| Yoi-matsuri |
"Eve-of festival'. The day, or evening, before the hon-matsuri or main festival day. A Japanese festival often seems to cover two days because the traditional "day" lasted from sunset to sunset |
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| Nenchu gyoji |
"Events through the year'. The annual cycle of [religious] observances. Japanese religion at every level is profoundly calendrical, normally structured around an annual cycle of festivals and special days referred to as nenchu gyoji. Details vary from region to region and among different religious institutions. Shinto shrines, like Buddhist temples and new religious movements virtually define themselves by their particular nenchu gyoji which contain, as well as nationally-celebrated festivals such as niinamesai, etc., the special festivals or rites of the shrine celebrating its founding or other significant events in its history. The nenchu gyoji may include events dated according to the lunar or solar calendar. The traditional lunar calendar, which required an extra month to be inserted every three years was replaced by the Western-style (solar) calendar in 1872. Many festivals are still scheduled by the lunar calendar. Three main methods are used to determine the festival's date in the solar calendar. These are (1) One month is added to the lunar date (e.g. the 15th day of the 7th lunar month ('15th July') becomes the 15th day of the 8th solar month (15th August)) The festival is held on the same date in the solar calendar as was scheduled in the lunar calendar (15th day of 7th month becomes 15th July) The festival remains fixed by the lunar calendar and therefore moves around the solar calendar like the Muslim Ramadan and to some extent the Christian Easter. In Tokugawa religion the annual ritual calendar combined Buddhist, community and shrine-rites, organised broadly around the plus New Year (shogatsu) and festivals. In the 1870's following the restoration a new annual calendar of rites was introduced. It emphasised rites for previous emperors in the 'unbroken lineage" and for the first time synchronised the nenchu gyoji of shrines throughout the country with the annual ritual cycle of the imperial household (koshitsu saishi) giving a central role to the emperor as priest of the nation. The new ritual calendar gradually superseded the old, especially after the Russo-Japanese war (1904-6) when the annual rites were introduced into schools and promoted by local authorities |
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| Nenju gyoji |
"Events through the year'. The annual cycle of [religious] observances. Japanese religion at every level is profoundly calendrical, normally structured around an annual cycle of festivals and special days referred to as nenchu gyoji. Details vary from region to region and among different religious institutions. Shinto shrines, like Buddhist temples and new religious movements virtually define themselves by their particular nenchu gyoji which contain, as well as nationally-celebrated festivals such as niinamesai, etc., the special festivals or rites of the shrine celebrating its founding or other significant events in its history. The nenchu gyoji may include events dated according to the lunar or solar calendar. The traditional lunar calendar, which required an extra month to be inserted every three years was replaced by the Western-style (solar) calendar in 1872. Many festivals are still scheduled by the lunar calendar. Three main methods are used to determine the festival's date in the solar calendar. These are (1) One month is added to the lunar date (e.g. the 15th day of the 7th lunar month ('15th July') becomes the 15th day of the 8th solar month (15th August)) The festival is held on the same date in the solar calendar as was scheduled in the lunar calendar (15th day of 7th month becomes 15th July) The festival remains fixed by the lunar calendar and therefore moves around the solar calendar like the Muslim Ramadan and to some extent the Christian Easter. In Tokugawa religion the annual ritual calendar combined Buddhist, community and shrine-rites, organised broadly around the plus New Year (shogatsu) and festivals. In the 1870's following the restoration a new annual calendar of rites was introduced. It emphasised rites for previous emperors in the 'unbroken lineage" and for the first time synchronised the nenchu gyoji of shrines throughout the country with the annual ritual cycle of the imperial household (koshitsu saishi) giving a central role to the emperor as priest of the nation. The new ritual calendar gradually superseded the old, especially after the Russo-Japanese war (1904-6) when the annual rites were introduced into schools and promoted by local authorities |
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| Sanja matsuri |
"Festival of the three shrines' (in Tokyo: sanja here is to be distinguished from the Ise/Kasuga/Hachiman sanja mentioned above) It is held on the three days surrounding the third Sunday in May at the Asakusa-jinja. The Asakusa area of Tokyo includes the former Yoshiwara pleasure district of Edo times. On the Saturday up to a hundred machi-mikoshi (town mikoshi) of various sizes parade through the streets and the following day the three honja mikoshi (main shrine mikoshi) called ichi-, ni- and san-no-miya make a ceremonial departure from the Asakusa jinja. The Buddhist-kami deity of Asakusa was formerly called the sanja-dai-gongen-sha 'great of the three shrines' or sanja-myojin-sha 'bright kami of the three shrines' and was the tutelary deity of the area. The festival features an old style of "binzasara" in which the dancers beat time with binzasara, wooden slats tied with cord |
