At the weekend I watched a television programme, on NHK, that featured Princess Akiko of Mikasa. However, they did not refer to her as a princess, or address her as “your highness” — they simply called her “Akiko-sama”.
This is because she was not on the programme as a princess. She was there as an expert. The programme was about an exhibition of Japanese art in the collection of the British Museum that is happening in Tokyo at the moment. Akiko-sama’s D.Phil (PhD, but from Oxford) was on the reception of Japanese art in Britain, and she worked on the Japanese collection at the British Museum for several years, even personally uncovering one of the works in the exhibition in the museum stores. (She was set to going through the catalogues to make a unified list of Japanese prints and paintings, and found something that looked significant — it was.) Thus, her “katagaki” (肩書き), the indication of her position in society, was “Special Professor in the Japanese Culture Research Centre of Kyoto Sangyō University”. She was very happy about this — she said, in the programme, that it was one of her dreams to be invited onto a programme as an expert, and that it had now come true. (They did mention, briefly, at the beginning, that she was a member of the Imperial family, probably to explain why she has no surname. And one of the English interviewees referred to her as “the princess” once, but it was subtitled as “Akiko-sama”.)
Apart from being a fun story, this is also relevant to the Shinto world. Revd Tanaka, the President of Jinja Honchō, often appears in Jinja Shinpō as the President of Jinja Honchō. He also appears as the head of the General Research Centre of Jinja Honchō, a position I believe he holds ex officio, and as the head of Kyoto Prefectural Jinjachō. When there is an article about Iwashimizu Hachimangū, he is mentioned as the chief priest of that jinja.
This also happens with priests who are chief priests of multiple jinja. They are referred to as the chief priest of the jinja that the article is about, even if it is not their main jinja, and if one of their other jinja is mentioned the note of its chief priest says “chief priest = Chief Priest Suzuki”, to indicate that it is the same person. The “Chief Priest” title here, however, refers to their position at the main jinja in the article.
This is even more obvious when a Prefectural Jinjachō holds an event at the jinja where the head of the Jinjachō (the chōchō) is chief priest. He is introduced as, for example, Suzuki Chōchō (蝶々, no, wait, that’s “butterfly”, 庁長), and then when the jinja is introduced the notation says “chief priest = Suzuki Chōchō”. In such cases, when the event starts with a matsuri at the jinja, it is normally led by the deputy chief priest, because the chief priest is there in his capacity as the head of the Jinjachō, and is thus, in a sense, not a priest at the jinja, just as Akiko-sama was not a princess in the programme.
An odd effect of this is that large meetings of Kyoto Prefectural Jinjachō are attended by the vice-president or a director as the representative of Jinja Honchō. The president is there, of course, because he is also the head of the Jinjachō, but he is not there as the president, and so he cannot represent Jinja Honchō.
Another important example concerns Yasukuni Jinja (靖國神社). In recent years, prime ministers have avoided visiting the jinja, but they have sent offerings on significant days. However, they have consistently used the katagaki “President of the Liberal Democratic Party”, not “Prime Minister of Japan”. It is true that the objections have seemed rather muted in recent years, so maybe this is working.
Of course, this is a feature of Japanese society as a whole, not just the Shinto community. There is a strong sense in which you are the role you are currently playing, no matter what other roles you might have. I feel that this is stronger in Japan than in the west — in the west, my sense is that someone’s most important title always takes precedence. In Japan, it definitely does not.
This can create problems for people, like me, who do not have a clear role to give them a katagaki.