The Autumn Peak of Haguro Shugendo

The only film of its kind that shows the ascetic training of Shugenja practitioners in Japan in a recording of the annual Haguro Shugendo Akinomine ritual in its entirety.
Shugendo, literally “the Way to Attain （Magico-Religious） Power”, is a religion that began to take shape in Japan around a thousand years ago. It derives from ancient beliefs about the mountain and the mountain deities, and from traditional shamanistic practices, that were given form and identity chiefly through esoteric Buddhism, but also through Daoist-type practices to some extent. Its practitioners, called shugenja or yamabushi (“those who lie down in the mountains”), regard the mountain as a womb within which they attain spiritual rebirth, as well as the place where they may come into contact with, and absorb, sacred power. Traditionally yamabushi entered the mountains in each of the four seasons and conducted rituals appropriate to the season. These practices have been largely lost to the vicissitudes of history. At Mt Haguro in Yamagata prefecture, however, the so-called Autumn and Winter Peaks survive; the Autumn Peak (Akinomine) in particular preserves an early form that interprets the journey from death to rebirth in terms of the Buddhist ten realms of transmigration, and reenacts these in a unique religious drama.
[DVD115mins, Packaging:©2009 Visual Folklore Inc.]