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Kokugakuin University

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

Hachiman Ōkami

I have mentioned in my essays that Hachiman Ōkami is actually several kami, and not always the same ones. A few weeks ago, I received a leaflet from the organisation of jinja in Amakusa, several islands just off the cost of Kyushu, which lists all 31 jinja in the area with resident chief priests, together with their kami. There are a few Hachiman jinja (Hachimangū), but they have a wide range of kami. (The names below are transcribed from the kanji, because the leaflet doesn’t give readings. That means that… Read More »Hachiman Ōkami

Working With Disagreements

As I have mentioned before on this blog, and indeed on the “About” page, I work (part-time, as a consultant) for Jinja Honchō, the largest and most influential Shinto organisation in Japan. This might seem like a natural pairing. After all, I practise Shinto, and write about it on my own time. However, Jinja Honchō is a right-wing organisation, and I am not a right-wing person. Jinja Honchō is so right wing that people write books with titles like Jinja Honchō: The Extreme Right Wing Organisation That Controls The Prime… Read More »Working With Disagreements

New Snake

Yesterday was the first day of the rabbit in March this year, so my local jinja, Shirahata Hachiman Daijin, held its Hatsu-u Matsuri, or First Rabbit Festival. As part of this, a large straw snake, with vegetables for facial features and a wooden sword sticking out of its tail, is made and tied onto the inner torii. The snake is left in place until the summer matsuri, in July, and so gets a bit battered over time. Today, however, it’s still fairly fresh.

Hatsumōdë: The Visitors’ View

In my last post, I reported on Jinja Shinpō’s hatsumōdë survey of about 400 priests across the country. They also conducted an online survey of about a thousand “ordinary” Japanese, to see how they had handled hatsumōdë this year. The first result they reported is that 78.2% of them had come across the encouragement to spread out hatsumōdë visits. That advertising campaign really does seem to have been effective, which underwrites the complaints made by rural priests, reported in my last post, that it was too much “one size fits… Read More »Hatsumōdë: The Visitors’ View

Shinto Ethics Essay

Buy Essay Last month’s Patreon essay was about Shinto ethics, and it is now available for purchase on Gumroad, for people who did not get it through the Patreon. Shinto does not put much emphasis on ethics, but that does not mean that the topic is entirely ignored. Obviously, individual Shinto priests have ethical standards, and priests do criticise certain activities on ethical grounds. However, there is very little in the way of “official” statements on ethics, which means that this essay is a distillation of things that have been… Read More »Shinto Ethics Essay