A couple of videos involving jinja have recently been released. First, one from Akita Prefectural Police, warning people against cons on social media:
“What does this have to do with Shinto?” you might ask, apart from starring a miko, that is. Well, er, nothing. However, the jinja where this was filmed has been running self-defence classes for its miko in cooperation with the prefectural police for years, and so they got talking about the police’s anti-fraud campaign. That led to the jinja agreeing to work with them. Apparently, the superhero who appears at the end is played by a priest from the area.
This sort of fraud is a major issue in Japan, and has been for years, although I gather that it is becoming a more salient problem in the rest of the world as well.
The second is the video promoting hatsumōdë that we (Jinja Honchō) made a couple of months ago. I wrote about the filming in an earlier post.
This shows a family going to a jinja for hatsumōdë, although we filmed it in early October, when it was still quite hot. They would probably be a bit more wrapped up for actual hatsumōdë, as would the miko (that’s my colleague, the priest).
This is only 30 seconds, but it shows the key points of etiquette: they bow at the torii as they go in, rinse their hands, do the standard veneration, and then get a Jingū Taima and hamaya (evil-dispelling arrow). They also never walk along the centre of the sacred path. That was one we had to keep catching people on — “a bit further over here!”.
The family are, I think, an actual family, or at least that is how they were introduced to me. The little girl was good at this sort of thing — but then, she is a professional. I suspect that doing a hatsumōdë promotion video is a good thing to have on your resumé — uncontroversial and not embarrassing.
There is also a 15 second version.
As I mentioned in the earlier post, we filmed a video about foreigners visiting a jinja on the same day. The editing for that is coming along nicely, so I expect to be able to introduce it in the new year.