Following on from the previous post, I want to look at the results for Jingū Taima, the ofuda from Isë Jingū that the Shinto establishment wants to see venerated in every household, and the results for local jinja, the so-called ujigami jinja.
The first striking result is that only 25% of people have even heard of Jingū Taima. Given the vastly higher level of recognition of Jingū itself, this suggests that there is room for improvement in this respect. Even if 98% awareness of Jingū Taima seems unreasonable, the 50% levels achieved for the Inner and Outer Sanctuaries would seem to be feasible. This number has not changed much over the last twenty years, either.
Because you are supposed to venerate a Jingū Taima on a kamidana, the next question was about whether the respondent’s family had a kamidana. About 40% said they had. While there have been fluctuations, this number has not changed much over the last twenty years either. Another number that has been steady is the proportion of households receiving a Jingū Taima, at about 15%. This is consistent with the number of Jingū Taima distributed and number of households in Japan, at least within the limits of the 10% or so of respondents who didn’t know.
More than half of the people who receive a Jingū Taima have it brought to them, either by a priest or by ujiko or sōdai from the local jinja. This is the more traditional method, and while there is talk of a decline in that, and an increase in the number of people coming to the jinja to get it, the numbers do not really support that — the question was not asked in 2004, and the results are more-or-less unchanged since 2014.
People who didn’t have a Jingū Taima were asked why not, and the most popular reasons were not having a kamidana (35%), not venerating Jingū in the first place (35%), and not needing one (25%). (People could choose multiple answers.) It is worth noting that only 5% said that they didn’t have one because they had another religion. These numbers are essentially the same as in 2014, which explains why Jinja Honchō has emphasised the distribution of simplified kamidana, and made strong efforts to reduce the barriers to setting one up. If the absence of a kamidana is someone’s only reason for not having a Jingū Taima, then that can be easily addressed. The other reasons are rather deeper.
Moving onto the ujigami jinja, about 55% knew where it was, which is, again, unchanged since 2014. Of those who know where it is, about 80% visit at least a few times a year, and about 15% visit at least once a month. The high proportion for visiting is not really surprising, as you are unlikely to make the effort to find out where your ujigami jinja is unless you plan to visit. Multiplying together, about 45% of Japanese visit their local ujigami at least a few times a year.
If you recall the numbers for religious affiliations that I reported last time, 6% of the population claimed to be Shinto. That means that about 85% of people who visit their ujigami jinja do not identify as Shinto, and similarly about 85% of people who have a kamidana are not Shinto. At least 60% of people who receive a Jingū Taima are not Shinto, either, and this number may well be higher, because a significant number of people who identify as Shinto may well be venerating a different jinja. Even if we assume that all Buddhists visit their ujigami and have a kamidana (which is unlikely to be true), at least a third of people who regularly visit their ujigami jinja see themselves as having no religion. This is entirely consistent with older surveys, and shows that asking Japanese people for their religious affiliation is almost completely useless if you want to know about these issues.
The results of these surveys are, I think, generally encouraging for the Shinto community. Jinja are still an important part of Japanese life, and Jingū is well known. Furthermore, knowledge of, and positive attitudes towards, Jingū seem to be spreading more widely. On the other hand, if ujigami jinja are supposed to be for everyone in the local community, there is still a long way to go, as most people do not visit at all, and many do not even know of its existence. The statistics for practice have not changed much over the last twenty years. This is not bad, because it means that Shinto practice is not supported entirely by old people. If it were, we would expect the sort of decline we saw in the number of people who had visited Jingū on a school trip. On the other hand, it is not good; the Shinto community thinks that everyone should have some connection to their local jinja, and the Shinto establishment thinks that every household should have a Jingū Taima.
In the last post, I said that the numbers suggest that the people responsible for raising awareness of Jingū and nurturing positive attitudes towards it should keep doing what they are doing. The numbers for practice, however, suggest that they need to try something new in that field.