Mimusubi

According to the 28 September issue of Jinja Shinpō, Abë Shinzō, the former prime minister of Japan, visited Yasukuni Jinja on September 19th. This does not seem to have raised the same amount of international controversy as his previous visit, on December 26th 2013, possibly because he was not prime minister this time, having formally resigned on September 16th. It did still make the front page of Jinja Shinpō, however. I am raising it here, because I think this visit is evidence in favour of my interpretation of his previous… Read More »Abë at Yasukuni

I have made two more of the back numbers of the Patreon essays available on Amazon: Shinto Practice for Non-Japanese. (Note that the links to Amazon are affiliate links, which means that I may get money if you buy something else after clicking on them, as well as, obviously, getting royalties if you buy my book.) This includes the essay for last month. I’ve made it available this quickly because these essays address questions that get asked a lot: can someone who isn’t Japanese practise Shinto, and if so, what… Read More »Shinto Practice for Non-Japanese

A few weeks ago, I wrote about an article published in Jinja Shinpō that was indirectly critical of the Shinto establishment, and wondered whether there would be any follow-up. There was. A couple of weeks ago, Jinja Shinpō carried two articles that were explicitly responding to that one. One of them was from a retired priest in his eighties, who lives in Yamaguchi Prefecture in western Japan. His main argument was that Shinto priests today weren’t as good as they were in the old days. There has, he claims, been… Read More »Further Dissension

As regular readers of this blog will know, Jinja Shinpō has recently carried a lot of articles about jinja that have adapted their matsuri to COVID-19, with details about how they have done it. A couple of weeks ago, they published one that struck me as a particularly practical and interesting idea. The jinja in question, Nishinë Jinja in Fukushima City, seems to be fairly large (although I had never heard of it before — with 80,000 jinja in Japan, I suspect that I will continue hearing about new ones… Read More »Umbrellas for All

A couple of weeks ago there was an interesting little article in Jinja Shinpō about a jinja that has been involved in the creation of a local craft beer. The jinja is Haijima Tenjinja, and it is in Akishima City, which is part of Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture, right on the edge of the urban area in the west. (Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture has a rural bit in the Tama region, to the northwest of the main urban area. Akishima is pretty much on the boundary between urban and rural.) Haijima Tenjinja… Read More »Local Beer

Two prefectural Jinjachō, Saitama and Osaka, have worked together, with support from Jinja Honchō and in consultation with an expert on infection prevention, to create a set of guidelines for jinja to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 while continuing their activities. This is described as “A New Form of Jinja Reverence”, and their slogan is “For Unchanged Prayers”. They have a logo for this, as well. The guidelines themselves are very practical, and largely what you would expect. For example, they recommend taking steps to maintain distance between people,… Read More »Guidelines for Jinja