Shinto Blessing of the Emirau Project at Hakusan Shrine in Japan

Hakusan Shrine

Today, the Emirau Project was presented to the Goddess Himesan at the Mount Hakusan Main Shrine at Shirayama, north of Nagoya on the Japan Sea,  in Japan, through the watercolor painting of “Tench boy and Marlin” painted by Edward Car.  A special Shinto ceremony was performed at Hakusan to alert the Goddess Himesan about our project and to attract her enthusiasm and support. The painting was placed in front of the Goddess in such a way so that she could see it well. Huge drums were beaten, several monks chanted, a maiden danced to unique Shinto music of flute, bells and drum.

The Goddess Himesan of Hakusan Mountain has a modest shrine at the Tokyo Tskiji Fish Market seen with the two lions at the gate. The shrine deals with the mountain and the sea. The mountain Hakusan behind the Shrine site at Shirayama is the home of the most powerful, wildest and action full female Goddess in Japan. Seamen and mountain men alike seek her support in their most harsh encounters and project experiences.

Hakusan is also known as Shirayamasan and Himesan.

The story about the boy at Tench Island goes back to 2003 while sitting there at the men’s end of the beach a small boy, left in the painting, was out in the ocean in his dugout traditional outrigger slowly being taken out to sea. Tench some 300 meters across peeks out of the water something like a meter, it is one of those coral pillars climbing 1000 meters up off a submerged ridge on the rim of the Manus Trench falling another 6000 meters into an abyss. Tench sits right in the middle of the sub equatorial drift, in a constant west bound current of a persistent 2 knots. The boy appeared to be swept away from the Isle, home for some 50 people keeping a unique language.  Actually as the boy slowly paddled back after good hour or more, against the current, it was clear he had caught a record size marlin. Coming closer to home, there was an excitement on the beach as his mother standing in the surf helped him untie his outrigger off the marlin. The fish was bigger than his dugout. The boy was about ten years old. No man was allowed to touch the fish. The Marlin now belonged to the domain of the women.

The meaning of the painting and the meaning of the Heroic Emirau People together with the Tench people and the Mussau people was well understood by the monk at Hakusan Shrine.