disputed presidency

The December 9th issue of Jinja Shinpō reported on a special meeting of the Jinja Honchō Board of Directors, which was held on November 29th to discuss the disputed presidency. Jinja Honchō’s position on the court decision and the dispute was explained, and they reported that they had asked Revd Ashihara about compensation for the costs to Jinja Honchō, his moral responsibility, the background to his application to change the registered president, and his interpretation of the court decision. They also explained his answers in detail (but the article does… Read More »Unproductive Board Meeting

On October 24th, Jinja Honchō held the regular autumn meeting of its Oversight Council. A couple of years ago, I commented that these meetings used to be boring events at which everything was rubber stamped without debate, but that things had changed! Now, they are boring because everyone argues about the presidency, and no progress is made… OK, that is slightly unfair. As normal, all the resolutions necessary to keep Jinja Honchō going were passed, without any noticeable opposition. A regulation needed to be changed as a result of Tsurugaoka… Read More »Another Oversight Council Meeting

As I said in my last post, the Supreme Court has now ruled on the question of who is the president of Jinja Honchō, and has ruled that it is not Revd Ashihara. Jinja Honchō and their lawyer have issued statements in response to this, as reported in the October 28th issue of Jinja Shinpō. They do not appear to be seeking compromise and reconciliation. Let us start with the legal side. Jinja Honchō’s lawyer claims that the court decision makes it clear that the president is effectively appointed by… Read More »Responding to the Judgement

On October 2nd, the Japanese Supreme Court issued its judgement in the case over the disputed presidency of Jinja Honchō. The court decided that the plaintiff (Revd Ashihara, who wanted the courts to confirm that he was the president of Jinja Honchō) could not appeal to the Supreme Court, because the grounds of his appeal did not meet the conditions for such an appeal in a civil case. Strictly speaking, then, they said nothing about the content of the case, but the decision means that the judgement of the lower… Read More »Supreme Court Decision

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

The August 5th issue of Jinja Shinpō contained an article reporting on a meeting of the Jinja Honchō Board of Directors that was held on July 19th. Much of the business was important but uninteresting — for example, one bit of the Jinja Honchō regulations needed to be modified to delete Tsurugaoka Hachimangū from the list of Beppyō Jinja (particularly important jinja that are supervised directly by Jinja Honchō rather than by the Prefectural Jinjachō) because Tsurugaoka Hachimangū has left Jinja Honchō entirely. Two topics, however, were more controversial, and… Read More »Fractious Board Meeting