The Origins of Shinto Weddings

Issue 279 of the Journal of Shintō Studies (神道宗教) reported on the annual meeting held in 2024. As always, there are a few longer articles based on presentations in the main symposium, and dozens of short pieces reporting on the research of different members of the scholarly association that hosts it, and publishes the journal. As normal, I would like to write about several of the articles, spread over a few posts. First, I want to pick up one talk from the symposium. The theme was “The Media and Religion”, and this talk, by Yunosuke Kimura (木村悠之介) (I think there should probably be a macron on the “Yu”, but there isn’t in the English contents list in the journal) was entitled “Shinto Weddings in Modern Times and the Role of Various Media”. “Modern Times” here means the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which is when Shinto weddings were just getting going.

The beginnings of this custom were not, it seems, straightforward. Traditional Japanese weddings were held in the home, and were a matter for the families. There may well have been some reference to the kami or Buddhas in the decorations of the living room, but the core of the “ceremony” was the bride moving to her new home and eating a celebratory meal with her new family. Priests and monks were not normally involved. It seems that changes were inspired by the arrival of Christian weddings in Japan.

However, at this point jinja were officially non-religious, and the larger jinja had been forbidden to perform “religious” functions, as part of the movement to make Shinto into a non-religious set of national rites. So when, in 1915, a priest wrote to the official magazine for priests asking for a recommendation for a reference book on “wedding ceremonies before the kami” (神前結婚式), the response was to cast doubt on whether it was appropriate to hold wedding services before the kami at an ordinary jinja, and no book was recommended. Three years later, however, a similar request did get a recommended text, along with the comment that the situation was “complicated”. In 1926, the government issued official guidance that wedding ceremonies were permissible at jinja.

The origins go back further, of course, and Kimura reports on two examples, one from 1875 and the other from 1877, that seem to be the earliest known examples of two traditions. The ceremony from 1875 was carried out in Gifu Prefecture by the priest of the local jinja, although it was held in the home of the couple. This was based on a book of five sample ceremonies, the third of which was a wedding ceremony, published in 1873 by the religious organisation associated with Isë Jingū. However, as Isë Jingū was made less religious over the next few years, it stopped being associated with this. The 1877 ceremony was held in Tokyo, at the “church” of a Shinto group venerating the kami of Shiogama Jinja, which is in Sendai, in northern Japan. This appears to have been based on a different text, published in 1870 by a priest of sect Shinto (the religious versions) in Gunma Prefecture, although there is no evidence of a direct link — the description of the ceremony just sounds like the version in the book.

The difference between these ceremonies was that the Tokyo one involved the couple symbolically walking around an object representing the Amë-no-Mihashira ( 天御柱), “Noble Pillar of the Heavens”), in imitation of the description of the wedding of Izanagi and Izanami in the Kojiki and Nihonshoki, while the Gifu one did not.

These two traditions of Shinto weddings can be traced from this period, and the use of the Amë-no-Mihashira remains a feature of wedding ceremonies in traditions of sect Shinto to this day. It is not, however, found in the wedding ceremonies held in most jinja, because the standard jinja of that period generally followed the other tradition.

Such ceremonies seem to have become common in sect Shinto, at least, and when the crown prince married before the kami, this provided a push. Hibiya Daijingū, later Tokyo Daijingū, held a mock wedding in 1899, to demonstrate the ceremony, and most sources say that the first real wedding was held in 1902. However, Kimura has found references to at least two earlier ceremonies, in July 1901. The reason for the common misunderstanding seems to be that the 1902 wedding received a lot of newspaper coverage, as part of a deliberate strategy to encourage people to follow this form.

That then became the model for weddings at normal jinja, and they increased in popularity, until they were officially recognised in 1926, as noted earlier.

This means that weddings as conducted in jinja today are based on a tradition that is about 150 years old. Tourists enthusing about the traditional Japanese weddings they see at Meiji Jingū probably do not realise just how recent that tradition is — although it is older than the jinja.