Shinto

Jinja Honchō has a formal system for people who support it financially. If you give a certain amount of money or more, you get a number of benefits in return. One is that you are sent Jinja Shinpō free of charge (the minimum donation amount is much higher than the subscription rate), another is that you get a little card that is supposed to entitle you to special sanpai at the “beppyō jinja” (although my experience suggests that at least some of the staff and priests at such jinja have… Read More »Jinja Honchō Supporters’ Matsuri

I have previously written on this blog about the problem of “inactive” jinja; that is, jinja that have the legal status of a religious corporation, but do not meet all the legal requirements to maintain that status. These can range from jinja that are so genuinely inactive that priests from the area cannot physically find them, to jinja where the matsuri are all performed, on schedule, by the ujiko and people visit to pay their respects, but there is no legally designated head of the religious corporation. The most recent… Read More »A History of “Inactive” Jinja

The season of taue matsuri has begun. These are festivals marking the beginning of planting rice plants out in the paddy fields, and are an important part of many jinjas’ ritual years. Indeed, the cycle of rice agriculture shapes the annual matsuri of most jinja, with the kinensai asking for a good harvest in February, and the niinamësai giving thanks for it in November, with matsuri asking that the weather not damage the crops in between. Indeed, at most jinja the important matsuri are tied to the rice crop in… Read More »Rice and Rites

A couple of weeks ago, Jinja Shinpō ran an editorial about “invisible jinja”. This was not about literally invisible jinja, but rather about the ones that do not show up in any statistics, so most people are not aware of them. There are about 80,000 jinja in Japan that have legal status as religious corporations. There is a great range of sizes and prosperity here, from single jinja that employ dozens of priests to single priests who look after dozens of jinja. One of the major problems that Jinja Honchō… Read More »Invisible Jinja

I have had a very short piece published in this week’s Jinja Shinpō. On February 11th, which is National Foundation Day, Shinto-related organisations hold events around the country to celebrate it. This national holiday was invented by the Meiji government, and these events are fairly representative of the right-wing and nationalist activities to which jinja are connected. Many of these events are reported, in some detail, in Jinja Shinpō. At one of the meetings, they made a formal declaration, including the phrase “with profound gratitude for being born in Japan,… Read More »The Power of Words