Today is Honen Matsuri at Tagata Jinja in the small town of Komaki, outside Nagoya, which attracts a lot of attention among Westerners because of its phallus-based rituals. It says much about the repressions of a Christian-based culture. The main … Read the rest
February 25 every year is Baika sai (Plum blossom festival) at Kyoto’s Kitano Tenmangu shrine. It’s also the monthly flea market known as Tenjin san. (Tenjin is the Kitano kami, alias Sugawara Michizane (845-903), a Heian-era statesman. )
Plum … Read the rest
With spring comes a rash of fertility festivals, designed to further the success of the year’s crops. These have ancient origins and go back to a time when the very existence of villagers depended on the success of the harvest. … Read the rest
One of the New Year rites at Shimogamo Shrine is the Okayu Festival, in which visitors to the shrine are invited to eat rice porridge in the belief that it will prevent illness during the rest of the year. … Read the rest
My local shrine, Shimogamo, welcomes in the new year with a series of rites, one of which is kicking a football around (kemari) and another of which is kicking off worship at its zodiac shrines. The latter are … Read the rest
A merry festive season
You could say that New Year is Japan’s equivalent to Christmas. It’s family-orientated, involves eating special food, and celebrates birth of a kind. The decorations feature an evergreen tree, and instead of midnight mass, there are … Read the rest
The animal welfare society to which I belong (JAWS) has an article in its latest newsletter which contains details of a shocking Shinto event involving cruelty to horses. It calls into question the whole ethos of Shinto as a religion … Read the rest
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