Japanese Ghost Stories: Spirits, Hauntings, and Paranormal Phenomena Page 6
In Japan today there are 183,996 religious groups recognized by the government, and another 47,023 without such recognition. Each has its own creed and philosophy. Of course, the current numbers are due less to supernatural leanings and more to the Religious Corporation Law, which was enacted in 1947 and replaced the Peace Preservation Law, which had imposed much stricter control over beliefs, activities, and groups deemed threatening to Japan’s prewar and wartime governments (hence the suppression of Omoto). The Religious Corporation Law provides outstandingly attractive privileges, including tax reductions in thirty-three different businesses, including bathhouses, hair salons, entertainment operations, real estate, inns and restaurants, and medical institutions. Temple admission fees and sales of temple talismans and charms are tax-exempt. Once a religious group is officially recognized, Japanese law currently bars authorities from reexamining its activities, a precaution designed to protect religious freedom.
The founding of Omoto represented a second wave in the movement to establish non-traditional religious groups in Japan. Between 1892 and 1938, seven new groups—the “new religions”—were formed. By far the largest of these new religions is Soka Gakkai, a lay Buddhist group founded in 1930, and boasting an estimated eight million families of believers throughout Japan. Powerful enough to control a significant part of Japan’s legislative apparatus, Soka Gakkai has been criticized for wielding too much influence, especially among Japan’s decision makers. Internally, followers have raised the current leader, Ikeda Daisaku, to the level of monarch.
A third wave began in 1948, and from then until 1987 another eight groups were founded, known as “new, new religions.” One of these, Kofuku no Kagaku, or the Science of Happiness, was founded in 1986 and claims five million loyal believers. AUM Supreme Truth was established in 1987 and grew to around ten thousand members in Japan (with several more tens of thousands overseas, notably in Russia).
Secret traditions have always had strong appeal, particularly among the more mystically inclined sects. Much of such secrecy concerns the development of supernatural powers, namely the psychic abilities that will lead devotees to a higher spiritual path. Thus, followers of the Tendai Buddhist sect undertake an arduous thousand-day training course at Kyoto’s Mount Hiei, and members of the Shingon Buddhist sect complete physically punishing practices at Wakayama’s Mount Koya. The austerity of Zen Buddhism is by now very familiar to many foreigners intrigued by East Asian mystic thought. Zen breathing techniques, which are typically necessary for dedicated meditation, can lead to a transformation within the body that many practitioners consider divine.
One Japanese mystic—also known for his impressive golf swing—is Masaki Kazumi, now based in a private laboratory in Okayama. This eighty-year-old dabbler in the fantastic and mystical is a prolific inventor credited with originating as many as 960 inventions, among them the electric rice cooker, the electric guitar, a lie-detector machine, moving stage lights, radar for fishing use, electric massage machines, and the “Biolite,” a special type of task lighting that significantly diminishes eye strain.
Many bizarre and unexplainable happenings surround this soft-spoken, yet energetic man. In October 1976, for example, he claims a pearl suddenly popped from his mouth. Originally 3.85 millimeters in diameter, it grew to thirteen millimeters and has been expertly valued at eight million yen. The pearl shrinks whenever he feels unwell. Another time, a woodlike statue materialized and spontaneously formed into a likeness of the Japanese god Daikoku, an experience he wrote about in his book I Saw a Miracle. When the composition of the statue was analyzed, it was determined to be a material unknown on earth. The statue and pearl are only two of many such apparitions. He also had a bottle of saké which provided alcohol endlessly for more than one and a half years without running out. Some visitors to his research laboratory receive bookmarks fashioned from four-leaf clovers. These clovers are said to have spontaneously changed their form from three leaves into four over a period of a few days, in response to Masaki’s specific request that they do so. A firm believer in past lives, Masaki recalls his former existences, one of which was as a Nichiren priest eight hundred years ago, when he wrote Buddhist sutras. He also dashed off a piano composition which he performed in Tokyo, although he has never studied piano. He believes the music came from a past life as a musician.
