Yard Shrines

There are well over one hundred small, private shrines maintained by native Ogawa-cho households, most of whom are in some way involved with farming and husbandry. The shrines are known as teinaisha, or "yard shrines," and more popularly as yashikigami, or "homestead kami. " Since shrines and kami tend to be conflated (with the exception of the "adult" shrines in the citizens' festival), yashikigami refers to both the shrine building itself and the enshrined kami.

Without trespassing, one can get a fairly good idea of the prevalence of yard shrines among native householders, since their red torii peek above the dense hedge or stone wall around most natives' homes. Sometimes the shrines themselves are visible. Most are the size of a large dollhouse, although a few are as big as a large toolshed. Not all yard shrines have torii; some, having rotted away, remain unreplaced, even though prayers and oblations continue to be performed at the shrine itself. The casual looker will conclude that the Kato ie maintains the best-preserved, and some of the most elaborate, yard shrines. Most are outfitted with a shiny red torii, crisp paper decorations, and polished offering vessels set out on the tiny porches alongside a pair of sparkling white ceramic foxes (fig. 13).

According to Miyazaki of Shinmei-gu, about one hundred of these Ogawa-cho household shrines are registered with his shrine. Every year he provides the owners with gohei, the white or red zigzag paper strips embodying the kami. One yard shrine owner and Shinmei-gu parishioner, Koyama K., mentioned that he purchased the strips from Miyazaki when the latter made his priestly rounds several days prior to the hatsuuma festival in February (described below). Koyama offers between 400 and 1,000 yen in return for the ritual papers.

As the following anecdote shows, the overwhelming majority of the yard shrines are dedicated to Inari—a kami of agricultural productivity and material wealth whose messenger is a fox. I asked Ogawa Z., a descendant of Kurobei and chair of the Gakuen Nishi-chokai (neighborhood association), whether he knew anything about yashikigami. He promptly replied that there were extremely few in Kodaira, which is

Fig. 13.
A yard shrine owned by an Ogawa Eight farm household. (Photo by author)

simply not true. Thinking that he might have misunderstood me, I described a typical yard shrine, adding that there were over a hundred in Ogawa-cho alone. He brightened and exclaimed, "Oh! You mean Inari-san! " Other yashikigami include Benten, Suijin, Konpira, Kojin, and Hosojin, who are known, respectively, as the kami of culture and protector of women; water kami; ocean kami and protector of sailors and fishers; kitchen kami; and smallpox kami.

These various household kami have the attributes of chijin, or earth-place kami. Inari, for example, is said to have territorial rights to and spiritual authority over a given place. The territorial aspect of Inari has been explained in reference to the homonym inari, which means "to become settled in a place." Symbolically, Inari/inari represents the contingencies of the reclamation and settlement of shinden and the ensuing process of village-making (Namiki and Tachikawa 1964, 31).^[3] Should a

family move, its yard shrine is often left behind and can fall into disrepair if the new residents do not worship or care for it. The departing family may hand over the shrine's gohei —the paper strips that embody the kami —to a neighbor who agrees to worship on their behalf. The assumption is that, left unattended, the kami (Inari) will be thrown into confusion and start a fire or bring ill fortune (HMSS 1971, 984-85).

Yoshino notes that, according to the theory of gogyo (the five agents: wood, fire, earth, metal, water), Inari is endowed with an "earth" nature, which means that it is activated or animated by fire (1981, 97–98). Uegaki, a sericulturist and farm manual writer active in the late 1700s, explains that batsuuma, the lunar calendrical day on which Inari is paid special homage, marks a period during which yang forces, such as sunlight, are at their peak ([1803] 1981, 69).^[4] Since the earth is made productive by sunlight, Inari thus is associated with agricultural productivity. For Inari to start a fire implies a topsy-turvy state of affairs; and since Inari is a kami of wealth and fortune, the further implication is that a confused and unattended yard shrine will bring poverty and bad luck.

