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Jinja Honchō established

1951 · Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan)

The Association of Shinto Shrines, Jinja Honchō, was formed in 1946 from the shrine world's own wartime bodies to represent the shrines in their new private standing, and by 1951, as the occupation drew to its end, it stood established as the national body of some eighty thousand shrines. From its office near Yoyogi it trains and certifies priests, publishes the shrines' teaching, and speaks for Jinja Shinto to the state and the public, while each member shrine keeps its own rites, its own kami, and its own parishioners.

Tagged: Jinja Shinto Shinto

The Event

Date
1951 (exact)
Also called
Association of Shinto Shrines
Era
Postwar Jinja Shinto; Standard periodization of Shinto history
Location
Tokyo; today Tokyo, Japan
Traditions
Shinto
Streams
Jinja Shinto

How the Tradition Tells It

Jinja Honchō speaks for most shrines, not all. Great houses such as Fushimi Inari have stood outside it, the thirteen sects of Sect Shinto are separate bodies, and thousands of small shrines belong to no association at all. Its establishment is the centre of postwar Shinto, not its boundary.

Connections

Illustration for Shinto Directive History Event Shinto Directive 1945 follows from

Primary Sources

  • The founding documents of Jinja Honchō.

Secondary Sources

  • Hardacre, Helen. Shinto: A History. Oxford University Press, 2017.
  • Breen, John, and Mark Teeuwen. A New History of Shinto. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

Provenance: HIST-0915; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-28.

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