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Kyoto’s Gion Festival

I’ve just finished reading Kyoto’s Gion Festival by Mark Teeuwen. (That’s a non-affiiliate link to the Bloomsbury site. They are having a 30% off sale on this book and all the others in this series until October 6th 2024.) It is about, well, Kyoto’s Gion Festival, one of the largest matsuri in Japan, and also one of the best-documented. The book traces its development from its origins (probably in the tenth century) up to 1952, and it would not be unfair to say that its motivating question is “why hasn’t… Read More »Kyoto’s Gion Festival

Retirement Age Revisited

The September 16th issue of Jinja Shinpō carried a front page article about the meeting of the Jinja Honchō Board of Directors on September 6th at which they prepared for the October meeting of the Oversight Council. One remarkable thing is that, if the report is complete, they did not discuss the disputed presidency at all. It may be that they have all accepted that they are not going to make any progress on that problem in the board meetings, and decided to just ignore it for now. (I think… Read More »Retirement Age Revisited

Faith in Mount Fuji

Recently, I read Faith in Mount Fuji, by Janine Anderson Sawada. (That’s an affiliate link to Amazon.) I found the book extremely interesting, mostly because it is about the early years of a tradition that was included in Shinto at the Meiji Revolution, but which is quite different from contemporary mainstream Jinja Shinto. (I believe that the Sect Shinto groups derived from this tradition are still active, but I do not think they are very large.) If you are interested in the historical diversity of religious practice in Japan, I… Read More »Faith in Mount Fuji

Restoration in the Noto Peninsula

On January 1st this year, the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture was struck by a very strong earthquake. I have already written quite a bit about this (check the tag), and the restoration efforts are, naturally, still in progress. On August 26th, Jinja Shinpō published an interview with the priests who are currently chairing the local jinja associations for the three worst affected areas in the peninsula. The Ishikawa Prefectural Jinjachō has also published a summary of the confirmed damage to the physical structures of jinja, as of July 31st. … Read More »Restoration in the Noto Peninsula

Shōwa Inari Jinja

While I was visiting jinja in Tokyo to make the final checks for my upcoming book (it takes you round six jinja in Tokyo to explain the history and cultural background of Shinto), I came across this jinja. As you can see, it is quite small. Despite the sacred forest being one tree, it still manages to dwarf the sanctuary, and completely hide it from view if you stand in the right place. The precincts are so narrow that the torii has to be placed sideways on to the sanctuary,… Read More »Shōwa Inari Jinja

Attitudes to Jingū Taima

Following on from the previous post, I want to look at the results for Jingū Taima, the ofuda from Isë Jingū that the Shinto establishment wants to see venerated in every household, and the results for local jinja, the so-called ujigami jinja. The first striking result is that only 25% of people have even heard of Jingū Taima. Given the vastly higher level of recognition of Jingū itself, this suggests that there is room for improvement in this respect. Even if 98% awareness of Jingū Taima seems unreasonable, the 50%… Read More »Attitudes to Jingū Taima