David Chart

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 Japan, before going on to retell some of the myths. They include the variant forms of the myths found in different sources, which can sometimes be really different. Parts of these essays are included in… Read More »New Back Issues

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, the article was not about the main sanctuary or the main kami. The precincts of the jinja include two large sugi trees (cryptomeria; Japanese cedar), which are known as “Husband-and-Wife Cedars”, because they grow close… Read More »Tree Spirits

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 this answer. The first is that Jinja Honchō avoids, as a matter of policy, deciding either of those issues. I have been told, on several occasions, to phrase things more indirectly because they do not… Read More »Who Decides?

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 (in writing, and in less than perfectly temperate language), and he was fired for harming the reputation of Jinja Honchō and disturbing its internal order. The judgement, at the Tokyo District Court, was handed down… Read More »Court Case

On February 24th, the Supreme Court of Japan issued a judgement in a case concerning a Confucian temple in a public park in Naha, Okinawa. The city had allowed the temple to use the land without charge, and the Supreme Court ruled that that was unconstitutional, and that the city was required, by law, to charge the full market rate. This is not directly related to Shinto, but the general issue of the relationship between religion and the state is of great importance to the Shinto community, and particularly the… Read More »Religion and the State in Japan

Kokugakuin University is one of the two Shinto universities in Japan. It is the older one, and it is located in Tokyo, although it also has a campus in Yokohama. At the end of February, it took over the entire back page of Jinja Shinpō to introduce some of the activities that took place over the last academic year in the Shinto Studies Department. Thanks to the pandemic, these were somewhat limited: the moon-viewing festival in October, the memorial matsuri for students of the university killed during WWII, also in… Read More »Kokugakuin University