The Story of My Life That Began Living in Extreme Poverty at a Shrine

When I was a child, if I told people, "We were so poor that our whole family lived in the back of a local shrine," they would be shocked almost 100% of the time and ask,
"You can live in a shrine?"
I suppose, generally speaking, you can't. Because in all my life, I have never met anyone who said, "I get it, me too."
We weren't priests or anything; we were just living there. I think the shrine I lived in was special.
My parents were a unique pair—both unemployed—and naturally, we had no money. Someone from the neighborhood association told them,
"If you act as the shrine caretakers, you can live in the shrine for free,"
so they agreed immediately and decided to live at the shrine.
Eventually, our family of seven—five siblings—lived in the back of that shrine, which had only two rooms and no bath, until I was in my second year of high school.
No matter how I struggle, my life begins with this "shrine living."

Shrine Living

The back of the shrine where we lived was quite dilapidated. There was no bath, the toilet was a primitive flush type (which was terrifying to go to), insects swarmed in the summer (I am still terrified of bugs), and in the winter, it was so cold inside that the front door would freeze shut. Speaking of cold episodes, one winter I rescued a bird that had been hit by a car, put it in a birdcage, and left it in the hallway, only to find it frozen solid the next morning. The temperature was no different from being outdoors in the northern country in midwinter. That is how cold the shrine was.
I remember very well that we used duct tape to fix broken window glass, which I think was also a factor in the cold.
The shrine's heating was a wood stove, so if we left the house (shrine) for even a little while, the temperature would drop below freezing. When we returned from staying at our grandparents' house, the temperature inside the shrine was the same as outside; not only was the air cold enough to see our breath, but the entrance (or what passed for one) would be frozen shut.
Because the shrine was full of gaps, I once encountered a spider so huge I mistook it for a crab. At the time, I was constantly getting caught in spider webs inside the house (shrine), so I knew "something pretty big lives here," but I never expected it to be crab-sized, and I screamed when I met it. By the way, my father exterminated it at the time, but he doesn't seem to remember. I think that just goes to show how encountering giant insects was an everyday occurrence. I remember well that in the spring, I would wake up to find several woodlice on my pillow or futon, and ants would come immediately if I spilled anything sweet. The shrine had too many gaps to be called "indoors." I think it was more like semi-indoors.
The shrine was operated by the neighborhood association, and we lived there under the promise that we would "perform shrine caretaker duties," so even though my parents were unemployed, they did the caretaker duties throughout the four seasons.
In the spring, crows would raise their chicks in the shrine grounds. To protect the chicks that couldn't fly, the parent crows would attack anyone who approached the shrine. My father, dressed lightly like a starting character in Dragon Quest, would be attacked relentlessly by the parent crows while he moved the chicks to a nearby river. By the way, when that season arrived, the school would distribute a document saying, "It is dangerous to approach the shrine because you will be attacked by crows, so do not go near it," but I couldn't avoid it because I didn't just approach it—I lived there.
In the summer, festivals were held on the shrine grounds, so we helped with the preparations (during the festival season, karaoke contests were held and it was incredibly noisy). In the autumn, we picked up massive amounts of fallen leaves and roasted sweet potatoes with them (this was my father's hobby, so it had nothing to do with being a caretaker). In the winter, the shrine path would disappear under heavy snow, so we shoveled snow in the grounds. I was made to help with most of the tasks and felt the four seasons in a mysterious way.
Other childhood chores included things that would never happen in a normal house: selling amulets and charms to people who came to buy them, selling fortune slips, and burning the New Year's decorations that were left in piles after the New Year. Two girls from the junior high school next to the shrine once visited us and asked,
"We were playing Kokkuri-san and our friend started acting strange, so could you please fix her?"
I refused, saying,
"We just live here..."
Because, really, we just lived there...
People who came to the shrine to buy fortune slips or amulets must have been surprised that a child answered when they rang the bell.
They might have thought, "The priest is young...?"
Perhaps because they thought the priest was young and looked down on us, the shrine was often broken into by offertory box thieves. Since the place where the money was put was a wooden door, it was often destroyed and the money stolen. The thefts happened so frequently that they eventually changed the door to iron. Even then, the thieves were persistent, and once they even broke in through the shrine's toilet window to steal the money. After that, bars were put on the toilet window as well. After that, the money was no longer stolen.