Many native Ogawa-cho households have legends to relate about their yard shrines. Collectively, these stories illustrate the place-kami aspect of Inari and also describe the circumstances that lead to the installation of yard shrines in general. For example, the story told by the Tachikawa household is part of a repertoire of Kodaira folktales. Their property formerly belonged to the Arai household, also Kodaira natives. One year, "a long time ago," an elderly member of the Tachikawa household fell ill, and a fortune-teller advised the family members to pay homage to their yashikigami. They were surprised, for they were unaware that an Inari inhabited their property. A deep hole dug at the base of a zelkova tree yielded a stone fox, which they began to worship on that spot. Needless to say, the ailing family member subsequently recovered (Namiki and Tachikawa 1964, 33).

My Kodaira landlord, Oto S., told a similar story. About twenty years ago, he and his family had "found" and thus "inherited," as he put it, a stone shrine on their property near the outhouse. The Shinmei-gu priest—the Otos are parishioners—advised them to move the shrine to a more auspicious site and, since the old one had crumbled, to buy a new one as well. The roof of the found shrine, which now lies behind the new shrine, is supposed to have a name and date carved on it, but we could find no inscriptions. Like its predecessor, the new shrine is made of stone. Oto mentioned that he had bought it at a "bargain price"

(150,000 yen) from Ogawa Y., a stonemason and descendant of Kurobei. (Stone shrines require less upkeep and are generally crude versions of the more intricate wooden structures.) The elevated base of my landlord's shrine was incised to resemble a castle wall, and a bamboo leaf design was carved on both sides of the miniature shrine proper. Its makeshift plywood door was jammed shut. As Oto fiddled with it, his wife wondered aloud if there was really an image inside. "Nah, the kids probably took it out," but he never did manage to get the door open for us to see for sure. My impression was that the Otos, unlike the Katos, were neither knowledgeable about nor assiduous in their treatment of the household Inari.

The installation and upkeep of yard shrines are related to the establishment of branch households and the tenor of their relations with main households. Collective oblations at a yard shrine may help to cement relations between main and branch households (cf. Nakane 1967; Sekiguchi 1972). By the same token, close relations between main and branch households may facilitate the initial installation of a share of the main household's yashikigami in the yard of a branch household. However, not all native households who claim to maintain tenacious intra-ie ties possess yard shrines, and not all native households withyashikigami maintain close main household—branch household relations.

A study of yard shrines in neighboring Higashikurume City revealed that old branch households tended to possess a yard shrine when the main household did; if the main household had never possessed or no longer possessed a shrine, then, usually, neither did the branches (HKSS 1979, 1048). This tendency seems to hold for Kodaira's native households as well, although the situation is complicated by a branch household's dependence or nondependence on the main household, as I discuss below. In the Oto family, the main household had gone bankrupt and moved to Tachikawa "some years ago." It was at that time, it seems, that the Oto yard shrine fell into disrepair. To give another example, neither the Asami main household nor any of its branches possess yard shrines. The househead of one rather recently established branch explained to me that the Asamis were not wealthy landowners on a scale large enough to warrant a household shrine. He also admitted that relations between main and branch households have been loose and informal.

Since Asami is a native ie of means, we might wonder how large is "large" While exact landholding figures are not publicly avail-

able, it is clear that Kodaira households with yard shrines, such as Kato, Koyama, Kobayashi, Ogawa, Hosoda, and Miyadera, were and are still—despite the postwar land reform—affluent and influential land-owners who are well respected, particularly within the native sector. However, the extent of a household's landholdings alone does not constitute a necessary condition for having a yard shrine. Nor does an agricultural livelihood, although most yashikigami owners presently pursue or at one time pursued farming as a full-time or part-time occupation. It was also common in the Edo period, when the majority of yard shrines were established, for merchant and artisan households to have yard shrines (Miyamoto 1981, 282).

In Kodaira, among the main-branch relationships that affect and are affected by yard shrines, two of the most typical are (1) main house-holds with dependent branches and (2) main households with nondependent branches. When the branches were, at the time of fission, economically dependent on the main household, they made their oblations at the main household's yard shrine. Since the majority of dependent branches were established within the main household's residence compound, it was a virtually foregone conclusion that they would share the same shrine. The same is true of branch households today that occupy the upstairs in a two-story house—I learned of two such situations in the Ogawa Eight. Whether or not these branch households will install a yard shrine of their own when and if they move somewhere else seemed to be a wholly subjective and negotiable matter.

