Word: shinto
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Hirohito now seems to relish his restricted but ritualized duties. Each year, he symbolically plants seedlings of rice on the 284-acre palace grounds; at least 20 times annually he dons flowing traditional costume as the nation's highest-ranking Shinto priest. In addition, each weekday he diligently repairs to his office to rubber-stamp government appointments, welcome foreign envoys and brushstroke his signature on an annual flood of 2,000 state papers. In return, the state devotes $41.1 million a year to the upkeep of palace property, including a taxable stipend of $936,000 for the Emperor...
...Emperor's five daughters, Princess Teru died in 1961 at the age of 35, and Princess Hisa died within six months of her birth in 1927. Kazuko Takatsukasa, 54, became a Shinto priestess after her husband died; Atsuko Ikeda, 52, is a businessman's wife; and Takako Shimazu, 44, is married to a banker...
...think that the mission of the Bauhaus was to standardize buildings everywhere. In effect, it enabled the Japanese to adapt to themselves. Perhaps this could have happened only to people accustomed, time out of mind, to living with two or three cultures simultaneously, like a farmer addressing one Shinto god after another until he gets the result he needs...
Bundled in colorful silks, the newborn Keiko Shirato was taken by her parents to a neighborhood Shinto shrine, where a white-gowned priest pronounced blessings for a long and healthy life. On three childhood birthdays she also visited Shinto shrines, clapping her hands and clanging bells to awaken the gods so she could pray to them. In 1980 Keiko used Buddhist omens to select a propitious wedding day. But she exchanged Christian vows with her fiancé in a small chapel at one of Tokyo's elegant hotels. Keiko, now 26 and a mother, expects that some...
...Keiko, such religious eclecticism is perfectly natural. "I owe respect to my ancestors and show it through Buddhism," she explains. "I'm a Japanese, so I do all the little Shinto rituals. And I thought a Christian marriage would be real pretty. It's a contradiction, but so what...