On December 12th last year, the Board of Directors of Jinja Honchō met, and the chairman appointed Revd Tanaka as president.
This means that the immediate problem of the disputed presidency is solved — the title of this blog post is not (entirely) sarcastic. Revd Tanaka is the president of Jinja Honchō, until the whole board comes up for election again in May. This also means that the chairman decided to give in for the sake of unity.
I think this greatly reduces the chances of a split in Jinja Honchō, because the factions were nominally lined up behind Revd Tanaka and the chairman (Revd Takatsukasa), and the chairman has clearly indicated that he thinks they should accept Revd Tanaka as president.
On the other hand, this only creates the conditions necessary to tackle the more fundamental problems. A couple of these came up at the board meeting.
One of them is the question of what happens to Revd Ashihara. He is still a director, but while some people want to make him carry all of the blame for the dispute, asserting that it all started when he identified himself as president to the government, others are arguing that this is unreasonable — he had, after all, been named president by the chairman, and advised by a lawyer to notify the authorities of his appointment.
While this is likely to be important to Revd Ashihara personally, its wider significance will, I think, be as part of the process of healing the divisions within the Shinto community. This problem has been simmering and seething for years now, and those feelings will not disappear overnight. However, if people take a conciliatory approach, and a generally acceptable board is elected in May, I think that Jinja Honchō will be able to avoid a crisis.
The other problem is one that I have mentioned before, and that the chairman raised, twice, at the board meeting. The regulations of Jinja Honchō need to be rewritten to make sure that this sort of problem does not arise again. That means that they need to be clear on how the president is appointed, and on what happens if part of the process does not go smoothly. At the least, they are going to have to be clear on whether the chairman has any actual authority at all, or whether he is purely a figurehead. There is another figurehead, the nominally highest post in Jinja Honchō, but she really is entirely ceremonial. Of course, Japanese history does have precedent for double figureheads. During the Kamakura Shogunate, the Tennō effectively delegated all his authority to the shogun, and the shogun in turn delegated all of his authority to the shikken, who was nominally one of his officers.
I expect that process to take some time. (Do the chairman and board have to agree? If so, what happens when they don’t? What happens if the board deadlocks? What happens if someone simply refuses to make an appointment? Come to that, what happens if the reaction of every board member, when asked to be president, is “Not on your nelly!”?)
In any case, this is good news. The appointment of a president should reduce the heat and pressure substantially, and might well create the space needed to actually solve the problems.
(Incidentally, this report was buried on page 14 of the January 1st issue of Jinja Shinpō, but that’s because the (extra-large) new year issue has a conventional layout, with any actual news right at the back.)
. . . I think I remember the answer, but of that ceremonial highest post, who is she?
The position name is the Sōsai, and the current incumbent is, I believe, Ikeda Atsuko, a sister of the previous Tennō, and the previous Saishu at Jingū. She is hardly ever mentioned, but I haven’t seen any notification that there has been a change.