Tottori Prefecture, on the Japan Sea coast, has the lowest population of any prefecture in Japan — 530,000, or about a third the population of Kawasaki. This means that it has all the problems of depopulation, including the ones that directly affect jinja. The December 2nd issue of Jinja Shinpō had an article about part of the response.
The prefectural association of young priests has set up a group that links jinja looking for extra priests for special matsuri with young priests who want to get more experience of serving at such events. Most of the priests in the group have other jobs as well, which is to be expected, and have few chances to serve anywhere but their home jinja — and probably not that often even there. On the other hand, a lot of jinja have only one priest, who is in charge of many other jinja as well, and thus do not have enough people to do major matsuri properly. The group normally finds one or two priests to help out at the main annual Reisai of such jinja.
However, in October they had a different opportunity. Ōgamiyama Jinja is in the process of repairing all the sanctuaries, which means that the kami need to be moved. On this occasion, the kami needed to be moved back into the inner sanctuary, which is halfway up a mountain, after the repairs had been completed, and the kami were being moved out of one of the subsidiary jinja for repairs there, on the same day. This meant that a lot of priests were needed.
The group was not entirely sure that they would be able to get enough people, but they put out the request, and quickly got a substantial response. Priests do not have many chances to participate in a senzasai, the matsuri in which a kami is moved, and so it was a valuable opportunity. They might never get to do it again — and, on the other hand, they might need to do it at their own jinja, in which case they wouldn’t want that to be their first time.
The matsuri was completed successfully, much to the relief of the participating priests, and the chief priest of Ōgamiyama Jinja was pleased that younger priests had been able to be involved in the matsuri.
This sort of initiative is likely to become essential if jinja in rural areas are to be maintained, so it is good to see that at least this example is already working effectively. In the long term, the government really needs to take steps to address the low birth rate and tendency for everyone to move to Tokyo, and the Shinto community can do little more than try to keep jinja in rural areas vital and active until that happens. Or, I suppose, until someone else finds a way to change the demographic trends in Japan, but I cannot see anyone other than the government with both the power and the interest to do so.
In the meantime, the priests are doing their best to make sure that the jinja will still be there, and still be active, when things change.