Mimusubi

　The 16th February issue of Jinja Shinpō had two full pages that showed very different sides of modern Shinto. The first was the front page, which was dominated by an account of a meeting held in Tokyo to call for the return of the Northern Territories. This is a group of islands off the northeast coast of Hokkaidō that were illegally occupied by the Soviet Union at the end of the Second World War, and never handed back. Indeed, they are the main reason why Japan and the Soviet Union… Read More »Two Sides of Shinto

In connection to my two most recent posts, I want to loop back to the 23rd February issue of Jinja Shinpō, in which two articles caught my attention for their treatment of foreigners. One was the latest instalment of Revd Kanzaki’s regular column. He is a priest and “minzokugakusha” (民俗学者), which my dictionary translates as “folklorist”. That’s wrong, and I think “cultural anthropologist” would be closer — but also wrong, because the implication of the Japanese is a focus on one’s own culture. In any case, he studies Japanese culture… Read More »Foreigners Again

The March 2nd issue of Jinja Shinpō included an article about Mimusubi. Admittedly, it was by me. The article was an explicit response to an article published in December, by a priest from Aichi Prefecture. That article was officially about how omamori are, and should be, treated in Reiwa, the current Japanese era. However, the main message was that jinja should avoid supplying omamori to foreigners, because they will just resell them online, treat them badly, and throw them away. He also mentioned that he felt fed up at seeing… Read More »Mimusubi in Jinja Shinpō

The second question raised for me by A Path into the Mountains (still an affiliate link!) was “Can Buddhas be venerated as kami?”. The reverse is clearly possible, as it is generally agreed to have been common for about a thousand years of Japanese history. Kami were taken to be provisional manifestations of more fundamental Buddhas — forms taken to enable the Buddhas to bring enlightenment to the Japanese. Thus, the kami were revered as Buddhas, and this was a standard part of Japanese Buddhism. What about the reverse? Is… Read More »Buddhas as Kami

I have recently read A Path into the Mountains, by Caleb Swift Carter. (Affiliate link!) The book is about historical practice at Togakushi Jinja (戸隠神社), and I have to confess that I had a serious problem with the methodology. Essentially, Carter’s position is that if a tradition doesn’t, institutionally, look like Tendai Buddhism, with a coherent set of deities, doctrines, and lineages, then it probably doesn’t exist, and certainly isn’t important. This results in the claim that Shinto only became involved at Togakushi in the mid Edo-period, because there is… Read More »Shugendō and Shinto