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Presidency in Court

Not wanting to be left behind by the USA, Jinja Honchō is currently in court to decide who the president is. The tags on this post should now link to all the immediately relevant posts, but I will start with a quick recap. At the last Oversight Council meeting in May, the chairman was re-elected, and a new board of directors was chosen. The new board of directors had a lot of overlap with the old one, despite the problems over the last court case. At the board meeting to… Read More »Presidency in Court

Cashless Payments

The second interesting presentation at the Shinto Youth Association training session (first one here), as reported in the September 12th edition of Jinja Shinpō, was about cashless payments. I have mentioned before that the (belated) spread of cashless payments in Japan is an issue for jinja, both for practical reasons, and because the physical offerings have religious significance. At the training session, further issues were raised. Omamori and ofuda are not bought and sold at jinja. This is because of the religious significance of the items: omamori and ofuda are… Read More »Cashless Payments

The Future of Female Priests

At the end of August the Shinto Youth Association, a grouping of priests under 40ish, held a training session in Tokyo, which was reported in the September 12th issue of Jinja Shinpō. There were three presentations, one of which appears to have been a conventional motivational speech by a businessman, and of little interest to us. The others were interesting, and I will write about them here, in one post each. The first was about female priests. This was a panel discussion, with a (male) moderator and two female priests.… Read More »The Future of Female Priests

Back to Koganëyama Jinja

Last weekend (which is Sunday/Monday for me) I went back to Koganëyama Jinja on Kinkasan, in Miyagi Prefecture. Kinkasan is a small island a kilometre or so off the Pacific coast, and the closest Japanese land to the epicentre of the 2011 earthquake. During the tsunami it was, briefly, not an island. The main thing on the island is Koganëyama Jinja, and I have visited it every year since the island reopened for visitors in 2013. I have written about it several times before, but I haven’t sorted out tags… Read More »Back to Koganëyama Jinja

Sacred Forests of Musashi Province

The article about sacred forests in the August 29th issue of Jinja Shinpō reported on the ongoing activities of a group that is investigating the sacred forests in the area covered by the ancient Musashi province. That area covers much of Tokyo and Saitama prefectures, and a bit of Kanagawa — I live in what was Musashi. Although it covers a lot of extremely urban areas, the northern mountains suffer from depopulation, so it is quite a diverse area. The group is made up of volunteers, and the people who… Read More »Sacred Forests of Musashi Province

Written Norito

Norito, the formal prayers offered during Shinto matsuri, are always written down, and the priest reads them from the paper. This is even true for common norito that the priest has almost certainly memorised. (The purification prayers may be read, but they are not, strictly speaking, norito, so it is also common for them to be recited from memory.) The steps of Shinto liturgy include specific instructions on what to do with the paper, and there are particular rules for folding it, and for how the norito should be written.… Read More »Written Norito