2024 Noto Earthquake

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

Today’s post is a bit different, because it is not strictly about Shinto, although it does have a lot of connections to Shinto and jinja. I have posted several times about the 2024 Noto Earthquake that happened on January 1st. One of the worst-hit areas was the city of Wajima, which is famous for its lacquer work (urushi, in Japanese), known as Wajimanuri. I am far from an expert on this topic, although I do like urushi, but my understanding is that Wajimanuri is a particularly involved process, even by… Read More »Urushi Nō

The National Association of Young Shinto Priests recently prepared and published two norito for use when praying for recovery from the 2024 Noto Earthquake. They can be downloaded (in Japanese, of course) from the association’s website. One of the norito is for use in jinja, while the other is for use at home, at one’s kamidana. I thought that my readers might be interested in the kamidama one, so I contacted one of the vice-presidents of the group, with whom I had worked on one of the projects through Jinja… Read More »A Norito for Noto

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the March 4th issue of Jinja Shinpō included an article on the damage in Toyama Prefecture. This article was a solid page of text listing jinja, again by chief priest, and the damage to each jinja. Even so, it didn’t cover the whole of the prefecture — two areas were held over for a later issue. A comparison between this article and the corresponding article for Ishikawa Prefecture makes the difference in impact starkly apparent. The Ishikawa article included a number of… Read More »The 2024 Noto Earthquake 5

The February 19th issue of Jinja Shinpō devoted a whole page to a list of jinja damaged by the earthquake on January 1st. For most of them, there is also a summary of the damage. I did read it all, but I’m not going to go through it one jinja at a time. I think that might be a struggle even for this interested audience. There are a few points I want to pick up, however. First, the reports are grouped by chief priest, presumably because the chief priest provided… Read More »The 2024 Noto Earthquake 4