Mimusubi

A couple of weeks ago, I received the April issue of the quarterly “magazine” of Kinkasan Koganëyama Jinja, in Miyagi Prefecture. (It only has four pages, hence the scare quotes.) This describes recent happenings, mostly matsuri, at the jinja, and also talks about upcoming events. One of those is the “first snake festival”, which happens for a week at the beginning of May, and thus often overlaps with Golden Week. This is one of the most important matsuri at the jinja, and one of the significant features is that, during… Read More »Close to the Kami

The article about sacred forests in the March 14th issue of Jinja Shinpō was, in a way, a sequel to the article the previous week. That article, which I talked about last time, covered the question of preserving sacred forests in a general sense, while the March 14th article was about two specific examples: bamboo, and deer. The bamboo in question is mōsō bamboo, which was introduced to Japan from China during the Edo period (1600-1850ish). It can be used in manufacturing a wide range of goods, and the shoots… Read More »Bamboo and Deer

The March 7th issue of Jinja Shinpō had another article in the series on sacred forests, and this one returned to the core topic, looking at the question of how they should be maintained. It was written by a lecturer at Tokyo Agricultural University, who presumably knows what he is talking about. It starts by observing that the image of sacred forests is of trees, certainly, but also other plants, and a wide variety of animals, living in an area that people neither enter nor interfere with. On the other… Read More »The Preservation and Maintenance of Sacred Forests

I’ve got a bit behind with interesting articles from Jinja Shinpō, so the one I want to mention today is from February 28th. It is another article about the problems with transaction charges for depositing coins in banks. As I have mentioned before, some jinja looked into cooperating with local shops, who had problems with the transaction charges for withdrawing coins, and this article was about some specific examples. It was written by someone who works for Osaka Jinjachō, so both of the jinja mentioned are in Osaka Prefecture. The… Read More »Coins, Again

Today’s video is brought to you, indirectly, by the YouTube algorithm. It is longer than the ones I normally introduce, and was put online about two years ago by Togakushi Jinja. Togakushi Jinja is, I think, the most important jinja about which I know nothing. Obviously, I am exaggerating slightly. I know that it was an extremely important centre for shugendō, the heavily Buddhism-influenced form of Shinto in which mountains played a crucial role. (Some people might describe shugendō as a Shinto-influenced form of Buddhism, and I can’t say that… Read More »Togakushi Jinja

The 21st February issue of Jinja Shinpō contained an article in the series about sacred forests. However, it did not have much to do with sacred forests, at least not directly — it was about the place of mountains in traditional Shinto belief. (It is true that most of those mountains have forests on them.) The article took a particular matsuri, a “mountain praising” matsuri, as its starting point. This matsuri is held at Shikaumi Jinja, or “Shika Sea Jinja”, which is on Shika-no-Shima, an island just off the coast… Read More »Venerating Mountains