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David Chart

Secretariat in Kazakhstan 2024

At the beginning of October, I went to Kazakhstan with one of my colleagues from Jinja Honchō, Revd Mitsui, to attend the XXII Meeting of the Secretariat of the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, and the first meeting of the Forum of Young Religious Leaders. Strictly speaking, Revd Mitsui was attending the meetings, and I was there to interpret for him. This is the third time we have attended these meetings. The first time, I had to provide interpretation. The second time, last year, there were interpreters.… Read More »Secretariat in Kazakhstan 2024

Bilingual Omikuji

One of the jobs I did through Jinja Honchō last year was assisting with the translation of a full set of omikuji, for Joshidōsha (Girls’ Way Company). The company itself has a very interesting history, as it was set up in the Meiji period to support girls’ education by a priest who campaigned for women to be allowed to become priests, and sold paper omikuji to jinja to fund those activities. However, in this post I am writing about the omikuji. Omikuji are often called “fortunes”, although these are called… Read More »Bilingual Omikuji

Felling Purification

One of the regular columnists in the “Thoughts in the Forest” section of Jinja Shinpō is Kanzaki Noritakë, a scholar of traditional culture and chief priest of a jinja in Okayama Prefecture, western Japan. In the September 30th issue, he wrote about a ceremony he was asked to perform before the felling of a tree. The tree in question was a massive cedar, growing beside the steps up to a local jinja, and beside the community hall. It had become old, with its interior hollowed out, and branches dropping off.… Read More »Felling Purification

Kamidana Veneration

The September 30th issue of Jinja Shinpō carried several articles about the meetings held around the ceremony to formally start the distribution of Jingū Taima for this season. (The ceremony itself was reported in the previous issue.) One of these meetings is the one at which leading members of the Shinto community talk about ways to encourage more people to receive Jingū Taima. At that meeting, the person responsible for those activities in Tokyo spoke about their efforts, and complained about influencers spreading false information — so Shinto is just… Read More »Kamidana Veneration

Graduation Decisions

Revd Tagawa, the chief priest of Fukumo Hachimangū in Saga Prefecture, had the second of her columns in the September 23rd issue of Jinja Shinpō. In her first column she talked about why she decided to become a priest, and this column was about a similarly important decision that she made near the end of her university career. She was studying at Kokugakuin University, and she says that, even though she was technically from a priestly family, because she had been raised in an ordinary household — rather than at… Read More »Graduation Decisions

The War Dead

Next year is the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. In advance of that, Jinja Shinpō is running a series of articles contributed by the Gokoku Jinja across Japan, each introducing one of the kami venerated there — that is, one of the war dead. (The series title is “Our Jinja’s Enshrined Kami” — わが社の御祭神.) The Gokoku (“Nation Protecting”) Jinja were formalised in the final years, and in a couple of cases the final months, of the war, but many of them have roots in the… Read More »The War Dead