Month of Gods (EN)

This time last year, I was in Japan. I traveled to many places, I visited temples, shrines, cemeteries, archaeological parks, theme parks, commemorative parks, gardens, museums, castles, open air markets, shopping arcades, galleries, music and theatre venues. I flew, I walked, I rode the bus and the train, I took a ferry boat, I was given a lift. During the second week of November, I travelled to Shimane prefecture where I visited Lefcadio’s Hearn museum in Matsue and the city’s castle -which is amongst the twelve Original Castles of Japan and one of the five original castles that have been named National Treasures. In Shimane, I visited locations that are connected to the birth and genealogy of Japan’s indigenous Gods, for example Yomotsu Hirasaka, a boulder that blocks the entrance to the Underworld next to which a small wooden mail-box has been placed. But the main reason I went to Shimane -and the principal destination around which I planned the whole journey- was to visit Izumo Taisha and attend the festival that takes place there in early to mid November. From the eleventh to the seventeenth day of the tenth lunar month, all the very many Gods of Japan depart from their private residencies and assemble at the aforementioned shrine to oversee and command human relationships. The pilgrims and visitors to Izumo Taisha perform the etiquette doubled. They bow four times and clap four times, twice for themselves and twice for their partner or future partner. The tenth lunar month slightly shifts from year to year, but it usually falls sometime between late October and late November. It coincides, more or less, with the Scorpio month. The tenth lunar month in Shimane is called Kamiarizuki: The Month When The Gods Are Present. In the rest of Japan -and, by extension, in the rest of the world- it is called Kannazuki: The Month When The Gods Are Absent. I was born under the Scorpio sign in Athens. Invariably, without gods. Last year, I had the good fortune to spend my birthday with the Gods. Not connected, but admittedly, the coming year doesn’t go very well.

Dora Economou Athens, 17 November 2020