Shinto

A couple of weeks ago I was preparing something for Jinja Honchō, and needed to check Kokugakuin’s English Shinto website. That reminded me that I hadn’t written about it here, so I am making up for that now. Kokugakuin University is the larger of the two Shinto universities in Japan, and trains more Shinto priests than any other institution. It does a lot of research on Shinto, and publishes some of that research in English. It also has a museum, which has a section on Shinto that is worth a… Read More »Kokugakuin’s English Site

The Kumamoto Earthquakes were just over five years ago. About six months ago, I wrote an essay about their impact and the recovery, but the April 26th issue of Jinja Shinpō had a long article on the current situation, including a particularly interesting situation at one jinja, so I would like to bring things up to date. The big picture is that the recovery is progressing well. A lot of rebuilding has happened, and some of the major damage to infrastructure has been repaired. For example, a major bridge that… Read More »Rebuilding in Kumamoto

April’s Patreon essay was about the archaeology of Shinto, and it is now available for purchase on Gumroad. Although the earliest written records of Shinto date from the eighth century, they describe an existing practice. Archaeology provides the only evidence we have on just how much further back it goes — and it seems that we have good evidence as far back as the fourth century.

The April 26th issue of Jinja Shinpō had a couple of articles about the ongoing court case involving Jinja Honchō. I’ll keep this brief, because it’s not particularly about Shinto, but people who read the earlier articles might want to know what is happening. The Board of Directors has decided to appeal. There are two important points at issue. One is whether the disciplinary action was legitimate, and the other is whether the actions that those employees were complaining about, the sale of some real estate, were corrupt. The court… Read More »Court Case Update

The April 19th issue of Jinja Shinpō has an article that draws out some of the issues from my post last week about public and private matsuri. A jinja in Tokyo had little leaflets printed with a prayer for people to say at their family kamidana, to pray for the recovery of northeast Japan (Tōhoku) after the tsunami in 2011. The leaflets were printed and distributed because, although the tenth anniversary of the disaster was on March 11th this year, the pandemic meant that the jinja could not invite anyone… Read More »Privately Public

The April 19th issue of Jinja Shinpō introduced Shinto playing cards, which have been developed by the Shinto Youth Association. These are standard playing cards — four suits of thirteen cards each, with two jokers — with pictures of Shinto things on each one. There are also short explanations. For example, going by the picture in the paper, “torii” is on the seven of spades, while “kagura” is on the jack of hearts. The idea is that these packs of cards could be given out to children at shichi-go-san (two… Read More »Shinto Playing Cards