On this, the third anniversary of the Tohoku disaster, I’d like to post this excerpt by Richard Lloyd Parry from a longer article he wrote for the London Review of Books. It draws attention to something that I’ve long … Read the rest
Category: Ancestor worship (Page 6 of 8)
I have a good friend – a university teacher – who often tells me she has no interest in religion. Yet every morning she puts out food before the butsudan (altar) for her dead father and tells him what she’s … Read the rest
Recently on my visits to Kyoto shrines I’ve been to a shrine dedicated to a clan founder (Awata Jinja) and one to a Yamato leader who became a kami of pottery (Toki Jinja, aka Wakamiya Hachiman-gu). Now I’d like … Read the rest
The town of Kurashiki which lies west of Okinawa city on the way to the Inland Sea, boasts a very attractive historical area. The well-preserved buildings host a variety of craft shops, cafes and galleries centred around a small … Read the rest
Huffington Post carries an article today in celebration of Samhain…
Autumn has arrived, and with it comes the advent of Samhain, a Gaelic holiday celebrated by Pagans and Wiccans, which is the year’s third and final harvest festival. Brush up … Read the rest
It’s sometimes said that Shinto’s roots lie in the Yayoi period (300BC – 250 AD), when incomers from the continent brought in beliefs connected with wet-rice agriculture from Korea and China. So what was the situation before that?
It … Read the rest
(Picture above shows the so-called ‘Nintoku burial mound’ aka Daisen kofun (c.400 AD) in Sakai, Osaka, considered to be the third largest funeral monument in the world)
In the compelling Japan, An Attempt at Interpretation (1904) Lafcadio Hearn put forward … Read the rest