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hatsumōdë

Hatsumōdë 2025

The 20th January issue of Jinja Shinpō had a front-page article about this year’s hatsumōdë. The editorial on the second page said that this year was relatively calm and trouble-free. Given that last year had a natural disaster and a plane crash, and the previous three years were in the throes of a global pandemic, “relatively trouble-free” is not a high bar. Even taking a longer view, it does seem to have been a good year, with pleasant weather over most of the country. This article is based on interviews… Read More »Hatsumōdë 2025

Hatsumōdë Video

Jinja Honchō has created a couple of advertising videos to encourage people to go to Hatsumōdë, visiting a jinja at the new year. There are 15 and 30 second edits, but I will just link to the longer one, because it does appear to include the whole of the shorter one. It may not be obvious what all the images are, so here are some explanations. 00: Sunrise. Or maybe sunset played backwards, but it is representing sunrise. This is probably because the first sunrise of the new year is… Read More »Hatsumōdë Video

Coins and Cards

A couple of issues that I have mentioned previously also came up in the free responses to the hatsumōdë survey, both connected to practical issues around offerings. The first is the service charge for depositing coins. Most jinja seem to have failed to find a way around that. Some are simply giving one yen coins (which cost more than one yen to deposit in a bank account) to UNICEF, while others have managed to make arrangements with local shops that cope most of the year, but cannot handle the vast… Read More »Coins and Cards

Reactions to the Noto Earthquake

The responses to Jinja Shinpō’s survey about hatsumōdë this year also included quite a few references to the 2024 Noto Earthquake — naturally enough, as it happened on January 1st. A couple of local reporters who live in the area did respond. One started by saying that messages of support had started coming from the Shinto community almost immediately after the earthquake, and for that they were very grateful. However, not only had the sanctuaries been destroyed, but so had the surrounding area. With the population shrinking and mostly elderly,… Read More »Reactions to the Noto Earthquake

Hatsumōdë Survey 2024

As last year, Jinja Shinpō conducted a survey of hatsumōdë across the country by sending enquiries to all the priests who are engaged as local reporters. They received responses from 349 in total. These priests are at a wide range of jinja, from large ones with multiple priests, to multiple jinja that cannot support a full-time priest between them, and cover the entire country. I think the results came out rather earlier last year, and I suspect that the reason for the delay this year was the 2024 Noto Earthquake.… Read More »Hatsumōdë Survey 2024

Hatsumōdë 2024

The January 22nd issue of Jinja Shinpō had an article about hatsumōdë, as normal for this time of year. The Noto Earthquake, of course, cast a pall over things this year, but hatsumōdë went ahead in the rest of the country and, as usual, it was strongly influenced by the weather. For the article, Jinja Shinpō contacted five major jinja around the country. The first was, of course, Jingū. This was the only jinja to give a number: they had 377,011 visitors over the first three days of the year,… Read More »Hatsumōdë 2024