The fun part of living in the shrine was that in winter, when the snow piled up too high, it became easy to access the top of the main hall, and I would run around on top of it. Fresh snow excites a child's heart, and I was so happy that there were places where the snow hadn't been stepped on by anyone (obviously), so I would stomp all over the snow on the main hall and eat as much fresh snow as I wanted. I always wished I could put shaved ice syrup on the fresh snow and eat it. Running around on top of a god and devouring snow is so disrespectful that it's terrifying to think about now, but as a child, I didn't care about that.
Also, the icicles that formed from the roof of the main hall were so huge that they were great for fighting with or licking endlessly. Thinking back now, it was incredibly dirty, but as a child, I wanted to eat as much snow and as many icicles as I could.
I also used to sneak into the main hall and play by surprising people who came to pray. The worshippers, never expecting that there were people inside that "garan-garan" (bell-ringing) area, would all be startled and give great reactions. I loved watching those reactions.
Since the grounds were my garden, I practiced walking on stilts (made by my father) using the stairs where people prayed, and my younger brother would run around the grounds, fall over, and hit his eye on the corner of the guardian dog statue, causing his eye to swell up terribly. It was an accident that could have been prevented if not for the guardian dog, but since we were at a shrine, it couldn't be helped. I also practiced riding a bicycle in the grounds. I learned to ride by practicing over and over on the concrete path that went straight from the torii gate to the prayer area. The grounds were seriously my garden.
It's a stretch to call it "grounds," but my father also held barbecues in the shrine area in the summer. We were grilling and eating meat as a family right next to the deity in the summer. If it were just the family, that would be one thing, but my father would invite relatives to the shrine. Even though we were just living there. Thinking back now, I think it was sacrilegious, but in my childhood, it was one of the events I looked forward to.
It doesn't matter, but there was a love hotel built next to the shrine (what kind of location is that?), and apparently, as a young child, I would frequently report on the people going inside.
I wrote that there were only two rooms in the shrine, but to be precise, it was divided into a living area and a main hall area. The main hall area had the main hall and a room that was like an anteroom. My mother's belongings were packed into that room, and every time there was a shrine event, we had to empty that room, so there was a big job where the family would carry the belongings to the living area like a bucket brigade. At those times, one room would be filled with stuff, so we had to live in the other room with an unusual population density of seven people.
When I reached puberty, I naturally wanted my own room, so I brought my belongings and bedding out of the cramped two rooms into the anteroom of the main hall and succeeded in making the anteroom my own. However, since it was right next to the main hall, I was bothered by the sound of coins being dropped into the offertory box and the sound of the shrine bell ringing all day and night, but I got used to it quickly. As an aside, after I started making the anteroom my own, I began to experience sleep paralysis extremely frequently. It was incredibly scary, but I still wanted to listen to late-night radio, so I couldn't leave the anteroom.
Even so, three rooms for seven people was too cramped, so there was a situation where my father built a prefab shed on the shrine grounds as a storage room without permission. The shrine had a wood stove, so a large amount of firewood and my father's carpentry tools were stored there. In the summer, the rooms would get hot, so my mother would cook using fire in that prefab and carry it to the living room-like area. Also, my father's erotic magazines were often discovered, so I think it probably functioned as his storage space for them too. Don't put erotic magazines out in the open.
And since the shrine was ultimately the property of the neighborhood association, the men from the neighborhood association would come and go freely in the anteroom. In other words, the place I considered "my room" was not my own room at all, but just "the anteroom of the main hall where the men from the neighborhood association could come and go as they pleased." The men would enter without knocking, whether I was sleeping or changing clothes, so there were many times when the men would appear while I, a girl in puberty, was changing my underwear. The daily life of a teenage girl having her bottom seen by men from the neighborhood association whom she only knew a little. My sense of shame gradually died.
To reach the point where my sense of shame died, there were many things besides having men see my bottom. The fact that I lived in a shrine was known to my classmates by elementary school, I was called "Itsuki Shrine," and naturally, I was bullied. My weak point, which I wanted to hide as much as possible, became decisive in junior high school. As I wrote earlier, there was a junior high school next to the shrine, so when I entered junior high, everyone in the school witnessed "Itsuki Shrine" while going to school. Even though it was a shrine life I didn't want anyone to know about, there was no choice but for everyone to know. I couldn't survive unless I killed the feeling of being embarrassed.
By the way, it's been about twenty years since I graduated from shrine life, but when I dream of my "parents' home," the shrine still appears. It seems my brain has been updated with the input that home = shrine.

