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Shinto

Working With Disagreements

As I have mentioned before on this blog, and indeed on the “About” page, I work (part-time, as a consultant) for Jinja Honchō, the largest and most influential Shinto organisation in Japan. This might seem like a natural pairing. After all, I practise Shinto, and write about it on my own time. However, Jinja Honchō is a right-wing organisation, and I am not a right-wing person. Jinja Honchō is so right wing that people write books with titles like Jinja Honchō: The Extreme Right Wing Organisation That Controls The Prime… Read More »Working With Disagreements

New Snake

Yesterday was the first day of the rabbit in March this year, so my local jinja, Shirahata Hachiman Daijin, held its Hatsu-u Matsuri, or First Rabbit Festival. As part of this, a large straw snake, with vegetables for facial features and a wooden sword sticking out of its tail, is made and tied onto the inner torii. The snake is left in place until the summer matsuri, in July, and so gets a bit battered over time. Today, however, it’s still fairly fresh.

Hatsumōdë: The Visitors’ View

In my last post, I reported on Jinja Shinpō’s hatsumōdë survey of about 400 priests across the country. They also conducted an online survey of about a thousand “ordinary” Japanese, to see how they had handled hatsumōdë this year. The first result they reported is that 78.2% of them had come across the encouragement to spread out hatsumōdë visits. That advertising campaign really does seem to have been effective, which underwrites the complaints made by rural priests, reported in my last post, that it was too much “one size fits… Read More »Hatsumōdë: The Visitors’ View

Shinto Ethics Essay

Buy Essay Last month’s Patreon essay was about Shinto ethics, and it is now available for purchase on Gumroad, for people who did not get it through the Patreon. Shinto does not put much emphasis on ethics, but that does not mean that the topic is entirely ignored. Obviously, individual Shinto priests have ethical standards, and priests do criticise certain activities on ethical grounds. However, there is very little in the way of “official” statements on ethics, which means that this essay is a distillation of things that have been… Read More »Shinto Ethics Essay

Purely Punning

The February 15th issue of Jinja Shinpō had a short article about a new purification font at Harina Jinja in Nagoya, a jinja I have actually visited. This font was designed to be hands-free, so there are no ladles, and there is a wheelchair-accessible font off to one side (the main font is on a small dais). However, that’s not what I want to talk about today. The water flows from six nozzles, placed around a hexagonal pillar. These nozzles are shaped like gourds, and 89 centimetres from the ground.… Read More »Purely Punning

Hatsumōdë: The Big Picture

This year’s hatsumōdë was, thanks to COVID-19, very different from most years. I have already written about some of the early reports, but Jinja Shinpō has now completed a survey of its local contacts, which means that it has responses from over 400 priests from across Japan, covering a wide range of types of jinja. The results show that, unsurprisingly, the impact of the pandemic varied a lot from jinja to jinja. The simplest statistic is that about 80% of jinja reported at least some fall in hatsumōdë visitors over… Read More »Hatsumōdë: The Big Picture