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2024 Noto Earthquake

Reactions to the Noto Earthquake

The responses to Jinja Shinpō’s survey about hatsumōdë this year also included quite a few references to the 2024 Noto Earthquake — naturally enough, as it happened on January 1st. A couple of local reporters who live in the area did respond. One started by saying that messages of support had started coming from the Shinto community almost immediately after the earthquake, and for that they were very grateful. However, not only had the sanctuaries been destroyed, but so had the surrounding area. With the population shrinking and mostly elderly,… Read More »Reactions to the Noto Earthquake

A Norito for Noto

The National Association of Young Shinto Priests recently prepared and published two norito for use when praying for recovery from the 2024 Noto Earthquake. They can be downloaded (in Japanese, of course) from the association’s website. One of the norito is for use in jinja, while the other is for use at home, at one’s kamidana. I thought that my readers might be interested in the kamidama one, so I contacted one of the vice-presidents of the group, with whom I had worked on one of the projects through Jinja… Read More »A Norito for Noto

The 2024 Noto Earthquake 5

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the March 4th issue of Jinja Shinpō included an article on the damage in Toyama Prefecture. This article was a solid page of text listing jinja, again by chief priest, and the damage to each jinja. Even so, it didn’t cover the whole of the prefecture — two areas were held over for a later issue. A comparison between this article and the corresponding article for Ishikawa Prefecture makes the difference in impact starkly apparent. The Ishikawa article included a number of… Read More »The 2024 Noto Earthquake 5

The 2024 Noto Earthquake 4

The February 19th issue of Jinja Shinpō devoted a whole page to a list of jinja damaged by the earthquake on January 1st. For most of them, there is also a summary of the damage. I did read it all, but I’m not going to go through it one jinja at a time. I think that might be a struggle even for this interested audience. There are a few points I want to pick up, however. First, the reports are grouped by chief priest, presumably because the chief priest provided… Read More »The 2024 Noto Earthquake 4

The 2024 Noto Earthquake 3

The response to the Noto Peninsula Earthquake on January 1st continues, and it is still a common subject on the news. People have started to move into the medium-term temporary housing that the state builds after a major earthquake, but a significant number (over 10,000) are still in evacuation centres. Given that the area was remote to start with, and considering the damage to the routes into it, it is not clear how much more quickly they could have been helped. However, the preoccupation of the central government with a… Read More »The 2024 Noto Earthquake 3

The 2024 Noto Earthquake 2

As expected, Jinja Shinpō has continued to report on the Noto earthquake. NHK news has also been covering it; the new problem is heavy snowfall, which might bring damaged buildings down and is hindering recovery efforts, as well as putting people in evacuation centres at risk of hypothermia. It sounds as though the authorities have set up to make it possible for everyone in evacuation centres to move temporarily to hotels in safer areas, but that means leaving their homes behind for an unknown period of time, so most have… Read More »The 2024 Noto Earthquake 2