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David Chart

Visiting a Shinto Jinja: Attitude and Etiquette

Jinja Honchō has recently published three new videos on the etiquette for visiting a jinja. They aren’t really three videos, though, because the two short ones are just extracts from the full-length one. I will link to the full one first; it’s about four minutes long. As you can see, it not only has English on-screen captions, but it has an English narration. I did the English adaptation, but Jinja Honchō hired a professional to do the voice-over. She was really good; we had to do one retake because she… Read More »Visiting a Shinto Jinja: Attitude and Etiquette

Sacred Forests as OECMs

The February 6th issue of Jinja Shinpō had another article about OECMs. These are, to recap, areas of land that are not set aside as nature reserves but, because of the way they are used, serve as a significant refuge for biodiversity. The article reported on two meetings: the latest meeting of the government working group, and a meeting at Jinja Honchō. The government meeting discussed the details of the proposed system for registering OECM areas in Japan. The trial period is coming to an end, and the system will… Read More »Sacred Forests as OECMs

The Priest’s Knees

The last new year article I want to write about was in the January 16th issue. The author is the chief priest of a jinja in rural Shimanë Prefecture. He starts by drawing a distinction between two words for a Shinto priest: shinshoku (“kami job”) and kan’nushi (“kami master”). He says that he feels that the second is somewhat higher status, and indicates someone who can properly call and dismiss the kami at prayers, and who works without holidays. A rural kan’nushi adds the ability to play the drum and… Read More »The Priest’s Knees

Young Priest

One of the new year articles in the January 23rd issue of Jinja Shinpō was by a priest who will turn 72 this year, reflecting on his youth. He is now the chief priest of his family’s jinja, and while he had two elder sisters, he was the eldest son, so his grandfather seems to have thought that he would obviously become a priest. As a child, however, he really, really did not want to. When he was in his first year of junior high school (so 12 or 13… Read More »Young Priest

Jinja and Robot

At the beginning of every year Jinja Shinpō runs a series of short articles from a wide range of people, mostly priests, who were born in an earlier year with the same zodiacal animal. This year, it’s people born in the year of the rabbit. As usual, I want to write about a few on the blog. The first one is from the January 16th issue, and by a priest at a jinja in Iwatë Prefecture, in northeast Japan. His jinja has acquired a robot rabbit, a “rabbot”, which is… Read More »Jinja and Robot

Sugō Jinja

Sugō Jinja is in Okazaki, in Aichi Prefecture, and is in the grounds of the castle where Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, was born. Its chief priest contacted Jinja Honchō about preparing an English leaflet, and we recently finished the job; the leaflet should have been printed by now. This task was a good illustration of the difficulties with these kinds of translations. First, the original Japanese history of the jinja was based on texts that were decades old, at least, and hard even for most contemporary… Read More »Sugō Jinja