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| Minkan Shinko |
"Folk religion'; 'Folk beliefs'. An academic category used to analyse and understand the complex interrelationships within Japanese religion. Minkan shinko may be defined as a developing substrate of folk-religious beliefs in Japan which incorporates elements from, yet transcends official distinctions between, "Buddhism", "Shinto", "Taoism", "Confucianism", "Christianity" etc., and which manifests most powerfully today in the world-views and practices of the 'new religions'. It has been argued (notably by Hori, Ichiro) that folk religion, which Hori also calls 'popular Shinto' represents the true, indigenous and persistent character of 'Japanese religion'. The main features of this 'Japanese religion' may be identified as shamanism or spirit mediumship of various kinds, animistic beliefs, filial piety, reciprocal obligation and ancestor reverence or worship, a syncretic approach to religious beliefs and an 'easy continuity' or absence of clear boundaries between the human and divine worlds. Some purists would argue that Shinto should not be confused with folk religion (see Kodo) Observers of Shinto as it is practised know that Shinto and folk religion cannot be distinguished any more than Buddhism and folk religion, while proponents of the folk-religion-as-substrate thesis might argue that "Shinto" is itself part of folk religion |
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| Gohan matsuri |
"Forced rice festival'. A type of festival enjoyed throughout Japan at Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines in which a participant victim is ceremonially and often comically "forced" to eat heaps of rice (gohan) large quantities of noodles (udon) potatoes etc. and drink sake from huge bowls. The festival seems to be a pantomime of the consequences of a good harvest. At the Kodomo gohan-shiki at Ubuoka jinja, Nikko, Tochigi on November 25th children dressed as force adults to eat. The Hakkoji-no-goriki ('luminous path forcing') of the jinja, Awano-machi, Tochigi is held at New Year on January 3rd. Gohan is also read kowameshi and means rice cooked with red beans |
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| Kansha |
"Government shrines'. A category of shrines identified as important by the government in 1871/2. Kansha were differentiated from general or miscellaneous shrines. In 1945 there were 209 kansha shrines and 109,824 shosha, of which over 105,000 were small "village" or "unranked" shrines. The kansha/shosha distinction was abolished in 1945 when Shinto was disestablished. See seido |
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| Taisha |
"Grand Shrine'. One of the shrine-titles (shago) In "Japanese" reading O-yashiro. From 1871-2 taisha referred to a sub-category of the 209 shrines. By 1945 there were 65 shrines thus classified as "taisha" type, though the only shrine which actually had Taisha as part of its name was the Izumo Taisha or Izumo O-yashiro. Since the war the Honcho has allowed a dozen other major shrines within its jurisdiction to take the name -Taisha, including the Osaka- Sumiyoshi-Taisha, Kasuga-Taisha, Hie-Taisha (on Mt.Hiei) and Kumano-Taisha. In addition there is the Fushimi-Inari-Taisha, which is not affiliated to Jinja Honcho |
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| Omoto -kyo |
"Great Origin'. A religious movement founded by Deguchi, Nao (1836-1918) a peasant woman who suffered many hardships before in 1892 receiving the first of a sequence of divine revelations from a previously little-known deity Ushitora no konjin (konjin of the north-east; the direction of danger) This deity, regarded as the sole god or omoto-no-kami came to be identified also with Susa-no-o and Kuni-toko-tachi. The movement was only semirecognised as a form of shinto under the wing of and experienced many difficulties with the authorities. Nao's revelations urged the 'reconstruction of the world" and the transformation of society by the people. Her daughter Sumi and adopted son-in-law Kisaburo worked with the foundress to develop the religion. Kisaburo, who was a prolific teacher and inscribed some 600,000 poems, became the de facto leader of the movement. He developed a belief that he should take over the leadership of Japan and changed his name to Onisaburo (see Deguchi, Onisaburo) a name which included characters normally reserved for emperors. As a result of criticisms of the government Omoto-kyo was persecuted between 1921-27 and again from 1935 when the organisation and its buildings were ruthlessly destroyed and Onisaburo imprisoned. After the war the movement re-emerged. Adopting a universalist approach, it accepts figures from other world religions as The teachings of Omoto have strongly influenced Ananaikyo and other groups including Kyusei-kyo (Sekai meshiya-kyo) and Seicho-no-Ie whose respective leaders Okada, Mokichi and Taniguchi, Masaharu were both originally followers of Omoto |
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| Shinto Taikyo |
