A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine

by John K. Nelson

What we today call Shinto has been at the heart of Japanese culture for almost as long as there has been a political entity distinguishing itself as Japan. A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine describes the ritual cycle at Suwa Shrine, Nagasaki's major Shinto shrine. Conversations with priests, other shrine personnel, and people attending shrine functions supplement John K. Nelson's observations of over fifty shrine rituals and festivals. He elicits their views on the meaning and personal relevance of the religious events and the place of Shinto and Suwa Shrine in Japanese society, culture, and politics. Nelson focuses on the very human side of an ancient institution and provides a detailed look at beliefs and practices that, although grounded in natural cycles, are nonetheless meaningful in late-twentieth-century Japanese society.

Nelson explains the history of Suwa Shrine, basic Shinto concepts, and the Shinto worldview, including a discussion of the Kami, supernatural forces that pervade the universe. He explores the meaning of ritual in Japanese culture and society and examines the symbols, gestures, dances, and meanings of a typical shrine ceremony. He then describes the cycle of activities at the shrine during a calendar the seasonal rituals and festivals and the petitionary, propitiary, and rite-of-passage ceremonies performed for individuals and specific groups. Among them are the Dolls' Day festival, in which young women participate in a procession and worship service wearing Heian period costumes; the autumn Okunchi festival, which attracts participants from all over Japan and even brings emigrants home for a visit; the ritual invoking the blessing of the Kami for young children; and the ritual sanctifying the earth before a building is constructed. The author also describes the many roles women play in Shinto and includes an interview with a female priest.

Shinto has always been attentive to the protection of communities from unpredictable human and divine forces and has imbued its ritual practices with techniques and strategies to aid human life. By observing the Nagasaki shrine's traditions and rituals, the people who make it work, and their interactions with the community at large, the author shows that cosmologies from the past are still very much a part of the cultural codes utilized by the nation and its people to meet the challenges of today.

Genres: Japan, Nonfiction, Religion, Anthropology, Philosophy, Theology, Asia

225 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I originally thought A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine was going to be a raw, 365-day account of activity at a Shinto Shrine. unfortunately for me, this book was only maybe a third of my expectations.

John K. Nelson's book is broken up into four sections representing the four seasons. each section gives an overview of the festivals, ceremonies and rituals conducted at Suwa Shrine, Nagasaki, in particular. before the reader starts learning about the various seasonal festivals, Nelson gives a nice, general explanation of Shinto, how Japanese people view Shinto (as well as Kami) and how it differs from other major world religions. Nelson also provides interviews with Priests, Head Priests and a Priestess to expand his lens on Shinto as well.

this account of Shinto and her (?) endeavors isn't bad but I was just hoping for a more of a day-to-day observation journal style which makes me want to maybe do that myself...

[Emi · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is interesting, but i just didn't love it as much as I hoped. The information presented was well but from a very foreigner perspective. I felt that the authenticity of the information was a bit lost through the lens of an American.

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember watching a lecture from a catholic church, where an official was advocating for the return of the Latin mass. He said something along the lines of: "People criticize the Latin mass for being incomprehensible to laypeople, why does it matter if regular people can't understand what we say, the mass isn't for them but for God." Now, I'm not here to judge the validity of his argument, though one's mind quickly turns toward the many beautiful churches the world over that are essentially abandoned and kept alive as an architectural tourist attraction, but it was deeply refreshing to see the Shinto priests at Suwa Shrine say the exact opposite. The Shrine lives and dies based on the participation of the local population and it's ironic that this particular Shrine was built precisely to combat the rise of Catholicism in the city of Nagasaki. Everyone openly admits that the function of the religion was political, and that it's rituals and festivals were designed to combat what was seen as foreign interference. That's not to say that the people who participate in the religious life of the Shrine don't feel a genuine positive result from their attendance; But it is funny that the success of the Shrine comes at the expense of the Church, which sometimes feels it's only duty is to God. There is an irony that the city of Nagasaki, which was nuked during the second world war, had been divided into two halves. One half was Shinto and the other half was Catholic, due to the influences of being a port city and major trading hub with the western world, and that it was this Catholic half that had taken the brunt of the nuclear blast. As soon as the dust cleared, and the Shinto priests realized that their Shrine was still standing, they seized the political opportunity and began proselyting and giving aid in what remained of the Catholic half. A possible response to the priest at the beginning of this paragraph could be something like: "A Catholic country just dropped a nuclear bomb on the Catholics living here, why should you pray to a God that can't be expected to help you?" A hard argument to counter.

