Episode 1 Class Clips

I'm Peter Owen Jones, I'm a vicar from the Church of England

and I've taken a year off from my parishes to see for myself

the richness of faith across six continents.

I'm going to witness rituals never seen before, making people's journeys from birth to death.

I'm going to encounter strange and beautiful faiths,

expressing people's deepest hopes and fears.

How can you say such things?

My biggest hope is to understand humanity's timeless fascination with the divine.

Am I dreaming?

Well, it's Sunday morning and as ever I'm going to church,

but this isn't just any church,

this is the biggest church in the world.

I'm a vicar in the Church of England - that makes me a Protestant.

But Seoul is the centre of a very different - and growing - kind of Protestantism.

CHEERFUL HYMN MUSIC

Pentecostalism is the fastest-growing brand

of Christianity in the world.

The hymns may be in Korean,

but the tunes are very recognisable as those born out of evangelical revivals.

And that's because Pentecostalism was imported from America.

It was originally an out-growth of American methodism.

Pentecostalism expects and demands human beings to have an intense personal encounter with God.

Central to it is a belief in the active gifts of the Holy Spirit -

these are the gifts of prophecy, of healing and of speaking in tongues.

These are the very same gifts that the disciples of Jesus experienced at the Feast of Pentecost,

when the Bible says the Holy Spirit descended upon the 12 Apostles.

It was a life-changing experience and they felt a power to spread the message of Jesus across the world.

And the same is happening here, at this Pentecostal church.

After the service, I discover just how fundamental they believe their

prayers are to the survival of the country against the communist north.

Intrigued, I take a Church bus

along the border with North Korea to Prayer Mountain,

a Christian bunker on the ideological front line.

HE SPEAKS KOREAN

The praying grottoes?

I know these look like changing rooms from the local swimming baths,

but they are in fact, all of them, prayer cubicles.

And they're all full of people saying their prayers.

Some people are going to stay in here for between 48 hours and

a week, and they wont eat, they'll maybe a little water,

but perhaps that's all. Erm...

The inspiration for the prayer cubicles

comes from the Bible - where people like Abraham, Moses and Jesus

all prayed in the wilderness to wait on God and to seek his will.

They also have a central auditorium where Christians can pray collectively.

The whole Prayer Mountain movement sprang from the practice of the early Korean Christians,

persecuted by the home religions and philosophies of Buddhism, Shinto, and Confucianism.

In desperation, Christians who could not practise their faith openly

would wake up as early as four in the morning

to ascend the nearby mountains where they could freely pray, until the first ray of sun rise.

Since the 1950s, it's the threat of communist North Korea,

which has inspired South Korean Christians to continue to make the trip to Prayer Mountain.

Brazil is home to the world's largest Catholic population.

In total, 140 million souls.

But things are changing. For over four centuries,

the Catholic Church has been the major Christian denomination in Brazil.

Recently, there has been a surge in growth of Protestant churches.

I'm about to meet one - Pastor Marcus, he's from the Church of the Assemblies of God, here in Brazil.

It's the largest Pentecostal church in the country.

And the people he's just about to minister to are not the type of men

that are going to make it to church on Sunday.

Let's go.

APPLAUSE

SHE SINGS

Pentecostals believe that God, acting through his son Jesus

and the Holy spirit, plays an active role in human life.

But the devil is also ever present.

Only through constant vigilance and in some cases, exorcism, is he kept at bay.

When you are placing your hands on the men's faces, what is taking place there?

Pentecostalism promises people who convert a total break with the past.

They believe that they can transform bad people into good people by casting out their demons.

Pastor Marcus has built up a formidable reputation in Rio's prisons.

There's a line, I think in the New Testament, that says, "When I was sick, you comforted me.

"When I was in prison, you visited me."

I've been in a few prisons in my time, but that one is a black hole from hell.

SHE SINGS

APPLAUSE

I'm in Bolivia to visit the Basilica of Our Lady of Copacabana.

Like many Catholic churches in South America, the basilica was built over a pre-existing sacred space.

Native Bolivians worshipped their own gods here

long before the arrival of Christianity from Europe.

These days, it provides a unique service, which draws in people from miles around.

Every Sunday, a priest performs automobile blessings directly outside the cathedral.

There's an incredible mixture of smells out here.

Basically, it's an aroma of champagne and diesel.

And this isn't really the sort of thing one expects to see outside

your parish church at 10.30 on Sunday morning.

