The previous post, about my most recent article in Jinja Shinpō, touches on the question of why I am writing about Shinto and working for Jinja Honchō. In this post, I want to address that question directly. I am not doing it for the money, although the fact that I get paid means that I can afford to spend enough time on it to do something potentially useful. I am also not doing it just because I am interested in, and a practitioner of, Shinto, although obviously I would not be doing it if I were neither. Finally, Shinto has no tradition of “evangelism”, so that is not it either.
The first reason is quite simple. Shinto is not well-known outside Japan, and it is widely misunderstood even by the people who know of it. It is also a very important part of Japanese culture, even today, and so one cannot really understand Japan without understanding Shinto. I want to help people outside Japan to understand Shinto.
The second arises from that. People outside Japan who learn about Shinto might want to practise it. I want to make that possible. I have provided the information needed to get started, but there are still a lot of practical problems involved. I still want to find ways to make it easier.
That leads into the third reason. A lot of jinja face serious problems due to the ageing and declining population in Japan. If there are people outside Japan who want to support them, that increases the chances that they will survive. Here, I want to start making the connections and establishing the systems to make it possible for jinja to appeal to people outside Japan as well, and for those people to support the jinja.
The fourth reason concerns one of the responses to the declining population: immigration. I think it is important for immigrants to become deeply and strongly connected to the culture of the country where they live, and in Japan’s case, I think jinja can play a very important role in this. The barrier is low, because jinja require no particular beliefs, and welcome anyone to their matsuri. They also tend to be strongly connected to the people who are the most established part of the local community, with the deepest roots. Thus, they are a good place for recent immigrants to form positive connections with the local community. A lot of priests are not sure how to do this, and I want to help.
The fifth reason is closely connected to the fourrth. There is always a risk of countries turning racist and xenophobic, particularly when immigration is rising and there are economic problems. Shinto is in a strong position to either accelerate that, or prevent it. I want to make sure that it is on the side of prevention. Fortunately, a lot of priests are already inclined to be open and welcoming, and so it is not too hard to get them to take stances that are accepting of immigrants and foreign tourists.
This has been a visible issue recently, due to rhetoric about the “foreigner problem” in recent months. This was serious during the Upper House election in July last year, when one party ran on a slogan of “Japanese First” and greatly increased its share of the vote. Fortunately, at the Lower House election this month almost every party dialled back their rhetoric on this point, with even that party changing its slogan to “Every Individual is Japan”, or something like that (this one is harder to translate), and barely mentioning foreigners in their speeches and material. The only party that did go all-in on “immigrants are bad” won no seats at all.
While this is a relief, I still want to work on creating an environment in which xenophobia is not acceptable, and that is the final reason why I am working with the Shinto community.
I do not know how much I can achieve, because I am just one person, but I do know that it is more than nothing. And so that is why I keep doing it.
Thank you so much for what you do and all your hard work !
I’m glad and thankful for your hard work and others too – because the more efforts there are to educate and bridge things the more I feel there can be healthy connections between people and Jinja, Japanese cultural traditions, and Shinto practices can be preserved in various ways.
I don’t want them to be lost nor people to disrespect them – and education is the main way we can help prevent those things, I feel!
Thank you!
You are wonderful and your book “ Introduction to Shinto “ is a masterpiece Nothing else to be said
Thank you!
I don’t really want to comment on xenophobia or immigration issues. I think the use of the word xenophobia in Japan’s current situation is overblown. Those who emphasize reducing immigration don’t mean they don’t welcome foreigners, but rather that the excessively rapid rate of immigration and the simultaneous emergence of new foreign cultures only further marginalizes Japanese culture. They simply want to protect the Japan they know. I believe the idea of maintaining an ideal number of foreigners in Japan is more common than increasing it (in this case, Japan is the most accepting country among Southeast and East Asian countries, and Japan essentially shares the same identity mentality as “them”). They simply want to keep the number of foreigners at a level that doesn’t exceed the “potential” for marginalizing Japanese identity. Although I admit there are underlying economic factors.
Regarding Shinto, I believe there have been numerous incidents of vandalism at Jinja and even Buddhist temples involving foreigners, such as drunk tourists, immigrants engaging in fanatical religious practices, or simply for fun. As a long-time foreigner living in Japan and recently returning from my home country, I am quite saddened by the changes in Japan’s socio-cultural environment, belief systems, and ethnicity. I believe it is important to maintain a safe number of foreign residents, as before, and to maintain their original characteristics, as is the case in most East and Southeast Asian countries. This is not xenophobic. The question is, to what extent are foreign residents absorbing Japanese culture compared to those practicing their own cultures in Japan? I believe Shinto priests today are in a similar situation to before, without having to engage in discussions about immigration or xenophobia.
I would agree that Japan is not a racist or xenophobic society at the moment. I think it is important to work to keep it that way, however, because there are groups who are using clearly xenophobic rhetoric. On the other side, jinja are in a strong position to help immigrants integrate into Japanese culture, and I am talking to priests who want to take positive action on that.
Incidentally, vandalism of jinja by foreigners does not seem to be a major problem. It’s not something that priests have raised with Jinja Honchō, or that came up when we asked them what we should put on our educational poster. I am aware of a few incidents, and no doubt there have been others, but they do seem to be rare.