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David Chart

Context

One of the front page articles on the December 11th issue of Jinja Shinpō was about a study session held online by the Shinto Youth Association, on the topic of “The Role of Jinja in Contemporary Society”. This consisted of two talks by Professor Kurosaki of Kokugakuin University. The first was on the role that jinja can, and have, played in disaster response, a topic that Prof. Kurosaki has researched extensively. The second was about “context”. There is a famous distinction in social sciences between “high context” and “low context”… Read More »Context

From Coexistence to Living Together

The main article on the front page of the December 11th issue of Jinja Shinpō was about the annual National Edification Meeting. (What’s “edification” when it’s at home? It’s the translation of a Japanese term that means activities to promote the religious aspects of jinja, but as much in terms of engagement by people who are already there as in terms of finding more people, so it is difficult to translate into English. “Edification” is the term that Jinja Honchō uses in the English title of the department I’m attached… Read More »From Coexistence to Living Together

Titanium Roofs

The December 4th issue of Jinja Shinpō included an article about the donation of a small sanctuary building to a company, for use as the jinja of one of its sites. The kami enshrined there is Inari, which is very common for corporate jinja, and such jinja are, themselves, a common feature of Japan. The interesting features of this article lie elsewhere. First, the building was donated by a vocational training school (“senmongakkō” in Japanese) on Sado Island, an island in the Japan Sea that is part of Niigata Prefecture.… Read More »Titanium Roofs

Jinja Kō

My patrons continued discussing Shinto overseas after my recent post on the subject, and one of them raised an interesting point that ties into historical customs. They asked whether some sort of proxy jinja visit would be possible, and that is something that was a standard part of practice within Japan for centuries. One of the biggest problems for people who want to practise Shinto outside Japan is getting hold of ofuda. While I am continuing to work with Jinja Honchō on this issue, there are still a lot of… Read More »Jinja Kō

Riders’ Jinja

The November 27th issue of Jinja Shinpō had an interesting article about the establishment of the first “Riders’ Jinja” in Tōhoku, at Yuriagë Minato Jinja in Natori City, Miyagi Prefecture. What is a “Riders’ Jinja”, you may well ask. These are a recent innovation, established on the initiative of what sounds like “weekend bikers” — people who like riding around the countryside on their motorbikes. A Riders’ Jinja is a jinja that actively welcomes them stopping by. It will provide prayers for safe travel, of course, but it is also… Read More »Riders’ Jinja

Removing Jetpack

This website has been running Jetpack, one of the most common WordPress plug-ins. It is good, and useful. However, it has a huge number of functions, of which I use hardly any, and it is a bad idea, from both a security and a performance perspective, to have lots of code you aren’t using on your system. Thus, I planned to remove it, and I have transitioned to specialised alternatives for most of the functions I do use. The only one I think I can’t replace is the “Like” button,… Read More »Removing Jetpack