The 16th February issue of Jinja Shinpō had two full pages that showed very different sides of modern Shinto.
The first was the front page, which was dominated by an account of a meeting held in Tokyo to call for the return of the Northern Territories. This is a group of islands off the northeast coast of Hokkaidō that were illegally occupied by the Soviet Union at the end of the Second World War, and never handed back. Indeed, they are the main reason why Japan and the Soviet Union never signed a peace treaty for that war. (So yes, Russia is currently occupying part of Japan. They say the islands are Russian, but I believe that the global consensus in this case is that the law is on Japan’s side.)
What, you might well ask, does this have to do with Shinto? Well, contemporary Jinja Shinto is institutionally continuous with (what we will call) State Shinto, and that was used by the state to assert its authority and territorial claims. Some of the concerns that were of great importance then are still emphasised today, including the Northern Territories. A lot of Japanese people are also surprised when they find the Shinto community committed to this sort of position.
The other was page four, which was entirely taken up with articles about misogi (禊)— ritual purification in water — performed on January 20th, “Great Cold” according to the traditional divisions of the solar year. One of the articles was about a video produced by a group of priests in rural Tokyo (yes, that’s a thing) in cooperation with priests from Kanagawa, in which the prayer associated with the misogi ritual is set to an arrangement of an Italian folk song. Because… Well, an Italian student who is studying Shinto participated, and is in the video.
Another article on the page reports on an event in Fukui City where a group of about 90 people from four to seventy years old ran around seven jinja, paying respects at all of them, before performing misogi at the last. These seven jinja only have three different chief priests, and four of them are Shirayama (White Mountain) jinja — which of Japan’s sacred mountains do you think might be close to Fukui? The jinja are obviously fairly close together if that age range of people can visit them all in an hour — even running. There is a photograph of the misogi, and you can practically see the young (school-age) participants saying “it’s freezing!”. The article says that this was the 13th time they had done this, and it seems to be turning into a local tradition. A couple of the events mentioned in other articles were the fiftieth of those traditions.
This form of misogi is one of the most “religious” things that is a core part of Jinja Shinto — the people who lead it are trained and licensed by Jinja Honchō, but it is an extra qualification on top of the priesthood. Doing this in January shows serious religious motivation. (I believe I have mentioned before that, although this is an important Shinto tradition, I am taking absolutely no positive steps to participate.)
Both of these activities are important, and probably about equally important, to Jinja Honchō and the Jinja Shinto community, and it is important not to think that one is more “authentic” than the other. I do, however, have my own opinions about which it might be best to emphasise.
Thank You! It was interesting to learn that Shinto is still concerned about the Northern Territories; are there any details about the meeting in Tokyo, perhaps any proposed solutions, etc?
Unfortunately, there do not seem to be any concrete solutions on the table at these meetings. The generous interpretation is that the organisers can see the difficulties created for returning the islands to Japan by the fact that there are almost certainly Russians who were born, raised, had children, had grandchildren, and then died and were buried on them, with graves that their descendants still visit.
The concrete requests are for a resumption of the program that allowed Japanese people to visit their ancestors’ graves on the island, and for the restart of programs for contact between the current Russian residents and the former Japanese residents and their descendants.