Playing drum and chanting an eagle song, Ruben Saufkie Sr. — a Hopi messenger and silversmith — brings East and West into balance at the leading shrine in Zushi, Kanagawa Prefecture.
At the same time, crammed into Kamenojinja-hachiman's small community hall, some 35 people pass around a cup filled with water, that they use to mark chakras or splash onto hands and arms. It is sacred, blended from waters from all the cardinal points of the earth.
Ruben has carried this water all the way from his Hopi homeland in Arizona. Normally, he would have poured it into a specially prepared gourd, but there was no time. He had walked out of Zushi Station, having come direct from Narita airport and Los Angeles, with just time to prepare.