distant origin of this event-
based sense of place lay in the intermittent comings and goings of kami from the physical
objects which were the yorishiro.
 Kami and the Ephemeral Nature of Sacred Space in Japan Kevin Nute

Kami and the Ephemeral Nature of Sacred Space in Japan

Kevin Nute

To the early Japanese, awesome natural phenomena, such as especially high mountains or
unusually large or strangely shaped rocks or trees, represented special or sacred space
chosen by kami for some divine purpose. These yorishiro (literally, places where spirits
descend) were perceived essentially as ‘gateways’ linking heaven and earth through which
kami appeared and disappeared (Figures). Sacred space, or place, for the early Japanese
was primarily centered on these vertically orientated natural objects believed to be
intermittently occupied by spirits (Figures).1

The yorishiro were often large trees, and it is no coincidence that there is a close link between
standing posts and kami in Japanese mythology, the same word, hashira, having been used
to count both, as well as people.2 The sacred Shinto tree eventually became the wooden
pillar found at the heart of several major Japanese building types, including the Shinto shrine
and the rural farmhouse (Figures).3

The first man-made sacred space in Japan was probably the himorogi, the most basic form
of Shinto shrine, which is still in regular use today in the jichinsai, or ‘ground quieting
ceremony’, used to placate local kami prior to the construction of a new building or some
other form of human land occupation. The himorogi generally consists of a four-posted
enclosure (kekkai) surrounding an evergreen sakaki tree branch set up vertically at its center,
and is widely thought to have provided the prototype for the basic unit of traditional
Japanese architectural space, the four-posted hito-ma àÍä‘(Figures).4 The temporary and
mobile nature of the himorogi, which is dismantled after the summoned kami has been bid
farewell, confirms that for the early Japanese sacred space could be created anytime and
anywhere a spirit was deemed to be present, and conversely ceased to exist when the kami
had departed. When unoccupied the sacred space was perceived as simply reverting to
undifferentiated non-place. The Japanese sense of place, then, was from its beginning
 Kami and the Ephemeral Nature of Sacred Space in Japan Kevin Nute

dependent on occupation, originally by kami but later by human beings, and since
occupation is time-dependent, then inevitably so too was the early Japanese sense of
place.5

Primarily because of this reliance on occupation, the early Japanese sense of place
encompassed ‘events’ in both space—in the form of physical objects—and in time, in the
form of actions or occasions. Rather than via a positive concept of ‘space’ as such, then, the
early Japanese seem to have perceived their world as essentially a system of places, i.e.
spatial and temporal events, separated by homogeneous non-place.

The well-known term ma, then, in its most basic meaning, represents what was originally
perceived as the non-eventful interval between such ‘occupations’ of space or time. This
notion of interval was clearly pre-dated by a much earlier awareness of the positive events
themselves, i.e. things or occasions, and is hence fundamentally different from the Western
notion of space as an entity in itself (Figures). The distant origin of this unusual ‘event-based’
Japanese sense of place—based as it is on objects and occasions—lay in the intermittent
comings and goings of kami from the physical objects which were the yorishiro.

Surprisingly, a close approximation to this unusual sense of space can be gleaned through
the recent notion of electronic or cyberspace where, very similarly, gaps between sites are
perceived as essentially ‘non-place’ rather than as positive entities, and places themselves
only really ‘exist’ while they are being visited (Figure).

Over a century ago in his novel Notre Dame, Victor Hugo predicted via the character Frollo
that “the book is about to kill the edifice.” For many, the rise of the computer, and more
especially the internet, has finally signaled the beginning of the end for the book itself; which
begs the question, ‘where does that leave the edifice?’ Architecture, it seems, may now be
facing its greatest ever challenge—the architectural expression of non-geometrical space—
at first glance a seemingly impossible task. Yet, four hundred years ago, Japanese tea masters
achieved something remarkably close to this—the architectural negation of conventional
space and time—in the form of the humble sukiya.