I'm curious to know why people have travelled here to have their cars blessed.

That's completely thrown me.

I've never asked God for a car.

It may seem unusual to us to ask a priest to bless a car, but here in Bolivia, it is what the people want.

So the Church offers the service.

Right, well, as Bolivia has some of the world's

most dangerous roads, it makes sense to get our vehicle blessed.

Marvellous.

Romero!

Look what I have bought!

Do you feel that after you've blessed this car, father, that things will go better for us?

I like this pragmatic side of Catholicism and the way

it has allowed these colourful, home-grown traditions, to thrive.

And it's provided me with a great excuse to make some noise and crack open the bubbly!

Johannesburg suffers from one of the worst crime rates in the world.

In the inner-city district of Hillbrow, dozens of new Christian churches

escape up here to find respite on a patch of wasteland above the city.

Here we are. Here we are.

Every Friday evening up here on this mound, the 12th Apostolic Church meet.

And they meet for a prayer vigil.

No-one's turned up yet. I was assured they'd all be here at three, and it's about half past five now.

The 12th Apostolic Church was founded in South Africa in the 1940s.

They broke away from the Protestant mainstream to create their own

African Church, with its own African reading of the Bible.

-Jesus is my number one, Jesus. ALL:

-He is my number one.

-Jesus... ALL:

-He is my number one...

As night falls, the atmosphere becomes more and more spiritually charged.

THE SPEAK IN TONGUES

Pentecostal Christians believe in a phenomenon called speaking in tongues.

The idea comes from writing in the Bible but says that after Jesus was crucified, the Holy spirit

came into his followers and they began speaking in other languages, or tongues.

The time when this happened became known as Pentecost.

In Africa, where spirits are very real presences to many people, I'm not surprised to find

that this new Christian church puts the Holy spirit centre-stage.

And even relies on it for protection.

What's it like living in Hillbrow.

It is a very rough place, to be frank.

There's a lot of criminality and stuff like that.

But we're not living in fear because the spirit is the armour of God, protecting us.

-Any time, to us, we don't mind.

-Is the church growing?

Very big, yes.

People come to this church because

its spiritual milk.

There is the word and there is the healing.

There is power.

There is light.

So this church is based on the power and presence of the Holy Spirit?

-Yes.

-OK.

Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?

-Yes.

-You don't believe it.

I do believe. I believe in the Holy Spirit.

Then when I pray, pray for each and every one of you.

Jehovah! In the name of Jesus.

THEY SPEAK IN TONGUES

In the name of Jesus Christ.

It's loud, it's noisy, you're being shaken.

Someone's banging you on the back and tapping the back of your head,

whispering in your ear and...

everything's happening at once.

It's disorientating.

But on the other hand,

if you are bold enough to let go,

you're enveloped by...

..the Holy Spirit.

The 12th Apostolic Church believe in the power, the reality, the presence - now - of the Holy Spirit.

Not as some academic concept, not as some theological notion, but as a reality of God.

So it's a very energetic, charismatic form of Christianity.

I'm in Mexico City for what is a huge Catholic gathering

in honour of Mexico's national saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe.

It's estimated that there'll be over 5 million pilgrims here today.

It's one of the biggest gatherings of people in the Americas.

Pilgrimages like this one are an important feature of many religions.

These Christians see it as their religious duty to make the journey.

Pilgrimage sites often grow up around where miraculous events are believed to have occurred.

Alfonso, why are these people coming in on their knees?

When you have a problem, you ask to the Virgin for help.

If she makes you the miracle, so you have to pay for it.

And the most unusual form is that you have to go by your knees, or walking long distances.

Some people have crawled for miles in honour of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

I mean, you are tired, but you are not in pain because your faith is making you get to the place.

Religion really matters here.

There are people crying, carrying statues and icons which they've brought from their houses.

This is testament to a society where Catholicism is immensely

deep-rooted within the very soul of this country.

When the Spanish conquered the Americans in the 16th century,

they converted its people to Christianity.

The Catholic Church demanded obedience to the Pope in Europe and faith in Jesus as the Son of God

and Mary as the the viriginal Mother of God.

Initially, the native Aztecs were resistant to conversion.

But a vision of the Virgin to an indigenous man ten years after the Spanish conquest changed everything.

One guy called Juan Diego was walking by the mountains and

in one moment, suddenly appeared the Virgin of Guadalupe in front of him.

