Matsuri for Nature

The July 14^th issue of Jinja Shinpō included an extremely interesting article by a consultant for Jinja Honchō called… Oh! Will you look at that? David Chart!

Is my faux naïf act fooling anyone?

I had another article published in Jinja Shinpō. It suggests that jinja could perform matsuri to celebrate features of nature in their local area. That could be an old tree, or the cherry blossoms, or fireflies, or birds, or the first snow of the year — anything. I suggested that the matsuri could be held outside, in the presence of the natural feature (easier with trees than with birds, granted), and that as part of the matsuri people could offer artworks, whether physical or performing, inspired by that aspect of nature. This idea is taken from the rice agriculture matsuri, in which people often perform actions that mimic parts of the process of raising rice.

My hope is that this would not only raise people’s awareness of the natural features of their environment, but also help to strengthen links between people living in the same area. These days, they might have nothing in common through work or family structure, but they do, by definition, live near that natural thing, and that does give them a shared interest. If they create artworks together, so much the better.

I was inspired to write this by an article in Nature a few months ago about the importance of celebrating the positive aspects of nature, rather than focusing on the doom and gloom of the climate crisis. Given that Shinto really does have deep roots in the veneration of nature, it seemed like an obvious fit.

However, it took quite a while to wrestle the article into a form that I thought would appeal to the readership of Jinja Shinpō. This was not made easier by the fact that the aspect of nature being celebrated would have to depend on the particular jinja, so I couldn’t say anything definite about it. And then, of course, I had to run it by the head of my section in Jinja Honchō to make sure that there were no problems. (There weren’t.)

In the article, I suggested that the outdoor matsuri should use a himorogi, a temporary residence for the kami, but I didn’t say anything about which kami should be called into the himorogi. That is up to the priest. It could be kami of the jinja, but it could equally be the kami of the natural feature in question. Or both. Theologically, himorogi do not get full — I think there are matsuri in which all “eight million” kami are called to the same himorogi.

This article is personally significant, because I think it is the first time that Jinja Shinpō has published an article by me that has nothing to do with foreigners. It is also not a reaction to an article that they published earlier. This really opens up the range of things that I can write for them. Of course, I still have to have ideas that are appropriate, and that are the sort of thing I can write about (I’m not a priest, and I don’t have a jinja), but it still feels like a step forwards.