Moving Jinja

The 26^th May issue of Jinja Shinpō had an article about a small jinja being moved.

The jinja in question was Tenman Daijizai Tenjinja (天満大自在天神社) in Tsuruoka (鶴岡市) in Yamagata Prefecture. Before the move, it was outside the main railway station, and it was supported by a group, called Tenjinkō (天神講), made up of shop owners on the local shopping street. The main annual festival was held on May 25^th, and on that occasion a priest went from Shōnai Jinja (荘内神社), also in Tsuruoka, to officiate.

However, the area around the station is being redeveloped (this happens a lot in Japan, and was central to the plot of Ujigamisama no Konsarutanto), and there was talk of the jinja being demolished. The members of the Tenjikō did not want that to happen, and so they talked to the priests of Shōnai Jinja about their options.

The kami of Shōnai Jinja is Sakai Tadakatsu (酒井忠勝), a late sixteenth to early seventeenth century warrior lord, and the priests determined that there were records of him sending emissaries to venerate Tenjin. This was a basis for moving the jinja into the precincts of Shōnai Jinja, as a subsidiary jinja (in this case a massha (末社)), and the ceremony to move it took place in late November last year. Apparently local students are already paying their respects there. (Tenjin is particularly famous as a patron of scholarship.)

The occasion for the article was the planting of an umë tree (Prunus mume) next to the new sanctuary. (The sanctuary is very small — probably only a metre or so tall, on a stone plinth, judging from the photograph. This is quite common for massha.) The umë tree is closely associated with Tenjin, because the kami, Sugawara-no-Michizanë (菅原道真), was fond of the tree, and one is said to have flown from Kyoto to join him in exile in Kyūshū. There is a jinja there, Dazaifu Tenmangū (太宰府天満宮), which is built over his grave and one of the two most important Tenjin Jinja in Japan. It was drawn in to this story because there was a record of a tree from that jinja being planted at Tenman Daijizai Tenjinja in the past, and the priests and members of the kō thought that it would be nice to do so again. Dazaifu Tenmangū was happy to help.

A delegation from Shōnai Jinja, led by the chief priest, went to Dazaifu Tenmangū in March to attend a matsuri, and receive the young umë tree. Then, in April, it was planted next to the sanctuary, in a ceremony attended by the priests, members of the kō, ujiko sōdai (氏子総代) from Shōnai Jinja, and representatives from Dazaifu Tenmangū. This variety of umë is called “Whatever I feel like” (Omoimama), because it has both white and red flowers.

This sort of event is fairly common in Shinto. If you look into the history of subsidiary jinja you often find that they were moved from somewhere else, often due to redevelopment of some kind, but sometimes because the original site was, or had become, too hard to access. This is the main way, I think, in which jinja end up with subsidiary jinja enshrining exactly the same kami as the main jinja, and as each other. Although particular places are very important in Shinto, the kami can be moved from one to another.