Shinto - Topics

Omamori from a shrine expire within a year and are returned to be burned Ujigami and chinju: how a Japanese shrine decided who belonged to a village How portable shrines get carried through a neighborhood at matsuri Where animist reverence for objects survives in modern Japan Whether Chinese and Japanese religious traditions belong in one East Asian category A Shinto shrine visit begins with purification at the temizuya Why Shinto myth has no single first human couple Visitors clap twice and bow before a shrine's kami Torii gates mark where ordinary ground ends Gagaku and the ritual music of Shinto shrines Mount Fuji carries shrines and climbing rites up its slopes Shinto kami inhabit rocks and waterfalls — how does that shape land use? What shrine maidens do in daily shrine life Yasukuni Shrine stays politically charged because of who is enshrined there Why rice and sake are offered to the kami Why old wooden temples need periodic rebuilding How hatsumode plays out at New Year shrines Does Shinto have an afterlife at all? How a Shinto wedding ceremony proceeds What kegare is and how shrine visitors avoid it Ise Shrine is rebuilt from scratch every twenty years on adjacent ground What misogi purification in cold water is for Japan's families often keep a Buddhist altar and a Shinto shelf — is that unusual? What a kami is and how one gets enshrined Why Shinto is one religion in surveys and many traditions to historians How Shinto is tied to Japanese identity and what that means for converts