Revd Tagawa, the chief priest of Fukumo Hachimangū in Saga Prefecture, had the second of her columns in the September 23rd issue of Jinja Shinpō. In her first column she talked about why she decided to become a priest, and this column was about a similarly important decision that she made near the end of her university career.
She was studying at Kokugakuin University, and she says that, even though she was technically from a priestly family, because she had been raised in an ordinary household — rather than at the jinja — she felt very ignorant compared to her contemporaries. Nevertheless, she made good friends, and was enjoying her university life.
Back in Saga, her grandmother was looking after the jinja. Her grandfather had died while she was at high school, and although her grandmother was not a priest, she had moved in to the jinja and was keeping it running by herself, while also teaching tea ceremony, flower arranging, and cooking. Her grandmother strongly supported Revd Tagawa’s decision to train, and said that she was looking forward to seeing her come back to the jinja as a fully-qualified priest.
Alas, in the spring of Revd Tagawa’s fourth and final year, her grandmother died suddenly. Revd Tagawa was not sure what to do. She had planned to go back to help her grandmother, and now there was no-one waiting to see her. She looked at the vacancies at jinja in Saga, but none of them were accepting female applicants. More than that, a lot of her friends were getting posts in the area around Tokyo. She didn’t know what to do, and went to talk to one of her lecturers. He told her to take her time worrying about it, and then he would support her in whatever she decided.
She took his advice, and went away to think. After some time, she came to a realisation. She wasn’t there to train to be a priest, she was there to become able to take over Fukumo Hachimangū. She reminded herself of her original purpose, and resolved to return to Saga.
During the summer holidays (remember, the Japanese academic year runs from April to March, so spring of her fourth year is right at the beginning of the academic year) she went back to Saga. She had decided to take over the jinja, but there was no way she could live on the jinja’s income. So she talked to other priests in the local area, and was recommended to Imari Jinja. She went to speak to the chief priest, whom she found surprisingly young, and although she wasn’t at all sure that a university-educated woman would get hired as a priest, the jinja took her on without any particular resistance.
Her career path was thus decided in the summer holidays, and the only thing left to do was to wait for graduation.
(Does that ending make anyone else think that something happened in the remaining nine months?)
This story is illustrative of a lot of features of priestly training. It is hard for people who are not from hereditary lines, because they lack a lot of the implicit knowledge people get from growing up at a jinja. A lot of new priests did take jobs around Tokyo, although that tendency is much weaker now than it was even a few years ago. And there is still a lot of practical sexism in the Shinto world — although that also seems to have been getting significantly better over the last five years or so, at least as far as the employment of new priests is concerned.