Back to Basics

This post was inspired by an article in the July 8^th issue of Jinja Shinpō, but it does not engage with its content in any detail. These are really my personal musings.

A very common idea in Shinto is that of returning to the source, origin, or initial idea. Because Shinto is small-c conservative, this is seen as a good thing, and it is quite common for people to urge the community to do so — whether it is a return to the origin of Shinto in general, to the original form of Jinja Honchō, or to the roots of a matsuri.

There is an element of this idea that I think is very important, and a valuable guide in life — particularly for organisations. It is important not to lose sight of why you are doing something in the first place. What are you trying to achieve? What is this activity supposed to do? It is very easy to get lost in details and habits, even for an individual. For a group, where each person only does part of it, it is possibly inevitable unless the organisation has institutional mechanisms to make sure it does not happen. And maybe even then — political parties always seem to turn into “machines for winning elections”, which is really not what they are supposed to be for.

But this useful form of the idea is always a question, and even when you are asking yourself, you do not presuppose the answer. There is a tendency, however, for the idea to be used as a concrete ideal, to suggest that other people are doing Shinto wrong. (In this context, I am thinking about priests talking to other priests.)

I think this is very dangerous. The notion of the “origin” is vague in Shinto, due to the absence of a sacred text, and while it does typically refer to the past, I have yet to see anyone use it to mean that priests should demolish all their sanctuary buildings. (Very early Shinto does not seem to have had them.) Thus, it is extremely easy to use it as cover for trying to impose one’s own vision of Shinto, in all its idiosyncratic detail, on other people, while suggesting that if they do not agree it can only be because they have lost sight of the true essence of Shinto. (The debate over the presidency has been veering in that direction, which is definitely worrying.)

Even when it is not used quite so broadly, it is very easy for someone to have a particular past practice in mind as the “way Shinto originally was” — and very unusual for that point in time to be anywhere near the origins of Shinto. People, in general, have a strong tendency to think of the “the past” as static. Remember, “The past is a foreign country” — no, like Africa, the past is a whole continent, and there are bits of the past that are more different from each other than either is from the present. When is the original point? What is our ideal?

In the contemporary Shinto establishment, that point is, in practice, 1926. However, there are priests who look back to earlier times, and some who take their origin later. The original intent of Jinja Honchō, for example, really has to be referring to 1946, even if someone is citing the 1980 Kenshō. But Jinja Honchō was founded under duress, as an emergency measure to ensure the survival of Shinto under foreign occupation. Why on earth should we pretend that Shinto is in a similar situation now? What is so great about 1926? Or the Meiji period? Or the period of the Engishiki?

Beyond that, it is entirely possible that the foundation, the core of a practice has never been properly manifested, even though “we” can see what it is by looking at past practice. The return to the source might mean developing a practice that is, in its details and totality, entirely new.

It is valuable to periodically ask ourselves whether we have lost sight of the fundamentals. It is helpful to remind others to ask themselves the same thing.

We should, however, be very careful about claiming to see better than they do.