It was an image seemingly everywhere, once I’d gotten my bearings in Sendai. The man was dressed in kimono and sat with arms and legs folded. His joyous expression was a picture of ebullience, everywhere from side streets to shopping mall displays. Seeing him made me smile.
It was only once I’d seen him for the first time, in the department store in the Izumi-chuō district, that I realized his image was seemingly everywhere in town. Photos, paintings, and little statues abounded. But it wasn’t until years later, during my PhD research, that I encountered him again.
He was a larger-than-life character of late 19th and early 20th century Sendai. Remembered today as Sendai Shirō, he was one of the city’s most beloved Meiji-era sons who is still regarded as a fortune kami. As I saw, he continues to enjoy a different kind of popularity today, as one of the city’s symbols. This is my retelling of his story.
Two Cities in One
In order to understand Sendai Shirō better, we need to grasp the lay of the land in the late-Edo Sendai that bore him.
Sendai as people think of it today is one city. It is easily shorthanded in hindsight as being the same as the Sendai Castle town in the Edo period. But this was not quite the case– it was not simply one entity but two in one.
Inside the Hirose River’s bend, built on and around Mount Aoba, was Sendai Castle. The senior Date vassals’ estates sat at the foot of Mount Aoba. Many of them had wealth and military power of their own, on par with small-time daimyo. Like the daimyo in Edo who performed alternate attendance on the shogun, they performed alternate attendance on the Date daimyo in Sendai.
From time to time, the Date daimyo would transfer their landholdings, promote and demote, or punish as necessary. This was a microcosm of the bakuhan taisei system that existed on the national scale. Commoners’ access to this side of the city was restricted, and because it was an active military installation of its time, nobody from outside of Sendai domain was allowed to enter Sendai Castle itself.
But across the Hirose River, on the flatter land between the Nanakita and Natori rivers that slopes gently toward the Pacific, was the commoners’ city. Some samurai lived there, in their own districts, but this was predominantly a non-samurai city, especially the parts that sat astride the Ōshū Highway.
At the city center, at the intersection of the highway and Ōmachi Avenue, was Bashō’s Crossing (Bashō-no-tsuji). Once, there were two-story structures with dragon sculptures on their ridgepoles, but today, only a modest monument to them remains.
Shirō from Around the Watchtower
A little bit to the east of Bashō’s crossing and the commoners’ city, the domain established Yōkendō Academy. This was its primary domain school, and was one of Japan’s preeminent educational institutions during the Edo period. On Yōkendō’s grounds, roughly in the northwest corner, stood a major firewatch tower. And in one of the adjoining neighborhoods lived the Haga family. Shirō, the 4th son in his generation, was born to the Haga family in 1855. Because he was from this area, some sources call him “Shirō from Around the Watchtower” (Yagurashita no Shirō).
The Haga family blurred the line between warrior and commoner. They had the right to a surname and to wear swords, and were in the business of firearms building and maintenance during the reign of Date Yoshikuni (1825-1874), the Date lord who ruled Sendai domain during the closing years of the Tokugawa Shogunate into the Boshin War.
This was a time when a family like the Haga would’ve had a lot of work to do. Despite the domain’s financial woes following the famines of the preceding decades, it still made a concerted effort to modernize its military forces and the technologies those forces relied upon.
The Haga family still exists in Sendai today, and still is in the business of making things go boom– but it’s since switched its focus from guns to fireworks.
It seems that the more some things change, the more they stay the same.
A Little Fact, a Lot of Questions
We don’t know a lot for certain about Sendai Shirō, but here’s what we do know. He was born in Sendai in 1855. According to modern-day relatives who run a website devoted to him, his adult name was Toyotaka. He was the son of a family of gunsmiths, as noted above.
There are differing theories as to why he was nonverbal. Some claim it was a childhood illness. Others, including Mihara, claim that Shirō’s nonverbal status was the result of a catastrophic injury. And beyond that, we know that he was famous in Meiji era Sendai as a larger-than-life character.
In life and beyond, Sendai natives saw him as a fortune kami. He disappeared circa 1903 in Sukagawa, Fukushima Prefecture, but some accounts had him still alive and traveling even further afield to Busan, in Korea.
Beyond this, there are anecdotes of people who saw him, knew him, or thought they saw him.
Mihara Ryōkichi, the folklorist we recently covered in a biographical sketch, met Shirō. Mihara, then two years old, was playing in front of his family’s home in Kokubunchō when he vanished. There was an understandable panic as his family and the neighborhood looked for the missing child to no avail. Just as news reached the police box at Bashō-no-tsuji that Shirō had been sighted with a small child in his arms, Shirō brought the young Mihara back home, all smiles and with a bag of candy.
In Kyōdoshi Sendai Mimibukuro, in his chapter heading on the man, Mihara relates the story. He says that for many years, his (Mihara’s) mother would often say “You grew up healthy because Shirō the Fortune Kami cared for you when you were small.”
Before we explore how the people of Sendai first regarded Shirō as a living kami, we have to stop and take stock of something a little more foundational. How are we understanding the concept of kami?
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Prompting Awe
“Kami,” which is usually shorthanded into English as “god,” is not exactly the same as the western conception of a god. I’ve seen friends who are ordained Shinto clergy define “kami” as “that which prompts awe.”
In my subjective experience as a Hachiman ujiko, this is a good definition. Some kami-sama are like people writ large, yes. But there are trees, rocks, waterfalls, and other inanimate things that are likewise enshrined as kami, too. They are our neighbors and are, like us, another part of Great Nature (daishizen)– mundane and divine are intertwined. Abstract forces can also be enshrined as kami, and so, too, can living people.