"Great Teaching of Shinto'. One of the thirteen groups of 'sect Shinto' (kyoha shinto) An organisation with no single founder, it was established in 1873 by pro-Shinto administrators as the 'Temple of the Great Teaching' (Taikyo-in) to organise the missionary activities of the 'Great Promulgation Campaign' (taikyo senpu undo) As a result of internal disagreements the Taikyo-in was dissolved and replaced by the 'Office of Shinto', Shinto jimukyoku. After the official separation of religion and politics (seikyo bunri) of 1882 this office was renamed 'Shinto honkyoku' (Chief Office of Shinto) and recognised as a sect by the Home Ministry in 1886. It fostered the basic principles of the emperor system up to 1945 under the leadership of a series of kancho (presidents) the sixth of whom changed the name to Shinto Taikyo to emphasise the sect's nongovernmental status. Its teachings focus on the first three kami in the account of the origin of the world |
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| Omisoka |
"Great last day of the month'. The 31 st of December, final day of the old year. It precedes as part of the season, one of the most important periods in the Japanese ritual calendar. Home shrines (both kamidana and butsudan, Buddhist ancestral altars) are cleaned ready for the kami and the ancestors of new year. Omisoka is generally marked by the ringing of a Buddhist temple bell (joya no kane, the watch-night bell) 108 times to drive out all the sins of the old year. It is an integral part of the 'demons out, good luck in" motif of the Japanese new year which transcends religious distinctions, continues with the following day and is reiterated at the lunar new year with |
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| Warei taisai |
"Great matsuri of the Warei jinja" at Uwajima, Ehime prefecture. This seafaring festival began in the eighteenth century and among other activities involving ships, flags and the carrying of into the sea features an extraordinary effigy of a broad, long-necked creature called an ushi-oni or "cattle-demon", a whale-like dragon who is paraded round the town carried by 15-20 youngsters |
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| Tenno |
"Heavenly king'. An epithet of Taoist origin traditionally applied to kami or Buddhist divinities; in a Shinto context it almost always means Tenno This is the popular "Buddhist" name of the kami Susano-o-no-mikoto, tutelary deity of the shrine (or Yasaka jinja, Kyoto) who is regarded as a of Yakushi-nyorai the healing Buddha and therefore a protector against disease |
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| Kakure kirishitan |
"Hidden Christians" who survived the early Tokugawa persecutions, compulsory Buddhist registration and forced renunciation of Christianity during the two-century sakoku ('closed country') period to re-emerge as distinctive religious communities in the mid-nineteenth century. In some cases the kakure kirishitan adopted Shinto tendencies, partly as camouflage and partly to perpetuate indigenous ancestor-veneration, for example identifying the toyo-tama-hime with the virgin Mary, and enshrining martyrs and ancestors as kami. The Karemitsu in Sotome, Nagasaki is the grave of an early European priest known as San Juan-sama |
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| Mi-ko-gami |
"Honourable offspring kami'—the kami who are "children" of the principal kami worshipped at a shrine. They are part of the of a major kami. SusanO-o at the Jinja (Gion, gozu tennO) has eight mi-kogami who are worshipped with him |
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| Jingu Kogakukan |
"Imperial Learning Hall University'. One of the two large Shinto universities responsible for the training of priests, (the other is Kokugakuin) It was established in 1882 under the name of Jingu Kogakukan (or Kogakkan) near the jingu as part of the attempt to develop a coherent Shinto doctrine following the divisive 'pantheon dispute" (saijin ronso) of the 1870's. It was set up to educate the sons of shrine priests and later moved to Uji Yamada where it became a Shinto training institute of the Ministry of Home Affairs until the end of the war. Those trained as Shinto priests up to 1945 were automatically qualified to be schoolteachers. As a government-funded religious institution it was closed down by the occupation administration in 1945. It reopened in 1952 as a private university after a funding campaign heavily supported by government figures including the prime minister and was rebuilt in 1962 on its original site at Ise |
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| Kogakkan University |
"Imperial Learning Hall University'. One of the two large Shinto universities responsible for the training of priests, (the other is Kokugakuin) It was established in 1882 under the name of Jingu Kogakukan (or Kogakkan) near the jingu as part of the attempt to develop a coherent Shinto doctrine following the divisive 'pantheon dispute" (saijin ronso) of the 1870's. It was set up to educate the sons of shrine priests and later moved to Uji Yamada where it became a Shinto training institute of the Ministry of Home Affairs until the end of the war. Those trained as Shinto priests up to 1945 were automatically qualified to be schoolteachers. As a government-funded religious institution it was closed down by the occupation administration in 1945. It reopened in 1952 as a private university after a funding campaign heavily supported by government figures including the prime minister and was rebuilt in 1962 on its original site at Ise |
