As you know Shinto is Japanese religion, and now there are over 80,000 shrines in Japan. The number of shrine is greater than that of temple, and many people visit a shrine to pray their happiness especially on the New Years Day, but when I visited a shrine I felt that the lack of manner of visitors, so today I’m going to talk about important manner when we visit a shrine.
According to Masao Fujii , first, we need to bow deeply and make ourselves presentable in front of the Torii (鳥居) which is the gateway to the shrine.
Second, we need to wash our hands and mouth at the Chozuya (手水舎) to purify ourselves. When we pray, we need to throw a coin in offering box (賽銭箱). The coin is offering to gods, long time ago the offering was rice. After throwing a coin we need to ring the bell, and bow two times, clap two times and pray. After praying we need to bow again.
These are basic manner to visit a shrine, and it is very simple, so at least we should know these manners and practice these at the shrine.
3 件のコメント:
It is an interesting idea to blog about the proper way to pray at a shrine. Foreigners and Japanese people can learn from this. Often times we see Japanese people clapping Shinto-style when they pray at Buddhist temples. Some shrines have pictures and instructions how to pray. Some shrines have slightly different manners as well.
I am curious about why are you so concerned about these manners...
The layout of your pictures and text is awkward. Where did you get information about praying at the shrine? It seems like you could have provided links about Shinto. The video is nice - but it is a little long. It might be helpful to have some description of the video - where is it, what it shows, etc.
I got the information about praying at shrine from the book called "shinji no kisochisiki" (神事の基礎知識) which was written by Masao Fujii (藤井正雄).
The reason why I am so concerned about the manners is that breaking these little manners triggers big problem. Recently I saw people who were fighting on the train, and the trigger of the fight was the breaking manners on the train, so to keep manners is necessary not to mess up our life.
To place my pictures and text is very difficult, for the preview doesn't work well, but I am trying to fix it.
I agree with you about the breaking of manners in public being a problem. We often read in the news how people get upset and resort to violence when manners are broken on the train or in public. But do people get upset when people don't pray properly at the shrine?
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