Filming at a Jinja

On Monday, I spent most of the day at a jinja that shall remain nameless, assisting at the filming of two videos for Jinja Honchō. During the morning, we were filming for an “image video” aimed at non-Japanese, and in the early afternoon we were filming for this year’s hatsumōdë promotion video (which, of course, is promoting next year’s hatsumōdë). The plan is for both of these to go up on Jinja Honchō’s YouTube channel, and so unless something goes horribly wrong I will write about the content then.

I do not expect anything to go horribly wrong, because the filming went well. The crew were pleased, the producer/editor was pleased, and all of us from Jinja Honchō were pleased. It was a nice jinja to film at, with an impressive sacred forest. We had good weather for filming — no rain, but little direct sunlight, and a gentle breeze. It was warm, but not uncomfortable. The only problem was the mosquitoes. One of my colleagues was sent off to buy insect repellent and anti-itching lotion early on…

In the morning, I was supposed to be there to advise the sample foreigners (a couple of YouTubers) on proper etiquette, in English. However, they were French, so I ended up mostly showing them, which my colleagues could also have done. And, because I had done that in the morning, I ended up doing it in the afternoon as well, with the Japanese family doing the hatsumōdë video. Three priests on site, and I get asked to provide etiquette guidance. On the bright side, none of the priests objected, or felt the need to correct me. And we all pointed out things that might be problematic. (I plan to talk about this when the videos go up, when you can see the revised versions.)

One of the priests was too busy to correct my advice, because she was pretending to be a miko. She has been a miko in the past, but she has never been a miko at that jinja. Like most jinja, it doesn’t have miko most of the year, although I am sure it hires some for hatsumōdë. And, of course, when you are symbolising jinja, you have to have a miko. And torii. (The jinja had some very nice torii of its own, so that was no problem.)

I mentioned to the sample foreigners that the woman acting as a miko was actually a priest, and they were surprised. They were more surprised when I told them that the other two women were also priests. When you say “Shinto priest”, I think most people still imagine an old Japanese man in full vestments. While there are a lot of Shinto priests like that (the latest issue of Jinja Shinpō had two obituaries for examples who had been chief priest since before I was born), it is far from universal.

We were, of course, filming in front of the sanctuaries quite a bit. Showing people paying their respects is an important part of both videos, and we needed several takes both times, as well as shots from different angles. As far as possible, we tried to do this while no-one was waiting to pay their respects for real. However, someone was doing a hyakudomairi (百度参り), which is when you pay your respects one hundred times, walking away from the sanctuaries to a defined point before going back. That point is normally not too far away. This takes a while to complete, and takes you to the sanctuaries a lot, so we did hold them up a few times. That was the first time I had seen someone actually doing it — and it would have to be that day. I hope they were not too annoyed.

After filming, Jinja Honchō paid for lunch for everyone, and we all went to Mos Burger, a suggestion that drew immediate and enthusiastic assent from all the priests present. They are good burgers, but it’s not quite the standard image of Jinja Honchō.

My work for Jinja Honchō should be a bit quieter for the next few weeks, so I plan to catch up on posts based on things I have read.