The Japanese spiritual practice of Shintoism might seem like a strange subject to bring up in the context of a modern-day traveling troubadour, descending from a lineage of nomadic Romanian circus performers. But, in the context of Julian Koster’s artistic endeavors and appreciation for the beautiful spaces of the world, the concepts of Shintoism seem to click.

 

The practice of Shintoism is not a religion per se. It has more to do with rituals and shrines which let humans interact with the world of spirits, or “kami.” Kami are merely spirits which take an interest in human affairs and appreciate that humans take an interest in them, too. If you are good to your local kami, they may intervene in your daily life in beneficial ways. It is hard even for Shinto scholars to define exactly what a kami is, which most would say is because humans don’t have to ability to comprehend their true nature.

 

Distinguished Shinto scholar Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801) once wrote of kami — in his seminal work “Commentaries on the Kojiki” — “I do not yet understand the meaning of the word ‘kami.’ In the most general sense, it refers to all the divine beings of heaven and earth...More particularly, the kami are the spirits that abide in and are worshipped at the shrines.”

 

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Before one may enter a Shinto shrine, they must pass through a physical gate called a torii, often made of wood, creating an arch with two upright crossbars. A torii symbolizes the boundary between the secular, every-day world and the world of the sacred. After you pass through a torii, you have entered the world of the timeless, of spirits and of the ancestors.

 

For Koster’s 2013 “Traveling Imaginary” tour, he raised almost $20,000 to build a shrine of his own: a portable, red-and-white-striped carnival side-show tent — delicately decorated in multicolored LED Christmas lights — which Koster and his band would travel the country with. In preparation for the tour he spoke with the website Tiny Mixtapes and discussed the kind of place he looks for when scoping out areas to play music.

 

“I feel like there are certain physical locations that can almost be entryways into vaster, infinite spaces or other realities that you can interact from this reality, as people do when they make up stories or create songs or films,” Koster told Tiny Mixtapes.

 

What Koster has done by creating a personal carnival shrine — where onlookers can come interact with Koster’s personal assemblage of spirits — is to bring these beautiful Shinto concepts of crossing between secular and sacred space onto the road in the United States. Koster’s personal band of spirits include the likes of Badger the Singing Saw and Static the smiling, talking bubble television.

 

“It seems like depending on the trip, different members of the mechanical sort will come,” Koster told Spectrum Culture. “It’s a lot to ask of them, to come on these journeys, but none of them want to be left home.”

 

The way he personifies these objects gives them a fantastic life of their own. He will be the first to tell you that he doesn’t play his singing saw, he “just encourages it to sing.”

 

While kami aren’t traditionally saws and televisions, and Shinto shrines aren’t traditionally moving carnival sideshows, Koster has nonetheless designed an experience with his live performances meant to be appreciated on a sacred level—deep and in-the-moment. Through his performances, Koster hopes to reintroduce people to the spirit world, the world of imagination and of magic.

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“What is magic?” Koster told Spectrum Culture. “The sense of wonder and delight caused by that which we witness transcending physicality; expressing something well beyond it’s boundaries...It’s life. It’s love.”

 

Another Shinto scholar, Jean Herbert, wrote a passage in his book “At the Fountain-Head of Japan” which describes the Shinto temple as “a visible and ever-active expression of the factual kinship — in the most literal sense of the word — which exists between individual man and the whole earth, celestial bodies and deities, whatever name they be given.”

 

“When entering it,” Herbert wrote. “One inevitably becomes more or less conscious of that blood-relation, and the realisation of it throws into the background all feelings of anxiety, antagonism, loneliness, discouragement, as when a child comes to rest on its mother’s lap.”

This is the kind of space Koster has created with his traveling tent — an entrance to the world of the sacred and the spirits, accessible through the flaps of a striped tent.