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Ujigami Jinja and Sūkei Jinja

There is a fundamental division between types of jinja in Jinja Shinto. There are ujigami jinja, and there are sūkei jinja. An ujigami jinja is supported by the people who live in the area around that jinja, while a sūkei jinja is supported by people who feel a connection to the jinja, no matter where they live. Historically, almost all jinja were ujigami jinja. Travel was difficult and infrequent, and so the only jinja that could become sūkei jinja were those that supported their own organisation of travelling priests. Those… Read More »Ujigami Jinja and Sūkei Jinja

Virtual Sanpai

Issue 279/280 of the Journal of Shintō Studies included an article by Takeda Atsushi (武田淳) entitled “What is Virtual Visiting to a shrine? Focusing on Shintō Shrines”. In Japanese, he talks about “virtual sanpai”, which is the term I will use here, because English doesn’t really have a good word for “sanpai” (参拝). The first point he makes is that the English word “virtual” does not mean quite the same as its Japanese translations, including the katakana word “baacharu”. In English, a “virtual X” is equivalent to an X in… Read More »Virtual Sanpai

Legally Merging Jinja

The Komorebi column in the September 14th issue of Jinja Shinpō was by a priest who is also a lawyer (kind of — he can charge for legal advice, but the Japanese system doesn’t perfectly map onto UK or US ones). He was writing about the problem of jinja that are both religious corporations, and hard to maintain, and he wanted to make three points. The first is that merging two jinja legally does not necessarily mean merging them religiously. One jinja might simply be moved to the precincts of… Read More »Legally Merging Jinja

The Dance Goes On

In 1950, Jinja Honchō (which was very new at that point) commissioned the creation of two sacred dances: Asahi-no-mai (Dance of the Rising Sun), for chief priests, and Toyosaka-no-mai (Dance of, er, the Rising Sun), for “young women”. The idea seems to have been to create dances that could be taught to all priests, miko, and local young women, so that sacred dance could be offered as a standard part of matsuri. Toyosaka-no-mai is widely offered, and is one of the two standard pieces of miko kagura — the other… Read More »The Dance Goes On

Merging Jinja

I found one of the articles in Issue 280/281 of the Journal of Shintō Studies particularly interesting. It is “The Significance and Challenges of Research on the Modern and Contemporary History of Individual Shrines: The Case of Atsuta Shrine in Haruno-chō, Hamamatsu City”, by Kawamura Tadanobu (河村忠伸). One of the reasons it is so interesting is that Kawamura is the chief priest of the jinja in question. He addresses that in the paper, and acknowledges that it means he is not entirely neutral. On the other hand, he has access… Read More »Merging Jinja

The Sacred Experience

Professor Ōmichi’s second Komorebi column was in the August 31st issue of Jinja Shinpō, and she continued her discussion of the relationship between media and the sacred, specifically Shinto. She started by talking about a certain Buddhist temple in Kamakura (that is what she said — she didn’t say which one it was) that has forbidden photography throughout the precincts, unless you have specific permission. She said that she put her camera and smartphone away, and felt that the release from the obligation to, or at least expectation that one… Read More »The Sacred Experience