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What is the male equivalent of a Miko? 2021/10/21 04:59
For my paper I studied different religions around the world and Shintoism always confuses me as the information was either limited or in Japanese, unfortunately I am not well versed in it.

I am curious whether is there a male equivalent of a miko? Does his role required the same rules for shrine maidens (virgins, shamanism training, etc)? Can he perform shamanism but refrained from doing priests work as he is not a priest level?

Or are all men who works in the shinto shrine are priests?

Thank you in advance.
by dddan  

Re: What is the male equivalent of a Miko? 2021/10/21 13:07
My knowledge of Shintoism is better than most Westerners but not compared to locals so take this with a grain of salt.

Two links which make comments on this are below:

https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2056.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miko

From my general observations - there tends to be two types of people who help out at shrines.

(1) General people who help out selling talismens and such (for study, health etc). Although many are female - these jobs are not gender specific. I've seen uncountable numbers of males working at the larger shrines selling things specifically at the start of the year such as Darumas etc...
(2) People helping out with the religious performances. Some seem to be Miko - while others may be kids where it's not gender specific.

The second seems to be much rarer than the first. An example of a Miko that I've seen is towards the bottom of this post: https://www.japan-guide.com/community/mfedley/report-2254

The example of the kids is towards the bottom of this post (https://www.japan-guide.com/community/mfedley/report-1649)
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