David Chart

The Shinto ritual year is structured around rice agriculture. (This may have been less true in some areas before the Meiji standardisation of ritual, but it is generally true now.) These days, of course, only a tiny proportion of the Japanese population is directly involved in growing rice, and that proportion has been dropping for years. Some Shinto groups have taken steps to address this, by giving people, particularly priests, an opportunity to participate in traditional rice agriculture. One such group is the Kanagawa Prefecture Young Priests’ League. (They don’t… Read More »Rice for the Kami

A little while ago, I read a book about jinja in depopulated areas of Japan. (過疎地神社の研究 (Kasochi Jinja no Kenkyū, Research on Jinja in Depopulated Areas), 冬月律 (by Fuyutsuki Ritsu)) The book is a report of several years’ anthropological study of the jinja in an area of Kōchi Prefecture, on Shikoku. Dr Fuyutsuki interviewed the priests and the sōdai, and the book is very interesting, in part because it makes it clear that it is not easy to say anything general about the problem. I may write at more length… Read More »Identifying Kami

The “Former Unification Association” is big news in Japan at the moment. (NHK always refers to it like that (in Japanese)); its current official name in English is “Family Federation for World Peace and Unification”, while the popular name for the group is “the Moonies”. The reason it is big news is that Abe’s assassin said he was motivated by Abe’s links to the group, because the group had bankrupted his family by pressuring his mother to make an unreasonably large donation. The opposition parties picked up on this, and… Read More »State Investigation

Shinto has formal vestments for priests, which are different for male priests and female priests, and for miko. However, these vestments do not have quite the same purpose as the vestments worn by priests of other major religions. In Christianity, and, it seems, Buddhism and Islam, the vestments are a mark of the sacred status of the priest. In Shinto, however, the vestments are pure clothes worn to approach the kami. This difference became obvious when we went to the international conference of leaders of world and traditional religions in… Read More »Shinto Vestments