JINJA HONCHO - Association of Shinto Shrines

According to Shinto faith, a human spirit is believed to remain forever like the spirit of kami (deity). The places where the spirit dwells are often mentioned as the otherworld in the classics such as the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters), the Nihonshoki (Chronicles of Japan), the Manyoshu (Anthology of Poems), etc. In each otherworld, there live kami. The most well known otherworld is ‘Takamano-hara’ (the otherworld of Heaven) where the most venerable deities live. Another famous otherworld is ‘Yomi’ where the divine female parent who gave birth to the land of Japan lives. This world is long considered to exist in the underworld, and is believed to be connected with the custom of burial. (But nowadays it is regarded that there is no academic basis for this.) The third otherworld is called ‘Tokoyo’; which is believed to exist somewhere beyond the sea. According to folk faith, there is a belief of ‘the otherworld in the mountains’. This faith is related to the fact that cemeteries were located on hills which have panoramic views over villages and also the fact that people often expressed their wish to watch their descendants even after their death. These other worlds, however, are not described as utopia nor as a hell. There is no difference at all from this world. It reflects a faith in the spirit of the dead who can visit this world if people make a ritual to revere the spirit, like at times when the divine spirits visit this world whenever people show their reverence at festivals. There is also a belief that kami and ancestral spirits protect their descendants as long as the descendants continue to hold festivals. It can be said that Shinto is not a religion which centralized its interests in the life after death, but in this world.

The ‘Bon festival’ and ‘Shogatsu’ (New Year’s day) have a particular significance in Japanese life. Before and after the Bon and Shogatsu periods, a wave of national migration occurs throughout the country as many people return to their hometown in order to spend the holidays with their family.

Shogatsu is a New Year’s celebration where people pray for a year’s good fortune at the beginning of the year, welcoming the spirits of ancestors as well as the harvest deity. The Bon festival is to console ancestral spirits at each home on around the 15th of July or August. This is the religious consciousness of the Japanese, to revere the ancestral spirits as kami. The Japanese have believed that the ancestral spirits who were sublimated to kami in a certain period after the death would stay forever in this land in order to watch over the life of the descendants.

The ancestral spirits remain in various places: in the location where they deceased, in cemeteries, and also in the home altar or in shrines where they are enshrined as deities.

The beloved deceased watches over the life of their descendants from somewhere on this land. This is the main concept of Japanese ancestral worship, which is still embedded deep in the minds of its people. This view is reflected in today’s Japanese customs that put more importance on the memorial day of ancestors rather than their birthdays.