If you’ve ever visited a Japanese shrine, you’ll know there are important rituals involved in proper worship, and one of them starts right at the entrance, at the water purification fountain, known as the chozuya or temizuya.
This is where worshippers use ladles called hishaku to scoop up water to wash their hands and sometimes even their mouths. However, this year’s pandemic has highlighted the dangers involved in using, and drinking from, ladles shared with strangers, particularly for older worshippers, and so many shrines and temples have removed these ladles as a safety precaution, leading some to fear that the custom is in danger of dying out.
Gifu-based Tomiya Honten, a long-established retailer of shrine goods that’s been in business for over 120 years, is determined to ensure the custom doesn’t die out, and they’ve come up with a creative new product to help preserve the tradition, called “My Hishaku Hishakun”.
Hishakun is a cute-sounding play on the word hishaku, as “-kun” is the suffix used for young boys, which helps to personify the ladle. It also lines up with the mini size of the new product, which is less than half the length of a regular hishaku.
Water purification is an important ritual as it’s said to cleanse the body and mind, remove evil spirits, and allow people to worship with a sense of refreshment. Hishakun allows visitors to maintain this tradition with the peace of mind that the ladle they’re using is clean and hasn’t been touched by anyone other than themselves.
▼ Each ladle comes packaged in its own cloth carry bag.
Made from hinoki (Japanese cypress), produced in the Tono region of Gifu Prefecture–one of the country’s best cypress-producing areas–the personal ladles are impregnated with a polymer coating to protect them from sun, water, mould, and cracks. This is a safe coating used on wooden tableware and sake sets, so there’s no problem in using the ladle to rinse your mouth during purification if you so desire.
The strap makes it easy to attach the ladle to your bag or even a kimono obi, if you’re dressed in traditional clothing. Adorned with wooden balls made from the yew tree, another famous tree in Gifu Prefecture, the ladle is both functional and stylish.
Mie Prefecture’s Ise Jingu, often referred to as Japan’s most holy shrine, has been encouraging worshippers to bring their own ladles for a number of months now, as have shrines in other prefectures.
The practice of using your own ladle will likely become more popular in future, and if the crowdfunding campaign for Hishakun is anything to go by, everyone is already keen to start using them.
Reward tiers start at 1,980 yen for the carry bag, while the ladle itself is available for 5,280 yen, and both ladle and carry bag can be purchased for 6,930 yen. Delivery is scheduled for the end of March 2021, by which time Japan and its shrines and temples should be gearing up for even more visitors ahead of the country’s planned reopening to international tourists in April.
Source: PR Times
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- https://soranews24.com/2020/12/05/japanese-water-purification-ritual-at-shrines-under-threat-due-to-the-pandemic/
5 Comments
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wraither
The tradition far surpassed multiple pandemics. I'm pretty sure the Japanese aren't that gullible for a crowdfunding scheme profiteering off of fear, are they?
...it got backed with more than 2 million yen.
Luddite
Grifting during a pandemic.
SandyBeachHeaven
Did you ever slide your finger across the inside of one of those ladles?
BertieWooster
God! Rituals are sooooooo boring!
Sven Asai
But thousands every day touching and pressing the same at all entrances displayed alcohol dispensers is OK, right? You are just only crazy, overdoing with such unnecessary complaints about many details but at the same time ignoring much more dangerous impacts. But feel free to test it, close down those purifying places in the shrines and watch the daily infection numbers. Want to hear my bet, how the amount will change? No, you don’t, right? lol