Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to elucidate how a Shinto Shrine in Japan has created a network through kinship and relatedness. How pilgrimage is not only a religious place but a place where several social relationships have been created. It concludes that it connects people of different social worlds.

Paper long abstract:

This study aims to examine how a Shinto shrine created a network through personal ties to substitute the role of the local community. In Japan, urbanization and modernization has weakened the old concept of local community. This is also the reason for numerous shrines falling out of favour (Morioka 1968; Ishii 1998). However, the HKN shrine which is situated in Ibaraki prefecture's rural periphery is still prosperous and putting in effort to attract worshipers and tourists. Takatani and Numazaki (2012) in the book "Tsunagari no jinruigaku", expanded Carsten's concept of relatedness and focused on how community forms outside the sphere of kinship, locality and workplace through social relatedness. However, along with social changes the form of community has also changed and traditional community which was based mostly on primary relations such as kinship and spatial relations has weakened. Consequently, in many depopulated suburbs, networks of people who share common economic interests have replaced the local community. In "The urban black community as network," Oliver (1988) postulates "By viewing community in network terms, we can examine the personal, organizational, interorganizational levels (e.g., Turk 1970) that vary in ways in which these communities are organized" (1988, 640). In the case of this shrine multiple networks of interpersonal ties have been created to sustain the shrine. This paper describes how the shrine connects people of different social worlds and concludes that more than kin and relative outsiders help to operate the HKN shrine.