Shinto

Hemp, “asa” in Japanese, is a very important part of Shinto culture. Hemp cloth is an important offering, and in the Daijōsai ritual that marks the accession of a new Tennō, hemp cloth is paired with silk. Hemp is also traditionally used in purification rituals, and the name for the ōnusa purification wand is normally written with the characters for “big hemp”, because it originally had strips of hemp cloth, or hemp fibres attached. This is a bit of a problem at the moment, because hemp is also the plant… Read More »Hemp

There was a nice column in the June 7th issue of Jinja Shinpō by a priest in Kumamoto Prefecture, in western Kyushu. He, Revd Kudō, was talking about the importance of cleaning the jinja precincts, and, in particular, sweeping up the leaves that drop from the trees planted around the sanctuaries. He quotes, without objecting, another chief priest as saying that most of a Shinto priest’s job is cleaning. Traditionally, this is done while in vestments, with a bamboo broom, but he confessed that he had started using a leaf… Read More »Cleaning

The May 31st issue of Jinja Shinpō contained three articles, about different jinja, that cast light on different aspects of the idea of the enshrinement of a kami. There is not enough material for an essay, but it will make a substantial blog post. The first, and simplest, was about repairs and rebuilding at a relatively small jinja in Tokyo, Eiju Inari Jinja. The main job of the chief priest of this jinja is assistant priest at Kanda Jinja, one of the most important jinja in Tokyo. As is normal,… Read More »Enshrinement

About a month ago, I was interviewed by Miyuki Seguchi of the Japan Experts Podcast, and that podcast went live a few days ago. It’s about 30 minutes long, and I hope I managed to be interesting. It is, of course, about Shinto in general, rather than about the very specific sorts of information I tend to write about here.

The May 24th issue of Jinja Shinpō contained a very thought-provoking article. Futarasan Jinja in Nikkō has just erected a monument near its middle jinja to celebrate the actions of one of its late nineteenth century chief priests. Nikkō is a mountainous area in Tochigi Prefecture, most famous for Nikkō Tōshōgū, a World Heritage site and the main jinja enshrining Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Futarasan Jinja is, however, about a thousand years older, and also part of the World Heritage Site. It honours one of the… Read More »Fish in the Lake