Issue 279/280 of the Journal of Shintō Studies included an article by Takeda Atsushi (武田淳) entitled “What is Virtual Visiting to a shrine? Focusing on Shintō Shrines”. In Japanese, he talks about “virtual sanpai”, which is the term I will use here, because English doesn’t really have a good word for “sanpai” (参拝).
The first point he makes is that the English word “virtual” does not mean quite the same as its Japanese translations, including the katakana word “baacharu”. In English, a “virtual X” is equivalent to an X in central and important ways, but it is not fully X. This is seen clearly in the idiomatic usage of “it’s virtually complete”. In Japanese, however, the words mean not real, or fake. One of Takeda’s concerns in the article is to see whether there is a coherent concept of virtual sanpai in the English sense of “virtual”.
In the process, he analyses the online presence of several jinja. Some websites, including the one that first described itself as a “virtual sanpai”, are actually just information about the jinja, available online. People are not engaged in a religious activity there. Others are online booking systems for gokitō, formal prayers, and sometimes you can also make the offering online, and have it carried out by the priests. This is, indirectly, a religious activity, but the religious part does not happen while you are online.
There are also cases in which people can attend a gokitō or matsuri online, through a video conferencing system. These are particularly interesting, because the activity is certainly religious, and it seems to be happening, while the person is online, through the medium of the internet.
Takeda points out that there are historical analogies for this, most notably the practice of distant reverence, or “yōhai” (遥拝). This was more common in the past, but is still practised today. (Although, when the prime minister was said to have performed yōhai for Yasukuni Jinja on August 15th, one newspaper accused her staff of digging obsolete words out of the dictionary — so you now know a Japanese word most Japanese people do not.) People pay their respects to a distant jinja, either through a dedicated site created for the purpose, or through the natural environment. Typically, people face towards the jinja to pay their respects. One of the examples he gives, Sakura Jingū in Tokyo, is explicit that the website is supporting people in doing this.
The clearest example of a “virtual sanpai” that he discusses is at Fukushima Hachimangū (福島八幡宮), which is in Fukuoka (not Fukushima) Prefecture. There, one can attend an online gokitō. The video conferencing system is two-way, with a large monitor in the prayer hall to display the petitioner. The petitioner is, apparently, purified through that monitor, and presumably also pays their respects there. However, the jinja only accepts applications from people who are connected to the local area, because they recognise the importance of local linkage. This practice started during the pandemic, when it was difficult to attend the jinja in person no matter how local you were.
He also discusses the case of Torikai Hachimangū (鳥飼八幡宮), which has a virtual jinja in the metaverse. However, he discussed that in a presentation he gave a couple of years ago, and I have already written about it.
He thinks that the Fukushima Hachimangū example is the most interesting from the perspective of praxology. There is clearly no fundamental problem with providing information online, and there are a lot of precedents for asking for gokitō by proxy, and so online requests also raise no fundamental issues. On the other hand, the fully virtual jinja raises too many questions to allow sensible discussion at this point.
The virtual sanpai with two-way interaction through the video conferencing system at Fukushima Hachimangū, however, raises important questions about what is necessary. Can someone be purified by waving the ōnusa over a monitor on which they are displayed? How does this relate to actual, physical presence in the jinja? Is it the same? Is it lacking something but still better than simply sending someone else? Can you link to the kami that way? (“Amë-no-Uzumë, AIM? No? You Zoom?”)
Takeda does not purport to answer those questions — he is a graduate student at Kokugakuin University — but I think he is right about their intrinsic interest.