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| Shin-mon |
"Kami-gate'. A gate, often an impressive roofed construction built in the style of the shrine, which allows the approaching visitor to pass through the shrine's encircling walls or fences (tamagaki) and can be closed at night. There are several types or designations of shin-mon. Ro-mon can be applied to any category but sometimes refers to a gate formerly reserved for the imperial messenger to the shrine. So-mon usually means the gate through the second tamagaki but may also mean outer gates. The names yotsu-ashi-mon 'four-legged gate' and yatsu-ashi-mon 'eight-legged gate' indicate the number of pillars supporting the central pillars from which these types of gate are hung. Kara-mon means a gate of multi-gabled Chinese (Tang) style from the period and zuijin-mon is a gate which either enshrines the shrine's guardians (zuijin ='attendant') or is flanked by their statues. The guardians used often to be Buddhist figures, and many were destroyed in the wake of the bunri decrees of 1868. Shrine gates were a continental, Buddhist-influenced development of primitive shrine architecture. Especially with the spread of shinto it became common to build two-storey portals instead of simple Examples of classic Buddhist-style gates are the Yomei-mon at the Nikko Toshogu and the gates of the Gion, Kamo and Hakozaki shrines. Gates such as those at the and Yasukuni shrines constructed since the separation of Buddhas and kami in 1868 are largely of unpainted wood with a thatched, tiled or copper roof in a nineteenth century 'pure Shinto" style, though the Sugo-isobe jinja in Ishikawa has a gate built in 1875 in stone and ironwork in a unique three-storied semi-European fashion |
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| Mikoshi |
"Kami-palanquin" or 'honourable palanquin'. An ornate covered litter used to carry a kami, as if a distinguished personage, from one place to another. The usual English translation of 'portable shrine' is not quite accurate for the journey is usually between the main shrine and one or more temporary shrines or resting-places (o-tabisho) or between one permanent shrine and another if the kami is visiting a neighbouring kami. At the SannO matsuri of the taisha for example two male and female 'rough spirits" (ara-mitama) are brought together in two mikoshi to be married. The mikoshi is analogous to an imperial palanquin; it is purely for travel and the journey is in some cases carried out in solemn secrecy and in darkness. Though a public processional journey may take the kami past the homes of parishioners (see Shinkoshiki) and the kami hallows the places (ujiko-machi) it passes, worship takes place only at o-tabisho, special places where the kami comes to rest. Mikoshi vary in construction; there are for example four, six and eight-sided versions, and they come in many sizes, ranging from several tons to those designed to be drawn by children. They are housed at shrines between use in a building called the mikoshi-gura or shinyo-ko. One or more mikoshi are generally carried during by an energetic group of young adult men of about 18-30 years who should be ritually pure (harae) Mikoshi themselves may be purified; the mikoshi of the taisha are dipped in seawater for this purpose. The men carrying the mikoshi represent the organised of the shrine and are accompanied by a procession of priests and other participants. At night they will escort the mikoshi with numerous lanterns (chOchin) In some cases a horse follows the palanquin in case the kami wishes to ride part of the way. The origin of the mikoshi is unclear but there is a tradition that in the Nara period a purple coloured renyo (palanquin) was used to welcome the deity Usa Hachiman to the capital for the celebration of the construction of the Daibutsu (Great Buddha) In Tokyo where the use of was stopped in the late era because of problems with overhead cables, festivals focus much more on the mikoshi, which are carried by men and women, including recently some women-only teams of bearers (onna-mikoshi) Some mikoshi processions which had died out in the Meiji period have been re-established in the post-war period with varying degrees of success to provide urban areas with a sense of communal identity |
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| Konjin |
"Metal-spirit'. In onmyo (yin-yang) cosmology metal is the element associated with the west and corresponds to the number seven. Traditionally regarded as a dangerous Taoist deity, Konjin the 'killer of seven" occupies certain directions once every five years (i.e. twelve times in the 60-year cycle of 'stems and branches') A Chinese text declared that if Konjin were offended he would kill seven people. If the members of one's own family were not sufficiently numerous, he would make up the number with the people next door. Directional taboos (kata-imi) associated with Konjin and other directional deities were a preoccupation of the nobility, and beliefs about dangerous directions and the wisdom of circumventing danger by travelling in auspicious directions (e.g. at hatsu-mode) remain in Japan today. In spite of his fearsome reputation Konjin revealed himself through Deguchi, Nao of Omoto-kyo and through Kawate, Bunjiro, founder of to be the benevolent parent-deity |
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