new priests

The April 27th issue of Jinja Shinpō carried the annual article about newly graduated priests on its front page. This article is about priests who have completed full-time courses, mostly at Kōgakkan and Kokugakuin Universities. (There are half-a-dozen much smaller institutions around the country, but they had a total of only thirteen graduates this year.) It does not include people who train part-time, or through the short (eight weeks or so) courses held by prefectural Jinjachō. I do not know exact numbers for priests trained through these two routes, but… Read More »New Priests 2026

The 28 April issue of Jinja Shinpō included the annual article about the employment of newly qualified priests. I have been writing about these since 2017. One notable change this year was a substantial fall in the number of people qualifying as priests: a drop of 26 to 136 at Kokugakuin University, and of 24 to 66 at Kōgakkan University. The majority of these students were on four year courses, which means that these people entered university in 2021, at the height of the pandemic. This drop probably says nothing… Read More »New Priests 2025

Every year, Jinja Shinpō publishes a summary of the newly-qualified priests and their employment destinations. This covers the people who train full time for at least a year, and mainly focuses on the Shinto universities of Kokugakuin University in Tokyo and Kōgakkan University in Isë. It does not cover the people who qualify through the short intensive courses, but you can only take those if you already have a post lined up at a jinja, making employment statistics a bit boring. This year’s report was in the April 22nd issue.… Read More »New Priests 2024

The April 24th issue of Jinja Shinpō carried an article reporting on the graduation of priests from the main training centres for the Shinto priesthood. Overwhelmingly, this means Kokugakuin University in Tokyo and Kōgakkan University in Isë. (The other six have nineteen graduates between them, while Kokugakuin alone has 151.) The reports cover three points. The first is the shortage of priests. At Kokugakuin, 151 people qualified as priests and 109 took jobs at jinja, 102 of them as priests. (The other seven were miko or non-priest staff, and six… Read More »New Priests 2023

On April 25th, Jinja Shinpō published its standard annual review of newly qualified priests and their employment. (The Japanese academic year ends at the end of March, so that is when they graduate.) This year, 72 new priests graduated from Kōgakkan University (in Isë), ten fewer than last year, and 149 graduated from Kokugakuin University (in Tokyo), nine fewer than last year. At Kōgakkan, 58 graduates (80.5%) got jobs at jinja, over 90% of them as priests. This was also largely true of the female graduates: there were 22 graduating… Read More »New Priests 2022

Japanese graduation season has come and gone again, and, as usual, Jinja Shinpō has published an article about the new priests who graduated from the main training centres, particularly Kokugakuin and Kōgakkan Universities. At Kokugakuin, 158 people were licensed as priests, including 60 women, while at Kōgakkan there were 82, including 16 women. 108 from Kokugakuin and 68 from Kōgakkan went to work in jinja. It is notable that, of the 50 who took jobs outside Shinto, 24 were women. Given the overall proportions, this does suggest that it is… Read More »New Priests 2021