Vocabulary

boat race

Gion Festival (in Kyoto during the month of July, with high point on the 17th)

Music Department (part of the Board of Ceremonies of the Imperial Household Agency)

Board of Ceremonies (part of the Imperial Household Agency)

hall of offerings (at a shrine)

Shinto-Buddhist syncretism

style of Shinto architecture in which the main hall and worship hall share one roof, and are connected via an intermediate passageway

main page; home page

Hachiman (god of war)

purification to invite good fortune

purification to cleanse one of sin

purification ceremony held on the first day of the snake in the 3rd month of the lunar calendar

norito read at a great purification event

grand purification ceremony (so-called because it was overseen by the Nakatomi family)

tamagushi used at Ise Shrine's purification ceremonies

streamers (made of linen, paper, etc.) attached to a long pole (used as a wand in grand purification ceremonies)

small purification wand

thinly cut hemp or paper mixed with rice (scattered as an offering to the gods)

first visit of a child to the shrine of its tutelary deity (usu. when the child is about 30 days old)

waiting for the sun (traditional all-night event of worship and neighbourhood fellowship)

hirudin (anticoagulant polypeptide produced by leeches)

thrombin

anticholinergic drug

anticholinergic drug

rubefacient (substance that causes redness of skin)

rubefacient (substance that causes redness of skin)

rubefaction (reddening of the skin)

rubefaction (reddening of the skin)

wheat

summer purification rites (held at shrines on the last day of the 6th lunar month)

bounce and resilience (of hair)

toilet training

final farewell (in this life)

bimodal

bimodal

kagura flute (six-holed horizontal flute)

kagura flute (six-holed horizontal flute)

offerings of food (to the gods)

primitive shrine (originally a swath of sacred land surrounded by evergreens; later a decorated sakaki branch on an eight-legged table)

evergreen tree