harai

Updated: May 29, 2025

In later times both rites were compounded into one, the misogi-harai, or simply the harai. This principle of cleanliness found expression in the architecture of Shinto shrines; plain white wood was everywhere employed and ornamentation of every kind eschewed.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

This distribution to thousands of homes of fragments of the wands, used to "drive away evils" at the time of the Ise lustration, represents of course the supposed extension of the high-priest's protection to those homes until the time of the next o-harai. The modern domestic form of the harai is very simple. for the women and girls. Thus the community is "lustrated" every six Months.

Lafcadio Hearn - Japan: an Attempt at Interpretation

By the misogi the body was cleansed; by the harai all offences were expiated; the origin of the latter rite having been the exaction of certain penalties from Susanoo for his violent conduct towards the Sun goddess.* The two ceremonies, physical cleansing and moral cleansing, prepared a worshipper to approach the shrine of the Kami.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

After the virgin priestesses perform the sacred dances in honor of local deities the water for their bath is heated by fires kindled by heaps of old harai or amulets made from temple-wood bought at the Mecca of Japan. The liturgy for the pacification of the gods of fire is worth noticing.

William Elliot Griffis - The Religions of Japan: From the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji

But all for in this most antique province of Japan all Buddhists are Shintoists likewise utter the archaic words of Shinto prayer: 'Harai tamai kiyome tamai to Kami imi tami.

Lafcadio Hearn - Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan : First Series