The observance of the “150th Anniversary Grand Festival of the Divine Founder’s Ascension” at your branch churches (Jan. 2001)

The observance of the “150th Anniversary Grand Festival of the Divine Founder’s Ascension” at your branch churches.

January 2001

New Year’s Greetings

Last autumn, the Grand Festival of the 150th Anniversary of the Divine Founder’s Ascension 教祖神百五十年大祭was held in nine separate ceremonies. Thanks to the fervent prayers and heartfelt service of our omichizure (companions)* across the nation, each occasion was successfully and magnificently completed.

(*In Kurozumikyō, the fellow followers are called omichizure お道連れ or “companions on the Way.”)

I deeply sense how greatly the Divine Founder, together with the successive generations of Chief Patriarchs, must rejoice at this outcome. First and foremost, I wish to express my sincere gratitude to all of you.

At Shintōzan*, improvements began with the creation of a new plaza before the main approach, followed by the completion of the “moving approach”—a barrier-free escalator and an elevator—making this sacred site more accessible for the elderly and those with physical difficulties. At Ōmoto 大元(another sacred site where Munetada Shrine is located), the long-awaited Ancestral Shrine was built in the rear garden of the Founder Memorial Hall. These developments, born from the accumulation of your true devotion, allowed us to welcome the Grand Festival in a most auspicious way.

(*Shintōzan is the sacred site of Kurozumikyō where the main shrine and the headquarters are located.  It lieteally means “Mount Shintō.”)

Furthermore, the “Ten Million Offerings of Purification Prayer*,” carried out together with you from October 1 of the year before last for one full year, reached a remarkable total of over 13.47 million offerings. Likewise, the “Marukoto (Roundness) Volunteer Day,” begun in May of that same year, has expanded from being centered at Headquarters to include all local churches. Thus, the Grand Festival of the 150th Anniversary of the Divine Founder’s Ascension was celebrated in a spirit that truly embodied the foundation of our religious community—prayer and service. For this, I feel profound reverence and gratitude.

(*Repeated recitation of Oharai or Oharae no Kotoba (the Great Purification Prayer) is one of the most important spiritual trainings of Kurozumikyō’s omichizure お道連れ. In this campaign, 13.47 million recitations of Oharai お祓い or Ōharai no Kotoba 大祓詞—the Great Purification Prayer, the most important prayer for Kurozumikyō — were reported within the designated period of a year.)

Moreover, just before the Grand Festival, at the end of August, the United Nations Religious Summit was held for the first time at UN Headquarters in New York, convened at the invitation of Secretary-General Kofi Annan. On this occasion, my elder son, Munemichi, who had just been appointed Deputy Chief Patriarch, was entrusted with the role of chief secretary of the Japanese delegation.

During the Summit itself, we both father and son were given prominent opportunities to participate. This was an experience so extraordinary that it can only be described as the gracious will of the gods. We are profoundly grateful for having been allowed to share in such a blessing.

In this way, through many fulfilling experiences—both tangible and intangible, within Japan and abroad—we were able to welcome the Grand Festival. For this, I feel heartfelt gratitude.

Above all, the Religious Summit offered profound lessons. As one Japanese living in today’s world, I found myself repeatedly challenged to reflect.

The most striking realization was this: the more advancement of globalization and the information technology makes our planet feel smaller, the more the uniqueness of each people—their identity, their national character—comes to be valued.

At the Summit, which gathered representatives from over ninety countries and more than a thousand participants, many embodied rich cultural identities rooted in their histories. Yet all shared a common recognition: that true peace requires acknowledging differences, honoring them, and learning from them. This spirit of generosity is precisely what humanity needs in the twenty-first century.

To put it another way, life cannot be lived meaningfully if it is uniform, like a “Kintarō candy” where the same face appears no matter where you cut. Rather, each nation must express its own characteristics, born of its land and history, while joining together in the shared goal of world peace.

On the personal level, this means that each individual should express their unique character. For us Japanese, it means living as Japanese—bringing forth our distinct qualities—while uniting under common goals and shared symbols. This is what it truly means to live in the twenty-first century.

What is truly important here is the genuine individuality of each person. Of course, this does not mean selfishness, as in “as long as I am fine, nothing else matters.”

This conviction has grown stronger in me since the autumn of 1993, when, to mark the twentieth anniversary of my succession as the Chief Patriarch, we began the greening project at Shintōzan by planting trees. From the start, we planted saplings whose lifelines—their deep roots—had not been cut. Watching them grow vigorously and with rich individuality over the years has impressed upon me that if human beings neglect their own deep roots, their lives too will become unstable.

This was further confirmed in the autumn of 1998, when a typhoon struck the Kinki region. Many artificial forests collapsed one after another, while in the Kasugayama Primeval Forest of Nara Prefecture—now a World Heritage Site—only a handful of trees fell, thanks to their firmly established deep roots.

At the same time, seeing the surge of unexpectedly violent crimes committed by young people has made me wonder: what has happened to their deep roots? My sense of the importance of these roots has only grown stronger.

Deep roots in human life begin with the bond between parent and child, and extend further to the ties with ancestors, forming a continuous chain of history. When these bonds are severed—when ancestors are neglected and the time walked by predecessors is treated lightly—there lies the source of many evils, and perhaps also the fragility of today’s Japanese people.

In the autumn two years ago, at the “Hayashibara Forum” (Translator’s note: “Hayashibara” is a Japanese family name literally means “woods field.”) organized by Hayashibara Co., a symposium was held in Okayama under theme “Time and Times.” It was led by Professor Hironaka Heisuke, President of Yamaguchi University and a world-renowned mathematician, and gathered twenty-nine distinguished scholars from both the humanities and sciences across Japan. Among the presentations, one cultural anthropologist delivered a statement that was truly a timely warning for our age.

“In earlier times, many people lived with a long sense of time span, in which ancestors existed before them, they themselves lived in the present, and descendants would follow. Moreover, death was understood with the conviction that one would eventually be reborn among one’s descendants. For this reason, even those without children welcomed adopted heirs in order to preserve and honor the family. However, as civilization advanced, more people came to live with a short sense of time, believing that their own lifetime—from birth to death—was the only time that truly belonged to them.”

This lecture implicitly suggested that the genuine way of life of the Japanese people, and the path that connects to eternity, lies in the tradition of respecting ancestors and predecessors.

The way of life that Japanese people today most urgently need to recover is the ancient spirit of ancestor reverence, the heart of keishin sūsō 敬神崇祖—respecting gods and honoring the ancestors.

Having gratefully completed 150th Anniversary Grand Festival of the Divine Founder’s Ascension, a celebration that truly embodies the spirit of keishin sūsō—respecting the divine and honoring the ancestors—we now plan to devote the next four years to visiting each of your branch churches. I, the Chief Patriarch, together with my eldest son, the Vice Chief Patriarch, will divide the work and conduct 150th Anniversary Grand Festival of the Divine Founder’s Ascension at each branch church. At the same time, regardless of family lineage, we wish to hold ceremonies in which we worship together the spirits of your ancestors along with the Founder.

We believe this is the path of gratitude toward our ancestors and predecessors, made possible by the privilege of having celebrated the Grand Festival, and also the way to respond to the sincere devotion of all of you who walk this path with us.

We now look forward, with all our hearts, to meeting you at your branch churches.