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David Chart

Purely Punning

The February 15th issue of Jinja Shinpō had a short article about a new purification font at Harina Jinja in Nagoya, a jinja I have actually visited. This font was designed to be hands-free, so there are no ladles, and there is a wheelchair-accessible font off to one side (the main font is on a small dais). However, that’s not what I want to talk about today. The water flows from six nozzles, placed around a hexagonal pillar. These nozzles are shaped like gourds, and 89 centimetres from the ground.… Read More »Purely Punning

Hatsumōdë: The Big Picture

This year’s hatsumōdë was, thanks to COVID-19, very different from most years. I have already written about some of the early reports, but Jinja Shinpō has now completed a survey of its local contacts, which means that it has responses from over 400 priests from across Japan, covering a wide range of types of jinja. The results show that, unsurprisingly, the impact of the pandemic varied a lot from jinja to jinja. The simplest statistic is that about 80% of jinja reported at least some fall in hatsumōdë visitors over… Read More »Hatsumōdë: The Big Picture

Papercraft Kamidana Items

The Tokyo Shinto Youth Association (Tokyo-to Shinto Seinenkai) has put some downloadable PDFs online for papercraft items for your kamidana. There is an ofuda-tatë, which is something to lean the ofuda against so that it stands up, a pair of koma-inu, and a pair of lanterns (which should not actually be lit because they are made of paper.) http://www.tokyo-shinsei.jp/papercraft.html The page and instructions are all in Japanese, but there are instructional videos, so they should be usable even if you cannot read Japanese. The download links are the things with… Read More »Papercraft Kamidana Items

Earthquake Commemoration

Next month will see the tenth anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake. There will, I am sure, be a number of events to mark it, and since it is a very solemn event to start with, the necessary pandemic countermeasures will not, I think, be a serious burden. (The largest issue that immediately comes to mind is that people who had to leave an area in the aftermath probably will not be able to go back for a memorial event.) Jinja Honchō is also asking jinja across Japan to… Read More »Earthquake Commemoration

The Perils of Research

One of the problems with continuing to research a topic that you have written about in the past is that sometimes you discover that you had misinterpreted something. For example, when I wrote about Miho Jinja, I noted that the jinja claims that Jinmu Tennō’s empress was a daughter of Kotoshironushi, the main kami at Miho Jinja. I also noted that the Kojiki says that she was a daughter of Ōmononushi, the main kami at Miwa Jinja, and I speculated on where Miho Jinja’s legend might have come from. However,… Read More »The Perils of Research

The Tennō’s Priestesses

A few months ago I wrote about a series of columns in Jinja Shinpō being written by a female priest who did not grow up in a priestly family. The latest instalment was in the January 25th issue, and was about her service in the jinja of the Imperial Palace, the Three Sacred Halls. The priests for these jinja are divided into the male Shōten and the female Naishōten. The Naishōten are required to be unmarried, and today I believe that means that they are all fairly young, although in… Read More »The Tennō’s Priestesses