By Kira Shannon
Religion scholar Kaitlyn Ugoretz projects a serene image on a screen in a room filled with UC Santa Barbara Religious Studies students and faculty — a striking red torii gate, its archway framing an idyllic Shinto shrine against a backdrop of lush greenery.
“During my time in the field I went to a Shinto festival, which is called a matsuri, in Japan. Specifically, it was a coming-of-age ceremony for children,” said Ugoretz, a current PhD candidate at UCSB. Her audience leaned in, captivated by her vivid description of young adults dressed in elegant kimonos, rituals performed by priests, and the quiet reverence of the occasion.
But then, with a mischievous smile, the guest speaker dropped a twist: the shrine in the first image wasn’t nestled in Japan at all—it stands just outside Seattle, Washington. And the ceremony she described with such detail unfolded not in Kyoto, but in Gardena, California.
Kaitlyn Ugoretz, a Ph.D. candidate within the UCSB Religious Studies Department shares her findings in the field about Shintoism in the U.S.
Kaitlyn Ugoretz, a Ph.D. candidate, was back at UCSB to speak about her upcoming dissertation on Shinto spaces in and outside of Japan and to receive feedback from peers and previous mentors. Since leaving UCSB she has travelled around the United States to study Shinto practices, and spent time in Nagoya, Japan as an associate editor for publications under the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.
Shintoism is an ancient Japanese religion centered on the worship of kami, or sacred spirits associated with natural elements, ancestors, and traditions. It emphasizes harmony with nature and rituals for purification and blessing.
Hundreds of years after Japanese people began arriving in the United States, the Shinto faith is now attracting mainly American practitioners, drawn to the spirituality of the religion.
Ugoretz’s research explores a debate that has risen in recent years about the authenticity of holding Shinto rituals on temporary grounds outside of Japan as opposed to permanent grounds within Japan, such as Fushimi Inari Taisha, located in southern Kyoto.
“People doing ritual in a space creates Shinto,” Ugoretz says. She argued that space is produced through social practices, so by practicing Shinto in a space, that space can be made sacred despite its temporality or dissimilarities to “Japanized” spaces.
Ugoretz presented several case studies of Shintoism, as practiced in unlikely spaces in the continental United States, and how these spaces honor Shintoism without the usual conventions of the religion in Japan. Spaces included the Seattle Japanese Garden, Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, and Koda Farms in the San Joaquin Valley. Each location serves a different general purpose, but all are used at times for engaging in Shinto rituals.
Ugoretz said a priest prepares a ritual by building a shrine and then inviting the kami to descend upon the space, making that space sacred for the practice. The priest she spoke to at Seattle’s Japanese Garden told Ugoretz that Shinto spirits are found wherever the shrine is erected, regardless of whether or not the shrine is in Japan. “The kami inhabit even the koi that swim in the pond,” she said.
Nor are Shinto practitioners who pray at these shrines expected to be ancestrally connected to the religion. Surprisingly, Ugoretz revealed that most practitioners in the U.S. are neither Japanese immigrants nor their descendents, but non-Japanese Americans.
She attributed this demographic shift partly to the global influence of Anime, a Japanese animation style that has grown increasingly popular worldwide. Anime has introduced Shinto themes and symbols to broader audiences, sparking interest in the religion among people unfamiliar with its Japanese roots. Ugoretz said the rising popularity of Shinto within anime has led to Shinto practice taking place even at large anime conventions, events which showcase the art and celebrate popular anime characters.
Shinto priests “go where the interest is and they go to these conventions and offer their services,” Ugoretz said. Other non-Japanese practitioners can be found around the country, often carrying out the rituals as families.
The Seattle Japanese Garden, a 3.5 acre urban sanctuary, is a space where Shinto priests in the area can host rituals for local practitioners. UCSB Religious Studies scholar Kaitlyn Ugoretz is researching how Shintoism is practiced outside of Japan, and in temporary spaces.
Before World War II, there were at least 80 Japanese diasporic communities in the U.S. and at least 40 of those were in California, Ugoretz said. Today, there are only three major communities, all of which are located in California. Ugoretz spoke about Shinto Priestess Izumi Hasegawa, who works around Little Tokyo to engage people, especially Japanese descendants, in Shinto.
“She tries her best to erect the Shinto altars in places owned by Japanese-Americans. She has done festivals in Japanese supermarkets, Japanese industrial parking lots, Japanese schools… She really sees Shinto as something Japanese American people should be involved in,” said Ugoretz.
But due to financial burdens and the difficulty of securing a temporary space for an altar, Rev. Hasegawa has had to become creative in the way she revitalizes the religion within Japanese-American communities, striving to find venues for little to no cost. Some of these are agricultural sites, such as Koda Farms in the San Joaquin Valley. Recognizing that rice has played an important role in Shintoism, as it serves as an offering to Inari, the God of rice, Rev. Hasegawa thinks that taking Shintoism into the field can breathe life into the religion, even away from its original home.
“It’s very important to conduct Shinto rituals at rice farms but particularly rice farms that are owned by Japanese people,” Ugoretz said. “She sees this as a way to keep the traditional relationship between Inari worship and the agricultural cycle.”
Shinto-practicing communities throughout the U.S. are flexible in their practices of these ancient traditions, which sets them apart from those in Japan and makes it easier for non-Japanese practitioners to determine that Shintoism is right for them. Ugoretz said that individuals in the U.S. who are queer or on the neuro-divergent spectrum have felt rejected from Christianity and Catholicism. Many have sought a spiritual home within Shintoism, where they can exercise faith while feeling wanted by their companions, she said, welcomed into a community of kindness and dedication to the practice of Shinto.
Kira Shannon is a second-year UCSB student majoring in Film and Media Studies. She is a Web and Social Media Intern with the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.