Kami visitors
The best time to visit Izumo is when all the kami of Japan go. That’s in the tenth month of the old lunar calendar (the dates vary in the modern calendar but are around this time of … Read the rest
Category: Festivals (Page 25 of 26)
It might seem an impossibility to see all eight myriad of Japan’s kami in one single place. But every year there is an opportunity to do just that, in one of Japan’s most attractive regions. It takes place in Shimane … Read the rest
Last weekend was the Kannamesai at Ise Jingu, often called its harvest festival. It’s their major event of the year, and I thought about going but found everything was booked. Then I heard that if you couldn’t visit Ise itself, … Read the rest
Today is the third Sunday in October, and at Kamigamo that means just one thing: Kasagake.
There were traditionally three styles of horseback archery carried out for the entertainment of the kami. The most well-known is Yabusame, in which … Read the rest
It’s the season of festivals, and yesterday I attended the taisai (big festival) of the small shrine of Uetsuki Hachiman in Koriyama, near Nara. The head priest is Rica Saitoh, who harbours plans for setting up a UK shrine. Here … Read the rest
Priests hopping and cawing like crows. Seven year old kids doing sumo. What’s that all got to do with Shinto, you may wonder?
Kamigamo Jinja is Kyoto’s greenest shrine and probably the oldest. It was established by the Kamo … Read the rest
Ah, the joys of living in Kyoto! Not a week passes without a special event of some sort, and most weeks there are several.
Yesterday was the night of the September full moon, or harvest moon, by tradition the … Read the rest