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hatsumōdë survey

Jinja and Jingū

With preparations for the next Shikinen Sengū at Isë Jingū properly underway, the survey that Jinja Shinpō carried out about hatsumōdë this year asked specifically about the distribution of Jingū Taima and gathering support, primarily financial, for the Shikinen Sengū. Jingū Taima are the ofuda for Isë Jingū, and Jinja Honchō’s official position is that every household in Japan should have one. They are distributed through local jinja, mainly at the end of the year, although you can receive one at almost any jinja throughout the year. One of Jinja… Read More »Jinja and Jingū

Hatsumōdë Manners

Quite a few of the responses to Jinja Shinpō’s survey on hatsumōdë dealt, in one way or another, with hatsumōdë etiquette. One problem that has come up before is that people are too well-mannered. They line up to pay their respects, and wait patiently in line, even when the line gets really, really long. One priest noted that they try to get four or five people to pay their respects at once, because there is plenty of space, but if they (the priests) go away again, it soon drifts back… Read More »Hatsumōdë Manners

Hatsumōdë Survey 2025

Jinja Shinpō published the results of its survey of its correspondent priests in the 3rd March issue. This survey is nominally about hatsumōdë, but the priests take the opportunity to write about lots of issues. The paper has been doing this for a few years (2024, 2023, 2022), but I think they have been expanding it over time. It is an incredibly valuable window onto the views of a wide range of priests, and I think that may be why it has been expanded. There will be six posts about… Read More »Hatsumōdë Survey 2025

Depopulation

Rural depopulation was, apparently, a topic that a lot of priests mentioned in the survey about hatsumōdë that Jinja Shinpō carried out and reported in the March 18th issue. It is the only subject where they explicitly mention that they do not have space to report all the comments that they received. This obviously is a serious problem, and one that I have mentioned many times before. The comments in the survey bring out two aspects of it. One is the absolutely simple “there are not enough people” problem. One… Read More »Depopulation

Jingū Taima

Jingū Taima (the ofuda from Jingū at Isë) are largely distributed around New Year, and so this was another topic that came up in the survey. Coincidentally, the matsuri at Jingū to mark the end of this year’s distribution was held on March 5th, and was also reported in the March 18th issue of Jinja Shinpō. This article also includes the reports on numbers distributed. This year, 8,038,452 Jingū Taima were distributed, a fall of 43,714 compared to last year. Although the numbers have fallen for fourteen consecutive years, since… Read More »Jingū Taima

Coins and Cards

A couple of issues that I have mentioned previously also came up in the free responses to the hatsumōdë survey, both connected to practical issues around offerings. The first is the service charge for depositing coins. Most jinja seem to have failed to find a way around that. Some are simply giving one yen coins (which cost more than one yen to deposit in a bank account) to UNICEF, while others have managed to make arrangements with local shops that cope most of the year, but cannot handle the vast… Read More »Coins and Cards