disputed presidency

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

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Tsurugaoka Hachimangū, a very large jinja in Kanagawa Prefecture, suddenly announced that it was withdrawing from Jinja Honchō. At that point, the motives were unclear. The July 1st issue of Jinja Shinpō contained a report of a press conference held by the chief priest on June 20th, at which he gave his reasons. These refer to the current problems within Jinja Honchō, in particular the dispute between the president and the chairman, and align him firmly with the chairman. He said that Jinja… Read More »Tsurugaoka Hachimangū Departure

This year’s main meeting of the Oversight Council of Jinja Honchō was held on May 23rd and 24th, and reported in the June 3rd issue of Jinja Shinpō. If you have been following this blog for a while (or have read the other posts tagged with “Disputed Presidency”) you will know that this meeting used to be a boring, entirely formulaic rubber stamp for decisions made by the central bodies. Now, it… isn’t. Jinja Honchō is formally led by the Chairman, but all the decisions are taken by the President,… Read More »Rogue Speech

The regular October meeting of Jinja Honchō’s Oversight Council was held on October 20th, and reported in the October 30th issue of Jinja Shinpō. It seems that “lively exchanges of views” continued. The most important focus of debate was still the dispute over the presidency, but this issue did not go anywhere. That should not be surprising to anyone who has read my previous posts on this problem (click on the “disputed presidency” tag to see those earlier posts if you are interested). While many of the same arguments are… Read More »October 2023 Oversight Council

On June 14th, the Tokyo High Court handed down its decision in the appeal from the District Court in the case over the presidency of Jinja Honchō. The result was reported in the June 26th issue of Jinja Shinpō. The appeal was rejected, so the High Court agreed that Revd Ashihara is not the new president. Jinja Honchō was, of course, delighted by this. They sent out an announcement to all the Jinjachō saying that it was now clear that Revd Tanaka was the president, and that the chairman should… Read More »Appeal Decision