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Hatsumōdë Video

Jinja Honchō has created a couple of advertising videos to encourage people to go to Hatsumōdë, visiting a jinja at the new year. There are 15 and 30 second edits, but I will just link to the longer one, because it does appear to include the whole of the shorter one. It may not be obvious what all the images are, so here are some explanations. 00: Sunrise. Or maybe sunset played backwards, but it is representing sunrise. This is probably because the first sunrise of the new year is… Read More »Hatsumōdë Video

New Book: Shinto in Person: Tokyo

My new book on Shinto, Shinto in Person: Tokyo, is now available for purchase on Amazon and Gumroad. There will be a print version available on Amazon very soon (possibly by the time you read this), but the approval process for hardcopy takes a bit longer than that for Kindle books. As the blurb says, the book is for someone who wants to visit jinja in Tokyo and learn about Shinto as they go. It does talk about the individual jinja, but it is more about broader Shinto culture, and… Read More »New Book: Shinto in Person: Tokyo

Transferring the Kami

At most jinja, the kami are held to be present in an object, referred to as the “goshintai” or “honourable kami body”, which is kept in the main sanctuary and never seen by the public. However, if the main sanctuary needs to be repaired or rebuilt, the kami need to be moved out while the work takes place, and moved back afterwards. This is called a “senzasai”, or “moving seat matsuri”, because the kami move to a different seat during the matsuri. The November 25th issue of Jinja Shinpō had… Read More »Transferring the Kami

Unproductive Board Meeting

The December 9th issue of Jinja Shinpō reported on a special meeting of the Jinja Honchō Board of Directors, which was held on November 29th to discuss the disputed presidency. Jinja Honchō’s position on the court decision and the dispute was explained, and they reported that they had asked Revd Ashihara about compensation for the costs to Jinja Honchō, his moral responsibility, the background to his application to change the registered president, and his interpretation of the court decision. They also explained his answers in detail (but the article does… Read More »Unproductive Board Meeting

Rites for the Dead

In Japan, most people die Buddhist. (Born Shinto, Marry Christian, Die Buddhist) However, a few people do have Shinto funerals, and some family graves are Shinto graves. (Cultural difference alert: Traditionally, people in Japan are buried in the family grave, and the grave stone just says that it is the family grave. The individuals in the grave are recorded somewhere, but that seems to vary.) Traditionally, members of the family tend the family grave over the generations, and perform the appropriate rites for their ancestors. There are even special provisions… Read More »Rites for the Dead

In the Company of Priests

As discussed in the last two posts, as well as this one, I attended the 30th Kanagawa Prefectural Meeting of Jinja-Related People last week. There was time for conversation, so in this post I want to reflect a bit on what it was like. The first thing was that it was very male-dominated. There were women there, including one of the priests from my local jinja who was collecting her 25 year certificate, but they were a small minority. On my table they were three out of nine, and we… Read More »In the Company of Priests