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David Chart

New Chief Priest at Yasukuni

 The August 5th issue of Jinja Shinpō carried a long interview with the new chief priest of Yasukuni Jinja, Ōtsuka Umio. He is an unusual choice because he was not a priest when appointed, nor is he the scion of one of the eminent families of Japanese history, like the Fujiwara, Tokugawa, or Imperial line. Rather, he is a retired admiral, and previous head of the officer school of the Maritime Self Defense Forces. (Not the navy. We don’t have a navy. Or any other armed forces.) The fact that… Read More »New Chief Priest at Yasukuni

Retirement Age

As I said in the last article, there were two topics discussed at the Jinja Honchō board meeting held on July 19th and reported in the August 5th issue of Jinja Shinpō that are worth picking up here. The first was the ongoing friction; the second was the question of a retirement age. The proposal is not reported in detail, but it seems to involve the introduction of a retirement age for senior roles in the Jinja Honchō secretariat. The aim is given as allowing the promotion of younger staff… Read More »Retirement Age

Fractious Board Meeting

The August 5th issue of Jinja Shinpō contained an article reporting on a meeting of the Jinja Honchō Board of Directors that was held on July 19th. Much of the business was important but uninteresting — for example, one bit of the Jinja Honchō regulations needed to be modified to delete Tsurugaoka Hachimangū from the list of Beppyō Jinja (particularly important jinja that are supervised directly by Jinja Honchō rather than by the Prefectural Jinjachō) because Tsurugaoka Hachimangū has left Jinja Honchō entirely. Two topics, however, were more controversial, and… Read More »Fractious Board Meeting

Children Refectories

“Children Refectories” is a straight translation of “Kodomo Shokudō”, the topic of the editorial in the July 22nd issue of Jinja Shinpō. This is an idea that has grown as a grassroots movement in Japan, apparently starting in 2012, and now having about 9,000 examples across the country. Because it is a grassroots movement with no central coordination the idea is a bit vague, but the core is the provision of free or very cheap collective meals for children. In a survey carried out in 2021, the most common goals… Read More »Children Refectories

Back to Basics

This post was inspired by an article in the July 8th issue of Jinja Shinpō, but it does not engage with its content in any detail. These are really my personal musings. A very common idea in Shinto is that of returning to the source, origin, or initial idea. Because Shinto is small-c conservative, this is seen as a good thing, and it is quite common for people to urge the community to do so — whether it is a return to the origin of Shinto in general, to the… Read More »Back to Basics

Remote Offerings

The 8th July issue of Jinja Shinpō had an interesting historical article about the ways people made offerings to Jingū in the early sixteenth century. It was written by the head of Nagasaki Prefectural Jinjachō, based on surviving documents from what is now Okayama Prefecture. These record 479 people who visited Jingū with a particular onshi (the priests who gathered adherents for Jingū and organised their visits), and give details of how they made their offerings. It seems that only 82 of them took cash to Isë and made their… Read More »Remote Offerings