In the particular case of the tearoom interior the parallels with cyberspace are, if anything,
even closer, because the sukiya was deliberately intended to be a world unto itself where the
continuity of ordinary space and time ceased to apply. To this day, for example, indicators of
 Kami and the Ephemeral Nature of Sacred Space in Japan Kevin Nute

external time, such as wristwatches, are strictly forbidden within the tearoom. And in marked
contrast to almost all other forms of Japanese architecture, the sukiya is treated as essentially
independent of its physical surroundings, a fact confirmed by the frequent moving of famous
tearooms from one site to another.6

In order to reinforce the sukiya’s isolation from ordinary space, the celebrated tea master Sen
Rikyu employed the meandering roji as a deliberate break with the profane world, and also
reduced the interior size of the tearoom as far as practically possible with the intention of
revealing the illusory nature of space itself to the truly enlightened mind free of material
attachments; as the famous allegory of the 84,000 bodhisattvas visiting a ten foot square hut
(the prototype for the ideal tearoom) was intended to illustrate (Figures).7

The primary Zen motive underlying the wabi tearooms of masters such as Rikyu was to remind
us of the illusions attached to physical being, including the continuity of space and time,
which only have significance for us because of our material existence.8 As in cyberspace,
then, within the tearoom one is a disembodied spirit, unencumbered by material distractions
such as gender, appearance or possessions. Moreover, in both cyberspace and the tearoom
there is no absolute time, only the ever-changing ‘now'. In the ideal chanoyu, then, spirit
meets spirit in a shared celebration of the moment, as encapsulated in the famous Zen-
inspired saying ‘ichi go ichi e’, 'one time one meeting.'

Within the tearoom, then, space has to all intents disappeared and time stands still. There is
literally no past or future, simply the here and now. The only other situations where these
extraordinary conditions are thought to prevail, at least under Einstein’s Relativity Theory, are
while traveling at the speed of light; near a blackhole; or at the centre of the Big Bang marking
the beginning of the universe itself, none of which are exactly within easy grasp today. Yet,
by stopping time and shrinking space to nothing, each gathering in the tearoom effectively
re-creates the primal conditions at the very beginning of the world—precisely the terms by
which Eliade defined ‘sacred’ space and time.9

As in the early Shinto shrine, the sacred space of the sukiya is dependent on occupation. It
exists only as long as the individual tea ceremony. With each Zen-inspired tea gathering, then,
as with each Shinto summoning of kami, sacred time and space are re-made.
 Kami and the Ephemeral Nature of Sacred Space in Japan Kevin Nute

©Kevin Nute 1997

Associate Professor
Department of Architecture
Muroran Institute of Technology
27-1 Mizumoto-cho
Muroran 050
JAPAN

Tel: +81 143 47 3360

Fax: +81 143 47 3243
E-mail: nute@oyna.cc.muroran-it.ac.jp
Kami and the Ephemeral Nature of Sacred Space in Japan Kevin Nute

REFERENCES

1 The well-known Japanese architectural critic Itoh Teiji writes, for example: “Originally there were no shrine

buildings in Japan. Instead, a tree, a forest, a giant boulder, or a mountain stood festooned with sacred ropes

of worship. When the primitive Japanese first felled a tree and set it up as a center pillar for a shrine, this sacred

quality followed it into their buildings. There the pillar towered, still dominating the space around it, and thus for

both religious and structural reasons, the earliest days to the present it has been recognized as playing a guiding

role in the establishing of architectural order." Itoh Teiji. (text) photographs by Yukio Futagawa The Roots of

Japanese Architecture (Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan Sha, 1963), p. 21.

2
On this topic, see for example, Inoue Mitsuo, Space in Japanese Architecture (Tokyo, John Weatherhill, 1985),

p. 5., originally published as Nihon Kenchiku no Kukan (Tokyo: Kajima Shuppan-kai).

