Shinto

The Passion of the Christ and Shinto Rites of Passage

 was very impressed with Mel Gibson’s “<a href="http://www.chasingthefrog.com/reelfaces/passion.php">The Passion of The Christ</a>.” Admittedly that is probably because I was raised in a Christian family and know the story, the background and consequences. I wept, but my Japanese wife fell asleep. You can see the <a href="http://tinyurl.com/5wsam">trailer here</a>.

A considerable part of the film showed Jesus and friends carrying large pieces of wood up a mountain. For part of the way Jesus was helped by someone else. So, two men carried a heavy piece of wood, while women watched and were mightily impressed.

This spectacle seems to have a lot in common with a lot of Shinto festivals

In many Shinto festivals men carry heavy objects through streets, often while women watch, for the sake of a spiritual purification. So why is that a lot of men do a lot of back breaking tasks **carrying things** in order to have a religious experience. And is it important that women watch?

Surprisingly, it does seem to be important that women were watching, in Mel Gibson's version of the passion at the very least. From reading the books upon which the film was based I was not particularly aware of the "women watching" aspect. But Mel Gibson's film made Jesus rather "mazacon" (mother obsessed? with conflicting feelings towards his mother) in a sense, or at least the film concentrated on their relationship to a very considerably extent. The whole film wallowed in maternal love. Mel Gibson's Passion of Christ took place before the eyes of his mother.

I don't know whether the episode is in the book, but the scene from the film in which Mary sees Jesus fall, unable to bear the weight of the cross is doubled with a scene from Jesus’ childhood when his mother ran to him when he fell over as a boy. Painful enough is the thought of a guy with his flesh torn to shreds, falling down under the weight of a giant log, but how much more painful and sad, when seen from the point of view of his mother, who sees him as a little boy.

But it was not clear who was seeing who as a little boy. The images from Jesus’ past, of his relationship with his mother, were more his own than those of his mother. In the Gospel according to Mel, Jesus saw his own suffering from the eyes of his mother - And how much more painful that
must have made it.

And for me seem to lie the rub, the point of the whole exercise. Why do all these Japanese gentlemen take their kit of an carry logs up or down hills? What was Jesus up to?

I have only done the carrying bit in one festival, that of Hesogaki-Sai held in June on the side of Mount Kora in Kurume. Gentlemen young and old, take their clothes off, put on a loin cloth, and carry a palanquin to the top of a mountain shouting "essah, hossah." The carrying part is very lightweight, nothing whatsoever on Jesus of course. But the purpose is a right of passage. The loincloth is the first one that young boys put on, and by putting it on they join the crowd of men, who take part in
the festival. The festival signals becoming a man. The important thing is, perhaps, that *only the men do the carrying thing*, and by taking part one signals that one is a man. The women have to stand at the side and watch (until very recently -- women are allowed to take part).

It is probably my own bias again but, looking at Mel Gibson's Passion it seemed as if Jesus was doing it to get away from his mother. "The son of man" was determined to carry this break through to the end, to make the cut, to pass that rite of passage.

What is at stake is not Jesus' real mother of course -- to get away from ones real mother is a lot easier. The attempt at which Jesus triumphed was to get away from the mother that he was carrying with him. The one through whose eyes he saw his own suffering. Even as he was seeing his suffering through her eyes, and we, he and she are aked to weep and watch, the very wallowing in matrios (motherly love), that makes us realise the fictional nature of the beast, the way in which we are creating a mother-internal to weep for us.

And even more, it seemed to me, there were times when Satan, played in a slinky-snake-like, hermaphrodite way by a woman, Rosalinda Celentano, seemed to double with Mary Mother of God. Both Rosalinda's Satan and Mary *seem* to love Jesus. Satan's love is seduction no doubt, but what of Mary's? Satan, like Mary is seen watching Jesus’ suffering all the way through. While Jesus is being whipped, Satan is for some reason nurturing a grotesque child. As Jesus carries his cross, Satan and Mary gaze at him from either side of the street. At first I thought that this indicated some sort of tension between them but...

Jesus’ final words -- before the famous ones  -- was to tell his mother that the young man she is with is her son and the young man, that Mary is her mother. That final cut precedes, crack-a-boom, heaven and earth rent asunder, and Mary's horrified face cuts to Satan's screaming as if at the bottom of the well. Satan had lost to 'the son of man', and a mother had lost her 'baby boy'. Then, "it is done" or "the prophecy is fulfilled."

I very painful way to become a man perhaps but, thanks to Jesus - very possibly a fictional account at the very least in case of Mel Gibson - it may be many Christians suffer less pain than the average man taking part in a Shinto festival. Christians use fiction to fight fiction.

All in all, I was very impressed by the film. I don't mind blood and I like Peter Gabriel. The Passion of the Christ  seemed to add a new dimension to carrying heavy pieces of wood around, and to the meaning of Sin/impurity and purity/redemption, which may not in fact be all that different after all.