Nelson provides a great writeup on the pragmatic functions of religion, noting:

When I use "tradition," it is in the way that Edward Shils (1981) or Eric Hobsbawn and Terrence Ranger (1987) intend, namely, that what meets the eye as being a cultures time-honored custom may in fact be an entirely new, radically novel event designed to create communal spirit, participation, or even political and financial capital. As we will see for the Dolls' Day festival and for Okunchi and when TV cameras are present at Suwa Shrine, tradition is not necessarily a heavy weight from the past that an institution lugs around from year to year, slowing down its more progressive members and deterring full participation in contemporary society. Instead, paraphrasing Hobshawn, when a tradition seeks to instill certain values or symbolic practices which automatically imply continuity with the past, it can best be thought of as a creative process "invented" to fit the complexities of the social moment. However, this is not to imply that it is impromptu, unstudied, illusory, or fictitious; to the contrary, an "invented" tradition is highly sophisticated design that fulfills three broad purposes. First, be establishing or symbolizing membership of real or artificial groups, it promotes social cohesion among dispersed individuals, families, or classes. Second, by establishing or legitimizing status, institutions, or relations of authority, it conveys and centralizes a symbolic power that can later be translated into political terms. Finally, as mentioned above, by its efforts to socialize individuals' awareness and acceptance of certain beliefs, values, or conventions of behavior, it encourages a continuity of compliance with existing and cultural orders. (Pg. 10)

The runtime of this work is Nelson going through the various festivals, rituals and events that Suwa Shrine goes through in a year, both old and invented, sometimes with the presence of film crews, and highlights the effects it has on the participants and the broader local community. Nelson doesn't shy away from mentioning that the Head Priest, Uesugi, had to go around and fundraise for money from the same community to build the shrine in the first place and that some events, like the Okunchi festival, not only fulfil a religious purpose but provide a sizeable amount of money in donations and offerings needed to maintain the Shrine for the entire year. In some ways reading this book is like reading a travelogue, the setting remains the same, but the context is always different. However, for anyone wanting a more in-depth look at what the Shinto religion actually believes in I think you'd need to look elsewhere. Nelson firmly roots the whole work in the relationship between the Shrine and the people it serves (including visiting tourists) and not between the Shrine and it's governing religious body.

Considering this book was published in 1996 and as a western reader it was interesting to see a few tidbits pertaining to the second world war, as the head priest of Suwa Shrine was (in a manner of speaking) a veteran of the conflict, having been in training as a kamikaze pilot when the war ended:

{Head Priest Uesugi speaking} "I guess you could say that I was the recipient, victim, and survivor of the education I received. Even until the end of the war, the school never relinquished its purpose to produce men and women who were willing to give their lives for the glory of the Japanese empire. In fact, I was in training as a kamikaze pilot when the war ended. I was ready to send my plane into a ship that perhaps your father was on-isn't that incredible to think about now? (Pg. 56)

It's always interesting to see the Japanese viewpoint of the war but more importantly, it's impressive to see how much the culture in Japan had changed by the 90s, with the head priest opening the doors of the Shrine's innerworkings to an American reporter and leading cultural delegations when dealing with and inviting higher ranking local American service members to participate in the Shrine's festivals. Another interviewed priest mentions another interesting passage from veteran's he interviewed:

Out of a hundred veterans that I interviewed, I never heard even one of them say that he heard anyone cry out 'Long live the emperor [Tennoheika banzai]' at the moment of death. They said they heard 'Long life to Mother!' or 'Remember me, Papa!' but never anything about glory to the emperor, like some of the war movies would have you believe. This didn't help me understand my friend's death very much, but it was a revelation nonetheless-that all the mental conditioning the Japanese people suffered before and during the war, much of it through the misdirection of Shinto symbols and teaching at the hands of the militarists, was just a lot of empty words. (Pg. 74)

Nelson finishes his work by advocating Shinto priests in general to harden themselves against any forms of political subversion that so heavily damaged it's credibility during the second world war and highlights various Shrines that have resisted political intrusion.

Overall, an interesting book. I think in some ways Nelson intended it to be a reference work because he repeats some tidbits or ideas from one chapter to another, and so he might have expected people to only read the chapters they're interested in. At the minimum it's gotten me interested in visiting Suwa shrine in Nagasaki and hopefully seeing a ritual firsthand, so ultimately Head Priest Uesugi's goal of getting more people interested in Shinto was fulfilled.

