The 30th Kanagawa Prefectural Meeting of Jinja-Related People

I though I was going to write about the 30^th Kanagawa Prefectural Meeting of Jinja-Related People in the last post, but in the end the kyōsan’in system took up all the space.

I think all the prefectures have one of these meetings every year. A lot of them are reported in Jinja Shinpō, but I haven’t counted up systematically, so there might be some prefectures that don’t, or that do it irregularly. (Obviously, everyone did it irregularly during the pandemic.) While the details differ from prefecture to prefecture, and year to year, the general pattern is standard, and the one I was at is representative.

It was held in a large banqueting room in the Royal Park Hotel in Yokohama, which is in the Yokohama Landmark Tower. (The banqueting room may be off to one side in the complex, because we had to go along a corridor to get there, and I think we left the tower proper — but it was all indoors with no windows.) There were a few hundred attendees, most of whom were getting some sort of certificate, I think. As well as the certificate that I got, there are awards for people who give substantial support to refurbishing jinja, or support a jinja over many years as a sōdai or similar, and for priests who have completed 25, 35, 45, or 55 years of service. Most of the awards are for long service by priests, and so most of the people there are priests.

The event was divided into four parts. The first part was the “ceremony”. After the opening declaration, we all paid remote reverence to Jingū, and then sang the national anthem. Then we all read the Principles of a Life Honouring the Kami together, before singing one of the prefectural Jinjachō songs. (Yes, the prefectural Jinjachō has two songs.)

Following that, there were speeches, first from the head of the Jinjachō, and then from the head of the prefectural sōdai organisation. After these speeches, from the heads of the organisations holding the meeting, certificates were presented to one representative of each group of recipients. People in that group were asked to stand while the representatives got their certificates, but no-one did. Too embarrassing, I guess. They said that 244 people in total got awards, which is why the actual presentation was to representatives. One of the awardees had been chosen in advance to give a short speech of thanks on behalf of all of us.

Next, there were speeches from the guests of honour, almost all of which were read out by representatives: the chairman of Jinja Honchō, the Great Chief Priest of Isë Jingū, and Arimura Haruko, one of the two members of the Japanese Diet directly sponsored by the Shinto Political League. She was there in person, and stood by the exit at the end to greet everyone as they were leaving. Support from the Shinto community across the country is vital to her re-election next summer, especially given the low level of popularity of the Liberal Democratic Party at the moment.

After the speeches, a declaration was adopted. This was entirely uncontroversial for the audience: let’s all support the Shikinen Sengū at Jingū, and promote the solemn performance, and continuation, of matsuri.

Then we did “Seiju Banzai”. This is where everyone stands and faces the Japanese flag, and someone at the front says, “Tennō Heika, Banzai!”, and then everyone raises both arms in the air and shouts “Banzai!”, the person at the front shouts “Banzai!” again, and everyone does it again, and then a third time. My wife’s reaction when I showed her the programme was, “What’s Seiju Banzai?” (“seiju” literally means “sacred life”, “banzai” is “ten thousand years”), followed by “People still do that?” when I explained.

And then we had the closing remarks, in which the speaker expressed astonishment that we were ahead of schedule.

The second part was a lecture by a priest who has served at Isë Jingū for almost forty years, covering two Shikinen Sengū, the accessions of two Tennō and the abdication of one, and the G7 summit in 2016. He had lots of slides of himself leading processions of very important people (and complained that G7 leaders don’t follow instructions, and have to all walk abreast, because they are all equally important). The main part of his talk was about the place of Shinto among world religions, and how to explain it to foreigners, so I found that very interesting, even if he spoke quite quickly. We have basically the same opinion on these questions, so I won’t summarise the lecture here.

The third part was a performance of bugaku, classical Japanese court dance. That was very interesting, but hard to write about, so I will include a photograph.

Finally, there was a meal. The food was French style, not Japanese, and it was very good. This was also a couple of hours when I could talk to my neighbours, and that proved to be very interesting. But there isn’t space in this post, so there will have to be a third post about this event.