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What is Shinto?

Until recently, this blog lacked something important: an easy-to-find short introduction to Shinto, so that people who came to the site while looking for basic information could find it quickly. I have now fixed that, adding a new page answering the question “What is Shinto?”. (It’s also linked from the main menu on every page.) There is also a five-year-old post, but that’s a bit harder to find. The new one should make things easy for people. This post is very short, but if you add the new page to… Read More »What is Shinto?

Why I Am Not a Priest

Regular readers of this blog probably know that I am not a Shinto priest, even though I work (part-time) for Jinja Honchō. I thought that you might be interested in the reason. The immediate reason is that I have never sought training as a Shinto priest. Jinja Honchō does not license people without their consent, and so I am not licensed. Of course, there is a follow-up question to that, but before I give the answer, there are a couple of things that are not the answer. It is not… Read More »Why I Am Not a Priest

Advice for Miko

The National Shinto Young Priests’ Association has created a video of advice for young women serving as miko at jinja over the new year. (And also for young men serving as assistants, but that wouldn’t get as many clicks — and the emphasis is on miko.) The video is all in Japanese, and probably not that interesting to watch if you can’t understand it, but I will embed it here in any case, and then write about it. This video lays out the general expectations for how temporary miko should… Read More »Advice for Miko

Rice for the Kami

The Shinto ritual year is structured around rice agriculture. (This may have been less true in some areas before the Meiji standardisation of ritual, but it is generally true now.) These days, of course, only a tiny proportion of the Japanese population is directly involved in growing rice, and that proportion has been dropping for years. Some Shinto groups have taken steps to address this, by giving people, particularly priests, an opportunity to participate in traditional rice agriculture. One such group is the Kanagawa Prefecture Young Priests’ League. (They don’t… Read More »Rice for the Kami

Identifying Kami

A little while ago, I read a book about jinja in depopulated areas of Japan. (過疎地神社の研究 (Kasochi Jinja no Kenkyū, Research on Jinja in Depopulated Areas), 冬月律 (by Fuyutsuki Ritsu)) The book is a report of several years’ anthropological study of the jinja in an area of Kōchi Prefecture, on Shikoku. Dr Fuyutsuki interviewed the priests and the sōdai, and the book is very interesting, in part because it makes it clear that it is not easy to say anything general about the problem. I may write at more length… Read More »Identifying Kami

State Investigation

The “Former Unification Association” is big news in Japan at the moment. (NHK always refers to it like that (in Japanese)); its current official name in English is “Family Federation for World Peace and Unification”, while the popular name for the group is “the Moonies”. The reason it is big news is that Abe’s assassin said he was motivated by Abe’s links to the group, because the group had bankrupted his family by pressuring his mother to make an unreasonably large donation. The opposition parties picked up on this, and… Read More »State Investigation