Today’s post is a bit different, because it is not strictly about Shinto, although it does have a lot of connections to Shinto and jinja.
I have posted several times about the 2024 Noto Earthquake that happened on January 1st. One of the worst-hit areas was the city of Wajima, which is famous for its lacquer work (urushi, in Japanese), known as Wajimanuri. I am far from an expert on this topic, although I do like urushi, but my understanding is that Wajimanuri is a particularly involved process, even by the standards of urushi work in general, with every piece requiring the work of multiple crafters. This makes it a difficult craft to preserve, because you need a lot of active people, all skilled crafters, to create a single item. There were already concerns about preserving the craft for the future before the earthquake hit. Most of the workshops were badly damaged in the disaster, to a point that made them unusable, and the crafters are not, in most cases, currently able to work, or even live in Wajima.
Shin’yūsha, about which I have written several times before, has been concerned about preserving the urushi tradition for several years — I attended a workshop in the subject before the pandemic. Recently, they had been planning to create a new Nō play on the subject of urushi, building on two waka (traditional 31-syllable Japanese poems) by Princess Akiko. According to Shin’yūsha, they had several aims for this. One was to preserve a cultural memory of the techniques involved in urushi work in a Nō play, because these plays are reliably passed down, and so if the play survives, the craft could be revived. Another was to pray for the continuation of the craft, because Nō is deeply connected with prayer — it originates in performances for the kami. The more immediate goals were to have urushi items created for the play, thus giving work to the crafters, and to raise awareness of the tradition. The plan had reached the stage where they expected the first performance to be this year.
The earthquake slammed the brakes on the project, as everyone worried about whether it was the right thing to do. After a few months, and consultations with urushi crafters affected by the earthquake, they decided that it was still a good idea, because it was important to preserve the traditions of the stricken areas, as well as saving the lives of people there. The project was relaunched, dedicated to the recovery from the Noto Earthquake, and specifically the recovery of Wajimanuri.
The project is overseen by a committee that is technically separate from Shin’yūsha but has a lot of overlap in personnel, including Princess Akiko and the chief priest of Dazaifu Tenmangū. It also includes a couple of Nō practitioners (helpful, I imagine), and the leader of a group of urushi crafters from Wajima (although they appear to be unavoidably based in Kanazawa for the moment). The committee have decided to launch a crowdfunding project, which is officially under Shin’yūsha (I don’t know, but I guess that this is because Shin’yūsha is a non-profit corporation, while the committee is legally just a bunch of people). The funds will be used to finish the play, and pay for the creation of Wajimanuri items, for use in the play, to be offered at a jinja, and to distribute to backers who donated more than a certain amount. The plan is for the play to have a sort of premier in November, at Kanda Myōjin in Tokyo, and backers over a certain amount can ask for tickets, although there are a limited number available. (This will not be a full performance with masks and props, quite possibly because they do not expect those items to be completed by that point.)
The crowdfunding is only for people in Japan, for logistical reasons (and so the entire page is in Japanese). If you are in Japan, and are confident that you will understand the page well enough not to accidentally donate ¥1,000,000, then please consider backing it. It is already more than 250% funded, which I assume means that the play is fully funded, and that further donations will fund commissions from the associated urushi crafters. The crowdfunding has a note saying that they have no idea when the urushi ware will be distributed, and they ask people to take a long-term view. Having backed several crowdfunding projects in the past, it would have to take a really long time (as in, decades) to be outside the normal time-frame for this sort of thing.
If you are outside Japan, then they have an English page for donations. (When I wrote to them to ask about publicising the project here, they told me this page was coming. I assume that it was already planned, but I am not completely sure.) This page translates quite a lot of the material on the Japanese page, so you can find out more about the project, and the donation option is very simple. As far as I can tell, you can complete the whole process in English, and the minimum donation is ¥3,000 (about US$20, at the time of writing).
Please do consider donating; this sort of support is essential to the long-term recovery of the communities devastated by earthquakes. It is also potentially critical to preserving the craft tradition, and such traditions are much, much harder to revive than they are to preserve.