Reishu Sakuma ／ Lineage & Ancestors
Cold Dew · Chrysanthemums bloom
Love Is the Single Step Where You Turn and Look Back
We tend to think of love as the force that pushes us forward. Yet after conducting a shinzenshiki, a Shinto wedding rite, I felt the opposite: love appears at the moment we stop walking. This article reads the Japanese words ji and ai to ask why the thread of a family does not break.
Translated from the Japanese original. Read in Japanese
The short answer
Ai, love, shows itself when hurrying feet suddenly halt and a person turns to look behind them. Ji, tender care, is the work of handing on, without holding back, what you yourself received. Look back, then pass forward. I take the presence of both together as jiai. In a household where jiai lives, the thread running from ancestors to descendants does not break.
01Love Appears When You Stop
We imagine love as heat that carries us forward. Love makes us persevere, love makes us step out.
But the other day, after conducting a shinzenshiki for a married couple, sitting in the quiet afterwards, I felt something quite the opposite.
Love does not appear while we are moving. It appears when we stop.
Someone walking in a hurry suddenly halts. "I wonder how that person is doing right now." They turn and look behind them. Their heart stays there, and their feet will not go on. That one halted step is, I believe, love itself.
Put the other way: a road we can walk without ever turning around may be one where love has not yet taken root.
02Ji Means Handing On What You Received
There is another Japanese word, itsukushimu, to care tenderly.
It means handing what you have, without holding any of it back, to those who will be born after you. A parent passes it to a child, that child to a grandchild. Passed on and on, never allowed to run out.
What matters here is that tender care expects nothing in return. It never assumed anything would come back from the one who received it. You simply refuse to let what you were given stop with you.
Picture a mother getting up in the middle of the night to hold her baby. There is no reward in that hour. Still, she is handing something on. Ji is that kind of unpaid work.
03Looking Back Means Remembering Where You Came From
"Looking back" carries a second meaning as well: looking again at where you came from.
Whose wish was I born out of? Whose prayers have kept me alive, so that I stand here now? Remembering this is what it means to turn around.
Look back at your parents. At their parents, and at theirs. By simple arithmetic, 10 generations back you have 1,024 direct ancestors, and 20 generations back more than a million. If any single one of them were missing, you would not be here.
At the end of that backward look, something is genuinely flowing. Once you can feel it, hand it straight forward.
Look back, then pass forward. When both are present, we call it jiai.
04Ten Seconds Is Enough
Daily life is busy. In a life that only works if you keep pressing forward, there is rarely room to turn around.
So 10 seconds is enough.
Waiting at a crossing, or in the bath. Simply bring to mind: thanks to whom am I standing here today? Perhaps your mother's face. Perhaps the face of someone you can no longer meet. If you do not know the name, "my father's great-grandfather" reaches them perfectly well.
Then take something you were glad to have received, and hand it to someone just as it was given to you. It need not go back to the person who gave it. Better, in fact, to pass it downward and onward. That is what it means to join the thread.
Behind you lies a thread that has reached this point without breaking once. Had it broken, you would not be here. Which means you stand at the tip of something that countless people kept handing on.
A life carried this carefully cannot be without worth.
Today, stop for a moment and look behind you. Whatever you can feel there, pass it straight forward. That single step will make your family's thread a little thicker.
Be the first to join your hands.
Frequently asked
- I know nothing about my ancestors, not even their names. Can someone from a family like mine still look back?
- Yes. Even with no records, the simple fact that you are here is proof that your ancestors kept handing life on. Bringing them to mind by relation, as "my father's great-grandfather," reaches them well enough.
- Is jiai meant only for family?
- Not at all. The heart of jiai is not blood but refusing to let what you received stop with you. A junior colleague or a child in your neighborhood receives the same work.
- When I look back, all that comes up is regret and loneliness.
- That pain is itself proof that you were truly connected. Rather than forcing it away, try counting the other fact: how much you were given. The direction of the heart changes.
Terms in this article
- jiai 慈愛
- in ordinary Japanese usage, deep and attentive affection, such as a parent feels for a child. In this article I take it as the state in which two things are present together: the work of handing on to the next generation what you received, which is ji, and the heart that turns to look back at the road you came by, which is ai.
- shinzenshiki 神前式
- a Japanese wedding ceremony in which a couple pledge their union before the kami. It is said to have spread from the Meiji era onward.
- chokkei 直系
- a direct bloodline, meaning the line that rises straight above you through parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.
From the same season
Why Sakaki Belongs on the Kamidana — Its Origin in the Kojiki and How to Care for It at Home
What Was Lost Was Not Horizontal Connection: What We Gave Up in Homes Without a Kamidana
How to Clap Kashiwade: Clearing Negative Ki and Reading the Ki of a Place
Next cold dew, new writing will join this list.