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A Jinja in Thailand

The December 16th issue of Jinja Shinpō had an article about an overseas jinja and, coincidentally, it was founded from Okuni Jinja. The jinja is in J-Park Sriracha, and given that the katakana transcription of “Sriracha” was “Shiracha”, I am not going to transcribe any of the other Thai names from the article, because I would almost certainly get them horribly wrong. J-Park was built to cater to local Japanese expatriates (I get the impression that Japanese car companies have a significant number of factories in the area), and to… Read More »A Jinja in Thailand

Okuni Jinja

The most recent bit of my work for Jinja Honchō to become public is on the English website of Okuni Jinja, in Shizuoka Prefecture. https://www.shinto-okunijinja-japan.net On this project, I was translating and providing English texts for large portions of the site, but I was not closely involved with the process of getting it set up — which is why they have a page entitled “What are Shinto?”, although the filename is “what-is-shinto”. The page about kami has the opposite problem. [Edit 2025/01/08: The people who are closely involved in getting… Read More »Okuni Jinja

Trees for Christmas

At the end of last week I visited my local jinja, Shirahata Hachiman Daijin, and the autumn leaves were looking very good. The trees and other plants in the precincts at this jinja have been carefully planned so that there is something worth seeing at almost any time of the year. Unfortunately, the gingko had to be pruned a few years ago, and the leaves are only just recovering. This year, they did turn quite yellow, so maybe they will be back to being photo-worthy soon. I do not post… Read More »Trees for Christmas

Hatsumōdë Video

Jinja Honchō has created a couple of advertising videos to encourage people to go to Hatsumōdë, visiting a jinja at the new year. There are 15 and 30 second edits, but I will just link to the longer one, because it does appear to include the whole of the shorter one. It may not be obvious what all the images are, so here are some explanations. 00: Sunrise. Or maybe sunset played backwards, but it is representing sunrise. This is probably because the first sunrise of the new year is… Read More »Hatsumōdë Video

New Book: Shinto in Person: Tokyo

My new book on Shinto, Shinto in Person: Tokyo, is now available for purchase on Amazon and Gumroad. There will be a print version available on Amazon very soon (possibly by the time you read this), but the approval process for hardcopy takes a bit longer than that for Kindle books. As the blurb says, the book is for someone who wants to visit jinja in Tokyo and learn about Shinto as they go. It does talk about the individual jinja, but it is more about broader Shinto culture, and… Read More »New Book: Shinto in Person: Tokyo

Transferring the Kami

At most jinja, the kami are held to be present in an object, referred to as the “goshintai” or “honourable kami body”, which is kept in the main sanctuary and never seen by the public. However, if the main sanctuary needs to be repaired or rebuilt, the kami need to be moved out while the work takes place, and moved back afterwards. This is called a “senzasai”, or “moving seat matsuri”, because the kami move to a different seat during the matsuri. The November 25th issue of Jinja Shinpō had… Read More »Transferring the Kami