Mimusubi

The April 18th issue of Jinja Shinpō carried another article in the series about sacred forests. It is by the same author as the previous one, about the Shikinaisha, and describes his impressions of the three broad types of sacred forest that one finds across Japan. (Apparently, he has visited more jinja than the 4,000-plus candidate Shikinaisha that he mentioned in the previous article.) His first point is to emphasise that the general image of sacred forests as untouched by human hands is wrong. Even if entry to them is… Read More »Sacred Forest Types

I’ve just released the next volume of the Mimusubi Essays on Shinto on Amazon: Shinto Liturgy. (That’s an affiliate link. The terms and conditions say that I have to tell you that, in case you think I am offering a completely neutral and disinterested recommendation of my own book. Anyway…) This is a compilation of two of the Patreon essays: “Ritual Movements in Shinto” and “Shinto Liturgy“, which are available individually from Gumroad at those links. (Those are not affiliate links, but I still get money if you buy my… Read More »New Book on Shinto Liturgy

My local jinja, Shirahata Hachiman Daijin, has just done some maintenance around the precincts. The photograph shows people repainting the railings around the platform in front of the prayer hall, but paint was also touched up elsewhere, and the bamboo fence behind the purification font was also replaced. This sort of maintenance is important, but I have the impression that it is the aspect of jinja management most likely to be neglected. Day-to-day essentials have to be done, because they are necessary right now, and so the jinja’s basic income… Read More »Routine Maintenance

I imagine that many readers of this blog are familiar with Chinese New Year, which typically happens in February, and marks the start of the year on the Chinese lunar calendar. Until the late nineteenth century, Japan also used a lunar (strictly, a lunisolar) calendar, and originally it used the Chinese one. However, because those calendars were calculated for Chinese longitudes, they were not quite right for Japan, and they were replaced in the Edo period by specifically Japanese ones. The current Japanese lunisolar calendar is known as the Tenpō… Read More »Calendrical Issues

“Kamikazë” is one of the Japanese words that most English speakers know, and they use it to refer to a suicidally dangerous attack. This is taken, of course, from the name given to the missions in which young Japanese pilots flew planes loaded with explosives into American warships at the end of WWII. The Japanese word, however, means “kami wind”, and has a much longer history. An important event in this history occurred in the late thirteenth century, when the Mongol Horde attempted to invade and colonise Japan. They sent… Read More »Kamikazë