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March 2021

Hatsumōdë: The Visitors’ View

In my last post, I reported on Jinja Shinpō’s hatsumōdë survey of about 400 priests across the country. They also conducted an online survey of about a thousand “ordinary” Japanese, to see how they had handled hatsumōdë this year. The first result they reported is that 78.2% of them had come across the encouragement to spread out hatsumōdë visits. That advertising campaign really does seem to have been effective, which underwrites the complaints made by rural priests, reported in my last post, that it was too much “one size fits… Read More »Hatsumōdë: The Visitors’ View

Shinto Ethics Essay

Buy Essay Last month’s Patreon essay was about Shinto ethics, and it is now available for purchase on Gumroad, for people who did not get it through the Patreon. Shinto does not put much emphasis on ethics, but that does not mean that the topic is entirely ignored. Obviously, individual Shinto priests have ethical standards, and priests do criticise certain activities on ethical grounds. However, there is very little in the way of “official” statements on ethics, which means that this essay is a distillation of things that have been… Read More »Shinto Ethics Essay

Purely Punning

The February 15th issue of Jinja Shinpō had a short article about a new purification font at Harina Jinja in Nagoya, a jinja I have actually visited. This font was designed to be hands-free, so there are no ladles, and there is a wheelchair-accessible font off to one side (the main font is on a small dais). However, that’s not what I want to talk about today. The water flows from six nozzles, placed around a hexagonal pillar. These nozzles are shaped like gourds, and 89 centimetres from the ground.… Read More »Purely Punning