Shinto

I have made two more of my essays from my Patreon available for purchase on Amazon: Myths of Okinagatarashihimë. (Affiliate link) Okinagatarashihimë, also known as Jingū Kōgō, is an important figure in the early myths of Japan. The wife of a Tennō (emperor), she was possessed by the kami and delivered an oracle saying that her husband should conquer the Korean peninsula. He ignored this and died, so she took his place, leading the conquest while pregnant with her son, the next Tennō. After returning to Japan, she ruled on… Read More »Myths of Okinagatarashihimë

As I have described in my book, my ujigami jinja, Shirahata Hachiman Daijin, has a special matsuri on the first day of the rabbit in March, and as part of this matsuri a straw snake is hung on the torii, where a shimënawa would normally go. This year’s snake went up a couple of weeks ago. Click on the images for larger versions. This matsuri is technically run by a “kō”, a group of people with a special devotion to a particular kami or jinja, rather than by the jinja… Read More »2022 Snake

If you read English-language discussions of Shinto, you are almost certain to come across references to the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. Indeed, I am currently reading Helen Hardacre’s Shinto: A History, which is good so far, and she refers to the kami in the same way. Is this legitimate? As readers of this blog and my other writings about Shinto probably already know, I do not translate “kami” at all, and certainly not as “god”. The concepts are very different, and referring to “kami” as “gods” is likely to make Shinto… Read More »The Sun Goddess Amaterasu?

The hardcover, full colour version of An Introduction to Shinto is now available from Amazon. (Affiliate link) It is really expensive, because of the cost of colour printing: $59.99. In addition, because of problems with the ISBN, I am afraid that I will not be able to make it available from any outlet other than Amazon in the near future. I would like to — the electronic version is available from Gumroad — but regulations make it impractical. It takes them a long time to print it, but the images in the proof copy,… Read More »An Introduction to Shinto in Hardcover

Today marks eleven years since the Great East Japan Earthquake, and I want to write a bit about it. I have visited the area affected by the tsunami at least once a year since the disaster, mainly to visit jinja, and so I have seen the progress in rebuilding. There has been a lot of progress. Transport links have been restored to almost all areas, and new homes have been built on higher ground to replace those destroyed by the tsunami. At many jinja, the initial rebuilding is complete and… Read More »Eleven Years

The series of articles about sacred forests had an interesting instalment in the February 14th issue of Jinja Shinpō — interesting because it isn’t about forests. It does have something of a connection to jinja, however. It is about artificial hills found around ports and coasts in many areas of Japan. Many of these are called “good weather mountain” (biyoriyama), although they are usually quite small as mountains normally go. These hills were used by fishermen and other sailors to get a good view of the sky, and judge whether… Read More »Artificial Hills