Lafcadio Hearn had a remarkable instinctive understanding of Shinto, the first Westerner to get at the essence of the religion. Whereas his great contemporaries like Satow, Chamberlain and Aston were much more proficient in Japanese, they looked to written accounts … Read the rest
Category: Ancestor worship (Page 4 of 8)
Autumn is here, and the festival season is in full swing. People associate this with harvests and nature worship, though many if not most of the festivals are nominally ancestral. That of Osake Jinja in Ako City (Hyogo Prefecture) is … Read the rest
The Koxinga Shrine in Taiwan is typical of Chinese ancestral shrines, and similar to those of Japan. It was set up by by Zheng Jing (1642-1681), to worship his father Koxinga. When Taiwan became part of the Qing Empire, it
ANA has recently started direct flights from KIX to Miyakojima, an island that lies between the Okinawan mainland and Ishigaki. Not knowing anything about it, I decided to take a long weekend and go explore. It turned out to be … Read the rest
Sugawara no Michizane was a courtier who fell from grace and in so doing became Japan’s second most popular deity, known as Tenjin. How come? Writing in today’s Japan Times, Michael Hoffman relates the story in graphic fashion in his … Read the rest
Green Shinto has written before of how Shinto stands on the twin pillars of animism and ancestor worship, and how these two different strands are interlocked. (See here for instance.) Zen too cultivates both aspects, though they are not so … Read the rest
Interesting Quote of the Day in Japan Today (
… Read the rest“Visiting a shrine to pray is different from being religious. It has nothing to do with religion. Most Japanese, including me, don’t think about whether we’re religious or