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June 2020

Summer Purification

Today, June 30th, is the day of “Nagoshi no Ōharai”, a purification ceremony held all over Japan, with roots going back well over a thousand years. On Sunday, Shin’yūsha, an organisation run by Princess Akiko of Mikasa, ran an online seminar on the subject, which I attended, and that reminded me that I should probably blog about it. The origins of this ritual are not quite as clear as they might be. There were annual purifications held at the Imperial palace, to purify all the Tennō’s ministers and the population… Read More »Summer Purification

Praying for the Economy

Unsurprisingly, the pandemic is still affecting the Shinto world, just like everywhere else, and several articles in Jinja Shinpō are still referring to it. For example, an important annual meeting (of the national association of sōdai) was carried out by sending documents to everyone and having them mail their votes back, and Jinja Honchō is in the process of setting up standards and practices for web meetings, so that they can be incorporated into the organisation’s rules. However, Japan has been moving towards lifting most of the restrictions. At the… Read More »Praying for the Economy

Instructions for Matsuri

A few weeks ago, Jinja Honchō sent me an interesting leaflet. This leaflet is entitled “Omatsuri no Tebiki”, which means, roughly, “Instructions for Matsuri”. It is directed at sōdai. “Sōdai” means, literally, something like “general representatives”, and it refers to the people who support a jinja, in theory on behalf of all the ujiko, the people who live in the area around the jinja. They tend to be older, and that is how they are drawn in the leaflet. This particular leaflet is particularly for people who are sōdai at… Read More »Instructions for Matsuri

Porcelain Torii

The entrance to nearly all jinja is marked by the traditional torii gate, with the distinctive double lintel. As I have mentioned before, there is no rule for what torii should be made of. Wood is the most traditional material; the most traditional of all is wood with the bark still on. However, stone is also common, as is bronze. Very large torii are often made of steel, and you can get plastic torii, which are very durable, and do not look very plastic. (You can also get plastic torii… Read More »Porcelain Torii

Going Online

This week’s Jinja Shinpō included a number of articles of interest, including one by me. That one will be the basis of a Patreon essay in a couple of months, so I won’t talk about it here. There was also an article about Jingū starting the distribution of omamori and ofuda again, although they are still not doing formal prayers outside the regular matsuri. However, the articles I want to pick up are about online activities. Two short articles reported on online meetings held by administrative groups in Shizuoka Prefecture… Read More »Going Online

The Price of Vestments

Back in May, a company that sells Shinto vestments had an advert in Jinja Shinpō. That is not so unusual; what is less common is that they printed the asking prices for most items. Since these were made public, we can safely assume that they are neither ridiculously high nor implausibly low; while there is bound to be variation depending on the source and the quality, these prices are probably representative. I will give all the prices in yen, as that is the currency they are sold in. For these… Read More »The Price of Vestments