Table of Contents
For this milestone post, I am going to tell you a bit about websites where you can find official details on Shinto Shrines.
Now, many of the larger shrines have their own website. However, there also are local catalogues for shrines in a particular area. These usually go by a name of [area]-jinshacho (神社庁 Jinjacho = "Shrine Office").
Unfortunately, since Shinto is organized in a decentralized way, that means there's no central repository where all shrines in Japan are registered. And to make matters worse, the website for each region looks slightly different. Some have search features, others don't, and the details on given for shrines all of those sites differ too. And naturally they are all in Japanese too, with no English translation in sight.
So in this post, I want to give you an overview of some of the online shrine dictionaries that exist.
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Tokyo Jinjacho
Landing Page: http://www.tokyo-jinjacho.or.jp
Search Page: http://www.tokyo-jinjacho.or.jp/jinja/map/
Example Shrine: http://www.tokyo-jinjacho.or.jp/ota/6151/
For most of you, this will probably be the most relevant site, since it shows all major shrines in Tokyo. It is fairly easy to use, with a two-level search place that first has you click on the district you are interested in (note: since this also contains a lot of rural areas, I added the location of the Tokyo Bay and circled the inner city of Tokyo). Note that this also includes a number of islands that are hundreds of kilometers south of Tokyo, but still fall under its administrative authority.
Once you click on a district, you are then taken to a map showing the major shrines in that district.
Note that these are only the bigger shrines, and there's a lot of smaller shrines hidden in between that are not listed in the directory. For example, here's a map with all the shrines that I found in the southeastern corner of Ota...
...but Tokyo Jinjacho only shows two shrines in that area.
Anyway, clicking on a shrine on the map will open up a tab from where you can go tho its details page, which looks like this:
From top to bottom, this page contains:
- The shrine name
- With it's pronunciation written in Furigana below
- [I can only assume that what is written in the square brackets is a nickname for this shrine]
- 御祭神 "Gosaishin" = Honorable Enshrined Deity
- The name of the enshrined deity (written in Furigana in the parantheses)
- 御由緒 "Goyuisho" = Honorable History
- The history of the shrine
- 例祭日 "Reisaijitsu" = Regular festival day
- 所在地 "Shozaichi" = Address
- TEL = Telephone number
- FAX = Fax number
- 最寄り駅 "Mayori Eki" = Closest station
Compared to what some other shrine directories offer, this is not overly much, but it has all the basics.
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Ehime Jinjacho
Landing Page: http://ehime-jinjacho.jp
Search Page: http://ehime-jinjacho.jp/jinja/
Example Shrine: http://ehime-jinjacho.jp/jinja/?p=979
By contrast, here's a site for a more rural region: Ehime (愛媛 "Love Princess"), one of Shikoku's four provinces, which among other things also contains Aoshima (青島 "Blue Island"), the island of cats. It's search page contains several ways to search for shrines. First, there's a search field. Below that, you can browse by area. After that, there's a map. And finally, there's a field where you can search by "Shrine Code", though I haven't been able to figure out what that means, and the results from searching in this field seem kinda random. Also, once again, this site only lists bigger shrines (probably around medium size and upwards), which seems to be a common thing for all these shrine directories.
Clicking on a shrine will take you to its page, which looks like this:
I don't know about you, but I like this one a lot better than the one from Tokyo Jinjacho. At first glance, you get a glimpse of the shrine, its location, and a tail-load of information. From top to bottom, here's what the fields mean:
- 神社名 "Jinjame": Shrine Name
- ふりがな "Furigana": Pronunciation
- 宮司名 "Guujime": Chief Priest Name
- 電話番号 "Denwanbango": Phone Number
- 神社主な祭礼 "Jinja no omona sairei": Shrine's main festival (with date)
- 神社主祭神 "Jinja Shusaishin": Enshrined deity
- 神社境内社 "Jinjakyou Naisha": Shrines inside the Shrine
- 神社御神徳 "Jinja Goshintoku": Shrine Virtues (what you can pray for at this shrine)
- 神社由緒 "Jinja Yuisho": Shrine history
- 神社鎮座地 "Jinja Chinzachi": Shrine's Sacred Seat (or more mundane: the address)
- 神社駐車場 "Jinja Choushajou": Shrine parking lot (where and how many spaces)
- 氏神地域 "Uchigami Chiiki": Parish area (the neighborhoods under the shrine's protection)
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Kyoto Jinjacho
Landing Page: http://www.kyoto-jinjacho.or.jp/
Search Page: http://www.kyoto-jinjacho.or.jp/shrine.html
Example Shrine: http://www.kyoto-jinjacho.or.jp/shrine/27/210/
Despite this being the website of the shrine capital of Japan, it is embarrassingly out of touch. To get to the search page from here, you have to click the middle panel in the middle column, and that gets you to a page that looks like this:
There, you can select a district, and then get a list of shrines in that district, with phone number, address, and what I suppose might be a mobile phone number. Some of them have a link that links to the shrine's own website, but there aren't any individual shrine pages listed on this site itself.