She's brown-skinned, in front of an indigenous guy,

so that's like the greatest moment in the religious history of Mexico.

The apparition of a brown-skinned Virgin to an native Indian kick-started the mass conversion

of the indigenous population and in an extraordinary turn

of events, began to unite Indians and mixed blood mestizos under the banner of Catholicism.

I joined the crowds packing into the basilica to pay their respects to the Virgin.

This is like being on the M25 in rush hour!

Stop-start, stop-start, stop-start.

HE SINGS

I never expected an escalator to take me underneath the Virgin of Guadalupe.

It is extraordinary how a miraculous vision seen by one man

can alter the religious history of an entire country.

Lithuania used to have 200,000 Jews.

They were part of the nine million strong Jewish population of Europe -

after the Christians, the most important religious group in the Continent.

The Nazis killed six million across Europe,

but in Lithuania, 91% were killed,

both by the German occupiers and the local people, during the Second World War.

Amongst the hundreds of abandoned synagogues

is this unusual wooden one.

I think she's sitting outside her house...

The key is held by Agrippina, an 82-year-old Orthodox Christian

who witnessed what happened to the Jews in her village.

Were there people from this village that took part in the killing?

Some of the families that did this, are they still here?

There are still Jews living in Lithuania.

But I'm going to have to go to the capital, Vilnius, to find them.

Before the Second World War there were about 100 Jewish synagogues,

a thriving Jewish community, here in this town.

But the Second World War decimated that population

and many of the traditions that went with them.

There's now only one -

one - that remains.

I'm joining the congregation as they prepare for their Friday worship.

HE CHANTS

THEY CHANT

This service is the start of Shabbat, which commemorates the day

that God rested after creating the Earth.

Later you will come to my home, and tonight we will have Shabbat...

-Tonight?

-Yes.

-I'll take you up. I'll come tonight.

-Yeah, great.

-Thank you for your invitation.

-Bye-bye.

-See you.

My visit to Vilnius has brought to mind an issue

that has been troubling me for some time -

some of the words of the founder of my Protestant faith, Martin Luther.

He had some fine things to say about

our understanding of our relationship with God.

But he also had some very dark things that he said,

especially about the Jewish race, the Jewish people.

I was reading this morning, and he said that the Jews were

"a base, whoring people, that is,

"no people of God,

"and their boast of lineage

"and circumcision and law

"must be accounted as filth."

He goes on to say that they should either be set to forced labour,

or

banished, exiled, forever.

Not a very pretty picture, that one.

Neither graceful nor holy,

nor loving.

Nor forgiving.

And look, you know, if we're going to make this journey,

we have to confront things like that.

We can't just pretend they didn't exist,

and that Christianity is all about Songs Of Praise and lisping vicars

and some of the lovely things that it has to offer -

you know, there are darknesses in its closet.

I'm going to talk about it tonight.

And I hope it's all right to talk about it at the Shabbat meal.

The most painful part of all of this for me

is that these words of Luther were used by the Christian Nazis

to justify the Jewish Holocaust.

Hello, Peter. My lovely neighbour.

Hello, lovely neighbour. ..Hello. How are you?

-Very good. Please come in.

-Thank you.

This is my grandfather.

Shabbat shalom.

-Shabbat shalom.

-Shabbat shalom.

Before the family can eat, we must ritually wash our hands -

in silence.

Mm-mm. Mmm...

Mmm...mmm...mmm...

Mm-mm.

-Mm-mm.

-Mmm.

-Mm-mm.

-Amen.

-Mmm...!

So the head of the family is giving to everybody the piece of challah,

and nobody's allowed to speak till they take the piece of challah.

You can take it, and the meal normally starts.

The founder of the Protestant perspective...

-Yes?

-..said some quite terrible things

about members of the Jewish faith.

As a Protestant Christian, I feel guilty about that.

When can we move on?

I believe when somebody understands the guilt

for his own previous generations -

as soon as this happens, this is the beginning of a new era.

For example, the Jewish people will never blame somebody,

but as soon as somebody starts thinking,

"I feel very bad for what my great-great-grandparents did" -

as soon as we come to that point, this is the beginning of new relationship.

OK. We'll shake.

-I hope you...

-Shalom, shalom, shalom.

So, now I know that in Britain I have got one more friend.

I need to write your address and when we come, we continue...

And we can just continue where we left off.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Wow!

There we go, then.

Umayyad Mosque?