No Money

Since my parents were unemployed, naturally we had an unbelievable lack of money. My parents made full use of their unemployed network, living by getting discarded bread from bakeries, discarded Japanese sweets from confectioneries, fish from people living next to fishermen (who weren't fishermen themselves), massive amounts of egg whites and chicken skin from izakaya pubs, and vegetables from farmer friends... and so on. Besides getting food, my parents also secretly grew cucumbers, tomatoes, strawberries, and the like in a home garden on the shrine grounds.
Everything I wore was hand-me-downs, and I wore clothes with strangers' names written on them as a matter of course. Thanks to living only on hand-me-downs, I owned bright red underwear as a first-grader in elementary school.
Hand-me-downs weren't limited to clothes; almost all the items needed for school were also hand-me-downs, and it was daily life for them to have strangers' names written on them too. Even my junior high school uniform was a hand-me-down (I was quite tall, so I think it was difficult to find a uniform that fit), and I was even moved by that unemployed network.
When I was in the middle grades of elementary school, my father started a part-time job. There are big questions remaining about the employment status, but it was better than being unemployed. By that time, our family often went to flea markets held somewhere in Sapporo every weekend. It was fun to get various things for dirt cheap. I was bullied at school and was a typical social misfit, but I only acquired the skill of negotiating prices at the flea markets almost every weekend.
Naturally, there was no allowance system in our house; it was a system where if you wanted something, you applied for it, and if permission was granted, it would be bought for you. Permission was rarely granted, but we got a Famicom at a flea market during the Super Famicom heyday, and a Super Famicom at a flea market during the PlayStation heyday; there was a time lag between what came to our house and the rest of the world.
The TV was also very small for seven family members to watch, and in an era of normal remote controls, the channels were changed physically with switches located at the bottom of the TV screen. Even though the shrine was cramped, there was a chair exclusively for my father, and he possessed an "oddly long, simple stick" with which he could freely change channels from that chair.
Partly because we had so little money, there were no birthday celebrations in our house, and I was told,
"Birthdays are days to thank the parents who gave birth to you,"
so instead of receiving presents, I was forced to be grateful to my parents. I thought that gratitude forced upon you is no longer gratitude.
Naturally, there was no Christmas, and since almost all of my New Year's money (I only got a thousand yen) was confiscated by my parents, I always received New Year's money from relatives with zero emotion.
My younger brother really wanted to buy a game, so he delivered newspapers from junior high school, but even after delivering newspapers, almost all the money he received was confiscated by our parents, and only a thousand yen remained in his hands each month. My brother delivered both morning and evening papers for that thousand yen. It is an episode that cannot be told without tears.

No Bath Either

Since the shrine was not intended for people to live in, there was no bath. Naturally, there was no shower either. This is a story from the Heisei era, not an era when not having a bath was normal. Because we had no money, we would go to a relative's house to borrow their bath, or borrow the bath of a kind person in the neighborhood. I don't think we went to public bathhouses that often because they cost money. I remember my hair freezing and becoming stiff on the way home from the bath when winter came.
I couldn't participate in "bath talk" at all, so I was unusually sensitive to bath-related topics. Every time the topic of baths came up at school or among friends, I would get nervous.
When there was pool class in elementary school, there was an order from the school to "take a bath the day before," so I was teased with things like, "Did Itsuki take a bath?" If it were now, I could reply, "Yeah, I did," but at the time, I couldn't. Because I was a bullied social misfit. (I'm still a bit of a social misfit even now.)
Because it was known to my classmates that I lived in a shrine without a bath, I was subjected to simple bullying where I was told,
"You stink."
Since I only took a bath every other day, maybe there were days when I did stink, but I was told I stank even the day after I took a bath, so I wanted to say, "No, I took a bath yesterday!" I couldn't say it, though.
I endured the simple bullying, and by the time I was in the upper grades, I had acquired the skill of dressing stylishly with hand-me-down clothes, so I wasn't bullied in the upper grades. It was the moment a slightly brighter me appeared.
However, by the time I became a junior high student, my chronic atopic dermatitis worsened dramatically, and my heart broke because everyone in junior high school was going to school while seeing the shrine, and I returned to being a gloomy social misfit again.
Because my atopy was severe, I wanted to take a bath every day, but unfortunately, the shrine I lived in had no bath. At that time, my atopy had worsened to the point where all the skin on my neck was made of scabs, but I couldn't do anything about it myself.