3 The pillar at the centre of the Buddhist pagoda may be an exception, since trees were placed at the core of

Indian stupas, which many believe to have been the origin of the pagoda. On this topic, see

4 Itoh Teiji, for example, has written of the himorogi: “Japanese architecture began when an enclosure was set

up about a sacred, festooned tree, thus creating architectural space." Teiji Itoh (text), photographs by Yukio

Futagawa, The Roots of Japanese Architecture (Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan Sha, 1963), p. 58.

5
Two of the main early Japanese contributors on the role of time in the Japanese perception of space were

Itoh Teiji and Isozaki Arata. See, for example, Itoh Teiji, Isozaki Arata, et al, “Nihon no Toshi Kukan: Japanese

Urban Space,” Kenchiku Bunka (December 1963): pp. 49-152, especially Itoh Teiji’s essay “Space-Time Value, or

Himorogi-kukan.” Western awareness of the role of time in the Japanese sense of place is similarly indebted to

the pioneering work of Gunter Nitschke, who has exhaustively researched Shinto land occupation rituals. See,

for example, Gunter Nitschke, “Ma: The Japanese Sense of Place,” Architectural Design 36 (March 1966): pp.

116-156; and idem, “Shime: Binding/Unbinding,” Architectural Design (December 1974): pp. 747-791. On the

particular relationship between kami and the role of time in the Japanese sense of place, see Isozaki Arata et

al, ed. Seigow Matsuoka, Ma: Space-Time in Japan (New York: Cooper-Hewitt Museum, 1979), and idem,“Ma:

Space-Time in Japan,” Kenchiku Bunka 31 (December 1981): pp. 117- 64.

6
Two excellent Japanese explanations of the essentially ‘spaceless’ nature of the sukiya interior are to be found

in Toshihiko and Toyo Izutsu, “Spatial Awareness and Creative Subjectivity in the Art of Tea,” in The Theory of

Beauty in the Classical Aesthetics of Japan (The Hague, Martinus Nijhof, 1981), pp. 55-61, and in Isozaki Arata,

“Frank Lloyd Wright’s View of Space,” in Futagawa Yukio, editor and photographer, and Arata Isozaki, text, GA

1: Frank Lloyd Wright, Johnson and Son, Administration Building and Research Tower, Racine, Wisconsin, 1936- 9

(Tokyo: A.D.A. EDITA, 1970), p. 3, 4. For a foreign perspective, also see Ching-Yu Chang, “Japanese Spatial
 Kami and the Ephemeral Nature of Sacred Space in Japan Kevin Nute

Conception—3,” Japan Architect no 326 (June 1984): pp. 65-66 and idem, “Japanese Spatial Conception—11,”

Japan Architect no 335 (March 1985): pp. 63-67.

7 According to the Vimalakirti Sutra (Yuima-kyo in Japanese) Yuima was visited in his 10 foot square hut by 84,000

bodhisattvas who were all able to sit on thrones the size of mountains. According to Okakura Tenshin, this allegory

was intended to show the unreality of space to the enlightened mind. See, Okakura Kakuzo, The Book of Tea

(1906), reprinted ed. (New York , Dover Publications, 1954), p. 34. For the detailed explanation of the Vimalakirti

Sutra, I am indebted to Gary Catwallader of the Urasenke Foundation.

8 This is a fact of Einsteinian physics. If something is subject to gravity, i.e. it has mass, it is also inevitably subject to

the effects of time.

9 See Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: the Nature of Religion. Trans. William Trask (San Diego: Harcourt

Brace, 1987). Eliade explained that: ". . . the experience of sacred space makes possible the 'founding of the

world': where the sacred manifests itself in space, the real unveils itself, the world comes into existence.” p. 63,

and further,". . . intervals of time that are 'sacred'. . . have no part in the temporal duration that precedes and

follows them, . . . have a wholly different structure and origin, for they are of a primordial time, sanctified by the

gods and capable of being made present by the festival," ibid, p. 71.

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