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David Chart

My Favourite Sanpai Time

I visit my local jinja, Shirahata Hachiman Daijin, every day to pay my respects to the kami. Because of my work schedule, this normally happens in the morning. However, my favourite time to visit is in the evening, when it is just starting to get dark, but before the doors to the haiden (the prayer hall) are closed. The lights in the haiden are on, and it is dark enough outside that they give the room a warm glow. Normally, there are lights on behind the bamboo blinds at the… Read More »My Favourite Sanpai Time

Epidemics and Matsuri

Jinja Honchō runs an annual conference for priests, at which academics give presentations on topics relevant to the religious content of Shinto. Normally, the priests gather for this, but that was not possible last year. Instead, two presentations were recorded, and made available on the priests-only website. I haven’t seen them, because I’m not a priest, but quite a lot of priests apparently did. They may even have been accessible to more priests than usual, as there was no need to travel to a central site, but there was no… Read More »Epidemics and Matsuri

Myths of Jinmu Tennō

I have just made two more of the Patreon essays available for purchase on Amazon. These essays, Myths of Jinmu Tennō, cover most of the myths about Jinmu Tennō, the first Tennō, from when he left Hyūga in southeastern Kyushu to the completion of his conquest of Yamato in central Japan. There are a few more myths about the establishment of his rule, and I will write another essay about those in the near future. The scholarly consensus is that Jinmu Tennō did not exist, and that there was no… Read More »Myths of Jinmu Tennō

“Transport Jinja”

The 25th January issue of Jinja Shinpō carried an article about the enshrinement of kami in a new jinja. This jinja is called “Transport Jinja” (交通神社), and it is on the roof of a shopping mall attached to JR Miyazaki Station, in southeastern Kyushu. It is sponsored by three transport companies and the company that built the mall, which is closely linked to JR Kyushu (one of the three transport companies). The companies spoke to the priests at Miyazaki Jingū about the project, and the jinja agreed to enshrine a… Read More »“Transport Jinja”

Hatsumōdë Reports

Last week’s Jinja Shinpō contained the first official report on this year’s hatsumōdë, with a suggestion that there would be further articles once the reporters had heard from some smaller jinja around Japan, and had time to build up something of an overview of the country. This year is likely to have been bad, however, and not just because of the pandemic. Some regions had unusually heavy snow, which made it physically difficult to get to some jinja. The overall picture was that jinja saw massive reductions in visitor numbers… Read More »Hatsumōdë Reports

Tenjin-sama’s Ox

Tenjin-sama, Sugawara-no-Michizanë, is often described as the kami of scholarship, and for once this is fairly accurate. Strictly speaking, no kami is the “kami of” something abstract, and in many cases that sort of description seriously distorts the image of the kami in Japan. However, the association between Tenjin-sama and scholarship is so strong that, in his case, you can actually say that. He was not always the kami of scholarship, but he is now. This might make it slightly surprising that his sacred animal is the ox, a beast… Read More »Tenjin-sama’s Ox