Wonderings to begin with (November 30)

 Within a week of the application deadline on November 15 the dozen seminar participants in the three-week study program in Mie-prefecture were notified and details for booking flights, meal restrictions, and so on were supplied for the timely arrangement for Feb. 20 to March 10, 2023. Reading about Shintoism through linked articles of (English) Wikipedia, as well as looking at the university host website with its past 10 years of participant summary reports helped to form a picture of the busy time ahead: mornings of classroom lectures and conversation, afternoons for fieldtrips to places presented on the Kogakkan campus in the morning. Others way to get to know the place include image searches at Flickr.com and Archive.org, as well as a look for "Irasuto Mappu" (illustrated maps of tour attractions, not drawn to scale), イラストマップ. Several informative Shinto books from the city library have been worth reading, too*. 

Google images for "Ise イラストマップ" (illustrated map)

Already there are a number of questions that come to mind. Some of these may well lend themselves to a blogpost of their own, too.

-Compare relationship of people to land in Shinto (ancient; modern) vs. Iron-age (Bronze-age) Britain
-Look for regional patterns today and in other eras (most active, least active; most kami, fewest; rural/urban)
-Compare Abrahamic religions/codes to Shinto: people-to-natural surroundings (relationship, but less so interpersonal)
-Spiritual development: Shinto for kids, for young adults, for family-builders, for retirees, for sickness/health
-Custom (mingled with pre-religion habits) versus Doxa (declared ways): official vs. folk understandings; related, excavating the accretions laid on at particular historical eras (including changes in modern times)
-Explore (experiential) meaning for Danshana & chokkan (直感, intuiting/direct engagement in presence)
-Superstition (magic, self-talk, guided visualization, fervent prayer & vigil & pilgrimage) versus faith tradition


* =-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Shinto books in English

John Nelson 1996 A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine. [set in Nagasaki's Suwa-shrine, JPS]

Ian Reader 1999 (first printing) Shinto. notes

C. Scott Littleton 2002 Shinto: origins, rituals, festivals, spirits, sacred places.

Helen Hardacre 2017 Shinto, A History

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