I’m not talking here about people who claim authority as a self-styled god and lording it over people– especially with an eye toward control and abuse. I’m talking about people who are almost larger than life. People who might be thought of as a local “character,” a being that prompts awe even amidst the mundane. In that regard, Shinto has always been remarkable to me in that it intertwines the mundane and divine.
So what is it like, in the mundane everyday pulse of the modern world, to meet a god? Let me begin with an example from my own life.
My Friend the Self-Styled God of the Cafe
My friend Victor E Navarro, Jr. was a larger-than-life character; a man whose life and reputation prompted not just awe, but also interest, amusement, and delight. I knew him for the final few years of his life. He spent most of his time hanging out in his favorite cafe in Pittsburgh’s Bloomfield neighborhood. He was one of the first there when it opened and was one of the last out when it closed. Even though his apartment was up the street, he essentially lived in the cafe. Victor was a prolific published author of nonfiction prose, short stories, and poetry, a sometime musician, a self-described lousy gambler, as well as a friend to the young queer folk, punks, and queer punks, who hung out around the cafe.
He was also by his own claim, a god. But this isn’t to say he sat in judgment of us or lorded that claim over us. He was a friend to anyone who hung out at the cafe, and he was a busker and raconteur of a caliber I’d never seen before. He was a bit eccentric, perhaps, and he made no secret of his mental illness, but he was a creative, funny, brilliant person whom the community cared for and admired deeply.
I for one will also never forget how he was one of the first people to believe in my writing skill, before even I believed in my own writing. He is commemorated by a stone marker beside the cafe.
Coming from a monotheistic background, this might seem amusing, quaint, or even alarming. For me, a Shintoist and a former resident of Sendai, it wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard of before, because of Shirō. Yes, okay, I thought, this local character is a folk kami. And? It isn’t anything I haven’t heard of before.
But unlike Victor, Shirō did not himself claim to be a god. So where did that belief start in the first place?
Beloved by the Community
Shirō would eat anywhere he particularly wanted, stay wherever he wanted, and even traveled regionally by train, all free of charge.
In the first place, I think some of this was driven by practicality. He was known to the community, and he was nonverbal, so there wouldn’t have been much point in pressing him for money. To me, this reads as a community adapting to support him, rather than punishing him.
But when people saw Shirō eat somewhere or stay somewhere, other customers would follow him in droves. He also enjoyed playing with children in the neighborhood. Because of his seemingly neverending joy, young parents came to believe that if Shirō spent time with their children, then their children would grow up healthy and happy.
This was the beginning of his reputation as a fortune kami. It was this image of Shirō that was already well established by the time of Mihara Ryōkichi’s childhood encounter with the man, which explains his mother’s belief.
That veneration would only grow with time.
Enshrinement after a Fashion
Sendai Shirō is enshrined today at Mitakisan Fudōson. This is a Buddhist temple in downtown Sendai’s Clis Road Mall, located near Sendai Station in Chūō 2-chome.
Word of mouth is what set the faith in Sendai Shirō as a deity into motion. As noted above, he had free reign of stores around downtown, people would follow him to a restaurant or other business. Business would soon boom.
Over time, in the Taisho era, there grew a belief among the stores in Sendai that even if you put up his picture, it would have the same effect, which was the origin of his photo’s enduring popularity. As originally printed, the photo was captioned The Meiji Kami of Fortune, Sendai Shirō-kun. Photos, paintings, and statues, all spread like wildfire around Sendai, and then to Japan at large.
But even if we believe he was a kami, it behooves us to remember, as Mitakisan Fudōson’s webpage says,
“Of course, just joining your hands before Shirō’s photo doesn’t ensure success. Putting in the effort and doing your best, with a smile and gratitude, is the basis on which you open the way to better fortune and things like business success, safety in the home, health, and academic success.”
After all, as the temple and other websites devoted to Shirō put it, a Japanese saying has it that “warau kado ni fuku kitaru”– fortune comes to the household that smiles.
Sendai Shirō today
Today, Shirō’s depictions have grown still more diverse, in Sendai and beyond. One I found especially fascinating was from 2016. An inflatable decoration hanging from the rafters of the shopping arcade outside Mitakisan Fudōson depicted him in the guise of Santa Claus, driving a reindeer sled. It seems strangely fitting for one of the beloved sons of a cosmopolitan city that has always existed at the intersection of cultures and religions.
Together with the equestrian statue of Date Masamune on Mount Aoba, and the streamers at Sendai Tanabata, Meiji era Sendai’s favorite son continues to be one of his hometown’s most easily recognized and beloved symbols. As his kinfolk put it on the website they maintain to spread his wordless message of joy and good fortune, “even if people can’t name the mayor of Sendai, there isn’t anyone who doesn’t know who Shirō is.”
And even now, so far from the city my heart still calls home, seeing his image makes me smile.
What to read next
The Geisha Who Took Down a Prime Minister
Sources
- “About Us.” Haga Fireworks. Accessed 16 August 2023.
- Nyri A. Bakkalian. “Mundane and Divine Intertwined.” Gods and Radicals, June 5, 2018. Accessed 18 August 2023.
- Kikuta Sadasato. Sendai Jinmei Daijisho (Tokyo: Rekishi Toshosha, 1974), p. 556.
- Mihara Ryōkichi. Kyōdoshi Sendai Mimibukuro. (Sendai: Hōbundō, 1983), pp. 47-50, 218-220.
- “Sendai Shirō no Goriyaku.” Sendai Shirō dot jp, accessed 16 August 2023.
- “Sendai Shirō no Yurai.” Mitakisan Fudōson. Accessed 16 August 2023.
- “Sendai Shirō, the Urban Legend of Sendai.” Sendai Shiro dot jp, accessed 16 August 2023.
- Suzuki Shōzō. Sendai Fūzokushi (Sendai: Ukaen, 1937), pp. 50-51.
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