David Chart

Jingū at Isë has a sacred well, from which water is drawn every morning in order to prepare the offerings for the kami. (Actually, there are three, so that there are back-up wells if anything happens to the main one.) This well is supposed to have been brought from Takamanohara, the high plain of heaven, via the Japan Sea coast of Kyoto prefecture. I have to confess that I am not entirely clear on how you are supposed to transport a well. It is contained in a jinja, and according… Read More »Cleaning the Sacred Well

I’ve just got back from Jinja Honchō, where I signed a one year consulting contract with them. I will be providing translations between English and Japanese, advising them on their English language publications, and interpreting at presentations and, possibly, on international trips. I am not an employee of Jinja Honchō; I am a freelance consultant, albeit on a one-year contract. I am certainly not a Shinto priest. When I am working on Jinja Honchō’s material, I will, of course, be doing my best to put Jinja Honchō’s official position into… Read More »New Contract

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my daughter has become interested in collecting goshuin, the vermilion seals that jinja offer as a record of your visit in return for a small donation. At the beginning of this week, we went on a short trip to Niigata Prefecture on the Japan Sea coast of Japan, and one of our main purposes was visiting jinja to collect the goshuin. The first jinja we visited was Yahiko Jinja. This is the Ichi-no-Miya of Echigo province; that means that, around a thousand years… Read More »Collecting Goshuin

The third Monday in July is a national holiday in Japan: Umi no Hi, or Ocean Day. Seven years ago, the coastal city of Iwaki in Fukushima Prefecture was still in the early stages of recovery from the Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent tsunami, and the Shinto priests of the area were also working to rebuild. As part of this, they decided to hold a Thousand-Fold Ōharae on a small hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, on the weekend of Ocean Day. This week’s Jinja Shinpō includes an article by… Read More »The Iwaki Thousand-Fold Ōharae

Tanabata, also known as the Star Festival, is a traditional summer celebration in Japan. It originates in China, in a legend of a celestial weaver and cowherd, who fell in love and spent so much time in each other’s company that they neglected their work. The other gods separated them by placing one each side of the Milky Way, and they can only meet once per year, on the seventh day of the seventh month, if the weather is clear. The weaver is said to be the star Vega, and… Read More »Tanabata

A couple of months ago I wrote an essay for my Patreon about the things found in a jinja, in which I talked about the contents of the main sanctuary, which is normally closed to everyone, including the priests. That description was of the “standard”, and so, as Shinto is characterised by different practices at different jinja, not every jinja is like that. In this week’s Jinja Shinpō, there was an article about “gyokuden”, which are found in the main sanctuaries of some jinja. A gyokuden (the characters used mean… Read More »The Gyokuden