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Year Opening Articles

At the end of each year, Jinja Shinpō invites people who were born in the same zodiacal year as the following year (so, for this year, the year of the snake) to write short articles, which are published over the course of January. These are short opinion pieces, and while some people are individually asked to write them, there is also an open call, announced in the newspaper. A few years ago, I wrote one and sent it in for the open call, and they published it. Because the zodiacal cycle is twelve years, everyone is (one less than) some multiple of twelve years old, and this being the Shinto community, there is a bias towards older people. This year, they led off (in the January 1st issue) with three priests born in 1941, followed by five born in 1953, three from 1965, and two from 1977. We might get one or two from 1989 by the end of the series, and maybe one from 1929, or even 2001. (Not impossible — a newly graduated and serving priest could be encouraged to write something by their father/the chief priest of their jinja.) I do not expect to see anything written by someone born in 2013.

The articles are very interesting, because you get a much broader range of perspectives than normal, and there is no need to link the content to recent “news”. The authors can reflect on their lives as priests, or raise issues that bother them, or even talk about things that happened decades ago. I have written posts based on these articles in the past, and if you go back to look in previous Januaries, you should be able to find them. This year also has some interesting pieces. In this post, I want to pick up on a couple that do not quite merit a full blog post, and the next post will be about one that, I think, does.

One of the articles from a priest born in 1941 concerned the importance of “zarei”, which means “seated reverence”. It is contrasted with “ryūrei”, which means “standing reverence”. If there are chairs in a jinja, that means you will be doing standing reverence. Yes, this is a bit confusing. Seated reverence is when you kneel on the floor, and perform the reverence (bowing and clapping) while kneeling. For standing reverence, you sit on a chair most of the time, and stand up to perform the reverence. My understanding is that standing reverence was originally for outdoor ceremonies, and that seated reverence was the default for indoors.

However, these days very few jinja do seated reverence, because very few Japanese can sit on the floor long enough to get through a whole ceremony. Kinkazan Koganëyama Jinja, the one in Miyagi Prefecture that I visit every year, did seated reverence the first two times I visited, but since then (for the last ten years) there have been stools in the prayer hall, and everyone has done standing reverence. My local jinja does an interesting combination for many ceremonies, in which you go up onto a raised area and then kneel to pay reverence after sitting on a stool throughout the ceremony.

The priest was lamenting the decline in seated reverence, but given the shift in practice in Japanese society, I do not think jinja are in a position to easily shift things back. Something like the practice at my local jinja might be the best that can be managed, at least for now.

The other article I want to pick up here was also from a priest born in 1941, who lamented that, despite his best efforts, he had still not reached the level of his grandfather. In what way? His grandfather, it is said, would enter the inner sanctuary from time to time with a bottle of sakë and two cups, and have a drink and conversation with the kami.

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3 thoughts on “Year Opening Articles”

  1. His grandfather’s level of piety seems easy enough, if he has the sake on hand. Icebreakers can be awkward I suppose.

  2. Is the Year of the Snake considered to have started on January 1? The Chinese zodiac follows the lunar calendar, which means that in 2025 the Year of the Snake should begin on the 29th of January.

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