Some interesting quotes:

{Walter Edwards (1989)} goes on to remind the reader of one of the essential differences between a Japanese way of looking at the world and, say, an American: for Japanese, the wider realm of social relations is founded on the principle of interdependence, a concept that "renders the individual incomplete as a social being" (116). contrast this with the American value of an overly romanticized independence, where each man or woman stands alone and must make his or her own way in the world, relying on no one else. While this type of individual is not unknown in Japan, and frequently appears as a tragic hero in Japanese film, literature, television, and theater, the predominant message is that one cannot conquer the odds alone, or find fulfillment alone, without suffering terribly along the the way. Ian Buruma (1984) explores this theme from a variety of perspectives in popular arts, finding a precedent in the Kojiki myths of Susa-no-o, the unruly Kami, who settles down only when he enters into marriage, after which (according to Buruma) "nothing more is heard from him again." (Pg. 246)

Personal note: One funny quote to me that shows the drastic change in the public perception of Japan's culture from the time of publication (1996) to today (2026). Most modern tourists talk about how clean Japan is despite how impossible it is to find a garbage can. Whoever was in charge of the public awareness campaign around litter between then and now should be praised.
I am continually stunned by the ambivalent attitude of many Japanese toward trash. While keeping their personal dwellings and tiny yards spotless, many people are often extremely crass in violating public spaces with litter. Sightseers will toss empty juice or beer bottles from excursion boats (though trash receptacles are abundant), dump garbage from their cars, and deposit the leftovers from lunches taken while hiking in sizable mounds of similar debris. Mount Fuji, one of Japan's traditionally sacred mountains as well as a dominant symbol of its peoples' alleged love of nature, is, by the middle of the summer, a huge litter heap. Similarly, monuments to human stupidity fashioned by discarded piles of juice, tea, or beer cans, as if the deities who formerly were thought to descend to earth via mountaintops might somehow make them disappear. Shrine Shinto could do much to shake the label of having become an "ossified" religion by revitalizing its fundamental ecological vision of the world into various kinds of social action directed at increasing public awareness of this staggering problem. (Pg. 247)

[Zhelana · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was really interesting, but it left me with the feel that shinto wasn't a particular thing - that it really was just like any number of other pre-christian religions, and I wasn't sure what was special about it other than the one festival where they marched neighborhoods through the street. It was really interesting, though, that section. I was left feeling bad for the poorer neighborhoods, who, even with the stipend would have difficulty raising the money for a 3 day party. I'd like to read another book that maybe covered Shinto beliefs, rather than just the methods of their rituals. This one would have made a better second book to read, I think. The most interesting thing about this book is how relevant Shinto has remained to the Japanese people, whereas in most of the world a few major world religions have taken over completely.

[Jefferson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a light, interesting overview of the liturgical year of a Shinto shrine in Nagasaki, Japan.

I enjoyed it. It felt like your nerdy uncle excitingly telling you about his time in Japan and hanging out with a bunch of Shinto priests. Here and there, the author tries some experimentation with style and storytelling. He is, perhaps, not a literary giant but it keeps the narrative refreshed.

The book is mostly documentary. It is only at the very end that Nelson provides much sociological commentary about struggles of modernity and history and current issues of Shinto.

I learned a lot. I recommend to anyone interested in Shinto or religious studies.

[Saskia (Smitie) · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I was a bit worried about the tone of the book. It started a bit like a scientific article with all the careful scentences to nuance the statements. It gets quite confusing.

But after the first chapters it gets more interesting with personal notes and a view of how a shrine functions during the seasons. Next time I visit Japan I will look to the shrines with a little bit more understanding of what I am looking at.

[Stefan Dion Garcia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a bit more dry and academic than I would have preferred. I wish it took more of a phenomenological approach. But it was very informative.

[Kay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this insider's account of what goes on in a Shinto shrine, but I never managed to get all the way through it. Since I go through cycles of interest in my reading, I'm hoping to come back to it the next time I'm reading about Japan.

[Havala · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for an eastern religions class. Wonderful descriptions of Japanese ceremony, Japanese life, and a behind the scenes look at how a shrine is run. Definitely helped me understand what Shinto is.
Beautiful imagery. Easy read. Interesting topic.

[Cheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting, educated outsider's point of view bolstered by first hand interviewing and opinion of those involved. Would recommend to anyone interested in Japanese culture, history, and Shinto itself. Made sense of a lot of things that puzzled me during my visit in 2008.

[Emily]

This is on the list, because it came up in a library database search . . . and has a chapter called "Beans versus Demons" (28 Feb 2012)

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly interesting, a little hard to follow at times.