Otafuku. Amy Katoh

      An Otafuku Blessing

      For days the diligent young women at my shop, Blue and White, had been making amulets— one is a small papier-mâché Otafuku face mounted on a slender bamboo stick, from which dangles a zigzag paper streamer decorated with a stamped spiral. A piece of dyed cotton and a sprig of rice completed the amulet. Another is little more than a small packet of handmade paper containing a ¥5 coin; the packet is stamped with a blue Otafuku face and tied over the head with a twist of indigo fabric. Felicitous symbols all.

      But not quite enough, I thought, without a more direct heavenly endorsement. So my husband and I drove up to the quiet little Kumano shrine at the top of the mountain pass above our old farmhouse in the town of Karuizawa in Nagano Prefecture. Day was just disappearing into a misty evening. No one stirred in the charming old shrine at the top of a long stone stair. Only the two stone lion dogs greeted us at the bottom, one with a particularly foolish grin. We prayed earnestly, one of us on each side of the boundary between Gumma and Nagano prefectures, which bifurcates the shrine. We emptied our pockets of small change to throw into the offering box in front. We bowed and clapped two times to call the gods. But still no priest appeared. We finally located him at his house below the shrine. He invited us in and gestured that I place the good luck amulets on a footed lacquer tray. I did, and he instructed us to bow two times while he chanted. Then two claps. Or was it three? Deep in prayer, he waved his long wand of white paper streamers over the waiting Otafuku amulets and over us. He blessed us with all his power of prayer. I felt a shiver pass through me as gods and man were connected. Here at the beginning of the 21st century was a priest devoutly following customs that reached into ancient legend. And here, once again, was Otafuku at the center of things, shining her light, sharing her blessing.