When I was a child, I used to play at Iyasaka Shrine, which
was a 20 seconds walk from my house. It was a very small shrine;
there were neither Shinto priests nor any other people working
there. The small house-like thing where the god was enshrined was
very small and old, made of wood. I did not know and still do not
know what kind of god was enshrined, but I guess it was the god
of harvest because in autumn, we had a festival. The shrine was
in a small forest of chinquapin, ginkgo, and pine trees. There
were also some flowers like azaleas and camellias. We used to
pick them to make necklaces. The inside of the forest was dim
because little sunlight came through their long branches. The
shrine was a little desolate, but to my feeling of childhood,
that desolation and dimness made the shrine a more quiet, holy
place. I could relax well in the forest and forget all the bad
things that happened at school.
The forest seemed to be a pretty good place for pigeons to
live. I could hear them cooing all through the year, especially
in spring. In summer, the forest became a big house for cicadas.
They were so noisy that I could hear them clearly from my house.
They really got on my nerves at the end of summer vacation when I
had to finish tons of homework. The pigeons were energetic too.
The cicadas and the pigeons were having a gigantic chorus. But
sometimes, they suddenly stopped singing. The silence was very
mysterious to me. It was different from any other silence.
Mosquitoes also loved living there. Almost no one went there in
summer. Even one step into the woods made one's arm bitten in a
second by more than 20 mosquitoes, craving for blood. But my
friends and I sometimes went there to catch cicadas. Of course,
we put insect repellent on our bodies completely.
There were 3 play bars, 4 swings, and a slide. Each one was
painted colorfully, so they did not match with the atmosphere of
the shrine. But we loved playing there. The shrine was like a
paradise for small children. The swings and the slide were
connected together like one big jungle gym. The swings were in
pairs, and each pair was hanging down from bars, which were
connected, to the sides of the slide. We used to do something
exciting, but quite dangerous with that "jungle-gym". First, we
climbed up the slide to the top. Then, we moved to the bars that
connected the slide and swings to walk on them. We had to be well
balanced because the bar was so high. And at last, in the most
dangerous part, we jumped down from the bar to get on the swing.
This was a great fun. For us, this was a small adventure.
I did not like to play with play bars. Most of my friends were
good at making circles with them, but I was not good at all. I
was always put to shame in the PE class at school. On Sundays, my
father sometimes took me to the shrine to practice on them, but I
did not improve at all. Because I was made to practice so much, I
made many blisters on my hands and felt dizzy.
There was also a small shrine office near the entrance of the
shrine. Usually, it was closed except for summertime. At that
time, children from 4th to 6th grade practiced traditional
festival music, "matsuri-bayashi", for the festival held in every
autumn. They practiced on every Friday night from seven to nine
o'clock. They played Japanese traditional flutes, big and small
drums, and hand drums. Because my house was very near the shrine
and small children played the music in that shrine, it was very
noisy and irritating. It sounded as if they were using broken
instruments. But every year when it was to be heard, I always
felt refreshed that summer had come.
Everyday after school, we hurried to the shrine and played
there until the sunsets. I really loved playing there, especially
with swings. I felt flying in the air with the refreshing
fragrance of pine trees, and our voices echoing in the forest.
Playing in Iyasaka Shrine was an important part of my daily life;
without it, I can not talk about my childhood. When I was ten
years old, I moved to the U.S. with my family. I came back five
years later to the same house, but I rarely heard children's
voices from the shrine. Children's life has changed a lot in five
years. They are too busy studying. Four months ago, I moved to
Tokyo by my family and myself moved to England. I think I can
never go back to Iyasaka Shrine. But as summer is coming, the
sound of matsuri-bayashi and cicadas are coming back to my mind;
and with them, very vividly, the quiet and holy image of the
shrine.
by Satoko Hagino
