The August 4th issue of Jinja Shinpō included an article about a one-day miko (巫女) experience event organised by Okayama Prefectural Jinjachō. The event took place at Funakawa Hachimangū (船川八幡宮) and was open to any woman, not just those already associated with a jinja or from the local area. The Jinjachō started organising these in 2018, but because the pandemic interrupted, this year’s was the fifth. The goal is to increase people’s familiarity with jinja, and it is held at a different jinja every time.
The day started with a formal prayer to the kami, and then the morning was taken up with a couple of talks, one from the chief priest (content unspecified — probably about that jinja), and one from the head of the Jinjachō committee organising the event, about miko and jinja in general. In the afternoon, they were taught Toyosaka-no-mai, one of the standard ceremonial dances for miko, which they then offered before the kami, in the prayer hall. Finally, they received completion certificates, and then learned how to fold up and put away the miko vestments they had been wearing.
The course was for twenty women, and apparently it filled up almost as soon as applications opened, with lots of people going on a waiting list. One of the participants came from Saitama Prefecture, which is near Tokyo and a long way from Okayama, so they were drawing from a wide area, but even so this shows how popular the idea of being a miko is. The people doing it ranged in age from 16 to 50, so the jinja was clearly not enforcing any of the conventional age limits.
It is worth noting that I think the women who took these courses were miko, if only for one day. They were trained, and performed sacred dance for the kami. This course is an opportunity to experience actually being a miko, not just to see what it is like. Of course, women who serve as miko for weeks, months, or years have different experiences, but those are different experiences of being a miko, just as it differs between jinja.
Incidentally, and nothing to do with the topic of this post, Funakawa Hachimangū also does Shichigosan for pets. Scroll down for photographs of lap dogs in kimono.