Old branch households that were not economically dependent on the main household tended to have their own yard shrines. In the Ogawa Eight, dependent branches usually were established within the main household's homestead and were not incorporated within the system of neighborhood divisions described in chapter 3. Moreover, during the Edo period, they were entered in the religious sect and population registers under the main household. Nondependent branch households were the overall norm among those formed in Ogawa-mura, probably because of the possibilities for independence in a shinden situation (KC 1959, 913-14), where land was available for acquisition in the following ways: (1) a branch could establish itself in another shinden village; (2) in the same village, a branch could take over the land of a settler who could not perform the rigorous labor of reclamation; or (3) a branch could start a commercial operation, such as milling or oil pressing.

In Kodaira the greatest amount of household fissioning occurred

after the Meiji Restoration (KC 1959, 852-53, 868), although a number of native branch households were established on shinden in and around the Kodaira Seven before that time. Between 1680 and 1804, the Shimizus, who were among the original settlers in Ogawa-mura, established eight branch households in that village and also in Nonaka-shinden and Tokura-shinden (Kokubunji City). Similarly, the Katos established branch households in Tokura-shinden in the 1750s (Ito 1961, 87; Katayama 1959, 267-68). In Ogawa-mura the decision to establish a branch household was made by the househead in consultation with the eldest son, and the majority of branches were established at the time of a younger son's marriage.

The explanation given for the comparatively low rate of fissioning during the Edo period is that the infertile shinden were not productive enough to warrant partitioning (KC 1959, 912-14). In the Meiji period, on the other hand, the burgeoning of sericulture and tea and indigo production, which individual households could manage sufficiently, facilitated the emergence of nondependent branch households. Sericulture especially predominated during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1874 nearly 52 percent of all Ogawa-mura farm households were engaged in sericulture, rising to 74 percent in 1886. Corresponding percentages for Ogawa-shinden are 55 percent and 83 percent. When the worldwide demand for silk plummeted in the 1930s, many of these farm households collapsed and turned instead to shopkeeping (KC 1959, 376-77, 576-78).

Although precise data for Kodaira are not available, a 1983–84 survey of yard shrines in neighboring Higashiyamato City offers comparable supporting evidence for the second pattern of branch household formation in conjunction with yashikigami possession. The survey revealed that, of the twenty-eight yard shrines whose origins could be substantiated, nine were established during the Edo period and the rest between 1868 and 1940. Moreover, only two of the fifty-nine shrines surveyed were "found objects," while about seventeen were said by the present owners to have been "brought along" by the household in question when it was set up as a branch (Higashiyamato-shi jishu gurupu 1984).

That a main household and its nondependent branch or branches have their own yard shrines does not preclude a close relationship between them. In the first place, a branch's shrine was usually installed as a share of the main household's shrine, signifying the extension of a transcendent, affective bond between the households. Moreover, given

the place-kami aspect of Inari, this "sharing" of a yashikigami may have, at one time, signified the consolidation of an ie' s spatial domain, both in the sense of actual landholdings and in the sense of affective enclosure. And although each branch household still celebrates its own yashikigami, every year onhatsuuma, it also offers up to the main household's shrine rice steamed with red beans (sekihan ), sake, fried tofu (aburage ), dried sardines (mezashi ), and tapers (tomyo ). On this date, the branches also assist in cleaning the shrine and help erect colored banners, usually inscribed with the phrase "shoichi-i Inari daimyojin" and their names.^[5] These joint activities demonstrate symbolically the relative tenacity of intra-ie ties, although, as some natives have remarked, the fact that their main and branch households no longer feast together on that day indicates the gradual thinning of those ties.

