Mimusubi

Early in their reign, the new Tennō performs the Daijōsai, one of the most important rituals in Shinto. I’m not going to write about that here, although I did write two essays about it, which you can now buy from Amazon through this handy affiliate link. The rice offered at the Daijōsai is grown in two sacred fields, with many ceremonies. But I’m not going to write about those ceremonies, either. The sacred fields are chosen through an ancient divination ceremony. I’m not going to write about that. I’m going… Read More »Hewing Wood and Drawing Water

Rev Olivia Bernkastel, a Shinto priest in the Konkōkyō tradition, made some interesting comments on my post “Multiply Religious“. Readers might find her perspective interesting; while we have a lot of points of agreement, her take on things is slightly different from mine.

The November 9th issue of Jinja Shinpō had an interview with the chief priest of Hokkaidō Jingū, who has just been appointed a Chōrō. This appointment is a pure honour, given to priests who have made an important contribution to Jinja Shinto over the course of several decades. They receive a staff with a small statue of a pigeon on top — this is historically significant, but I am not sure of the exact significance. Chōrō is the highest honour that a priest can receive within Jinja Honchō. Anyway, this… Read More »Right-Wing Priests

I have made some more back issues from the Patreon available again. First, I have put Offerings for the Kami on Amazon. This combines my essays on shinsen (offerings of food and drink) and kagura (sacred dance). Both of these essays were heavily edited for space reasons before they were included in my book, to remove almost all of the discussion of specific local examples. If you are interested in reading about special offerings at particular jinja, or traditional local forms of kagura, then you might want to pick this… Read More »More Back Issues Available

After the rather heavy topics of the last few posts, here’s something a bit lighter, albeit still significant. A columnist wrote (in the November 9th issue of Jinja Shinpō) about his childhood in northern Kyushu, where his grandfather and grandmother served at the local Shinto jinja and Buddhist temple. They would take turns, so that while, for example, his grandfather was on the jinja committee, his grandmother would be on the women’s committee for the temple, and when their terms ended, they would swap. So far, so traditionally Japanese. When… Read More »Multiply Religious

A very important feature of Japan at the moment is rural depopulation. Japan’s population is falling overall, and most young people are moving to cities. This has led to rural communities where the average age is around seventy. This causes many problems, and in the grand scheme of things the problems it causes for jinja are probably not the most important. They are, however, the most important from the perspective of this blog. Fundamentally, jinja need a certain number of people living nearby if the matsuri are to be maintained.… Read More »Responding to Depopulation