Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
3.2
Characteristics of the Kanamura Shrine Belief Area
3.2.1
Introduction
3.2.1.1
Purpose and Methodology of This Chapter
This section clarifi es the spatial structure of the religious catchment area with ko
and believers by outlining the differences in acceptance of some faiths, including
tutelary deities. We can illustrate these differences by analyzing the Kanamura
Wakeikazuchi Shrine ( Kanamura for short) in Tsukuba City, Ibaraki. The Kanamura
faith has been accepted mainly in the rural areas of southwestern Ibaraki, southeast-
ern Saitama, and northeastern Chiba.
First, I present an overview of Thunder Worship based on the Kanamura faith,
and then I describe the location and history of Kanamura . In the second part,
I describe the community and private prayers as the religious form of the Kanamura
faith, introduce distribution of ko and believers, and illustrate the catchment area of
Kanamura . I will compare the spatial characteristics of each catchment area, review,
and conclude the study.
3.2.1.2
Thunder Worship and Kanamura
Thunder worship has been diffused through rural communities in Japan. Thunder is
adored, not only in awe of a dreadful being that brings disaster, but with reverence
to a kami of water or a child of kami carried by lightning originating from a heav-
enly God (Tamura 1972 ). It is faith not only in the mysterious power of thunder that
damages crops and houses, but also in the Lord of rainfall. Several authors identify
the thunder belief as a revengeful faith, and the original image of Kitano Tenjin had
the traits of a rainfall God (Tamura 1972 ; Ueda 1988 ). Yanagita ( 1969 ) quoted sto-
ries like: When a bolt of lightning strikes anywhere in Kanto region, people stick a
bamboo pole into the spot that has been hit and hang a sacred straw festoon from it
to enable the thunder spirit to go up to the heavens. When the thunder God visited
the ground as a child, a respectable farmer brought her up kindly. Since then, the
farmer's paddy fi eld has had as much rain as he desired. Yanagita interpreted the
fi gure of thunder written in these stories as a primordial form of the Thunder God.
I have identifi ed numerous shrines devoted to thunder worship, called thunder
shrines (Kaminari, Raiden, Kagutsuchi, and Wakeikazuchi Jinja), in the northern
part of Kanto and Ibaraki (Fig. 3.16 and Table 3.2 ). These areas receive much rain-
fall from thunderstorms (Kurabayashi et al. 1971 ). Twenty-six thunder shrines are
registered as religious corporations, and believers think Kanamura has a higher
status. Most thunder shrines offer only Wakeikazuchi-shin . A few shrines have
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