Only the Number of Siblings Is High

I am one of five siblings, which is rare these days, and I grew up as the second oldest. I think it's true that the poor have many children. My mother had a perfectly balanced birth order: boy, girl, boy, girl, boy. Living in a shrine with a large family, I was always on edge, wondering when we would be found out by TV and have a crew come to film us.
The top three were two years apart, and then there was a seven-year gap, and then siblings born in consecutive years were born. I helped a lot with child-rearing. Even now, I can easily hold a newborn baby whose neck hasn't stiffened yet. I gave the bottom two milk, changed their diapers, and put them to sleep. Since I practically raised the bottom two myself, I couldn't help but love them. Although I fought a lot with my brother and younger brother who were two years apart.
But even though I say I raised them, it was impossible for a third-grade elementary school student to raise children. Once, I left my younger sister, who was nine years younger and had just learned to crawl, on the second floor of my grandmother's house and was playing with my cousin downstairs when I heard a loud sound: "thump, thump, thump, crash!" and a little later, I heard a crying voice: "Waaa!" When I rushed into the hallway, my sister, who should only have been able to crawl, was crouching at the bottom of the stairs and crying her heart out. Maybe she was lonely because she was left on the second floor alone. I thought she wouldn't come to the stairs because she could only crawl, but that wasn't the case. My sister, who tumbled down the stairs from the second floor, was miraculously uninjured, and that was the extent of it, other than her becoming extremely afraid of stairs. My sister is still fine now, but I sincerely think I'm glad she didn't suffer a major injury back then. Even though she doesn't remember it, she still blames me for this accident as if it happened yesterday.
I have two younger brothers: one who is two years younger, right in the middle of the siblings, covered in tattoos and piercings, looking like an outlaw, and another who is ten years younger, a smart guy with glasses who graduated from a national university graduate school. My mother said, "It's worth having five children," because a child who goes to a national university could be born from stupid parents.
My brother who was two years older had an intellectual disability from birth, and I was told every time I turned around,
"When Mom and Dad die, I'm counting on you to take care of your brother."
That was probably a word spoken out of worry from the parents' perspective, but for me, it was nothing but a curse. I, as a child, thought that I couldn't be happy like normal children because I had to take care of my brother in the future. I even thought about whether I should kill my brother while I was protected by the Juvenile Law for the sake of our future happiness as siblings, and how I would kill him. I liked Jiro Akagawa, so I even thought about whether I could use a trick.
After I grew up to a certain extent, I asked why there were so many siblings, and my mother said, "Because I thought it would be better if there were many people to take care of your brother." It was as if we were told we were born to care for our brother. I thought, "You've got to be kidding me." I wanted to live my own life.
I think what my parents should have done was not to have many siblings when a disabled child was born, but to work and save money for my brother's future, but my parents didn't do that. Because of their religion.

