You’ve probably seen gateways like the one above—called a torii—in many of the pictures you’ve seen of Japan. The torii indicates that a Shinto shrine lies beyond its gate. And there are tons of them.
The Japanese Ministry of Culture says there are at least 90,000 Shinto shrines and places of worship—and that figure doesn’t count the small, informal shrines that can be seen along roadsides and in people’s private homes.
The altar or shrine found in a Shinto-practicing home is known as a kamidana. Although it may be on a smaller scale than the massive “official” shrines located all over Japan, the kamidana has the exact same purpose: to give the deities that protect believers a holy place in which to reside.
And now I have a kamidana of my very own (see the picture below).
Before you get all impressed and start thinking that my craft skills have vastly improved over the past couple of months, I should tell you that my torii is store-bought. I tried building my own with popsicle sticks and Elmer’s glue, but since I’m not even close to being an architect, I couldn’t get it to stand up without falling over. I was starting to worry that I’d have to just draw my kamidana on construction paper (as I’ve done with other religious symbols in the past, as you may recall).
Luckily, I found an easy way out of the problem. While shopping for a new bed for my dog Chip (you remember him—he’s the one who peed on my pagan altar back in January), I stumbled upon the torii you can see in the photo above. That’s right, folks—apparently, Petco is a supplier of Shinto-related altar pieces. Who knew? Granted, the Petco torii is intended to be placed in a fish tank, not a kamidana, but it still works.
Besides the torii, there are several elements that go into making a kamidana. In the center is a small circular mirror called a shintai. It symbolizes the presence of whichever deity the shrine is supposed to house: in my case, the goddess Benten or Benzaiten (I’ll tell you more about my choice another time).
The round mirror symbolizes deity because it’s pure and because it has the ability to reflect and radiate light. Okay, so my shintai may not be quite as pure as one might hope—it’s actually an old makeup compact. But I did wash it thoroughly. I assure you, I’m taking this whole Shinto cleanliness thing very seriously.
To the sides of the kamidana you place cuttings from an evergreen plant—preferably, a sakaki tree. Since my area of Pennsylvania seems to be curiously lacking in sakaki trees, I used pine branches from my yard. They seem fine to me.
Representing the elements that sustain life are three special containers that go around the sides of the shrine: one container filled with salt, one with rice (which has to be washed first, of course), and one with water.
Above the kamidana, you hang rope made of natural fiber. From those pieces of rope, you tie white rice paper that is cut or folded into shapes that resemble lightning bolts. I didn’t have rice paper, so I used regular printer paper. And I had to tape it to the strings rather than tying it, because I couldn’t control the bendy, stiff rope. Either way, the point is the same: The paper shapes let anyone who sees the kamidana know that the area belongs to the deity and that the shrine is pure and clean.
Inside the shrine, you place a prayer paper where you can write your needs and wishes for the deity to take into consideration. (Just for the record, it’s none of your damn business what I wrote on my prayer paper. Get your own kamidana!)
In keeping with Shinto’s emphasis on purity and cleanliness, it’s essential to remember to wash your hands and, if possible, rinse your mouth, too, before approaching the kamidana. Fortunately, despite my aversion to getting my hair wet in the shower, I have a bit of a hand-washing and tooth-brushing compulsion, so keeping myself good and clean for my deity shouldn’t be as big of a problem as I originally thought.
Now that I have a place to make offerings and say prayers to my chosen Shinto deity, I feel a little more connected to this month’s faith and a lot more “religious” than I’ve felt over the last few months in the other religions, where I had less structure and less “stuff” on which to focus my efforts. I think I might kind of like Shinto—too bad I’m not Japanese, I guess.
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