Except... some of them are actually hosted on this site. One in roughly 5 shrines links to an address like the example shrine above. However, those sites are all very individual, and don't have an unified appearance. My best guess is that this is an offer of the Kyoto shrine office, letting shrines who can't afford their own complete website host a simple page here.
Since all of those are handmade, I won't go into describing the individual fields here. Most of them are repetitions of the above fields anyway. However, I do want to point out at least one of the lovingly hand-crafted maps that many of those shrines feature.
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Aichi Jinjacho
Landing Page: https://aichi-jinjacho.or.jp/
Search Page: https://aichi-jinjacho.or.jp/search_map.html
Example Shrine: https://aichi-jinjacho.or.jp/search_detail.html?id=6204bed9-20a5-4e24-a094-4fa34642bb12
Standing in stark contrast to the site of the Kyoto Jinjacho, the site of the Aichi Jinjacho (Aichi is located roughly a third of the way from Kyoto to Tokyo, with Nagoya being it's biggest city) is everything you'd expect from a modern website, including slowly changing images at the landing page. The search bar is already right there at the bottom, and the button to the right takes you to a map where you can search for shrines by area (you have to scroll down a bit on that page to get to the area map).
Sadly, the sub-pages thereafter no longer have any maps, but only a long list of shrine names.
Clicking on any of these takes you to the shrine's page, which looks like this:
At the top, there's the shrine's name (with pronunciation in Furigana).
After that, some shrines feature a photo.
And then, there's a list of shrine details, which includes:
- 神社名 "Jinjame": The shrine's name (again)
- 御祭神 "Gosaijin": Enshrined deity
- 神社通称 "Jinja Tsuusho": Shrine's Common Name (what the shrine is also called)
- 郵便番号 "Yuubin Bango": Postal Code
- 鎮座地 "Chinzachi": Sacred Seat (or more mundane: the address)
- 最寄り駅名 "Mayori Ekime": Closest Station Name
- 氏子地域 "Ujiko Chiiki": Parish area (Area under the shrine's protection)
- 例祭日 "Reisaijitsu": Regular Festival Day
- ご朱印の有無 "Goshuin no Umu": Temple Stamp Availability (有 = Yes; 無 = No; 不明 = Unknown)
- 職員の有無 "Shokuin no Umu": Attendants Present (有 = Yes; 無 = No; 不明 = Unknown)
- 受付時間 "Uketsuke Jikan": Opening Hours
- 参拝者駐車場の有無 "Senpaisha Choushajou no Umu": Worshipper Parking Space Availability (有 = Yes; 無 = No; 不明 = Unknown)
- 連絡先 "Renrakusaki": Contact information
- ホームページ "Hoomupeeji": Home page
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Hokkaido Jinjacho
Landing Page: https://hokkaidojinjacho.jp/
Search Page: https://hokkaidojinjacho.jp/jinja/
Example Shrine: https://hokkaidojinjacho.jp/水天宮/
Hokkaido has by far the largest shrine office by area: Just the one for the entire north island, which for the record is the size of Austria. Even so, on account of being conquered by Japan rather late, it doesn't have as many shrines as the other areas. Anyway, the Hokkaido Jinjacho, too, has a very modern website, which is a lot like the one of the Aichi Jinjacho. The fourth button in the top bar takes you to the search page, where there's a map for the different districts. Note how the map includes the Kuril islands, which were conquered by Russia during WW2, but which Japan still claims for itself over half a century later.
Clicking on the name of an area will take you to a page with the major shrines in that area, which aren't many. The list may not be complete, but this also goes to show just how few shrines Hokkaido has in total.
Clicking on one of those shrine panels takes you to the page for that shrine, which is very nice, with not just one but a number of pictures, many of which are even labeled.
At the top, there's the shrine name (sadly without Furigana this time, so you have to guess the pronunciation).
And to the right of the pictures, there's a list of details with the following fields:
- 所在地 "Shozaichi": Address
- 例祭日 "Reisaijitsu" = Regular festival day
- 祭神 "Saijin" = Enshrined deities
- 社殿様式 "Shaden Youshiki" = Main building architecture style
- 社殿面積 "Shaden Menseki" = Main building area size
- 境内面積 "Keidai Menseki" = Shrine grounds area size
- 氏子世帯数 "Ujiki Setaisuu" = Number of households in parish
- 崇敬者数 "Suukei Shashu" = Number of worshipers
- 交通機関 "Koutsuu Kikan" = How to get there (The exact translation would be "transport system", but the value of the field describes how to get to the shrine)
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Others
To wrap this up, here's a number of other Jinjacho websites from various regions I've visited, with sample shrines:
