journal of shinto studies

Another of the presentation reports in the Journal of Shintō Studies was entitled “The Transformation of the Tateyama Cult and the Resacralization of Cultural Heritage”, by Saeki Yoshifumi. Tateyama is a sacred mountain in Toyama Prefecture, and is one of the most important such mountains in Japan. Before the separation of Shinto and Buddhism at the Meiji Revolution, it was an important centre of syncretic mountain religion, and there were several villages that were dominated by families who made their livings by hosting pilgrims who had come to the mountain.… Read More »Return of the Sacred

Every year, the Society of Shintō Studies holds an academic conference at which its members give short papers. I attended a few years ago, but the pandemic and work commitments mean that I have only been once. I really should try to get there this year. In any case, summaries of the papers are published in the Journal of Shintō Studies a year or so later — in this case, in issue 269. These are very short papers (only a couple of printed pages), but they are a bit more… Read More »Jinja and the State

In this post, I would like to talk about another article from Issue 267/268 of the Journal of Shintō Studies, “Urban Festivals as a Local Resource for Social Interconnectivity: Redevelopment of Nihonbashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, and the Kanda Festival”, by Akino Jun’ichi. This is pretty much the polar opposite of the last article I wrote about, because it concerns the way in which one of the largest matsuri in Japan, the Kanda Matsuri, has responded to a recent surge in the population of its ujiko, including the arrival of dozens of… Read More »City Matsuri

This post is about another article in Issue 267/268 of the Journal of Shintō Studies: “The Effects of Inactive and Semi-Inactive Shintō Shrines on Local Communities — A Case Study of a Super-Aged Community —”, by Fuyutsuki Ritsu. Dr Fuyutsuki has been researching jinja in depopulated areas of Kōchi Prefecture, on the Japanese island of Shikoku, for many years, and has already published a book about it (which I have read, and may write about properly at some point). This article is about the same region, but focuses on a… Read More »Jinja Without Ujiko

I recently read the combined Issue 267/268 of the Journal of Shintō Studies, the academic journal of the Society of Shintō Studies, which I have mentioned before. This was a special issue, “A Religious Studies Perspective on Shintō”, and it contained a number of interesting articles. (I think I have mentioned before this journal has official English titles for all the articles, although the content is only in Japanese.) The article I want to talk about today is “The Meaning of Shichi-go-san and the Impact of COVID” by Taguchi Yūko.… Read More »Shichi-go-san During COVID-19

One article in the April 2022 issue of the Journal of Shintō Studies was about the Naoi Matsuri at Owari Ōkunitama Jinja. This matsuri was revised by the local daimyo in the 18th century, and the revised version is still held today — it is famous as a “naked festival”, which means loincloths only. The main interest of the article is in the contribution that a particular person, an important scholar, made to the revision. It was known that he did contribute, but the documents he submitted have been lost.… Read More »Kidnap Matsuri