Shinto

At the beginning of the month, on the day of the Hatsu-u Sai (“First Rabbit Festival”, held on the first day of the rabbit in March), Shirahata Hachiman Daijin, my local jinja, put up a new straw snake on the torii at the top of the steps to the jinja. This year, I arrived at the jinja while they were putting the snake on the torii, so I was able to take photographs. Fortunately, everyone was concentrating on the snake, and had their backs to me, so I can put… Read More »Shirahata-san Snake 2024

A new anime recently arrived on Netflix: Otaku Elf (Edomae Elf, in Japanese). This is about a Pathfinder elf (Pathfinder is just like Dungeons & Dragons, except the elves have longer ears — oh, and it’s better) who is the kami of a jinja in Tokyo, under the name “Takamimihimë” — “Princess Big Ears”. She is a total otaku, and the main sanctuary of the jinja is her nerd nest, where she plays computer games, builds plastic models, watches anime, reads manga, and avoids going out to meet people. The… Read More »The Theology of Otaku Elf

Every issue of Jinja Shinpō includes a short column from Jingū at Isë. In the January 29th issue, this column talked about the importance of fire at Jingū. It is used to provide light for the matsuri that are held at night, and to cook the food for the kami. In the latter case, the fire is started using a fire drill. It is also used to boil down the sea water from which the salt offered to the kami is extracted. That’s it. All the uses of fire are… Read More »Fire in Shinto

The “Mori ni Omofu” (“Thoughts in the Forest”) column in the January 15th issue of Jinja Shinpō was about the Noto earthquake, and had an interesting comment. “Unnecessarily looking for explanations of events that rely on things beyond human understanding, like a conspiracy theorist, cannot be said to be a healthy shinkō attitude.” One reason this is interesting is that an article in the Shinto newspaper is telling readers that the earthquake was caused by plate tectonics, which we understand pretty well, and not by the kami. As I have… Read More »Shinkō

The February 5th issue of Jinja Shinpō included an article reporting on the Shinto-related intangible cultural assets recognised by the most recent meeting of the relevant government committee. Such articles are frequent, and also cover the meetings dealing with tangible cultural assets. One of the intangible assets recognised this time was a ceremony from a jinja in Saga Prefecture, on Kyushu. On July 15th, men from among the ujiko purify themselves, and then climb the sacred tree with a sacred flag attached to the end of a bamboo pole. This… Read More »Divination by Wind