A Dutchman has become the only (?) http:\/\/search.japantimes.co.jp\/cgi-bin\/nn20060209f2.html”>non-Japanese Shinto master in Europe<\/a>.<\/p>\n
His house, which includes the Dutch Yamakage Shinto Shrine, incorporates a “kami-dana” household Shinto shrine and a “shime-nawa” (sacred rope). It is also home to the Dutch Shinto Association.<\/p>\n “When I was approved as a Shinto priest by the Rev. Yamakage, I was told to apply Shinto to Dutch society,” de Leeuw said. “So in that sense I decided to change the interior of the shrine a little bit from the interior I knew from Japan.<\/em><\/p>\n Coincidentally, I was just reading a book by his teacher, Motohisa Yamakage, The Essence of Shinto<\/em><\/a>. Yamakage seems interested both in explaining Shinto to the West and revitalizing it within Japan. He is old enough (81) to remember what happened when this decentralized practice was co-opted by the imperial government<\/a> in the late 19th century.<\/p>\n Yamakage quotes one priest with approval:<\/p>\n Shrines should gather parishioners together and not teach them, I believe. We should not give any lectures to those who come to pay respect at the shrine or to visit the office of the shrine. We have to respect their positions or ideas. We should neither criticize them nor force them to follow our ideas. For the shrine is the public facility, and we don’t ask which religion or sect they belong to. The shrine is not the place we give more education. It is the place where they freely feel and learn something in their own way.<\/em><\/p>\n With so much pressure on contemporary Paganism to follow the “Protestant mode,” with designated leaders, “congregations,” and so forth, we might want to consider Shinto as a model in some things instead, particularly the idea of a priest serving a shrine instead of a congregation–which was true in ancient Paganism as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Dutchman has become the only (?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[5,60],"class_list":["post-907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-paganism","tag-shinto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-eD","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":308,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=308","url_meta":{"origin":907,"position":0},"title":"Shinto's struggle Although I have\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 21, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Shinto's struggle Although I have never visited Japan, I have often wondered if Shinto in some ways best resembles classical Paganism, in so far as the shrine and the gods come first--there is not the idea of minister + congregation. In Pagan Theology, Michael York asks something similar about Hindu\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":556,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=556","url_meta":{"origin":907,"position":1},"title":"Japanese deitiesPart of the interaction\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 9, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Japanese deitiesPart of the interaction between the native Japanese religion Shinto and missionary Buddhism, which came from China, was an attempt to correlate Shinto deities with the various past and future Buddhas of Mahayana (Northern) Buddhism.The \"Gods of Japan\" photo website has both deities (\"kami\"> and Buddhas, in great detail.Tags:\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10153,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10153","url_meta":{"origin":907,"position":2},"title":"The Japanese Do Animism So Well \u2014\u00a0But So Can You","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 6, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Two things I was reading this week came together. One was this article in The Atlantic: \"Tidying Up With Marie Kondo Isn\u2019t Really a Makeover Show,\" about the Japanese author of\u00a0 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, who now has a show on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?_encoding=UTF8&MarketPlace=US&ASIN=1607747308&ServiceVersion=20070822&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&Format=_SL160_&tag=soutrocknatub-20","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1259,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1259","url_meta":{"origin":907,"position":3},"title":"Blog It and They Will Come. But Why?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 28, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Real search-engine queries that brought Web visitors to this blog:Is Depeche Mode synonymous with homosexuality? [I don't know; I missed the 80s.]Booty shaking videos of Muslim womenArvol Looking Horse fraud youtube [he is an American Indian activist on the \"cultural appropriation\" issue]make shinto priest hatfood placed in creek for religion[I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6986,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6986","url_meta":{"origin":907,"position":4},"title":"A Billion-Candles Candlemas","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 3, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"By the Sun, Candlemas\/Imbolc happened this evening, between 8 and 9 o'clock, Mountain Time. And I was watching an episode of PBS' American Experience called \"The Big Burn.\" Coincidence, I think not. :) (You can find it streaming on their site.) Ten minutes in, there must have been smoke in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ancestors\"","block_context":{"text":"ancestors","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=ancestors"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4866,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4866","url_meta":{"origin":907,"position":5},"title":"Pomegranate 13.2 in Production","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 26, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Pomegranate 13.2 is in its final proofreading stages. Online articles may be available this week, and depending on when I get the cover from the graphic designer, it should go to the printers (yes, there are two different printers) within two weeks. I intend to make Ronald Hutton's review article\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}