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Shinto

The Name of Amaterasu Ōmikami

Jinja Honchō, and the Shinto community in Japan in general, do not like abbreviating “Amaterasu Ōmikami” to “Amaterasu”. A lot of people in Japan outside Jinja Honchō do, and often write it in katakana, but Jinja Honchō always writes it out in full. There are, I think, two reasons for this. The first is the obvious one, that it seems disrespectful to abbreviate the name of the kami. Of course, there are limits to all things: even Jinja Honchō normally refers to Amënikishikuninikishiamatsuhikohikohononinigi no Mikoto as “Ninigi no Mikoto”. However,… Read More »The Name of Amaterasu Ōmikami

Bell Ceremony

The October 9th issue of Jinja Shinpō contained an article about a joint Shinto-Buddhist ceremony with a long history. The ceremony involves Enoshima Jinja, in Fujisawa, and Engakuji, a Buddhist temple in Kamakura, both in Kanagawa Prefecture, west of Tokyo. These two cities are very close together, as are the two institutions. The origin of the ceremony was the creation of a bell, the Ōkanë, or “big bell”. This bell is a National Treasure, and it is 259.4 cm tall. It is, apparently, the largest temple bell in the Kantō… Read More »Bell Ceremony

Enshrining Kami

A while ago, one of my patrons asked me a very good question. How do priests convince kami to enter, and remain in, the goshintai at a jinja? This is quite fundamental, but something that I have not seen addressed at all. In the earliest jinja, the problem does not arise. The belief was that the kami was there already, and the jinja developed in that location as people venerated the kami, and set up a permanent structure for the matsuri. In those cases, the goshintai might be a mountain… Read More »Enshrining Kami

Berlin Meeting

This year, the Community of Sant’Egidio held its meeting for peace in Berlin. Last year, when it was in Rome, I was part of the Jinja Honchō delegation, but this year the decision was that I wouldn’t go. I am told that things went well enough, so we will see what happens next year. If they suddenly decide that I should go again, that would suggest there was room for improvement… Anyway, three people went in the end: the director of our department (Revd Ushio), the head of our section… Read More »Berlin Meeting

Kazakhstan Congress

Last week, I was at the meeting of the Secretariat of the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, in Astana, Kazakhstan, as half of Jinja Honchō’s delegation. As it turned out, I had a lot less to do than last year. First, our Liaison Officer used to work at the Kazakhstan Embassy in Tokyo, so we already knew him, and he speaks good Japanese. That meant I did not need to interpret between him and Revd Mitsui. And then it turned out that they were providing simultaneous Japanese… Read More »Kazakhstan Congress

Forests at Jingū

I have mentioned before that the magazine The Imperial Family also carries articles about jinja that are not directly connected to the Imperial family. The Summer 2023 issue had such an article, about the forests at Jingū. As readers of this blog are probably at least vaguely aware, Jingū rebuilds all the main sanctuaries once every twenty years, and moves the kami from the old to the new, in the Sengū. The old sanctuaries are then disassembled, and sent to jinja around the country that need new ones. However, even… Read More »Forests at Jingū