The Reason My Parents Were Unemployed

The reason my parents remained unemployed was, simply put, "religion." The religion my parents believed in had a teaching to "be poor," and they were unemployed because they faithfully followed it. To be precise, it wasn't just my parents; everyone in my parents' family line were believers of that religion, so people who didn't work were not an unusual existence for me.
My parents and relatives drilled the teachings of that religion into me from the time I was a young child. It seemed like an elite believer was born, but I grew up to be a religion-anti. I don't know how great God is, but we were so poor that our whole family lived in a shrine, we spent a year without birthdays, Christmas, or New Year's money, I was bullied at school, and I wanted to take a bath every day because my atopy was severe, but even that didn't come true. I thought, "Where is the happiness in this situation?"
My parents apparently did "good deeds" during their unemployment period in accordance with the teachings of the religion, but I always thought, "Before helping strangers, please make your family happy first."
Yes, I was exactly what was talked about a little while ago: a "second-generation religious follower." My parents and all my relatives forced their faith on me, and almost all the money that should have been given to me was taken away and used for donations called "offerings."
My parents' criteria for judging various things were very simple: if something good happened, it was thanks to God; if something bad happened, it was because of a lack of faith. For example, even if I got a high score on a test, it was thanks to God, and my efforts were not recognized at all. I have no memory of being praised by my parents in my childhood. I feel that even healthy parent-child communication was hindered because of the religion. Because of that, my self-esteem did not grow healthily at all.
My religion-anti mode became decisive one day when I saw the head of the grand church riding in a Mercedes-Benz.
"Why is the head riding in a Mercedes-Benz when we are having such a poor time!?"
I pressed my parents, but they said,
"That's fine because the believers gave it to the head because they wanted him to ride in it."
Hey, hey, what is this? I thought we weren't supposed to be poor, I thought we were supposed to be poor and help people, sell that Mercedes-Benz right now and help people, that's strange. I thought, and from that day on, I completely started to think about what a ridiculous religion it was. Rather, the fact that they could continue their faith even after seeing that Mercedes-Benz was unbelievable to me.
By the way, the donations continued even after I started working part-time, and I was told by my father, who was almost like a yakuza,
"Since you are able to work thanks to God, offer 10% of your part-time job pay!"
and I tearfully offered 10%. Being able to work part-time was thanks to my own efforts, but such logic doesn't work on my parents.
My extremist father would calmly say, "If you don't offer, quit your part-time job!" so I continued my part-time job while paying the offering because it was better to continue the part-time job by paying the offering than to have no income.
My mother didn't say much about donating, but when I became a university student and started working a lot, she started sponging off me by giving other reasons, such as "Give me money for electricity" or "Give me money for water." By this point, it had nothing to do with religion. It's a matter of my parents' morals. My parents had super low morals, sadly.

The Curse of Being Ugly

I grew up being called "ugly" by my low-moral parents at every opportunity.
Actually, when I look at old photos, I do think I was ugly, but as a young child, I was deeply hurt every time I was told that.
I noticed this by watching my younger sister, but my parents probably expected a reaction like, "Oh! Don't say that! Hmph!" every time they called me "ugly," and I think they wanted that kind of communication (my sister was able to give that kind of reaction), but I was the type to get depressed, thinking, "I'm ugly..." so that communication was clearly not suitable for me.
The ego of an ugly person is amazing, and I had a habit of thinking and acting based on the premise that "I am ugly." Because I'm ugly, I have to wear makeup properly; because I'm ugly, I have to always be neat and clean; because I'm ugly, I have to at least smell good; because I'm ugly, I have to at least wear heels; because I'm ugly, I have to be thin; because it would be a nuisance if an ugly person liked someone, I shouldn't like anyone... and so on. I imposed many restrictions on myself for being ugly.
But the ego of an ugly person isn't all bad, and I think it was a good thing that I continued to resist by spending money on beauty and fashion after I was able to earn money by working part-time. When I was a student, I even became a "gyaru" because it was the "coolest" thing to be. If I had become cynical and thought, "It's useless no matter what I do because I'm ugly anyway," I think I would have become an incredibly ugly person by now. I'm glad I was at least a positive ugly person.
By the way, now that I'm approaching forty, I want to be reasonably pretty, but I've reached the point where whether I'm ugly or beautiful doesn't matter anymore, as long as I don't bother others.

Other Topics of My Life

Besides what I've written so far, I've had a lot of things happen: at 14, I developed Crohn's disease (a disease that is a superior version of ulcerative colitis), a rare disease on the level of a prime minister resigning, because of swelling next to my anus; I was hospitalized repeatedly; I went to school from the hospital; I developed an eating disorder; I worked as a hostess to earn university tuition; after graduation, I accidentally got a job at a super black company; my illness worsened incredibly due to stress, and I was almost fired in six months because of the illness; I had abdominal surgery; the apartment where I lived alone for the first time was a slum with terrible public safety; I couldn't refuse the men who approached me, so before I knew it, I was dating multiple men at the same time, and my friends called those men "Team Itsuki"; because being a company employee was too hard due to my chronic illness, I turned into a self-employed nail technician and did it for eight years; I became depressed; the COVID-19 pandemic and depression overlapped, so I closed my self-employed business and returned to being a company employee; before I knew it, Team Itsuki had disbanded; and by the time I wanted to get married, there was no one left, so I did intense marriage hunting, and so on, but I am still living today.
Yes, I am living.
I am somehow living this life with many topics. I want to show someone that you can live even with a life like this. I am living and writing today, too.
As long as you are alive, you can meet again.
I hope to see you again in an article where I write about the above topics in detail.
Well then, see you again! (Salute with a smile)