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 articles about three such matsuri. That is a lot for a single issue, which is why I was inspired to write about it.
The basic form of the ceremony was the same at all the locations, because it is defined by Jinja Honchō and very few jinja do this often enough to have their own traditions. The matsuri is almost invariably held at night, normally shortly after sunset.
First, a matsuri, with norito, is held in the location where the kami are currently enshrined, informing them of the move. The goshintai is then taken from its current location, normally by the chief priest, and he and the goshintai, which is referred to as the “gyo”, using simply the character for “honourable”, are surrounded by a white silk screen, carried by other priests. The screen and goshintai are escorted by ujiko and sōdai carrying various symbolic objects, such as spears and bows.
Before the “gyo” starts to move, all the lights in the jinja precincts are extinguished. Attendants carry lanterns to illuminate the ground where they are walking, but otherwise the movement takes place in the dark. The lights are rekindled once the “gyo” has been enshrined in its new location.
The ceremony concludes with another matsuri, including a norito, held in the location where the kami have been moved to. This norito informs the kami of their new location.
Of the three reported in Jinja Shinpō, two started at 7 pm. In these cases, the kami were only moving from the jinja office to the main sanctuary, or vice versa, so the actual journey did not take very long.
The third started at sunset, which was 4:30 pm. This, I think, was because of the distance involved. The jinja was Wakasahiko Jinja, in Fukui Prefecture. This jinja enshrines two kami, Wakasahiko and Wakasahimë, who are now identified with Hikohohodemi and Toyotamabimë, from the Kojiki myths, but we have a surviving fragment from the eighth-century Wakasa-no-Kuni Fudoki showing that they were originally independent kami. In any case, the two kami are enshrined in separate sanctuaries, 1.8 km apart. These sanctuaries need repair, and the decision was taken to do them in sequence, and to enshrine each kami in the jinja office associated with the other sanctuary while the work is in progress. According to the article, this was the first time that the two kami had been enshrined in the same precincts.
At Wakasahiko Jinja, the “gyo” was placed on a “haguruma” (“winged chariot”, or “feather wheel”, but “winged chariot” seems more appropriate to the context), and then wrapped with white silk. At the others, it seems to have been carried by the chief priest within a moving screen. I am confident that this difference is due to the distance the “gyo” had to travel — it would be really bad if the chief priest dropped it, and over 1.8 km that would be a real risk. (Consideration for the chief priest’s arms may also have been involved.)
There is evidence suggesting that, in the earliest days, most, or at least many, Shinto matsuri were conducted at night. Today, however, only senzasai are consistently carried out after dark. It is very important that no-one see the goshintai, which is why, even when moving, it is inside a bag, inside a box, inside a silk screen, in the dark.