David Chart's Blog

Category: Shinto

  • New Book: An Introduction to Shinto

    I have just published An Introduction to Shinto, a book based on the first two years or so of essays for my Mimusubi Patreon. It is available as a Kindle e-book from Amazon, from any of the various national Amazons. (The link is to the US site, because I think most potential readers are in…

  • Mimusubi Patreon Special Offer

    Note: The special offer is over now, but this post is still up as a historical record. You can find out what is happening with Mimusubi on the Mimusubi website, or the Mimusbi Patreon. To celebrate the release of the video about Shinto that I helped Greg Lam of Life Where I’m From to make,…

  • Mimusubi

    This blog has been somewhat neglected of late, because most of my online writing has been connected to Mimusubi, and my essays about Shinto. That project has now been running for a year, and I’ve written nine essays. I’m currently working on the next one, which will be about Yasukuni Jinja. If that sounds like…

  • Shinto Essay Patreon

    Today, I launched a Patreon for essays about Shinto. If people are interested enough to support it, my plan is to write essays that are “accurate and objective”, insofar as that is possible, and use the associated website (Mimusubi) to publish my personal opinions and individual approaches. If you are interested in the topic, please…

  • White Without Privilege

    This morning, I went to the jinja near my office to pay my respects to the kami. There happened to be a Japanese woman paying her respects at the same time, and as I stepped back to leave, she turned towards me and murmured (in Japanese) “Wonderful!”. I assume that she was referring to the…

  • Hayashi Razan’s “Honchō Jinja Kō” — Shinto Texts Course 7

    The summer holiday is over, and yesterday the Shinto Texts course at Kokugakuin University started again, with a lecture on Hayashi Razan’s Honchō Jinja Kō. I am confident that very few of my readers will have heard of either the author or the text, but both were of great significance in the history of Shinto,…

  • Shirahata Hachiman Daijin Festival

    The annual Grand Festival of Shirahata Hachiman Daijin, our local shrine, was held last weekend. The festival itself is on the Sunday, and on the previous day, the Saturday, there is a children’s mikoshi procession. A mikoshi is a portable shrine, based on the palanquins in which the nobility were carried in Heian times (about…

  • Visit Tohoku! Sendai and Shiogama

    According to a recent article in the Guardian, the number of tourists coming to Japan has fallen sharply. This is, perhaps, because they imagine that Japan is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, glowing with radioactivity and, quite possibly, roamed by gangs of mutant bikers. And Godzilla. Obviously, this is not the case. There is no problem with…

  • ÅŒharaikotoba — Shinto Texts Course

    Yesterday we had the fourth of this year’s Shinto lectures at Kokugakuin. The lecturer was Professor Okada, and the theme was the ÅŒharaikotoba. The ÅŒharaikotoba is a purification prayer, and one of the most important norito (ritual prayer) in Shinto. Indeed, it is almost certainly the most important single norito, which is why it earned…

  • A Wedding and The Grand Shrines of Ise

    Last weekend we went on a little trip. One of Yuriko’s cousins was getting married in Gifu (near Nagoya), so we went to that, and then extended the trip a bit to go to Ise and visit the shrines. The wedding was on Sunday, so Yuriko and Mayuki went to Nagoya on Saturday to stay…