David Chart

The series of articles about sacred forests had an interesting instalment in the February 14th issue of Jinja Shinpō — interesting because it isn’t about forests. It does have something of a connection to jinja, however. It is about artificial hills found around ports and coasts in many areas of Japan. Many of these are called “good weather mountain” (biyoriyama), although they are usually quite small as mountains normally go. These hills were used by fishermen and other sailors to get a good view of the sky, and judge whether… Read More »Artificial Hills

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that most banks in Japan had introduced significant transaction fees for the deposit of coins, and that this was likely to have an impact on jinja. This issue was clearly of concern to the people at Jinja Shinpō, because when they sent out the hatsumōdë survey that I discussed last week, they also included a question about this problem. They got a wide range of responses. (Incidentally, a couple of weeks ago, a few days after the results were published, NHK did a short… Read More »Coin Transaction Fees

Last year, Tokyo Jinjachō made two videos demonstrating the etiquette for visiting a jinja and put them online. They are both less than three minutes long, and were filmed at jinja in Tokyo. The first is about how to purify yourself, both when there is a ladle, and when there isn’t. The second is about the etiquette of paying your respects, both with and without a bell rope. The Japanese subtitles on both videos mainly give descriptions of what is being done, rather than additional explanation, with an encouragement to… Read More »Jinja Etiquette Videos

Bloomsbury Shinto Studies is a series of books, in English, about Shinto, published by Bloomsbury (and thus probably subsidised by the profits from Harry Potter). The series is still active, and although the initial hardcover publications are very expensive, the paperback versions are more reasonable. You can also get ebooks direct from Bloomsbury, although I am sure that they are available on Amazon as well. These are serious academic books, and thus rather heavier going than most of the things I write for Mimusubi, but they are all interesting, and… Read More »Bloomsbury Shinto Studies

This blog post covers two articles about sacred forests from Jinja Shinpō, because these two drifted a bit from the core topic in talking about the history and etymology of sacred forests. The article in the January 31st issue was mainly about sacred forests in other cultures; they were found in ancient Egypt, and in India, and in China from the fifth or sixth century. It did talk briefly about Japan. There are remains of structures from the mid-Yayoi period onwards (from around 100 BCE) that appear to be ritual… Read More »Origins and Etymology of Sacred Forests