(Sightings) — Guests to film theaters throughout the USA not too long ago had the chance to see one of the crucial in style Japanese anime sensations of the final decade — not the Oscar-winning Hayao Miyazaki movie “The Boy and the Heron,” however the movie “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no yaiba — To the Hashira Coaching,” the third cinematic installment within the Demon Slayer franchise.
Though not practically as acquainted on these shores as Miyazaki’s critically acclaimed masterpieces, the Demon Slayer franchise is extra in style in Japan than nearly another pop cultural model. The primary Demon Slayer movie, 2020’s “Mugen Practice,” is the best grossing movie of all time in Japan — with a income of over 40 billion yen, it beats not solely Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away,” but additionally “Titanic” and “Frozen.”
“Demon Slayer” is famously impressed by a variety of non secular traditions and practices. A lot of its aesthetics and world-building derive from types of mountain asceticism, worship of native spirits referred to as Kami, and demon lore. What’s much less apparent are the methods by which this popular culture phenomenon itself is spurring on revolutionary spiritual practices of its personal — what we would name “pop faith.”
The Demon Slayer franchise revolves across the story of Tanjirō Kamado, a youth in 1910s Japan. Someday he comes dwelling to seek out his household slaughtered by demons. The one survivor is his sister, Nezuko, who has been become a demon (not not like how vampire bites flip victims into vampires). In an effort to revive his sister’s humanity, Tanjirō units out into the world and finds himself amid a centuries-long battle between people and the demons that feed on them.
Whereas this story started as a manga comedian from the pen of graphic novelist Koyoharu Gotouge in 2016, it has since exploded into different media, together with an award-winning animated sequence in addition to the aforementioned movies.
“Demon Slayer”’s depiction of demons, which additionally attracts on world pop cultural tropes about vampires, is rooted within the demon lore of Japan’s spiritual traditions. For instance, the outstanding demon Hantengu is a reference, in title and in picture, to legendary creatures referred to as tengu, man-bird hybrids which have a millennia-long historical past in East Asian folklore. Tanjirō’s particular method for combating demons, the hinokami kagura, is equally impressed by Japanese spiritual practices. It’s an adaptation of a real-life type of ceremonial dance often known as kagura that’s steadily carried out at Shinto shrines throughout Japan.
Movie poster for “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no yaiba — To the Hashira Coaching.” (Courtesy picture)
Lastly, “Demon Slayer” attracts inspiration from Japan’s traditions of mountain asceticism. Since historic occasions, mountains have performed a vital function in Japanese spiritual traditions as websites of energy and arduous religious practices, corresponding to standing underneath waterfalls whereas chanting mantras. With the intention to be taught to combat demons, Tanjirō goes by means of the same coaching routine within the mountains, together with waterfall coaching.
Nevertheless, the affect between “Demon Slayer” and Japanese religions isn’t a one-way road. The franchise has additionally impressed new in style spiritual practices. Followers are making visits to current shrines and different religious websites related to the franchise. The Kamado shrine within the metropolis of Dazaifu, from which Tanjirō’s final title is claimed to derive, is positioned on a mountain that previously was an vital middle for ascetic observe. Followers now flock to this location in massive numbers, and the shrine has begun to promote a brand new vary of protecting talismans immediately impressed by “Demon Slayer.”
One other shrine, the Shōhachiman shrine within the metropolis of Kitakyūshū, is dwelling to a cleft boulder that’s mentioned to have been the inspiration for the same boulder in “Demon Slayer.” This shrine, too, has grow to be a preferred vacation spot amongst followers. Oftentimes, followers go to each in a single journey.
One could ask whether or not this pop fandom is basically “spiritual” or not, however the terminology used to speak about these visits locations them amongst millennia-old traditions of non secular pilgrimage on the archipelago. They’re referred to actually as “visits to the sacred websites” (seichi junrei).
The “Demon Slayer” phenomenon has additionally spurred new spiritual practices at these shrines. As a part of conventional Japanese shrine visits, it’s common observe to buy a votive pill referred to as an ema, upon which one could write a want or request to be granted. These needs vary from averting catastrophe in a single’s private life, to therapeutic illness, to passing vital college exams. This pill is then left on the shrine, within the hopes that the unseen powers will look favorably upon it and make it come true.
At shrines that followers affiliate with “Demon Slayer,” one more and more finds ema tablets containing not simply needs, however drawings of characters or parts from the sequence. This isn’t merely a case of fan artwork in a brand new location. In Japanese religions, ailments and pandemics have an extended historical past of being related to demons. Together with a drawing of a demon slayer like Tanjirō alongside, for instance, a request to “vanquish COVID-19” can thus be mentioned to represent a brand new twist on centuries-old spiritual practices.
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This isn’t to say that “Demon Slayer“ is a faith; slightly it serves as a reminder that folks’s spiritual practices don’t happen in a vacuum completely separated from their consumption of fictional media. It’s well-known that franchises corresponding to “Dune,” “The Avengers” and “The Good Place” draw inspiration from real-world religions. But in specializing in this one-way affect, we could properly have missed the visitors that runs within the different route.
(Bruce Winkelman is a educating fellow on the College of Chicago Divinity College. This commentary initially appeared in Sightings, a publication of the Martin Marty Middle for the Public Understanding of Faith on the divinity college. The views expressed don’t essentially replicate these of Faith Information Service.)
