David Chart

The November 9th issue of Jinja Shinpō had an interview with the chief priest of Hokkaidō Jingū, who has just been appointed a Chōrō. This appointment is a pure honour, given to priests who have made an important contribution to Jinja Shinto over the course of several decades. They receive a staff with a small statue of a pigeon on top — this is historically significant, but I am not sure of the exact significance. Chōrō is the highest honour that a priest can receive within Jinja Honchō. Anyway, this… Read More »Right-Wing Priests

I have made some more back issues from the Patreon available again. First, I have put Offerings for the Kami on Amazon. This combines my essays on shinsen (offerings of food and drink) and kagura (sacred dance). Both of these essays were heavily edited for space reasons before they were included in my book, to remove almost all of the discussion of specific local examples. If you are interested in reading about special offerings at particular jinja, or traditional local forms of kagura, then you might want to pick this… Read More »More Back Issues Available

After the rather heavy topics of the last few posts, here’s something a bit lighter, albeit still significant. A columnist wrote (in the November 9th issue of Jinja Shinpō) about his childhood in northern Kyushu, where his grandfather and grandmother served at the local Shinto jinja and Buddhist temple. They would take turns, so that while, for example, his grandfather was on the jinja committee, his grandmother would be on the women’s committee for the temple, and when their terms ended, they would swap. So far, so traditionally Japanese. When… Read More »Multiply Religious

A very important feature of Japan at the moment is rural depopulation. Japan’s population is falling overall, and most young people are moving to cities. This has led to rural communities where the average age is around seventy. This causes many problems, and in the grand scheme of things the problems it causes for jinja are probably not the most important. They are, however, the most important from the perspective of this blog. Fundamentally, jinja need a certain number of people living nearby if the matsuri are to be maintained.… Read More »Responding to Depopulation

At present, Jinja Honchō is being sued by two people, one former employee and one who was demoted. The former is suing for (the Japanese version of) unfair dismissal, while the latter is suing for unfair demotion. (I’ve never heard of that in the UK or US, but apparently it is a thing here: Japanese law appears to rely on “abuse of authority” rather than any particular consequence.) They are asking for the courts to confirm that the decisions were without effect, and for payment of the salary that they… Read More »Court Case

This blog post continues my report on the October meeting of the Oversight Council. You might want to start with my explanation of the council, or with the first part of this report, or even with the second part. The budgets were followed by the accounts, which specified what Jinja Honchō had spent its money on in the previous financial year (July to June). The accounts were all accepted by the council. And then it was time for questions. The first question was about the payments to Jinja Honchō’s lawyer,… Read More »Questions of Accounts