Masaki states that almost every human has two souls. The first soul comes into existence in the womb just before the mother becomes pregnant. This first life contains all knowledge about former lives, including character, work, and relationships; one’s encounters in this life, whether positive or negative, are deeply connected to one’s past. When the child is about eleven years old, the second soul usually enters, and that soul determines what sort of person one will be in this life. Using a pendulum, Masaki determines a visitor’s human nature by analyzing what he calls the fuchi pattern cast by the pendulum on a sheet of blank paper. He says that on March 7, 1973, a voice came to him while he was on the campus of Osaka University, ordering him to make a pendulum using a bar magnet. At first he did not know how to use it, but accidentally discovered that it moved in a certain way when held over his arm. He tested others and found different movement patterns, so over the next three months he further tested three hundred people. By 1993 he had examined thirty thousand people. As a result, Masaki claims to be able to pinpoint intelligence level exactly, as well as basic nature and human potential. When he begins to use the pendulum, suspended from a copper wire, he first clears his mind. Soon he sees a white or gold light emanating from the magnet, and senses a shock to his chest. After that the magnet begins to move. He feels confident that he can predict at what age someone will die, although he only releases this information if he thinks the person concerned has the ability to change some aspect that will postpone the date of death. Masaki knew his own life would end at the end of January 1979, so when he was told in 1978 that he needed dental work, he refused, saying that he was going to die very soon. On New Year’s Day of 1979, however, he was at home when he heard a deep voice booming. The voice explained it belonged to one Hachiman Daibosatsu, Masaki’s guardian, and that it was going to grant him an extended life span and many supernatural powers as a reward for Masaki’s contributions to humankind.
Born in Hyogo Prefecture in 1916, Masaki started doing breathing exercises when he was six years old, inhaling for seven seconds and exhaling for seven seconds for one hour each night. After three years of such practice he says he received clairvoyant powers and his brain waves reached theta level. When he was in the third grade of elementary school he explained the Nichiren Buddhist sutras to his mother. From a very early age, therefore, he was aware of his spiritual capabilities and the importance of the supernatural. Masaki attended Osaka Imperial University (now Osaka University), where he studied aeronautical and other engineering fields. As a student he began inventing numerous gadgets, and during World War II was nominated by other researchers as the person best able to begin to develop a new weapon. After World War II, at the medical department of Osaka University, he conducted research into the nervous system and invented low-frequency-based medical equipment. He also served as head of the Craft Center in the university’s engineering department. Among his many contributions is his unique way of hitting the ball in golf. His method, which entails coordinating the body’s center of gravity with how the club is gripped, enables him to consistently hit 340 or so yards, and he has trained Japanese professional golfers.
Masaki believes the mind can accomplish anything it wants to do, providing will and training are sufficient. The mind’s capacity is unlimited and supernatural powers are available to anyone who wants them. One of his more recent inventions is his “Para Memory II Brain Potential-riser,” which looks like a Sony Walkman, complete with earphones. Meant to enhance brain function, the small machine uses a range of sounds to influence brain wave frequencies. Anyone who can reach theta wave level frequency, for example, can allegedly bend spoons without effor
t. After watching a television program about Uri Geller in 1973, Masaki invented a machine to examine metal stress, which he tested using mental power. He concludes that mental power alone can create stress in metal. In November 1974 Masaki tossed a spoon into the air, where it snapped in two. After being examined more closely, the spoon split again. An elementary school boy whom he tested tossed up a blank sheet of paper and crayons into the air and a picture was instantly drawn on the paper. Masaki also tested and observed the ability to move and manipulate solid materials easily, such as bending metal through mental effort alone, even from several hundred meters away.
Masaki has personally experienced and documented at least twenty-three different supernatural or psychic phenomena, including an out-of-body journey in Nagano Prefecture in 1975. He also believes that he and another psychic, Miho, were friends in Atlantis some 120 million years ago. One piano composition is supposedly healing music from Atlantis, and Masaki has used it for patients suffering from mental depression.
