Shinto

The hatsumōdë jinja visit at the beginning of the new year is a firmly established tradition in contemporary Japan. Anywhere from dozens to millions of people descend on each jinja to pay their respects, receive ofuda to venerate in the new year, and provide the foundation for the jinja’s financial survival over the following year. This presents jinja with a major problem this time. They cannot afford to simply cancel hatsumōdë, in most cases; the income is vital to paying the bills over the rest of the year. On the… Read More »Yōhai Gohei

A few weeks ago, Jinja Shinpō ran a pair of articles on the Yakumo Koto. This is a particular kind of koto, a stringed instrument with strings stretched over a long (1 metre or more) sounding board. The strings are plucked, and held at various points to make different notes. Koto have been associated with Shinto ritual since the earliest legends: a koto is used in a ritual described in the Nihonshoki. The Yakumo Koto does not go back that far; the impetus for the articles was the bicentenary of… Read More »Yakumo Koto

According to the 28 September issue of Jinja Shinpō, Abë Shinzō, the former prime minister of Japan, visited Yasukuni Jinja on September 19th. This does not seem to have raised the same amount of international controversy as his previous visit, on December 26th 2013, possibly because he was not prime minister this time, having formally resigned on September 16th. It did still make the front page of Jinja Shinpō, however. I am raising it here, because I think this visit is evidence in favour of my interpretation of his previous… Read More »Abë at Yasukuni

I have made two more of the back numbers of the Patreon essays available on Amazon: Shinto Practice for Non-Japanese. (Note that the links to Amazon are affiliate links, which means that I may get money if you buy something else after clicking on them, as well as, obviously, getting royalties if you buy my book.) This includes the essay for last month. I’ve made it available this quickly because these essays address questions that get asked a lot: can someone who isn’t Japanese practise Shinto, and if so, what… Read More »Shinto Practice for Non-Japanese

A few weeks ago, I wrote about an article published in Jinja Shinpō that was indirectly critical of the Shinto establishment, and wondered whether there would be any follow-up. There was. A couple of weeks ago, Jinja Shinpō carried two articles that were explicitly responding to that one. One of them was from a retired priest in his eighties, who lives in Yamaguchi Prefecture in western Japan. His main argument was that Shinto priests today weren’t as good as they were in the old days. There has, he claims, been… Read More »Further Dissension

As regular readers of this blog will know, Jinja Shinpō has recently carried a lot of articles about jinja that have adapted their matsuri to COVID-19, with details about how they have done it. A couple of weeks ago, they published one that struck me as a particularly practical and interesting idea. The jinja in question, Nishinë Jinja in Fukushima City, seems to be fairly large (although I had never heard of it before — with 80,000 jinja in Japan, I suspect that I will continue hearing about new ones… Read More »Umbrellas for All