work for jinja honcho

We have made some more videos at Jinja Honchō, and they went up on YouTube at the end of last week, so in this post I will introduce them. First, the three-minute version. We filmed this last October, on the same day as last year’s hatsumōdë video. I talked about the process of filming in the earlier post, so I will write about the content today. It is probably better to watch the video first. The concept was an “image video”, with no words, that gives an impression of what… Read More »Jinja Videos

Last week, I interpreted at a seminar held by Jinja Honchō for the diplomatic corps in Tokyo. Attendance was not great because it was Easter weekend and the weather was foul, but some people did come, and they said that they enjoyed the seminar. The subject was gagaku. Gagaku is the tradition of court music that is now played at many Shinto matsuri, and that accompanies miko kagura, the sacred dance performed by miko. The seminar started with a lecture from the head of the oldest non-governmental gagaku group in… Read More »Gagaku for Diplomats

The previous post, about my most recent article in Jinja Shinpō, touches on the question of why I am writing about Shinto and working for Jinja Honchō. In this post, I want to address that question directly. I am not doing it for the money, although the fact that I get paid means that I can afford to spend enough time on it to do something potentially useful. I am also not doing it just because I am interested in, and a practitioner of, Shinto, although obviously I would not… Read More »Why I Do This

A couple of videos involving jinja have recently been released. First, one from Akita Prefectural Police, warning people against cons on social media: “What does this have to do with Shinto?” you might ask, apart from starring a miko, that is. Well, er, nothing. However, the jinja where this was filmed has been running self-defence classes for its miko in cooperation with the prefectural police for years, and so they got talking about the police’s anti-fraud campaign. That led to the jinja agreeing to work with them. Apparently, the superhero… Read More »Some Videos

On Monday, I spent most of the day at a jinja that shall remain nameless, assisting at the filming of two videos for Jinja Honchō. During the morning, we were filming for an “image video” aimed at non-Japanese, and in the early afternoon we were filming for this year’s hatsumōdë promotion video (which, of course, is promoting next year’s hatsumōdë). The plan is for both of these to go up on Jinja Honchō’s YouTube channel, and so unless something goes horribly wrong I will write about the content then. I… Read More »Filming at a Jinja