Curing people has become the focus of the Hokkaido healer known as Akutsu. A former veterinarian, Akutsu heals by thumping people expertly and yelling. He, too, has a significant following, and his healing powers have been observed and measured by Nomura Harehiko. In 1994 Nomura and Machi tested Akutsu in Machi’s laboratory at Tokyo Denki University. A practicing Christian, Akutsu makes the sign of the cross before starting treatment, which usually consists of hitting the patient’s backbone. Nomura used his antenna to register changes from the patient’s palm before and during Akutsu’s emission of ki, which he sends via his hands or eyes. The patient’s feet were also tested during treatment, to see whether there were corresponding changes in their internal ki.
Another healer quietly working in Japan today is Takahata Hikaru, who was a white-collar worker in a Japanese company when he inadvertently discovered his healing gifts. When a close family member fell seriously ill, Takahata was able to use his hands to heal the patient. Now retired from his company, he has since healed thousands of people, and his transformed life was recently made into a movie.
Psychic power also involves the ability to harness nature’s awesome power. In Japan, one way of achieving this is through the help of fusui, the Japanese reading of the Chinese term feng shui, meaning “wind and water.” Fusui is the ancient East Asian practice of geomancy, a complicated system of divination used to select the most auspicious site for a grave or house and determine how it should be constructed. Such divination insures that inhabitants benefit from harmonization with the surrounding environment, the basic principle being that humans should not disrupt existing natural order by indiscriminately modifying the landscape. After careful siting, architectural design is expected to go beyond requirements of space, form, and structure, to express more deeply a balance with the physical environment. Fusui practitioners believe the system can harness vital ki, thereby ensuring continuing prosperity for themselves and for future generations.
Inventors of the south-pointing compass, ancient Chinese thought they had discovered a vast magnetic field enveloping the earth. In fact, constantly traveling between the north and south poles were subtle forces, both electromagnetic and psychic. Dragons or serpents were believed to best exemplify these undulating energy rhythms, so the paths along which such forces move became known as “dragon paths,” the basis for wind and water theory. Dragon paths are loosely analogous to electrical current running through a cord, with access to the current represented by the socket, or ketsu, in Japanese. This is the point at which ki can be harnessed in fusui. Access to vital energy through proximity to a ketsu makes some places much more auspicious than others. The quality of a place may also be judged by assessing three important geomantic criteria: mountains, watercourses, and directions. The central idea is to calm wind and acquire water.
Japan reportedly has many ketsu. One such energy outlet in Tokyo is the site of Edo Castle, now the Imperial Palace. Another is the thickly wooded Meiji Shrine, a Shinto sanctuary dedicated to Emperor Meiji and his consort. Indeed shrines throughout Japan may have been constructed on ketsu locations, showing that the ancient Japanese, like other peoples, may have been extremely sensitive to the earth’s energy fields, locating shrines where they most strongly experienced a feeling of power. Such sites include Chichibu in Saitama Prefecture, Hakone in Kanagawa Prefecture, Ise in Mie Prefecture, Miwa in Nara Prefecture, and Atsuta in the city of Nagoya. Ketsu mountains include Mount Fuji, which is said to radiate power in several directions, and sacred Mount Osore.
The Fujiwara family, which dominated northern Tohoku through four successive generations and also established the ancient capitals of Nara and Kyoto, were particularly noteworthy devotees of fusui, which they seriously studied and applied, even sending a son to learn the science in China during the seventh century. The first head of the Fujiwara dynasty was originally buried in Osaka, but his sons moved the body to Nara because fusui decreed this to be a much more auspicious location for positively influencing his off-spring. In fact, as recently as the 1990s, some Japanese credited Hosokawa Morihiro’s good fortune in becoming prime minister to the fact that he is directly descended from the Fujiwara family, of which Hosokawa’s maternal grandfather, former prime minister Konoe Fumimaro, was also a scion.
