September 2020

Every year, the publicity department at Jingū produces a magazine called “Musuhi”. This is a very lightweight publication, about sixteen pages, with a lot of colour photographs and nice images of Jingū. I will base this post on last year’s; this year’s has just been published, and was announced in last week’s Jinja Shinpō, which is why I decided to write about it even though I don’t have it yet. However, the content is broadly the same from year to year, and towards the back of the magazine, I think… Read More »Musuhi

In this week’s Jinja Shinpō, there are a lot of articles about jinja and Shinto groups that have taken various steps to make sure that they can still hold a matsuri, while minimising the chances of spreading COVID-19. In some cases, it was very simple. Miyagiken Gogokoku Jinja simply reduced the number of people attending its annual memorial matsuri by 90%. (This is one of the regional jinja to the war dead, and thus holds a matsuri on August 15th, the day the war ended according to Japan, every year.)… Read More »Matsuri Under COVID-19

I have just put two more of the past essays from my Patreon up for sale on Amazon. These essays cover two Shinto prayers, with transcriptions, translations, and basic commentary. These two prayers are not strictly norito, because they have slightly different functions, but they are, in terms of structure and vocabulary, important examples of how norito are written now, and were written in much earlier times. The Ōharaëkotoba is the most important purification prayer, and is still an important part of Shinto practice today. I would imagine that any… Read More »Ōharaëkotoba and Izumo Yogoto on Amazon

“Calling on Jinja Shinpō and its Readers while Lamenting the Current State of Jinja Honchō” This is not the sort of title I expect to see on an article in Jinja Shinpō, and indeed the first sentence of the article says, basically, “I am not at all sure whether this article will be printed in Jinja Shinpō”. As I have mentioned before, Jinja Shinpō rarely publishes anything critical of the Shinto establishment, or even anything that might be awkward for them. This is why I included them in the Shinto… Read More »Dissension in the Ranks