Mimusubi

The Sendaikujihongi is an ancient collection of Shinto myths, and most people have never heard of it. This is even true in Japan. This is because, for about a thousand years, people believed that it had been written by Shōtoku Taishi in the early seventh century, until an astute scholar in the Edo period pointed out that it referred to events in the ninth century. After that, it was regarded as a forgery, and largely ignored. As a result, it has been much less available — it was published, in… Read More »The Sendaikujihongi

The back page of the June 28th issue of Jinja Shinpō was a full-colour special celebrating the completion of the refurbishment of the Masakado Tsuka in Ōtëmachi, central Tokyo. Taira no Masakado was a leader and general of the early tenth century who rebelled against the central government and proclaimed himself the “New Tennō”. His rebellion was put down, and Masakado himself was beheaded, and the head taken to Kyoto to be displayed in public. After three days, however, it flew, shining with white light, back to eastern Japan, and… Read More »Masakado Tsuka

Earlier this week, I volunteered to help out at Asakusa Jinja’s natsumoude. Normally, I would write that “natsumōdë”, but Asakusa Jinja has an official romanisation for the word, so I am using that. This is, as you might guess, related to hatsumōdë. Hatsumōdë is the custom of visiting a jinja or temple in the first few days of a new year, to pray for good fortune. Natsumoude is the “new custom”, as Asakusa Jinja puts it, of visiting a jinja or temple in the first few days of July. The… Read More »Natsumoude

A number of jinja in Ibaraki Prefecture, just to the northeast of Tokyo, have got together to offer “kami tama”, or “kami beads”, to people who visit the jinja, and the June 21st issue of Jinja Shinpō had a short article about them. These kami tama are wooden beads about 1.5 cm in diameter, with a hole through them for threading onto a string, and an image on the side that is related to their jinja. They can be obtained at each jinja, presumably in exchange for a small offering,… Read More »Kami Tama

The June 21st issue of Jinja Shinpō carried an interesting column about the way the Shinto world talks about itself. It was mainly concerned with specific Japanese usages, and one of the points the author made was that these usages are really hard to translate consistently into other languages, so I am not even going to try. Rather, I want to comment on his central point. The phrases that Shinto people use to refer to themselves as a whole are very ambiguous. Now, recall that Japanese has a (well-deserved) reputation… Read More »“Shinto People”

Hemp, “asa” in Japanese, is a very important part of Shinto culture. Hemp cloth is an important offering, and in the Daijōsai ritual that marks the accession of a new Tennō, hemp cloth is paired with silk. Hemp is also traditionally used in purification rituals, and the name for the ōnusa purification wand is normally written with the characters for “big hemp”, because it originally had strips of hemp cloth, or hemp fibres attached. This is a bit of a problem at the moment, because hemp is also the plant… Read More »Hemp