The 27th January issue of Jinja Shinpō reported on a meeting between the chief priests of three important jinja: Shirayama Himë Jinja in Ishikawa Prefecture, Oyama Jinja in Toyama Prefecture, and Fujisan Hongū Sengen Taisha in Shizuoka Prefecture. Each of these jinja is central to the veneration of a particular mountain: Mt Shirayama in Ishikawa, Mt Tateyama in Toyama, and Mt Fuji in Shizuoka.
The reason for this meeting was that, from 2023, the three prefectural governments have been cooperating to attract tourists on the basis that they are the sites of the Three Sacred Mountains of Japan. (I can think, off hand, of half-a-dozen jinja that might dispute that. This is why Jinja Honchō stays far, far away from lists like this.) Revd Murayama, the chief priest of Shirayama Himë Jinja, felt that if the three local governments were cooperating on these grounds, it was no good for the three jinja to be ignorant of what the others were doing, and so he organised this meeting, which is intended to be the first of a series.
They met at his jinja, and talked about important issues: recent changes in the number of people climbing their mountains, the working conditions of their staff, how to get things up the mountain, how to dispose of rubbish, the problem of toilets, and so on. In short, they discussed all the practical problems of operating jinja that have a site on top of a high mountain.
These problems are quite significant. Obviously, the sanctuaries at the summits are closed when the mountains are officially closed due to snow in winter, but I don’t think that you can get to them other than on foot at any time, which means that anything produced at the top of the mountain that needs to be disposed of, has to be carried down by someone. Similarly, anything that is going to be consumed there has to be carried up. And it’s not just for the staff — it’s for all the tourists climbing your sacred mountain, as well. These issues might not sound very religious, but thinking about it, it is not at all surprising that they are the topics that the chief priests wanted to talk about.
At the end of the meeting, Revd Murayama remarked that there were a lot of difficulties involved in running jinja that were the centres of mountain veneration, and expressed the hope that future meetings would include the chief priests of more jinja involved in those practices, so that they could discuss the form of the religious practices and the issues they face. I hope that those meetings are also reported, because I would like to know what they say.