About
While touring in the car, sitting in the passenger’s sheet, I said to myself “this must be the Ki of the Japanese gods. All the nature, the people, and the other things in Satoyama(the countryside) are filled with Ki.” A number of Torii(an archway to a Shinto shrine) I saw in Setoyama might have subliminally affected me in some way.
Essentially, I am not a religious type of person. Even when I was a student at a Christian school, I was very good at arguing in a hypocritical manner just to get high marks. My wife took aside glance at me photographing while she was driving, she just had to laugh, saying, “it is just like Kan-nagara!”
Kan-nagara, she explained to me, means “in the manner of the Japanese god’s will”. It is a kind of belief that Japanese people have preserved for a long time, since the beginning of the country’s history. Kan-nagara is a kind of grassroots philosophy of the Japanese, who have always worshiped the great presence of nature. The path of Kan-nagara is the path of shintoism, she said.
Putting aside the question of the accuracy of my wife’s knowledge on the subject, I was deeply persuaded by her words. I sensed her explanation went just to the point. Inside my soul, the strange word, Kan-nagara, and the mysterious feeling, Ki, resonated with each other.
I have been told the I see things that other simply do not notice. And now, things have become clear toe me that I didn’t notice before. When I was caught up only by what was under my feet or before my eyes, I couldn’t see or fell things which existed, but only off in the distance. All of us are living in this world, I believe, not knowing that we are surrounded by such real, but invisible things.
Now what moves me comes from the gentle perspective of being able to see these real things, and to feel them very clearly. I will name this state of mind Kan-nagara, and I believe the Yaoyorozu-no-kami, the myriad of Japanese gods, will allow me to do so.
