For the Shinto blog, I chose to watch Sunshine through the Rain. Out of all of the sections of Kurosawa’s film “Dreams”, I liked this one the most. The scene began with a small boy walking out into the rain. He stands there without saying anything. Soon his mother comes out and talks to him. She tells him that as it is raining, the sun is still out and that this is the type of weather that foxes have their wedding processions in and that they do not like it when someone watches them. In Part 2, the same boy is shown walking silently in the forest as it continues to rain with the sun shining. Suddenly, he sees fog in the distance. People are then shone walking out of the fog. The people are marching in unison as music is played. This appears to be the foxes wedding procession, which the young boy’s mother warns him not to watch. At the end of the clip, the boy returns back to reality where he meets his mother again. She is not pleased with him because he disobeyed her. His mother refused to let him back into the house and told him that an angry fox had come looking for him. The angry fox had given his mother a weapon for the boy to kill himself since he brought shame and dishonor to himself.
This section from the film “Dreams” relates a lot to the Shinto religion. In Shinto, foxes are considered to be spiritual and wise creatures and everything in the world revolves around spirituality. The clip expressed how important foxes are in society and it also signifies how wise they are. At the end of the clip when the boy returns home after dishonoring his mother, this relates to the fact that there is an emphasis placed on actions. One of the Shinto ethics states that there is an emphasis placed on actions that create harmonious relationships in home & society. When the boy disobeyed his mother, he did not act in a way of honor and he caused tension, instead of harmony, between himself and the foxes. Lastly, this clip also related to Bushido, which believes that dishonor is worse than death and for this reason ritual suicide is expected if dishonor occurs. Because the boy caused himself dishonor it seemed only right in his mother’s eyes as well as the fox’s eyes that he commit suicide.
I also watched the same clip as you. I like how you expanded on the spiritual meaning of foxes. I did not even think to look that up. I focused more on the Shinto myth themes than considering other Shinto ethics. It is pretty cool that honor is so important in that society, because I feel like it is not as equally important here in the united states.
ReplyDeleteI watched the same clip as well and I had no idea why they were foxes. I knew there had to be a reason. In my blog I talked about the honor and courage that the family undergoes.
ReplyDeleteI picked the same clip. I also noticed how much the idea of dishonor was emphasized by this clip of Kurosawa's film. It obviously shows that dishonor goes hand in hand with impurity and is worse than death.
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