Shinto Sect Starts Year With a Clean Consciousness

Instead, he was purifying his flock at Konko Church of Los Angeles, using elements of an ancient Japanese ritual aimed at clearing out the negative energies of the past.

Dressed in white silk robes and a black pointed hat, Tsuyuki held aloft a large wooden stick topped with white paper streamers before the East Los Angeles congregation of about 75 people. As he waved the wand three times, he chanted, "May each and every one of your discomforts and diseases be dispelled to the great universe of the Principle Parent" -- his tradition's term for the unseen laws of the universe.

Then the congregation recited purification prayers in English and Japanese and took sips of sacred rice wine.

The ritual, which is rooted in Japan's indigenous spiritual tradition of Shinto, is "a symbolic purification of your heart to begin the new year with a clean slate," said Tsuyuki, a Los Angeles native who sports a salt-and-pepper ponytail beneath his ceremonial garb.

Although New Year's Day has become a secular holiday for many Americans, it has long been associated with spiritual cleansing and renewal in many traditions. Even in the West, New Year's Eve noisemakers and fireworks once were used as tools to banish evil spirits.

Many Jews purify themselves through ritual immersion in the waters of the mikvah bath, particularly before the Jewish New Year. According to Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, a professor of Jewish law at Loyola Law School, immersion in the mikvah symbolizes reentry into the amniotic fluid of the womb.

"The notion is that no matter where I am or what I may have done, you can always begin anew and return to the natural purity of the soul," Adlerstein said.

He said, however, that the chief spiritual cleansing before the Jewish New Year, which is observed in autumn, is produced through introspection and reflection. Serious students study special texts or tapes on repentance during the month before the Jewish New Year, he said.