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Sacred Waters

The August 3rd issue of Jinja Shinpō was the special summer issue, which has twice as many pages as usual. Much of the space is taken up by the names of jinja, because they pay to have their name appear in this issue (and the New Year issue). Another distinctive feature of this issue is that the front and back pages are printed in colour, and taken up with what could be called a photo essay. The theme this time was sacred waters. The front page was a picture of… Read More »Sacred Waters

Diversity

There were a couple of interesting articles in the July 27th issue of Jinja Shinpō, into which I may be reading too much. The first was the “Thoughts in the Forest” column, which was one of the pseudonymous entries. The author — whose written name might not even have a reading given that it is a pseudonym, so I will just read the first two characters as “Ueto” — apparently has non-standard colour vision. He (probably, looking at the pseudonym, and the strong hints that he has the red/green variation… Read More »Diversity

Forests at Jingū

The new set of authors for the Komorebi column in Jinja Shinpō are publishing their first instalments, and the July 27th issue included the first column by Yamamoto Yoshiya, who works in the forestry department at Isë Jingū. He promises to write about the forests, and so I anticipate reporting on his columns quite often. His first column is introductory. The forests around Jingū are divided into two parts — the Shin’iki (神域), “area of the kami”, and Kyūikirin (宮域林), “sanctuary area woodland”. The Shin’iki is the area immediately around… Read More »Forests at Jingū

Imperial Succession

I have written about the Imperial family and succession on this blog before, but the relevant law was revised on July 17th, and there was a front-page article about it in the July 27th issue of Jinja Shinpō, so I am going to write about it again. The Tennō is extremely important to mainstream Shinto, and to Japanese conservatives in general. The immediate reason for this is that the Meiji government, which had just overthrown the Tokugawa government, used jinja and priests as part of a propaganda effort to make… Read More »Imperial Succession

Priestly Numbers

Issues 280 and 281 of the Journal of Shinto Studies (神道宗教) were merged into a single special issue, focusing on the modern history of Shinto — defined as post-1868. There are a few articles in this issue I want to write about, but first I want to pick up some numbers given in the introductory article by the issue’s editor, Fujimoto Yorio (藤本頼生). The first compares the numbers of religious institutions (defined as religious corporations) and religious professionals (priests, monks, pastors) for Shinto, Buddhism, and Christianity. These numbers are taken… Read More »Priestly Numbers

Priestly Titles

Issue 279 of the Journal of Shintō Studies has a report on a presentation by Yamanaka Terushige entitled “About the Pre-War and Post-War Shinto Priesthood System: The Transformation of the Rank of Gon-negi”. Readers of this blog may know that, in contemporary Jinja Shinto, there are three ranks of priest at most jinja: Gūji (宮司 Chief Priest), Negi (禰宜 Senior Priest) and Gon-negi (権禰宜 Junior Priest). Large jinja may also have a Gon-gūji (権宮司 Deputy Chief Priest). Gon-negi is probably the most common rank, because a jinja is only allowed… Read More »Priestly Titles