Much of the film’s action is in natural settings—the forest, rivers, the bay; and his activities there, in addition to logging, are hunting, trapping, flirtations, and interactions with water and weather. There is also talk among the loggers about the Mountain Kami and various taboos; and they engage in ritual behaviors associated with trapping and killing wild birds and animals. Shinto, of course, provides a context for all this, both in terms of its world view and its ritual tradition.

A summary of the Shinto world view needs to contain at least three major insights. First, in the human encounter with the world, nature is understood as creative and life-giving (musubi), a “generative…vital force” that connotes the sense of harmoniously creating and connecting. This vital power is directly associated with kami, the Japanese term given to those “unusual” and “superior” aspects of both nature and humanity that are experienced as possessing an awesome presence and potency, such as natural objects in heaven and earth (heavenly bodies, mountains, rivers, fields, seas, rain, and wind), and great persons, heroes or leaders. This “myriad of kami” are not metaphysically different in kind from either nature or humanity, but rather are “superior” and “unusual” manifestations of that potency inherent in all life.

The second Shinto insight indicates that although we are grounded in the vital process of musubi and kami, we can also be disrupted and disjoined from it. In the tradition the more prevalent expression of this sense of obstruction is the term “pollution.” “Purity,” in turn, characterizes the state of creativity.

The third insight concerns the “straightening” action taken by humans to overcome those powers that obstruct or pollute the life-giving power of musubi and kami. There are a variety of means for achieving this, but it is principally through ritual actions ranging from formal liturgies conducted by priests in shrine precincts, to ascetic practice (misogi) and major public festivals. The ascetic practice of misogi at Tsubaki Grand Shrine in Mei Prefecture, for example, is a water purification rite that involves standing under a waterfall after preparatory warm-ups and various recitations.³ In the fire festival (O-tou Matsuri) at Shingu-shi, Wakayama-ken, the men who are going to carry the fire torches start with misogi at the ocean beach, then change to white clothes with a rope belt, and climb 538 stone steps to the summit of Kaminokura-yama. Upon the arrival of the sacred fire, everyone’s torch is lit, and when the shrine gates are opened, 2000 men with torches in hand rush down to the foot of the mountain.⁴ All these activities, from rituals to festivals, are conceived of in terms of ridding people and things of “pollution” (tsumi) in order to reinstate “purity.”