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Imagine if women were not allowed to set foot on Mount Fuji or Kyoto's Mount Hiei. It's hard to envisage, isn't it? Women are as natural a sight there as birds or stones — or men. But little more than a century ago, it would have been hard to imagine women approaching such places. A scholar at Kansai University's Institute of Human Rights Studies was quoted as saying that, before 1872, numerous sacred sites throughout Japan were off-limits to women, not just those two famous peaks. Yet since most such prohibitions were lifted by government fiat, women have walked and climbed, and prayed there along with men — and behold, the sky has not fallen.
The unimaginable turns out to be surprisingly malleable. There were times when it was unimaginable for a society to function without slaves. There were times when it was unimaginable not to execute a religious or political dissident. In most parts of the modern world, such attitudes have been turned on their heads. This lends weight to the case being mounted against the government's bid to get a site that bans women included on UNESCO's World Heritage List.
The place in question is the Kiisanchi no Reijo to Sankeimichi (Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range and Surrounding Cultural Landscapes). It is an enormous complex — nearly 500 hectares, occupying parts of three prefectures — and, on the face of it, an obvious candidate for the prestigious list of cultural and/or natural sites that qualify as "treasures of the past" uniquely worth preserving.
Lying to the south of the ancient capitals of Nara and Kyoto, this beautiful area is dotted with mountains sacred to Shinto and Buddhism, and crisscrossed with pilgrimage paths dating back more than a thousand years. It has been described as Japan's "spiritual heartland."
It is one of about 50 sites that will be considered for inclusion on the UNESCO list when the World Heritage Committee meets in China at the end of June. According to a Cultural Affairs Agency spokesman, the site meets all the criteria, including the most important: It has "outstanding universal value" and it can be adequately preserved by the state.
The one tiny problem, for some, is that a pocket of the complex remains off-limits to half the population. Women are banned from the 10-km by 24-km area that includes Mount Omine and Ominesanji Temple, in line with traditional religious views. Citizens' groups have petitioned the government and the temple to lift the ban, and lobbied the UNESCO committee to rule the site ineligible if the ban is not lifted.
Indications are that the committee is not likely to be swayed by these objections. A UNESCO spokeswoman said earlier this month that the organization does not require sites to have unrestricted access, pointing out that some places on the World Heritage List include areas that are banned to one group or another for "spiritual reasons." Greece's Mount Athos is not open to women or children, and Australia's Kakadu National Park, with admirable evenhandedness, includes some areas that prohibit women and some that prohibit men.
There is a case to be made for not worrying about exclusivity, and it is enshrined in UNESCO's official criteria. One of the six (and only one has to be met) is that a site must "bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization that is living or that has disappeared." The Kii Mountain Range site bears testimony to a cultural tradition that, if it has not disappeared, is definitely headed that way: the tradition of considering women as inherently impure beings who occupy a fixed and subordinate place in the religious realm. If that view is integral to the very meaning of the place, then it makes sense to preserve it by maintaining the ban.
But it makes more sense to think of the religious traditions embodied at Mount Omine as infinitely more profound and adaptable than that. As the case of Mount Hiei shows, a sacred site does not become less sacred if women are granted access to it. The ancient traditions of worship survive because, as it turns out, they are expressions of human longings and impulses, not male ones. It is therefore to be hoped that someone — be it an abbot, a politician or a U.N. bureaucrat — figures that out before the Kii Mountain Range takes its rightful place on the World Heritage List.
The Japan Times Weekly
May 15, 2004
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関西大学の人権問題研究室によれば、1872年以前には、富士山、京都の比叡山など多数の霊場が女人禁制であったという。現代では、これらの禁制はほとんど解除されている。
ところが、政府がユネスコの世界遺産登録を求める「紀伊山地の霊場と参詣道」には女人禁制が残っており、反対運動が起きている。これは3県にまたがる約500ヘクタールの地域で、1000年以上の歴史を持つ神道、仏教の霊場と参詣道を含む。
世界遺産委員会は、6月末に北京で開催する会議で、「紀伊山地の霊場と参詣道」を含む50箇所が記載されている世界遺産暫定リストを検討する。文化庁当局者によれば、同地域は「顕著な普遍的価値を持つ」、国家によって保護が可能である、などの登録基準をすべて満たしているという。
問題は地域内の大峰山、大峰山寺を含む部分が宗教的信仰を理由に女人禁制となっていることだ。市民団体などは政府と寺に対し禁制の解除を求め、ユネスコに対し禁制が解除されない場合は登録を拒否するよう求めて運動している。
世界遺産委員会は、決定は反対運動には左右されないという。実際に、ギリシア、オーストラリアには、女性、男性、児童に解放されていない世界遺産がある。
登録基準のひとつは「現存する、あるいはすでに消滅してしまった文化的伝統や文明に関する独特な、あるいは稀な証拠を示していること」である。紀伊山地が女人を不浄とするという、消滅しつつある伝統を象徴しているとすれば、禁制を続けて伝統の証拠を保全するのは理解できる話だ。
しかし、大峰山の宗教的伝統は改変可能なはずだ。女人禁制の解除は、比叡山の例が示すように、霊場の神聖度を減じはしない。社寺礼拝の伝統は、性別に関係ない人間的欲求、衝動に基づくものである。紀伊山地の世界遺産登録にあたり、高僧、政治家、国連高官などの仲裁で問題解決を図ることが望ましい。
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