A Priest’s Calling

One of the authors of the Komorëbi (“Sunlight Through Leaves”) column in Jinja Shinpō for the next two years is Revd Tagawa, the chief priest of Fukumo Hachimangū (“Fortunate Mother” Hachimangū) in Ōmachi Town (“Big Town” Town), Saga Prefecture, Kyūshū. Her first column was in the June 17^th issue, and she wrote about how she came to be a priest. She was born in 1991, so this is a fairly recent story.

She grew up some distance from the jinja, but Ōmachi is the smallest town in Saga Prefecture (Yes, I know. It was a coal mining town, and it was big then.) so she cannot have been too far away. Her maternal grandfather was the chief priest, and he performed her Shichigosan rite. She thought that he looked impressive in his vestments, and different from the way he was normally.

Her mother’s family were the hereditary priests of the jinja, and also the hereditary town postmasters, and her grandfather had been postmaster, taking over as chief priest when he retired. This is a common pattern — at most jinja, it is only possible to serve as the priest if you do not need to earn a living, because the priestly responsibilities will neither do that, nor leave you enough time to do so another way. Her father was (and possibly still is) the postmaster, and her mother worked in the post office, but they did not want to end the line of priests. Her father considered getting a priest’s licence, but taking a month off work to attend the training course was not a realistic option. (This is also a common problem.)

Her parents were discussing the issue, obviously concerned about it, when Revd Tagawa was little, and she found herself saying, “I’ll take it on,” as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Her parents were very happy, but she didn’t think about it too much for a while.

While she was at junior high, her paternal grandfather died, and this close encounter with death triggered the normal teenage angst. If we all die, what is the point? Why was I even born? Apparently, this kept her awake some nights, and one day she finally asked her mother.

“Why was I born here, in this family?”

“It was to take over Fukumo Hachimangū, wasn’t it?” was her mother’s easy reply.

This opened Revd Tagawa’s eyes, and she had a firm idea of her purpose in life. She no longer doubted that she would take over the jinja.

Hereditary lines of priests are standard in Shinto, and one of the few unusual things here is that a woman has become the chief priest in her own right, despite having two older brothers. I would guess that they didn’t want the job, but we may learn more about that in future columns. As we see from her parents’ worries, this sort of hereditary line is a double-edged sword. It is very convenient to be the heir to a priestly lineage if you actually want to be a priest. Less so if your ambitions lie elsewhere.

Revd Tagawa has been very active and creative at her jinja, which I imagine is why she was asked to write the column, and I expect to report her contributions again in the future.