April 2021

The April 19th issue of Jinja Shinpō has an article that draws out some of the issues from my post last week about public and private matsuri. A jinja in Tokyo had little leaflets printed with a prayer for people to say at their family kamidana, to pray for the recovery of northeast Japan (Tōhoku) after the tsunami in 2011. The leaflets were printed and distributed because, although the tenth anniversary of the disaster was on March 11th this year, the pandemic meant that the jinja could not invite anyone… Read More »Privately Public

The April 19th issue of Jinja Shinpō introduced Shinto playing cards, which have been developed by the Shinto Youth Association. These are standard playing cards — four suits of thirteen cards each, with two jokers — with pictures of Shinto things on each one. There are also short explanations. For example, going by the picture in the paper, “torii” is on the seven of spades, while “kagura” is on the jack of hearts. The idea is that these packs of cards could be given out to children at shichi-go-san (two… Read More »Shinto Playing Cards

The April 12^th issue of Jinja Shinpō carried an interesting short article, written by someone in their final year of training for the Shinto priesthood at Kokugakuin University. Their concern was that, in order to avoid spreading COVID-19, many matsuri were being held with minimal attendance, often just the officiating priests, and that this was against the basic character of Shinto. They argued that jinja, and matsuri, should be open to everyone.

If you have a formal ceremony performed at a jinja, a seishiki (or shōden) sanpai, the priest includes your address and name in the norito that is read to the kami. This is so that the kami knows who the prayer is for. After your name, the priest says “eeeeeee”. There is normally a short pause before and after that sound as well.

What’s that about?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog post asking who had the authority to decide whether someone could practise Shinto, or was practising it wrongly, and came to the conclusion that no one did. However, as I mentioned at the end of that post, there might still be things that you should do if you are investigating Shinto, even if no-one has the authority to tell you that you are doing it wrong. This post is about my position on that.

Obviously, this post is not telling you what you have to do if you want to investigate or practise Shinto. I spent a whole post arguing that no-one has the authority to do that, and that includes me. Rather, I will describe what I think is a good way to approach the field, with reasons. It is up to you to decide whether you agree.

I thought I’d do a very simple post with some photographs I took recently (over the last couple of weeks) of jinja and other Shinto things near my home.