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David Chart

Gravel from Jingū

Every issue of Jinja Shinpō includes a short column written by someone at Jingū, and the December 12th instalment was about the gravel on the paths. Look, they have to produce one of these every week. Cut them some slack. Actually, it did have a very interesting part. Gravel gets caught in the tread of shoes, or even gets inside the shoe itself. That’s just the nature of the stuff. It means that people often take some of the gravel home with them, without even noticing. The interesting part is… Read More »Gravel from Jingū

Cashless Systems

The December 12th issue of Jinja Shinpō had an interesting front-page article about cashless payment systems and the implications for jinja. It turns out that introducing such facilities at jinja is not at all straightforward. First, there are four different types of cashless payment in Japan, and they are covered by different laws. These are pre-paid systems, funds transfer systems, direct bank payment systems, and credit systems. The law for pre-paid systems does not allow them to be used for charitable donations, as they must be used to pay for… Read More »Cashless Systems

What is Shinto?

Until recently, this blog lacked something important: an easy-to-find short introduction to Shinto, so that people who came to the site while looking for basic information could find it quickly. I have now fixed that, adding a new page answering the question “What is Shinto?”. (It’s also linked from the main menu on every page.) There is also a five-year-old post, but that’s a bit harder to find. The new one should make things easy for people. This post is very short, but if you add the new page to… Read More »What is Shinto?

Why I Am Not a Priest

Regular readers of this blog probably know that I am not a Shinto priest, even though I work (part-time) for Jinja Honchō. I thought that you might be interested in the reason. The immediate reason is that I have never sought training as a Shinto priest. Jinja Honchō does not license people without their consent, and so I am not licensed. Of course, there is a follow-up question to that, but before I give the answer, there are a couple of things that are not the answer. It is not… Read More »Why I Am Not a Priest

Advice for Miko

The National Shinto Young Priests’ Association has created a video of advice for young women serving as miko at jinja over the new year. (And also for young men serving as assistants, but that wouldn’t get as many clicks — and the emphasis is on miko.) The video is all in Japanese, and probably not that interesting to watch if you can’t understand it, but I will embed it here in any case, and then write about it. This video lays out the general expectations for how temporary miko should… Read More »Advice for Miko

Rice for the Kami

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