I thought I’d do a very simple post with some photographs I took recently (over the last couple of weeks) of jinja and other Shinto things near my home. This is a dōsojin, which used to stand at a junction of roads at the edge of a field, but now stands at the side of […]
Removing Offerings
When should you take offerings down from your kamidana? A few weeks ago, someone left a comment on the blogpost on my old website about kamidana, suggesting that leaving the offerings there for two weeks proved that I knew nothing about Shinto and certainly couldn’t have written a useful book about it. Now, that blog […]
New Back Issues
I have just made some more back issues of the Patreon essays available for purchase. First, on Amazon, there is Myths of Creation and Amaterasu. This combines two of my past essays, Shinto Myths and Myths of Amaterasu, and explains the sources for early Shinto myths, and the role they have played in Shinto and […]
Tree Spirits
The March 29th issue of Jinja Shinpō had an interesting article about a new feature of Fuji Sengen Jinja, a jinja in Oyama, in Shizuoka Prefecture. The town is very close to Mount Fuji, and the Sengen Jinja enshrine the kami of that mountain, identified as Konohanasakuyabimë, who is also identified with cherry blossoms. However, […]
Who Decides?
Who gets to decide whether someone may practise Shinto, and whether they are doing it right? This is, it turns out, a really hard question. The obvious answer might well be “Jinja Honchō”. It is, after all, the largest Shinto organisation in Japan, representing the overwhelming majority of mainstream jinja. There are two problems with […]
Court Case
I have mentioned before on this blog that there is an ongoing issue in the Shinto world, more specifically at Jinja Honchō, as a former staff member has sued it for (the Japanese equivalent of) unfair dismissal. He reported his concerns about a particular real estate transaction to two members of the board of directors […]