A given household's shrine may also serve as the focal point for a voluntary but exclusive consociation (ko ) based on faith (shinko ) and heartfulness (kokoro ). The yard shrine of Koyama K. offers an exemplary case in point. It also illustrates the manner in which a yard shrine may become a place of public worship. Popularly known as Kasamori Inari, or "pox-warding Inari,"^[6] the shrine was installed about 135 years ago. Although no one quite knows why, Kasamori Inari was the focus of rowdy pilgrimages at the turn of this century. Tea shops, snack stalls, and bonsai vendors lined the path to the shrine, where Shinto dances (kagura ) were performed and young couples danced until midnight. The shrine's prosperity sparked quarrels among its custodians over the disposition of donations and offerings. In the ensuing squabble, Kasamori Inari was forgotten—at least until 1961, when the Koyamas and their neighbors in the same bangumi formed an Inari-ko and rebuilt the shrine on a smaller scale. The shrine's revival was prompted by a spate of traffic accidents and other misfortunes in the neighborhood, which the native residents interpreted as signs of Inari's anger at having been neglected for so long (Namiki and Tachikawa 1964, 32). The inauguration in 1960 of the native-run Kodaira Local History Study Society, which campaigned for the renovation of historical structures, also may have influenced the decision to rebuild the shrine.

There are about thirty wooden slats nailed to the outside walls of Kasamori Inari shrine, and on each one an Inari-ko member's name and donation are recorded in descending order of the amount given. Koyama's recently deceased father leads the list with a donation of 40,000 yen. Six tall torii, offered upon the fulfillment of a prayer, straddle a short stone path in front of the shrine. Inside the toolshed-sized

structure are hundreds of locally produced terra cotta and ceramic foxes stacked from floor to ceiling on either side of the altar, which is decorated with two red and one white heisoku, or sacred zigzag papers mounted on sticks. And on shelves fitted to an outer wall are stacked hundreds of dusty votive tablets (ema ). Koyama's mother and several Inari-ko members offer daily prayers at the shrine, and on hatsuuma both the Inari-ko and members of the Koyama ie (including the main household) congregate to perform oblations.

Kasamori Inari also demonstrates how a yard shrine can provide a focus for intra-ie relations of a nonhierarchical nature, insofar as the shrine belongs to a branch household and is also worshiped by the Koyama main household. Although this branch, established in the 1850s by Koyama Umazo, prospered in the sesame oil trade, its economic rise did not correspond to a decline in the main household's fortunes, in which case a branch often assumes the role of a main household (Nakane 1967, 115). The intra-ie worship of Kasamori Inari represents not a change in the internal hierarchy between the main and branch households but, rather, an affirmation of the affective aspect of their relationship.

The Inari-ko is one of the consociations linking neighboring native households—nonnatives are not welcome—in a voluntary and horizontal manner, irrespective of other fixed or fluid forms of neighborhood divisions within a given bangumi. The Inari-ko, in short, is based on and revolves around faith and camaraderie—subjective qualities which, as the Kasamori Inari legend suggests, may yield to avarice should a shrine lose its exclusivity and become popular among the public at large. (This potential for avarice, in fact, is the rationale given for excluding newcomers from native consociations.) The Inari-ko, intersects with Shinmei-gu:ko members are also parishioners, and Kasamori Inari is registered with the premier shrine, from which it receives ceremonial paraphernalia. There is, then, a degree of spatial articulation between the Koyama yard shrine and its Inari-ko and between Shinmei-gu and its parish; and this articulation further integrates the Ogawa Eight.

The Kasamori Inari-ko is one of several such consociations in the Ogawa Eight. There are also pilgrimage ko, organized on a bangumi basis, such as the Mitake-ko and the Mitsumine-ko, named after mountains in Saitama prefecture. Each year the members designate several representatives to make a mountain pilgrimage on their behalf. When the pilgrims return, a party is given for them. At this party, the pilgrims

recount their adventures and distribute talismans, which are then plastered on the fences, mailboxes, and doors of native homes, distinguishing them from newcomer households. The talismans feature a wood-block print of a terrifying dog, seated and teeth barred, above which appears the name of the mountain shrine (KC 1959, 1210; KK 1983, 134-35; Asahi shinbun, 25 April 1984).

Yard shrines not only symbolize a household's (or ie' s) nativeness, but the mere obeisance to yashikigami indicates a recognition on the part of native households of their collective role as the custodians of "tradition." Apart from the actual exclusion of newcomers from membership in coteries such as the Inari-ko, the yard shrines visually distinguish native from newcomer homes, as do the "wolf-dog" talismans. Yard shrines and their owners also are the subject of legends and folktales that help to mystify the nativeness of native households. The Koyamas, who own Kasamori Inari, are perhaps the most notorious in this respect.