We're off to the Umayyad Mosque,

which is one of the most important mosques in the world.

It's in the old city of Damascus.

I'm fascinated by that mosque.

-Is it your first time to see the mosque?

-Yes, it is.

Is it your first time that you see a mosque?

No, I've seen lots of mosques but none of them have seemed quite so ancient.

I want to learn more about what happens inside a mosque.

What are the main countries where the visitors come from?

All over the world.

Islam is the second largest religion in the world,

with at least a billion followers.

Literally, Islam means "submission to the will of God".

After it was founded in 632 in what is now Saudi Arabia,

it spread rapidly.

When the Prophet Muhammad died, many of his followers

felt that a new leader should come from the Prophet's family.

This group became the Shi'a Muslims.

Today, Shi'a Muslims do not recognise the authority

of elected Muslim leaders.

Instead, they follow the teaching of a line of imams

who they believe are elected by God.

Sunni Muslims believe that after the Prophet's death,

a new leader should be elected by his followers.

Today, they make up over 85% of Muslims.

Having followed different leaders for hundreds of years,

there are differences between how the two groups practise their faith.

But they both share the same basic Islamic beliefs.

What is the most important point of Islam, for you?

It's to believe in God, in angels, in prophets,

in books and destiny - the good and bad, from God.

That's it. Once you believe in these five, you are a good Muslim.

But that makes ME a good Muslim.

Yeah - if you believe in God and the angels

and the books and the prophets,

including Prophet Muhammad.

-Once you try to learn, you will come to a point that you accept it.

-Mmm.

Where is the focus of prayer?

Any place you pray in is the correct place,

but your prayer should be made facing direction of Mecca.

-East.

-No, which is south from Damascus.

It's east from UK, west from India,

-south from here and north from Australia.

-It is.

So, Mecca is the centre of the world.

Why, when a Muslim man prays -

he goes down on his knees, he leans his face forward,

he puts his hands on the ground then his forehead on the ground?

Every Muslim, making the prayer,

should have seven bones touching the floor.

The forehead, two hands,

two knees, two feet.

-OK.

-And this is a teaching by the Prophet Muhammad, who said,

"Pray as you saw me praying."

You start the prayer like this,

as if you are just throwing everything else of your worries

and interests of your world behind you,

and say, "God is greater".

Allahu Akbar.

-Allahu Akbar.

-And then...

Allahu Akbar. God is greater...

Then you go down.

Down here, you have to have your hands,

your feet, and then your nose and forehead touching the ground.

Allahu Akbar.

MUEZZIN CHANTS

Coming from the West,

I had always thought of Ethiopia as a place of great hardship.

I want to find out how the world's biggest religions

provide for their people

in the face of repeated droughts and subsequent famines.

We set off to the northern province of Tigray.

Tigray was the sight of the famine in the early 1980s

that shaped my entire impression of Ethiopia.

I am nervous of what I will find.

I am certainly not prepared for a place of such spectacular beauty.

The North Ethiopian Highlands are just so, so beautiful.

So beautiful.

In the valley of Negash,

we stop at the first Muslim settlement

founded in sub-Saharan Africa.

1,300 years ago, the Prophet Muhammad's daughter

and 80 of his followers fled here from persecution in Mecca.

There have been Muslims here ever since.

I join the community elders here for a special prayer meeting

which takes place in a house beside the mosque.

CHANTING

The ceremony starts with the roasting of coffee beans.

Has there ever been a time when your prayers have not been answered,

because there is so much suffering, there is a lot of pain in the world?

This teaching's a challenge to my belief in a benevolent God,

and to my expectations of Ethiopia.

I mean, to be honest I wasn't really looking forward to coming here.

I felt that I would be arriving in a land where

I would be constantly confronted with sorrow,

and with erm...

..with things that I would find upsetting.

And I wasn't really looking forward to being tested in that way.

But being here is... quite, quite different.

I'm in Bangkok in Thailand

where Buddhism is the official state religion.

But what I want to find out about is the essence of Buddhism itself.

It actually originated in India

and the Buddha was not a god but mortal, an Indian prince

who claimed the roots of human suffering were our selfish desires.

Desires are just illusions, he said.

They can never be satisfied because the world changes all the time.

Instead we should cease to strive and detach ourselves

from people and things.

That was the only true road to an everlasting state of bliss.

The way to enlightenment was through meditation, good deeds and,

as in most religions, the adherence to a long list of dos and don'ts.

