I have occasionally threatened to write a book entitled And Then It Burnt Down: An Architectural History of Japan, because fires are such a recurrent part of Japanese architectural history. Indeed, in the Edo period the saying was that the Edo (modern Tokyo) had two sorts of flowers: fights and fires. (The original Japanese doesn’t alliterate as nicely as the English translation.) Concerns with fire prevention are still very strong in Japan, and the front page of the February 2nd issue of Jinja Shinpō was all about one of these events: Cultural Heritage Fire Prevention Day.
This is held every year on January 26th, marking the anniversary of a fire in 1949 at Hōryūji, a Buddhist temple and the oldest extant wooden structure in the world, in which some important wall paintings were badly damaged. The event was first held in 1955, so this year was the 72nd. It is, I think, primarily aimed at people and groups responsible for cultural heritage buildings, as an annual reminder to check their fire prevention and response policies. There are articles in Jinja Shinpō every year about jinja that do something on the day.
This year, it was Ōkunitama Jinja in Tokyo, which held a fire drill involving its own fire-fighting group (I think), the local fire fighting group, and the local fire brigade. (As I said, fighting fires is a big thing in Japan.) The scenario was a large earthquake in Tokyo, which started a fire in the prayer hall. First, the miko tried to put it out (and failed, for the purposes of the exercise), and then the jinja’s group evacuated people and cultural treasures, before trying to extinguish the “fire” as the city’s Women’s Fire Prevention Group treated the “casualties”. Finally, the external fire fighting groups joined them in spraying lots of water onto the roof of the prayer hall.
This sort of practice is, of course, extremely valuable, particularly when problems are discovered, and one of the reasons for printing the article is doubtless to encourage other jinja to think about doing the same.
There was also a report of a notice issued by Jinja Honchō in response to this year’s firefighting white paper, published by the government, and a report of the white paper itself. Last February, there was a very large wildfire around Ōfunato in northern Japan, and the response has been to strengthen prevention measures. The most relevant part is that the government will start issuing formal cautions and warnings when conditions are such that there is a serious risk of wildfires starting. When such a warning is in effect, there will be legal limits on what you can do, and that includes having a large outdoor fire to burn old omamori and ofuda. Such fires are an ancient tradition in Japan, and the only officially approved way of disposing of such things. However, they traditionally happen in mid-January, which is in the middle of the wildfire season here. (Winter is dry on the Pacific coast, often with strong winds. The Japan Sea coast gets several metres of snow, and summer is damp everywhere.) Thus, the notice was to remind jinja that, no matter how traditional it is, they will still be fined if they do it while a warning is in effect. The changes also plan to introduce an obligation to formally notify the authorities before you have a bonfire or something similar in areas or time periods when it might be mistaken for a wildfire, or cause one. The notice reminds jinja that this also applies to traditional ceremonies.
Jinja are mostly wooden, and house the sacred vessel of the kami, and so the Shinto community is strongly motivated to stop them burning down. Again.