Shinto

I watched The Peach Orchard section of Kurosawa’s film Dreams. I found many aspects of Shinto in these two clips. This section was about a little boy who sees a little girl in his house and then follows her outside to the field. He then sees kami which look like humans with white painted faces. They are angry with him and his family for cutting down the peach trees in the field. He starts to cry and tells them that he really loved the peach trees so they forgive him and allow the peach trees to grow once more. At the end, it seems that each kami was an individual tree that was cut down. This demonstrates that the trees are part of nature and therefore are one with the kami. As we learned in class, everything is spiritual and therefore there is continuity between humanity, nature, and the spirits/gods. The kami even say “We are the spirits of the trees, the life of the blossoms. Those vanished trees are weeping in their sorrow.” This proves that they represent the spirit of nature. We were in class that the gravest sins are sins against sacred objects or places. The problem that presents itself in these clips is that the boy’s family cut down a sacred peach tree field. The only difference between this and the story of a kami who destroyed a sacred rice field is that the boy and his family were forgiven unlike the kami who was punished in the myth. This section says that Doll day is a celebration that is for the Peach blossoms arrival and the dolls say that they personify the peach trees and they will no longer go to their house again because the peach trees were cut down. They ask the boy how he and his family are to celebrate doll day if the peach trees are no longer there. This harvest festival is an example of a large Shinto worship festival.