Even among natives, the Koyamas are referred to, without a trace of malice, as "kind of different" (chotto kawatta ). The household is popularly known as oni no yado, or "house of demons." The name stems from their practice of entertaining demons during the end-of-winter (setsubun ) festival in February, when all other households seek to purge evil from the premises by throwing beans and shouting, "Demons outside, fortune inside!" It is thought that this unusual practice was started by Umazo, who established the branch household to which Kasamori Inari belongs. Sekihan, or rice steamed with red beans, is prepared and heaped onto a square of paper that has been placed upon a round straw mat, the cover of a cylindrical straw bag used to store grains. (The paper has been creased twice to symbolize a crossroad.) Sake is sprinkled liberally over the festive rice; tapers are then lit, and the demons who have been expelled from neighboring households are invited to the feast. At midnight the househead escorts them to a crossroad, ostensibly to confuse the demons and keep them from returning to cause mischief; deposits there the straw round heaped with rice; and returns home, taking special care neither to look back nor to be discovered by anyone (Namiki and Tachikawa 1964, 31). According to the present househead, the demons are now escorted to an isolated corner of the homestead, since the increase in late-hour traffic on Oume Road precludes conducting the ritual along this historic thoroughfare.

The standard explanation for the Koyamas' demon-feasting ritual is that Umazo felt sorry for the expelled demons and hit upon the idea of

feasting them in order to forestall any revengeful notions on their part. He was also keen on cajoling them into working their magic on behalf of his household, which was making a start in the oil-pressing business. It was cautiously volunteered by several natives that the "differentness" of the Koyamas extends to their being fox-spirit holders. Accompanying the belief in possession by human and animal spirits is the belief that certain households "hold" animal spirits, which usually work to enrich their owners, although the spirits may also abandon or turn against their holders. The Katos, who maintain the most elaborate yard shrines, have also been implicated, albeit through innuendo, as fox-spirit holders. It is significant that both households are among the largest landowners in Kodaira; Koyama and Kato also are the most numerous names in the Ogawa Eight.

Yoshida has noted that animal-spirit holding is most common and that spirit possession occurs most frequently among unrelated neighbors and among families whose farmlands are in close proximity. He cites the relative autonomy of such neighboring households and the relative weakness of kinship ties as predictors of conflict, manifested in the form of spirit possession and accusations of animal-spirit holding. Unstable economic activities such as sericulture also facilitate these phenomena (Yoshida 1984, 86, 96, 102-3). The conditions for spirit holding and spirit possession enumerated by Yoshida fit the shinden context described in chapter 3, particularly the predominance of place (over "blood" and/or fictive kinship) ties and the striated arrangement of homesteads. Although one local historian, Oda T., mentioned to me that pilgrims to Kasamori Inari during its heyday were sometimes possessed by the resident spirit, it is not clear whether these incidents were attributed to the Koyama household as a fox-spirit holder. Although animal-spirit holding is a sensitive issue not easily broached by outsiders such as myself, an in-depth study of the Musashino shinden villages should yield much insight into this practice in the Kanto region.

It is no secret that the Koyamas are "different," for the story of Umazo feasting the demons is included among the folktales and research reports published by the Kodaira Local History Study Society. The unusual custom of the Koyamas is even mentioned in publications such as the Kodaira Women's Association newsletter (Fujin no tsudoi nyuzu, March 1984). Like the despotic antics of Ogawa Kurobei, the "kind of different" practices of the Koyamas add a dash of spice to Kodaira local history. Moreover, the fact that the Koyamas still feast the demons every February makes their custom a "living history."

Customs such as this one not only distinguish the native sector in Kodaira but imbue the city with an "authenticity" that vitalizes the image of Furusato Kodaira. In this connection, Koyama K.'s wife remarked half seriously and half facetiously that since their demonfeasting custom is so well known in Kodaira—"and your work will make us famous in the United States, too"—perhaps they should stop the practice. She claimed to be uninterested in the household's lore, since she does not view their lifestyle as "marvelously strange" (fushigi ). However, she continued, her daughter does find it strange and has made researching the Koyama ie' s history her hobby. Perhaps other members of the new generation of tochikko will also be self-conscious enough about their household's nativeness to make it an object of research, quite apart from the question of whether they will actively perpetuate these customs on their own.