Pagan, Shinto & Spiritual Book Reviews February 2017

Shin’nyo Kawai, The Wisdom of Ise Jingu

(Sara Project, 2016)

I was lucky to get this. Back in April I attended Japan Society’s Generation to Generation: Window on Ise – Japan’s Most Sacred Place event, organised in association with Ise City. It was a kind of mini expo on one of Japan’s most important Shinto shrines, Ise Jingu. The purpose of the event was to increase international understanding about Ise Jingu and the Shinto religion in the run-up to Ise City hosting the G7 summit in May. It featured talks by priests from Ise Jingu, a musical performance, and samples of Ise’s speciality food and drink. Attendees were also given a free pack of information brochures about Shinto, and it included this book, The Wisdom of Ise Jingu by the shrine’s senior priest Shin’nyo Kawai. This book is now available to purchase from Amazon Japan.

It being a free book, and written in the slightly odd typeface that you often see in cheaper English works published in Japan, I was not expecting anything of particularly high quality. I turned out to be very pleasantly surprised.

The Wisdom of Ise Jingu is a little gem of a book. It could have focused entirely on the history and functions of Ise Jingu itself and still have been a solid read. But Kawai goes a step further and uses his explanations of Ise Jingu as a vehicle for introducing the basics of Shinto beliefs and philosophy. Kawai is so successful in doing this that I would go as far as to recommend The Wisdom of Ise Jingu as a core introductory book to Shinto (if it was a little easier to obtain). All the important aspects are covered – episodes from the Kojiki, the basics of Shinto ritual, the value of cleanliness and purification, for example.

Despite being pitched towards those less familiar with Shinto, The Wisdom of Ise Jingu has plenty for more experienced Shintoists. The explanations of the history, philosophy and rituals of Ise Jingu are enlightening, and Kawai offers some really unique and fascinating insights into Ise Jingu. And although it still feels like a translation due to some of the rather Japanese-style sentence constructions, for the most part the translation is quite good. To top it off, the book is filled with beautiful colour photos of Ise Jingu.

I have to admit, Ise Jingu is not my favourite shrine in Japan. When I visited it, I felt somewhat underwhelmed, as I mentioned in a previous post. But this book gave me a whole new feeling of appreciation for Ise Jingu and actually made me want to visit it again! I would’ve probably given this book my Read Of The Month, had it been a little longer and a little more readily obtainable outside Japan. I hope that perhaps Kawai considers increasing distribution of this excellent little book in the future.