The Tennō (天皇) is the symbol of Japan and of the unity of the people, according to the current Japanese constitution. For all intents and purposes, he is also the head of state, although the constitution doesn’t actually say that. However, historically the Tennō has played an extremely important role in venerating the kami, and Jinja Shinto was restructured in the late nineteenth century to focus on venerating the Tennō. This has made the Tennō extremely important to the contemporary Shinto community.
This can be seen in the articles in Jinja Shinpō. For example, in the 16th June issue, there was a front page article about a visit by the Tennō and the Empress to Okinawa, to pay their respects to the war dead. As this year is the 80th anniversary of the end of the war, the Tennō and Empress are visiting a lot of the significant sites associated with it — the broadly uncontroversial ones, at any rate. The visit did not involve any specifically Shinto actions by the Tennō.
However, he did send offerings to two jinja in Okinawa. Whenever the Tennō makes an official visit to a prefecture, he sends offerings to all the jinja that received state offerings before the war, and to all of the Gokoku Jinja (護國神社), the local jinja enshrining the war dead, in the prefecture. (Most have one, some have none, a few have several.) The offerings are handed over to the chief priests by one of his attendants, and then offered by the chief priests in a special ceremony — for which Jinja Honchō is trying to come up with general guidelines. Thus, the Tennō is not personally involved, and in this respect it matches the ancient practices around Imperial offerings to local jinja. Before the Meiji Revolution, it was extremely unusual for the Tennō to visit a jinja in person — the rituals he performed were all performed at the palace, and not at the jinja in the palace.
On the back page there was a full page spread about restoration work at Chichibu Jinja (秩父神社) in Saitama Prefecture. This was a long process, and started in celebration of the jinja’s nominal 2,100th anniversary. The Tennō sent, again via a representative, offerings for both anniversary matsuri, and the matsuri at which the kami were moved back to the main sanctuary. However, one of the highlights of the article was a visit by the Tennō to the grounds of the jinja to see some of the floats used in the jinja’s main annual matsuri. This matsuri is one of 33 matsuri that have been recorded by UNESCO as Intangible Heritage, and so the Tennō was seeing them as part of Japanese tradition, rather than as part of the religious practices of Chichibu Jinja. Indeed, the offering from the Tennō attendant on his official visit to Saitama had been received earlier, and was presented to the kami in the morning, before the Tennō himself arrived.
And then on page 5 there was an article complaining about an event where people at the Osaka Kansai World Expo had been dressed up in ancient formal costumes. The problem was that the costume in question was one traditionally reserved for the Tennō, and the author was profoundly shocked at the lack of “common sense” being shown. Even women were allowed to wear it! (There were female Tennō after this costume was introduced, but as the clothes were for men, I am not entirely sure whether they wore it — it depends on which aspect was taken to have priority.) The author took this as a sign of the loss of respect for the Tennō and called for it to be restored. I am sure that the vast majority of Japanese would have no idea what he was talking about.
As a result of reading Jinja Shinpō, I know a lot about what the Tennō does, because his activities are normally reported. I am sure I know more than the overwhelming majority of Japanese people. However, I think that this is one of the ways in which the Shinto community is somewhat out of step with the Japanese population as a whole. It is probably not enough of a difference to be a real problem, but I suspect that quite a lot of people are a bit surprised when they encounter it.