The Daijōsai is one of the most important Shinto rituals. It is performed once each imperial reign, by the Tennō in person, to honour Amaterasu Ōmikami and all the other kami. The current Tennō will perform it in a week’s time, and I have just released a paid essay on my Patreon describing how the ritual is performed. If you are interested in seeing it, the Patreon Back Numbers page contains details on what to do: you should sign up…
Most jinja are located in Japan which is, as readers of this blog surely know, prone to natural disasters of many kinds. Because there are jinja all across Japan, almost every natural disaster affects at least one of them. Sometimes, they do a lot of damage. Much of the damage done to jinja is no different from the damage done to any other building, albeit often more expensive to repair than a typical family home. However, there is a unique…
Miko vestments are possibly the best known of the standard vestments for staff at jinja, because they feature in a lot of manga and anime. Miko wear bright red hakama (called “hibakama”) over a simple white kimono (called a “byakuë”). Because the hakama completely cover the kimono below the waist, it looks like they are wearing a white top and red bottoms, but the white kimono is also ankle length. (You can find pictures of “miniskirt miko” online without even…
Today is a national holiday in Japan, to celebrate the enthronement of the Tennō. The enthronement ceremony itself happened at 1 pm, with heads of state from around the world in attendance. And it had nothing to do with Shinto. The enthronement ceremony has, in fact, never had anything to do with Shinto. It was originally copied from Chinese models, and until the late nineteenth century, everyone wore traditional Chinese official robes for it. (By the late nineteenth century, those…
As I mentioned in my post about male priestly vestments, the vestments for female priests are different. When female priests were officially permitted after the war, the vestments were initially based on the formal clothes for female Heian aristocrats, just as those for men were based on those for male aristocrats. However, the robes of female courtiers, the “jūnihitoë”, or “twelve robes”, have multiple layers, are very heavy, and are difficult to move in. As a result, it was not…
To celebrate the release of the video about Shinto that I helped Greg Lam of Life Where I’m From to make, I am running a special offer on my Patreon. Anyone who signs up before this month’s paid post (which will go up at 11:55pm Japan time on the 31st), and whose payment clears, will get one or more bonus essays. What you get depends on the level you sign up to. $1 • Matsuri. The heart of Shinto practice….
Shinto priests wear distinctive vestments when performing ceremonies, based on the clothes worn by the nobility of the Heian period (ca 800 – 1200 CE). The vestments are different for male and female priests, and for priests of different ranks, and for matsuri of different levels of importance. This post just gives a couple of representative examples for male priests, as most Shinto priests are still male. (I plan another post on female priests in the near future.) The base…
A couple of weeks ago (in the September 9th issue) I had another article published in Jinja Shinpō. This article was mainly about Shin’yūsha, an organisation that was set up primarily to run workshops for children at which they could encounter Japan’s traditional culture. It is fairly new — less than ten years old — but it has already developed to offer some events aimed at adults. I have attended quite a few of the events, often with my daughter,…
It is now over eight and a half years since the Great East Japan Earthquake, and rebuilding is still in progress across the affected region of Japan. The longest delay has been in Fukushima Prefecture, where the accident at the nuclear reactor meant that work on rebuilding could not even start for years in some areas, and there are still areas close to the reactor that are closed due to radioactive contamination, and likely to remain so for many years…
Shinto is the traditional religion of Japan. As is normal with real-world situations, every single word (even “is”, “the”, and “of”) in that sentence is controversial, and potentially misleading, but it is still the best place to start. I believe that Shinto is best thought of as a religion, but that word tends to create an inaccurate image. Shinto does not have a founder. It also does not really have sacred texts; the oldest collections of Shinto legends are eighth…