Boom!... Boom!... My chest reverberates with the thumping of a huge wooden drum as two robed holy men shuffle across tatami mats. They kneel in a vermilion-colored alcove, and a young assistant announces that the ceremony has commenced. The priests begin bowing and chanting rhythmically. I've been given a white "robe of cleansing" to wear. Actually, it's more like a smock. I'm not sure what I should be doing. I bow a couple of times.
I've come to the 1,270-year-old Kanda Shrine in Tokyo to purify and bless something very near and dear to me: my cell phone. I've had hellish luck with mobiles over the past year. I left one on a ride at Universal Studios Japan. Its successor suddenly—and mysteriously—died. The next one accompanied my pants into the washing machine, and its replacement went AWOL in less than a week. Divine intervention was needed, and pronto.
Japan's Shinto religion holds that nearly every object in the world, animate or inanimate, has a spiritual essence. Therefore, anything can be blessed, from a newborn child to an automobile. Priests at the Kanda Shrine, which overlooks Akihabara—Tokyo's mecca for consumer electronics—offer prayers for the well-being of gadgets.
Kanda found its calling in metaphysical IT work seven years ago, when Microsoft XP went on sale in Japan. The shrine created talismans to prevent system crashes, and they were snapped up by the throngs of nerds who prowl Akihabara for the latest gizmos and porn comics. Soon, requests were pouring in for priests to perform purification rites on laptops, cell phones, even Web portals. Today Kanda offers microchip-shaped good-luck charms for ¥800 (about $8) and private ceremonies for ¥5,000.
Back in the great hall, an older priest waves a giant wand—essentially a mop of white parchment streamers—over his counterpart. Thus cleansed, the younger priest rises and carries my phone on a lacquer tray to the main altar. He begins a low-pitched chant, invoking the shrine's deities to "watch over and protect Brian Ashcraft's cellular phone."
As the sound of plucked koto strings echoes through the hall, the assistant jingles gold bells over my head. I'm told to approach the altar and am given a tree branch, an offering to the shrine's deities. A priest painstakingly instructs me to turn the branch 180 degrees—no, no, clockwise—and place it on the altar. Then bow deeply twice—that's good—and clap twice.
Most Japanese people would probably stumble through this intricate ceremony as clumsily as I do, but the tenets of Shinto are deeply ingrained in their consciousness. It occurs to me that this must affect how they view their little electronic helpmates. Perhaps gadgets really do have souls. Maybe my problem isn't bad luck—maybe I simply haven't been giving my phones the respect they deserve. I bow again, and the ceremony concludes.
Near the great hall's exit, I am presented with a wooden plaque certifying that my cell has been purified. Over a cup of sake, senior priest Katsuji Takahashi chuckles as he tells me, "I've lost my phone twice, but both times it turned up."
Seven months later, my blessed phone is still with me.
My cell phone sits in a lacquer tray waiting to be blessed by a Shinto priest. Late last year, I visited the ancient Kanda shrine, located in the heart of Tokyo's consumer electronics district. The shrine does boffo business offering charms and ceremonial purifications that protect cell phones and laptops and even blogs and ISP service from bad mojo. You can read about it here and see more images of the temple and its priests by clicking on the thumbnails above.
A geek nirvana has grown up around the 1,200-year-old Shinto shrine. Tokyo's Akihabara district is the place to go if you're looking for gizmos, manga, videogames, anime, or figurines. On the right is the otaku hypermart AsoBitCity, and on the left is a doujin (fanzine) bookstore packed with images of doe-eyed schoolgirl characters.
Up a narrow side street and under a red and green gate, a wide stone path leads up to the Kanda shrine. It's morning, and a salaryman on his way to work stands tossing change into the wooden offering box and clasps his hands in prayer. Just over the top of the green roof tiles, modern buildings dot the skyline. The view is discombobulating at first, the modern and ritzy clashing with the traditional and sacred, yet that image sums up Japan.
Near the shrine's entryway is what looks like an old-school arcade attraction. Inside is a shishigashira, or lion head puppet. Drop some yen in this coin-op device to see the mechanical lion do its festive Shinto dance that wards off evil. When the shimmying is over, an omikuji, or fortune, drops down the chute. The fortune, printed on a rolled-up piece of paper, could just as easily be terrible as great. I'm afraid to use the thing — one more bit of bad luck and my cell phone might spontaneously combust in my pocket.
I enter the shrine with my cell and don a white robe for the purification ceremony. I've been called before the altar. I'm feeling nervous and awkward. Why wouldn't I be? I don't know precisely what it is that I'm supposed to be doing. Clap two times...? Alrighty, here goes.
Whoosh! Parchment rustles noisily, and gusts of cleansed air hit me in the face. The priest is holding a haraigushi, a prayer stick covered with folded bits of paper. Waving the haraigushi over my phone is part of the blessing ceremony. After this is over, I'm called upon to offer a tree branch to the deities of the shrine.
These paper charms are made to look like microchips. Each has the words "IT Info Safety Blessing" and the shrine's name inscribed on it. The backing is a sticker with peel-off paper — perfect for slapping it onto your laptop. Take that, computer viruses!
All done! I'm given a piece of wood to commemorate the ritual. My name is handwritten on it, along with the words "Cell Phone Safety Blessing." It's been eight months since this ceremony, and my phone is still safe and sound. Maybe the ritual itself worked…or maybe the ritual forced me to look at my phone with a little more reverence and respect.
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