Visiting a Shinto shrine at the New Year is a popular custom in Japan. When I lived nearby a shrine, I would visit my local shrine at about 12:30 in the morning on New Year’s Day. The shrine grounds would be crowded with students and adults and everyone would make a big line in front of the haiden to pay their first respects of the year to the kami-sama. While waiting people would chat with their friends, some whom had not seen each other for a long while. After praying their respects, many people would get a amulet or something from the shrine to take home. In my case, I would usually get a “hamaya”, a sort of lucky arrow.

Recently I was thinking about these objects you can get at a shrine. There are various types–ofuda slips, omamori amulets, ema plaques, and so on–but they are all called “Juyohin”. Of course, you can’t just take one of these juyohin for free. There is usually a written amount of money (often like 500 yen or something) that you have to give first. Thus this would be “buying” a juyohin, right?

Actually no, it is a little bit different. In this Western secular world, where everything is talked about in terms of money (I am not a consumer!), it might be a little hard to see the difference at first. So let me try to explain.

The money given in exchange for a juyohin is a donation. For more formal visits, the donation is not set and at the end of the visit, the priest will give the visitor some juyohin to take home. The juyohin given has no relation to the amount of the donation given and sometimes may even cost more than the original donation itself. In a more casual occasion, such as most people’s New Year’s visit, it is a little more difficult. There are a lot of people all at once. Most of them know little about Shinto etiquette. And the nature of the visit itself if quite brief. So accepting formal donations and then personally choosing juyohin to give back to each one is probably impossible. Thus having a small set donation for each juyohin that the person can choose themselves is much more realistic.

Does this mean you can give less than the donation and it is okay? Probably if that was in fact all you could give. But modern day people have a really warped sense of what they “need”. I am a full time graduate student working 2 part time jobs to make ends meet. I have really scrimped and saved in order to be able to go graduate school. One time, I had an experience visiting a shrine for a formal visit and gave one man yen (about $100) as my donation. The priest in fact protested, saying it was too much. But for me, supporting this local shrine is important. I can home cook rice and beansprouts every night (rice is free, beansprouts only 19 yen!) and wait another year to buy some new clothes (mending clothes is a lost art). Supporting this shrine which is doing good work is more important to me.

Anyway, this is just my opinion and I am not a priest or anything. But my point is that we should receive juyohin, not merely buy them. We need to get rid of the consumeristic mindset that pervades so much of “modern” life today.