Skip to content

David Chart

Gagaku for Diplomats

Last week, I interpreted at a seminar held by Jinja Honchō for the diplomatic corps in Tokyo. Attendance was not great because it was Easter weekend and the weather was foul, but some people did come, and they said that they enjoyed the seminar. The subject was gagaku. Gagaku is the tradition of court music that is now played at many Shinto matsuri, and that accompanies miko kagura, the sacred dance performed by miko. The seminar started with a lecture from the head of the oldest non-governmental gagaku group in… Read More »Gagaku for Diplomats

New Book

I’ve just published another collection of essays from the Patreon on Amazon: Myths from Fudoki Fragments 2. (Affiliate link!) This book includes three essays on Shinto-related myths found in fragments of the eighth-century Fudoki, texts compiled by Imperial order to describe the regions of Japan. Not all of the fragments are genuine, but it is impossible to be sure which are real, which are later paraphrases, and which are entirely spurious. This is something I discuss in the book. This collection includes the original version of the Urashima Tarō story.… Read More »New Book

Kami Who Have Sex

Content warning: See the title… A book I have read recently is Maguwau Kamigami (まぐわう神々), by Kanzaki Noritakë (神崎宣武). The title can be translated as “Kami Who Have Sex”, and it is about explicitly sexual elements in Shinto practice. The first thing to note is that Kanzaki is a Shinto priest and ethnologist, and has a regular column in Jinja Shinpō. His new books invariably get a positive review in the newspaper. But not this one. This one was passed over in silence. The executive summary is that explicitly sexual… Read More »Kami Who Have Sex

Going Digital

The hatsumōdë survey published in the March 9th issue of Jinja Shinpō also covered several aspects of the digital transformation. Social media, AI, and cashless payments were picked out as major issues, and there seem to have been a lot of responses. The attitude to social media is broadly positive, and a lot of priests are seeing good results from putting photographs of their jinja on Facebook or Instagram. They also mentioned that if you put information about events and such online, people, particularly young people, find it there, and… Read More »Going Digital

Jingū Taima 2026

Both the results of the hatsumōdë survey published in Jinja Shinpō on March 9th and a couple of articles, including the front page lead, on March 16th deal with the distribution of Jingū Taima. Jingū Taima are ofuda from Isë Jingū, and the position of the Shinto establishment is that every household in Japan should have one on their kamidana. According to the articles published on the 16th, last season (that is, over the new year period coming into this year) 7,836,747 were distributed, a fall of 106,101 from the… Read More »Jingū Taima 2026

Hatsumōdë Survey 2026

Jinja Shinpō has once again conducted its annual survey of its correspondents, priests at jinja across Japan, to find out how hatsumōdë went, and to hear about other issues. The results were published in the March 9th issue. This survey was started during the pandemic, but it seems that I am not the only one to find its results very interesting and useful. This year, there is no mention of the pandemic or of changes related to it, and so it seems to have become a regular annual event. I… Read More »Hatsumōdë Survey 2026