Ever been at work or out shopping — and just feel like you want to make a wish to the gods?
The i-Shrine (i神社) from Ein Entertainment is a new iPhone app (115 JPY or c.$1) that lets you visit a Japanese Shinto shrine and do just that.
Using the app is a bit like having a virtual shrine experience: as normal you enter the precincts and go up to the offertory, tapping the money box to throw in your “coin”. Bow twice and clap — and you have made your wish! The app can sense movement and sound, along with with exploiting the usual iPhone touch screen to make you feel like you are almost interacting with the gods.
Apparently supervised by Takamagahama Shrine (which appears to be a mythical place!), you can do three things with the i-Shrine app: ring the bell to make a wish; get a fortune (omikuji); or make a prayer (norito).
This is not the only app like this on the market. Moak1’s iJinja ($0.99) (below, right) is similarly titled and similarly themed, but it is less of a “shrine experience” and more of a fun oracle. Shake your iPhone and you will get a joke message meant to help you survive modern society through laughter.
We also found this interactive Flash site a few weeks ago, Air Sampai (Air Worship) (below), a virtual trip through two Kyoto shrines, part desktop worship, part educational tour (with almost-accurate English subtitles). Digital and online interest in Shinto is peaking, it seems.
What these apps do is connect a mobile and digital population with recognizable — but increasingly distant — rural customs. Everyone in Japan knows what to do at a shrine, but how many young urban kids actually go these days? I don’t wish to sound alarmist but it is a fact that these traditions are threatened by our lifestyles. In much the same way the health apps are meant to maintain our dietary balance, could these kinds of apps keep us connected to a more spiritual way of life?
Of course, Shinto shrines and what you do at one likely do not qualify as “worship” in the strictest sense of the word. These apps are not really “religious”; they are more custom-based, and lighthearted at that. But what about other apps connected to major faiths? A quick search reveals quite a lot of Christian apps, not unsurprisingly. Perhaps we aren’t doomed after all!
