In my first essay on Mieruko-chan, I argued that most of its ghosts are familiar: rude, clingy or greedy, and explained within a few pages.

The presence at the shrine is different. It is the one thing in the series that helps Miko. And it is the one thing I trust least.

“Three times”

In volume 2, a powerful-looking ghost has attached itself to Miko’s friend Hana, who has no idea. So Miko goes to a shrine with Hana and prays for things to get better.

Then, right beside that ghost, something appears: a figure in Japanese dress, like a shikigami, the spirit servants of old Japanese legend. It destroys the ghost. And Miko is left with a single word: three times.

If the story stopped there, this would be a guardian angel. It doesn’t stop there.

Help that was never free

Looking back, the clues were there. “Three times” is not a blessing. It is a count. And in volume 4, the fortune-teller known as the Godmother, who knows more about these things than anyone in the story, does not speak of the shrine presence as a protector at all. She calls it kyatsu (彼奴), an old, rough word for “that one” that you would use about an enemy. An English translation has to pick a single word for it, and whichever it picks, the hostility in the original is hard to keep.

By volume 6, the help turns out not to have been free. The series never spells out the price, but the Godmother and her apprentice Romu end up facing the shrine presence head-on, and Miko’s part in it is to be the decoy. Her job is to do nothing at all.

Not the God of unconditional love

Many of my readers grew up with a very different picture of what a higher power does. In the Christian idea of grace, help is a gift. You cannot earn it, and no one sends you a bill for it afterward. Love that keeps count would not be love.

I came to that idea at a bad time. I was being bullied at work, and I started reading the New Testament. What stayed with me was the idea of loving without expecting anything back, and with it, not hitting back. When you are being bullied, your own mind goes dull. Anything you say gets twisted and used against you. Not answering back turned out to be one way to survive. Looking back, I was holding on to God, trying to keep a bigger heart toward the people doing it.

The shrine presence in Mieruko-chan is nothing like that. It keeps count from the very first word.

Closer to how shrines work in Japan

But the New Testament was not the only place I turned to in those days. I also went to shrines. And that is where the shrine presence in Mieruko-chan started to make sense to me, because a Japanese shrine never promised to help for nothing.

In Japan, the relationship with a shrine has long had a give-and-take side to it. If a wish comes true, you are expected to go back and give thanks, a custom called orei-mairi. A god that is neglected or crossed is said to bring misfortune, tatari. Help from a shrine is not assumed to be free.

The one I went to was a well-known enkiri shrine in Tokyo, a shrine for cutting ties. The advice people often give about these shrines is that you should not go there to curse someone. You pray with gratitude, for the tie to come apart on its own, because answering a grudge with a grudge only binds you tighter.

So that is what I did. After that, the position of the people who had bullied me slowly changed, and my own situation got better. I can’t prove what caused it. But I came away feeling that places like that are not empty, and I still go back regularly to give thanks.

Seen that way, the shrine presence in Mieruko-chan is not breaking the rules. It is following older ones.

The same advice from opposite directions

What stays with me is this. The God of the New Testament asks nothing in return. The shrine expects you to come back and say thank you. They start from opposite places. And yet both told me the same thing when I needed it: don’t answer a grudge with a grudge. Don’t hit back.

That is also Miko’s rule. She doesn’t fight the ghosts. She doesn’t answer them. And when the shrine presence finally comes to collect, the one thing that only she can do is nothing.