To refrain from taking life,

to refrain from taking that which is not given,

to refrain from sensual misconduct, to refrain from lying,

to refrain from intoxicants which lead to loss of mindfulness.

Then there are three additional precepts

which are to refrain from eating at the wrong time,

one should only eat between sunrise and noon,

to refrain from dancing,

using jewellery and going to shows.

The last one is to refrain from using a high, luxurious bed.

It's not that high, really, is it?

I'll turn over now.

Next morning I visit one of Bangkok's biggest temples

to see Buddhism in practice.

Today is Ordination Day, the culmination

of a three to six month period for boys and young men

spent learning how to control their desires.

I'm struck by how much daily life is integrated here.

In my own tradition, this would mean life behind closed doors.

In Thailand, it's different.

It seems the monks can come and go at will.

In the complex of lanes behind the temple, I found a senior monk

who could answer some of my questions.

What I find very interesting is that a young man can become a monk

for three months and then he can leave and have a family

and then maybe later in life he can pick that up again.

-Yes.

-It seems very fluid.

Of course, Buddhism is a part of community.

In Thailand, we believe that if you are not ordained,

a gentleman is not ordained, you are still considered as

uncooked, you are still considered as raw.

In that sense, your mind or your spirituality is not well trained.

That's why in Thailand they believe that if you go and ask

for someone's hand for marriage, they will ask you first criteria is

are you ordained? Have you ordained?

Only then they will consider to give your daughter because if you

are not ordained yet, you don't know how to take care of the daughter yet.

In that sense, the monastery plays a great role

in terms of giving spiritual training for them.

Make them ready to face society.

The climax of the ordination comes

when the abbot leads the monks three times around the temple.

For me, the sight of the thousands of city families following them

in quiet devotion is a sign of the faith in the Buddhist message.

The Buddhist philosophy is that suffering comes from desire,

from our continual craving for power, money, sex...

and a thousand other worms that infest our hearts and our souls.

It is that continual state of craving

that the Buddhists seek to rid themselves of.

We misunderstand in the West.

We see Buddhism as a strange, rather ephemeral, slightly flowery thing

that someone called Samantha has taken to and lives in Totnes.

In the East, this is the main religion.

Between 350 and 400 million people are Buddhists.

I can't help but see an unexpected connection with Shinto here.

Just as Shinto wards off the chaos of nature,

so Buddhism teaches how to order the chaos within our hearts.

The Daigo temple of Shingon Buddhism was built on a sacred spring

in the ninth century and I've been allowed to peek

into the austere daily lives of the novice monks who train there.

I immediately noticed that these monks are finding

a distinctive way to avert chaos in the mind and in the heart.

Here is the theology of order in operation.

Everything is timed.

Everything is worked out to the very last detail.

I think after a while of living here you would

fall into the pattern and it would become immensely reassuring.

At the heart of Buddhism

there is a way to inner tranquillity and ultimately nirvana.

There is no God, only a path to enlightenment.

And for the monks here, it's an austere one.

DRUM RHYTHMS AND CHANTING

Right in the heart of Bangkok,

there's an open-air shrine to a faith where office workers, students

and tourists can just pop in

at any time of the day to pay their respects and make a prayer.

You can offer flowers or release some birds,

or if you're really flush, commission a dance.

This shrine is in Thailand,

which is a Buddhist country, but it is not a Buddhist shrine.

It is a Hindu shrine.

What I love about this shrine is that here, on one of the busiest intersections in the city,

is one of the busiest shrines in the city.

I decided to find out what religion the people coming here to pray belonged to.

-Are you Hindu or Buddhist?

-Buddhist.

But that's a Hindu god.

I'm off to Calcutta in India

to find out more about the role of the gods in the Hindu religion.

Calcutta is one of India's greatest cities and three-quarters of its 15 million inhabitants are Hindu.

I'm here at the high point of the religious calendar,

when Calcutta's citizens, especially the women,

are in full celebration mode.

They're celebrating a nine-day act of reverence, or puja,

to the goddess Durga.

But while the women dance, on the banks of the city's river,

the sacred Ganges, there are men whose sole occupation

is to gather a holy ingredient for the festival.

It is used to construct literally thousands of gods and goddesses.

Over the nine days of the festival,

the clay deities are brought to life in street shrines known as pandal,

where the people come to have their wishes blessed by the now living gods.

