Mimusubi

A week or so ago I wrote about the kami of smallpox, and mentioned the red gohei, or heisoku, that my local jinja had set up on top of the offering box. At that point I didn’t have a picture, but now I do. This picture is at my home, because I asked the priests to perform a matsuri asking for an end to the epidemic, and today I picked up the ofuda (on the left) and red heisoku (on the right) that they prepared during the matsuri. Normally, one… Read More »Epidemic Ofuda and Heisoku

I have just published An Introduction to Shinto, a book based on the first two years or so of essays for the Mimusubi Patreon. It is available as a Kindle e-book from Amazon, from any of the various national Amazons. (The link is to the US site, because I think most potential readers are in the US, but I think it will automatically give you a link to your local site if that is different; I get one for the Japanese site, for example.) The book, I hope, does what… Read More »New Book

Last week’s Jinja Shinpō contained an editorial about COVID-19 and the response to it, which had some very interesting content. In Japanese, people are asked to avoid “fuyōfukyū” trips out. This means trips that are not necessary and urgent: that is, things that you do not need to do right now. So, the editorial asks whether paying one’s respects at a jinja is “fuyōfukyū”. As you might expect, given that this is an editorial in the Shinto newspaper, the conclusion is “not necessarily”. The reasons given are sensible. People are… Read More »COVID-19 and the Future

In the midst of the impact of COVID-19, I am still visiting my local jinja every day. This is fine: it is part of my walk, and I do not get close to anyone while doing so, which means that social distance is being maintained. (I wouldn’t visit a jinja I couldn’t walk to at the moment, though.) Today, I arrived to find that a small red gohei had been set up on the offering box. (A gohei, or heisoku, is two pieces of paper, both folded into lightning-bolt shapes,… Read More »The Kami of Smallpox

As COVID-19 continues to affect the world, it is, naturally, having more effects on jinja. These effects are being reported in Jinja Shinpō, which means that I can tell you what is happening. The advice is still that matsuri should be carried out, as it has been from the beginning, but jinja are asked to seriously consider only having priests present, or to restrict the number of other people who attend, to avoid crowding in the prayer hall. On the other hand, jinja are advised to cancel the associated events,… Read More »Further Impact of COVID-19

As COVID-19 continues to spread around the world, I want to write another post to bring readers up to date on how it is affecting jinja. One important thing to be aware of is that the situation in Japan is, at present, much less critical than it is in most European countries or the USA. The total number of deaths is still under 200, the total number of confirmed infections is still under 10,000, and nowhere in the country is in lockdown. (Part of the reason for that is that… Read More »COVID-19 Developments