The August 3rd issue of Jinja Shinpō included a double-page spread of articles about sacred forests. One article was about the sacred forests at Jingū, but since I wrote about them two weeks ago, I will skip over that one here.
The other articles were about caring for sacred forests. One was by an expert on urban trees, talking about the issues specific to them. As he points out, trees die. They live a lot longer than people, but they do die, and then fall over. Before they reach that point, individual branches die, and drop off. In a natural forest, this is good, as it creates space for new trees and returns nutrients to the soil. In an urban setting, it is a problem, because the falling tree is very likely to cause damage. Not only that, but the urban environment is not great for trees, and so they tend to have shorter lifespans than they do in natural forests. Thus, he emphasises the need to monitor such trees, and intervene before problems occur.
A linked pair of articles described the introduction of education about sacred forests, and care for their trees, into the curricula of the two Shinto universities, Kokugakuin and Kōgakkan. At the moment, this takes the form of one-off sessions in which the students visit a sacred forest and listen to explanations from an expert, along with an experience of transplanting a tree. Kōgakkan, however, is planning to develop this into a full course, and it is possible that Kokugakuin will do something similar in the future.
The next article was about a training course for “sacred forest instructors”, run by the Sacred Forest Study Group. This course runs over two days, and covers the history and composition of sacred forests, as well as the necessary care. The program has been running for almost twenty years, but only a few people have completed it — fewer than thirty. This article, which was advertising this year’s course, is probably part of a push to expand it. With changes under the biodiversity treaty, the sacred forests at jinja can be registered with the state as contributing to preserving biodiversity, and the article mentions four that already have been. If they train more experts, they may be able to get more sacred forests registered. Legal recognition should, at the very least, make it easier to resist pressure to replace the forests with other developments, and there are signs that other support may be made available.
The editorial in this issue was on a different page, but it took up this topic. It emphasised the importance of maintaining the forests, and mentioned a number of existing resources that might help. It also acknowledged that there was a wide range of sacred forests, from the vast woodlands at Jingū that will support the Shikinen Sengū and the artificial forest at Meiji Jingū that is now an important oasis of biodiversity in Tokyo, to the forests at jinja where the priest is responsible for many jinja and does not know how they are going to find the money to cut down trees that have died.
This is clearly an issue that is becoming more prominent in the Shinto community, and I hope that means that the sacred forests will be preserved for the future.