Essays & series
Long-form essays tracing the logic of prayer and ritual through history, science and philosophy, with full references.
What Was Lost Was Not Horizontal Connection: What We Gave Up in Homes Without a Kamidana
The second installment argues that what the nuclear family lost was not cohabitation but the vertical axis of time running from ancestors to descendants, sets psychological research on children who know their family history beside the old Japanese words wakemitama and nakaima, and shows how that axis can be restored even in a 2DK apartment.
Why Your Home Has No Kamidana: The Answer Was Drawn on a Blueprint in 1951
Japan's shift to the nuclear family was not simply "the tide of the times." This first installment traces it, through statistics and records, to the combined force of the 1947 revision of the Civil Code, the 51C standard floor plan for public housing of 1951, and an economy that grew as households split apart.