Awareness of Jingū

Earlier this year, Jinja Honchō commissioned a survey of people’s awareness of, and attitudes towards, Jingū. This is the third such survey, and they have been held at ten-year intervals. This means that the last one was held the year after the most recent Shikinen Sengū, while this one and the first one were held roughly midway in the cycle. The basic results, the proportions of each answer to each question, were published in Gekkan Wakagi on September 1^st. (Gekkan Wakagi is the monthly newsletter that Jinja Honchō sends to priests. It isn’t secret, but it isn’t easily available to non-priests, unlike Jinja Shinpō. It is easily available to people who work in the department of Jinja Honchō that produces it…)

First, for a bit of background, Question 10 asked whether people had a “religion” of some sort. About 30% said yes, and about 70% said no. When the 30% were asked what their religion was, about 20% said Shinto, and about 80% said Buddhism. 1.7% said Christianity. This question was also asked last time, and that time 6.3% said Christianity. Now, I can see no reason to suppose that the number of Christians in Japan has fallen by 75% in the last ten years, so I am going to take this as a rough measure of the accuracy of the numbers: about five percentage points. Thus, I am going to round ruthlessly, and numbers will not add up to 100%. (It is worth noting that this survey gives the percentage of Japanese who are Christian as about 0.5% (30% of 1.7%). Christianity is a tiny minority religion here.)

So, what about Jingū? Essentially everyone in Japan has heard of it; that was the first question, and over 95% said “yes” in all three surveys. There is essentially no change here over time. Another question asked whether people knew about the Shikinen Sengū — the ceremony in which the kami move house. Here, there are clear differences. In 2004, 20% knew, in 2014, 50%, and in 2024, 35%. The change from 2004 to 2014 is not surprising, because the Shikinen Sengū was all over the news, but it is interesting that awareness is clearly higher now than at the same stage of the last cycle.

Knowledge about Jingū is also fairly widespread. About 80% know which prefecture it is in (Mië), and about 70% know that it is a famous tourist attraction. (This is good. If only 20% knew that, one would have to doubt whether it was true.) About 50% know that it has Inner and Outer Sanctuaries, and about 55% know that it enshrines the ancestor of the Tennō. Only 45% know that it enshrines Amaterasu Ōmikami, which is interesting. I would have expected more to know the name of the kami than the relationship to the Tennō.

Other results suggest a possible reason for this. The survey asked whether people had visited Jingū. About 50% had, which was basically unchanged from the earlier surveys. The follow-up question was about the type of visit, and one option was “school trip”. In 2004, that accounted for 30%, falling to 15% this year. Similarly, the proportion who learned about the Shikinen Sengū at school fell from 25% in 2004 to 10% this year. I suspect that we are seeing a natural decline in the number of people who learned about Jingū under the pre-war system, when the connection to the Tennō was by far the most important thing about it. Indeed, the proportion who know that Jingū enshrines Amaterasu Ōmikami has risen from about 30% in 2004.

People were also asked their impression of Jingū. About 70% said that it was historical and traditional, which appears to be up from 2004, when about 60% said that. Similarly, the proportion of people saying it is beautiful has risen from 20% to 30%, and the proportion who think it is sacred and mystical has risen from 25% to 40%. In practical terms, about 65% of the people who hadn’t already visited Jingū said that they wanted to, as compared to about 45% in 2004. Thus, it looks as though people generally have a positive impression of Jingū, and that their impression is getting more positive. (Admittedly, there was no question to see how many of the people who have been would not go back unless hell froze over. On the other hand, some negative impressions were given as options, and got tiny numbers — 0%, the way I am rounding.)

These numbers suggest that the people trying to create a positive image of Jingū have succeeded. To be honest, I suspect that it would be difficult to greatly increase many of the “knowledge about” numbers — something known by half the population is very well known already. Obviously, they shouldn’t stop, because people will forget if they do, but in this respect the results suggest that “more of the same” is a good policy.

This has got long, so I will do a separate post on the results for Jingū Taima and local jinja.