There are these makeshift shrines on every single street corner.

All the people here are going around from shrine to shrine and

there's a great deal of competition between the shrines

to see which one is considered to be the best.

Isn't that great?

All of that is a recent construction.

That in fact is a shrine.

It's just such an incredible piece of design.

A ship in the middle of this backstreet of Calcutta.

But every shrine depicts the same scenario -

the victory of the goddess Durga

over the demon Mahisha.

Hindus believe in one god - all the gods and goddesses

are manifestations of this ultimate reality, Brahma.

But I want to find out if these shrines have a deeper meaning.

I've asked my old friend, Lakshmi Singh, to explain how

these shrines relate to the mysteries

of the vast number of inter-related Hindu gods and goddesses.

The central figure

of the whole of the puja

-is Durga.

-Is Durga.

In these nine days, she changes from one energy to the other energy,

from one form to the other form, like a woman,

from a little girl, the daughter, she becomes the sister,

she begins the wife, she becomes the mother, she becomes the grandmother.

So it's the depiction of my life, my story, in different forms and how to go about it.

But it's not about a woman.

It's about the energy, the electricity

which sustains everything here, in every form.

What do you think when you look at this, Lakshmi?

I must have control over myself.

I must get rid of the negative side of me.

To cut that green demon out.

Get it out of me.

A big fight is happening.

But this is always work in progress, surely?

All the time.

So then me...

I have to slay my demons

before I'm able to understand

wisdom, which is the goddess depicted on the left of the Durga.

On the ninth day, women all over the city say goodbye to their mother goddesses.

What's happening is that all the married women are gathering on stage

and putting vermilion on the goddess Durga.

They're also putting it on each other.

LOUD DRUMMING

But as the nine-day festival comes to an end,

the clay figures are taken on their final journey.

Throughout the night,

some 20,000 Durga goddesses from all over the city

are dragged through the streets

back to the Ganges from whence they came.

-Here we go.

-Yeah, go.

-Here we go.

I'm beginning to understand that for Hindus, this life represents only a

brief period of continuity in the eternal journey of the soul through countless deaths and rebirths.

Such devotion is driven by the hope of your soul ultimately

becoming one with Brahma, God, the ultimate reality.

Religion in the Far East of Asia is often expressed very differently to Europe.

It seems that people find many different ways to live out their relationship with God or the divine.

I'm in Shingu, in south-east Japan,

to wash the preparations for tonight's Oto Matsuri Fire Festival,

which is celebrated by local people

at the beginning of the new lunar year.

These men are in effect saying goodbye to the old year.

They're washing away the sins of the last one.

Do you feel cleansed?

-Are you ready for the fire?

-We forget about woman now.

You forget about women now?

Baby. Baby.

-Like a spirit baby.

-Where does impurity come from?

Why do ordinary middle-class citizens in this advanced country

subject themselves to such discomfort?

But I soon discover that for the men of Shingu,

this is only the beginning of a big day of rituals.

Unlike my faith, in Shinto, there is no single god to pray to.

I'm told there's thousands of them.

Today each participant prepares a torch on which he writes personal messages.

What does this torch wish for?

The cleansing of sins, the prayers to the spirits, it all sounds very elemental.

Clearly this is a very special day in the year.

And I'm hoping to find out why

at tonight's fire festival on a hill overlooking the town.

2,000 men will assemble at a shrine below a sacred rock.

It's known locally as a kamikura, a landing place for the gods,

and what they do there sounds like it could be a bit of an ordeal.

As night falls, there's a constant stream of arrivals at the rock.

It's like Friday night in Reading down there.

The ceremonial torch arrives and if they can stop

fighting over it, the lighting of everyone else's can begin.

And the purpose of the torches,

with their personal wishes, now becomes apparent.

Your torch is lit and then the smoke from that torch rises up to the gods

with your wishes for the new lunar year.

But that's only the prelude to the grand climax, when everyone is

physically penned into the sacred space behind the temple gate.

The men in charge of the gate have arrived.

They are now pushing everyone back behind the temple gate

and once everyone is inside, they'll shut the gate.

There's fighting breaking out again.

And then they will open the gate and there'll be this mad rush.

It's mayhem down there.

In fact, it's absolute chaos.

And that's a bit of a shock to see in such an ordered society as Japan.

That is a very ancient ritual and it's tied to a very primitive

belief, that in the beginning, there was chaos,

and that every year, the world has to be created anew.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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