Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 26, 2025
They had come to town for the matsuri of our own ujigami, or parish-temple; and, as there were many curious things to be seen at the night festival, we started for the temple after dark, Kinjuro carrying a paper lantern painted with my crest.
When the land had been portioned out among the various clans, each of which had its own ancestor cult, all the people of the district belonging to any particular clan would eventually adopt the religion of the clan ancestor; and thus arose the thousand cults of the Ujigami.
Purity of heart is not less insisted upon than physical purity; and the great rite of lustration, performed every six months, is of course a moral purification. It is performed not only at the great temples, and at all the Ujigami, but likewise in every home
There were, of course, various grades of these clan-gods, just as there were various grades of living rulers, lords of the soil. Above ordinary Ujigami ranked the deities worshipped in the chief Shinto temples of the various provinces, which temples were termed Ichi-no-miya, or temples of the first grade.
He prescribed ten prayers for persons having time to repeat them, but lightened the duty for busy folk, observing: "Persons whose daily affairs are so multitudinous that they have not time to go through all the prayers, may content themselves with adoring the residence of the Emperor, the domestic god-shelf, kamidana, the spirits of their ancestors, their local patron-god, Ujigami, the deity of their particular calling."
Indeed, the word ujigami, now used to signify a Shinto parish temple, and also its deity, means 'family God, and in its present form is a corruption or contraction of uchi-no-Kami, meaning the 'god of the interior' or 'the god of the house. Shinto expounders have, it is true, attempted to interpret the term otherwise; and Hirata, as quoted by Mr.
Now just as among the Greeks and Latins the family cult always continued to exist through all the development and expansion of the public religion, so the Shinto family worship has continued concomitantly with the communal worship at the countless ujigami, with popular worship at the famed Ohoya-shiro of various provinces or districts, and with national worship at the great shrines of Ise and Kitzuki.
And the cult of the Ujigami embodies the moral experience of the community, represents all its cherished traditions and customs, its unwritten laws of conduct, its sentiment of duty .... Now just as an offence against the ethics of the family must, in such a society, be regarded as an impiety towards the family-ancestor, so any breach of custom in the village or district must be considered as an act of disrespect to its Ujigami.
Indeed, Shinto presents us with a mythological hierarchy of which the development can be satisfactorily explained by that law alone. Besides the Ujigami, there are myriads of superior and of inferior deities. There are the primal deities, of whom only the names are mentioned, apparitions of the period of chaos; and there are the gods of creation, who gave shape to the land.
The best authority on the local customs and laws of Old Japan, John Henry Wigmore, remarks that the Shinto cult had few relations with local administration. In his opinion the Ujigami were the deified ancestors of certain noble families of early times; and their temples continued to be in the patronage of those families.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking