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A Lunchtime Lecture from CJS: 'Making Shinto Work: Female Priests, Local Shrines, and Divergent Practices'
A Presentation by Dr. Dana Mirsalis
Pacific University
This talk explores how the entrance of women into the Shinto priesthood in 1946 precipitated the formation of a gendered priesthood. While Jinja Honchō (the Association of Shinto Shrines) espouses women's essential difference from men and restricts and directs women's participation in the priesthood through gender-segregated hiring practices and regulations, female priests do not accept their rhetoric unconditionally. While female priests tend to endorse binary, essentialist models of gender, their experience of gender is much more intersectional and contextually grounded than Jinja Honchō's models suggest, leading to them constructing a type of femininity that is not only particular to priests but also specific to their local shrine context.
By exploring the case of the gendered priesthood, we can see the growing divide between Jinja Honchō and local shrine communities, exacerbated by the changing world priests must navigate and Jinja Honchō's lack of attention to female priests (and small shrines). As a result, female priests widen the gap between Jinja Honchō and their local shrines not through overt resistance or rejection but with dozens of tiny decisions—small adjustments and adaptations to better their local environment that create their own form of Shinto.
12:45 PM | Thursday, February 5th, 2026
Fariborz Maseeh Hall Room 333
Free & Open to the Public
Please use the entrance on SW Broadway
For more information on our upcoming events, please visit: https://www.pdx.edu/japanese-studies/cjs-upcoming-events
#cjs #centerforjapanesestudies #psu #pdx #portlandstateuniversity #events #shinto #japanesestudies
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