Resurrecting the Sacred Land of Japan: The State of Shinto in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

This article explores a subject overlooked in both Japanese and non-Japanese scholarship, namely the state of Shinto in twenty-first century Japan. It addresses Shinto from the perspective of the Shinto establishment, and adopts a material approach, focusing on the material objects known as jingu taima or Ise amulets. The approach is justified by the Shinto establishment's ongoing campaign to disseminate Ise amulets to ten million Japanese homes. This article asks why the Shinto establishment devotes its energies to the amulet campaign and what the campaign discloses about twenty-first century Shinto. It examines the Ise amulets as material objects, explores their manufacture and distribution, and reports on growing resentment amongst shrine priests towards the campaign. It is argued here that, for the Shinto establishment, the Ise amulet campaign is a vital strategy in its declared aim of resurrecting in the postwar the sacred land of Japan. KEYWORDS: Shinto-Ise-amulet-Jinja Honcho-Shrine Office (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.) What is the nature of the Shinto present? How does Shinto today reflect on its notorious past? How, indeed, does it see its future role? In brief, what are we to make of Shinto in the twenty-first century? Questions pertaining to postwar Shinto, except in so far as they relate to Yasukuni shrine, have received precious little attention in Japan or elsewhere. The purpose of this article is to shed some much-needed light on Shinto and its agenda at the start of the twenty-first century. Where to begin? Any discussion of the Shinto present must surely privilege the Shinto establishment. By the Shinto establishment I refer to Jinja Honcho ... or the National Association of Shrines (hereafter NAS). NAS, fashioned in the immediate aftermath of the war, is a comprehensive religious juridical person (hokatsu shukyo hojin ...) that supervises the vast majority of shrines in the land. NAS merits the closest attention because it trains, appoints, promotes, and dismisses Shinto priests; it determines the rites that these priests perform, and through its theological research institute (Kyogaku Kenkyujo ...), it shapes Shinto's modern meanings. Any study of NAS must involve a critical use of NAS publications, notably the weekly Jinja Shinpo ... and the monthly Gekkan Wakaki ... Here I make full use of these publications, but the principle method deployed here is a material one.1 Material objects of all sorts are vitally important to the study of religion because they mediate human contact with the sacred; they structure sacred space, and they give meaning to ritual practice. Of the many material objects that define Shinto, one might usefully explore the shintai ..., those alwayshidden sacred objects in which the kami reside. A study of the diverse offerings (shinsen ...) presented to the kami in shrine rites would yield much. So, too, would an investigation of the material objects, natural and man made, that give physical shape to the shrine and its compound: the torii ... gates, the honden ... sanctuary, and haiden ... worship hall or, indeed, the sacred trees known as shinboku ... or the forests (mori ...) in which shrines typically nestle. The material object to which the Shinto establishment directs our attention, however, is none of these. NAS draws us rather to an object known as jingu taima ... Jingu refers to the Ise ... shrines, while taima is the Ise name for what is elsewhere known as ofuda ... or amulet. Jingu taima are Ise amulets, and it is probably no exaggeration to say that they are the key to an understanding of twenty-first-century Shinto.2 NAS is presently pushing a campaign, officially styled issenman katei jingu taima hosai undo ..., designed to get amulets from the Ise shrines into ten million Japanese homes. It regards this campaign as nothing less than the barometer by which to evaluate the success or failure of Shinto today. The campaign actually began in 1987, but it enjoyed only mixed fortunes until it was invigorated in 2005 with the introduction of the model district system (moderu shibu seido . …