Nor was the fact that the influence of fusui is believed to extend through the centuries lost on Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616), the charismatic shogun who founded the Tokugawa shogunate at present-day Tokyo. So convinced was he of fusui ’ s efficacy that he is said to have hoarded all available knowledge of it for exclusive use by himself and his family, effectively making fusui secret in Japan. Acting according to fusui principles, Tokugawa went so far as to relocate the burial sites of his rivals, supposedly to ensure that powerful grave energies could not extend to their descendants.
In addition to placing Edo Castle on a ketsu, Tokugawa left detailed instructions on how his funeral and burial should be handled to project his influence into future generations, leaving none of his heirs’ affairs to chance. Eventually he was buried at the Toshogu Shrine in Nikko, a grandiose mausoleum built by some fifteen thousand artisans laboring for two years at his grandson Iemitsu’s command. Constructed according to fusui guidelines, Toshogu and the neighboring Futarasan Shrine are thought to receive positive energy generated by the nearby sacred mountain, Mount Nantai.
From its beginnings fusui has been inseparable from yinyang dualism and the Five Elements Theory, the Chinese doctrine that all things and events are products of yin (the vital energy of the earth) and yang (the vital energy of the heavens). Yang interacts with yin to produce the five elements, or agents: metal, water, wood, fire, and earth. If these elements are balanced, the seasons run their normal course. When the ki of yin meets the ki of yang, trees and flowers bloom. Fusui practitioners work on the premise that the ki of the earth flows in much the same way as the ki of the human body, and that the earth has pressure points which can be likened to acupuncture points and accessed in the same way.
It is thought that fusui first arrived in Japan from China around the seventh century, close on the heels of other early transplants including Buddhism, Confucianism, and Chinese medicine. The historic city of Nara was originally designed by a geomancer, and Kyoto was also laid out according to one of fusui ’ s most auspicious settings, known in Japan as “black turtle, blue dragon, red bird, and white tiger.” These are names assigned to geomantic features which, by virtue of their placement and shape, make a setting particularly powerful. However, a ketsu location cannot manifest itself until humans create a relationship with the site by placing a building or grave on it. It is the spirit of the place that radiates energy, not the building or grave itself, which acts merely as a means of access.
In Japan today, fusui continues to play a role on the island of Okinawa, which has long had close cultural ties with China. Records show that in 1393 a group of Chinese fusui experts emigrated to Ryukyu, the former name of Okinawa, and founded the village of Tohei, from w
hich they disseminated fusui techniques. Three centuries later, in 1708, the Ryukyu governor Saimon traveled to mainland China, returning with a renewed enthusiasm for fusui, and intent on making it the foundation of all city planning. Fusui became an official activity within the bureaucracy, remaining so until the Meiji Restoration, after which it was sidelined in much the same way as Chinese medicine in favor of Western ideologies. Even today, however, Okinawans continue to consult geomancers in the planning of homes or graves.
A whole new branch of modern science, geobiology, is based on recent discoveries about the earth and energy lines or fields. In the late 1970s, Dr. Ernst Hartmann, a German physician, hypothesized that a grid of energy lines emanates from the earth’s surface and circles the globe. Named the Hartmann grid, these lines were described as being oriented magnetically in north-south and east-west directions at regular intervals, and easily measurable with a simple device called a Lobe antenna. The resulting energy fields were termed “bioelectromagnetic (BEM) fields”; the earth reportedly radiates at least twenty different types of BEM fields, also known as telluric grids. Apparently, Himalayan monks oriented houses and cells for monks in such a way that they were completely contained within BEM fields, evidence, perhaps, that ancient peoples, too, were acutely aware of such energy lines. Researchers today are studying old Chinese fusui texts, as well as centuries-old techniques used in Europe, Egypt, Central Asia, and South America. Given emerging knowledge about the body’s physical makeup, interplay between human beings and the environment is assuming an even greater significance than before.