On a Spring Train

You do not necessarily have to go to a shrine to feel the presence of the kami.
On a warm spring day, simply swaying on a train, letting your eyelids grow heavy, there are moments when you suddenly feel as if something sacred has brushed against you.

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As a Shinto priest, I sometimes stand between a newborn baby and the kami.

At a baby’s first shrine visit, as I recite the norito, the infant lifts its tiny fingers into the air, gazes at things no one else can see, and lets strange sounds rise from deep in the throat. At such moments, I feel that the child has not yet fully arrived in the human world. Something luminous, pre-verbal, and sacred still remains there.

There are words that do not so much explain such moments as linger around them. Words that carry the air of a place, the warmth of a voice, and the texture of a certain season of life.

From the years when I was raising twins, two such words still remain in me.
One is kisanji, an Osaka word that people would say again and again when they saw my twins in their buggy.
The other is okkon, the word my mother used for the strange sounds they made before they began to speak.

At the time, I did not know how deeply those sounds and words would remain in me, or how, years later, they would return on a spring train to Kyoto like the sudden brush of the kami.

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Grooving with Kami arrives every Tuesday. Most essays are open to all, and once a month I share a more personal paid piece like this one.