work for jinja honcho

The 29th September issue of Jinja Shinpō carried a second article connected to me, this one about one of the projects I have worked on at Jinja Honchō. This is a poster explaining basic manners for visiting a jinja. With the massive increase in foreign tourists in Japan, this has become a bit of a problem. The events that get a lot of publicity are things like influencers doing chin-ups on torii, but the things that become a real issue are more subtle. I mean, most reasonable people realise that… Read More »Etiquette Poster

A week or so ago I was in Kazakhstan again with Jinja Honchō for the eighth Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions. This year the Pope wasn’t there, but we did have a cardinal, the two Chief Rabbis of Israel, the Patriarchs of Moscow and Jerusalem, and numerous representatives of the Islamic world, from Iran to Indonesia. There were also representatives of Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and us, for Shinto. In total, there were 101 delegations, and the event was chaired by the President of Kazakhstan. Jinja Honchō has… Read More »A Patriarch, a President, and a Rabbi

A few weeks ago, a reader left a comment noting that I was optimistic about the future of Shinto. This is true, and there are reasons for that, despite all the problems at Jinja Honchō, the shortage of priests, and the declining population of Japan. I should be clear that I do not think that every jinja in Japan will survive into the future. Indeed, I know they will not. Some have already been merged, and there was an article in Jinja Shinpō a few years ago about a group… Read More »Reasons for Optimism

With Jinja Honchō’s new website, they have also made some new pamphlets public. Soul of Japan and Jinja were available before, but the others, I think, are new. Matsuri was mainly by the other consultant, so I am not going to say much about it — although it is worth reading. I wrote Shinto Myths a couple of years ago (checking my files, actually 2021-2), but I don’t think it made it online before the beginning of this month. The art and layout took quite some time, and as you… Read More »Pamphlets

Last Saturday I was interpreting at a seminar that Jinja Honchō held for the Diplomatic Corps in Tokyo, on Shinto and Noh. This was the latest in a series that used to be annual, but that got interrupted by the pandemic — it finally restarted this year. As the speaker who opened said, Noh has a reputation for being hard to understand, boring, and soporific. Fortunately, the seminar wasn’t. That opening speaker, Kenji Kato, noted that there has been a lot of work on the relationship between Noh and Zen… Read More »Shinto and Noh and Diplomats