Shinto's mountain goddess is no longer a jealous bitch

[Taro Toporific]

Goddess Konohana

Japan to let women work in mines
Telegraph.co.uk, 10 March
Japan is to end a ban on women working in mines and tunnels, based on an ancient superstition that their presence could make a mountain goddess jealous. ... Until a law was passed in 1872, women were even prohibited from climbing mountains, including Mount Fuji, which is considered especially sacred....more...

[FG Lurker]

[Taro Toporific]

The path to enlightenment
The sacred meets the scared in Japan's Kii Mountains
San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, October 2, 2005, Dorogawa, Japan
Mount Omine ...It's sacred ...Japanese feminists have fought against the ban for years, with no success. The Buddhist publication Tricycle reported that one male protester "has gone so far as to repeatedly climb Mount Omine while wearing a dress, becoming perhaps the first transvestite Buddhist pilgrim."
...the head priest, Kakisaka Mikinosuke, handed me his embossed business card and sat down to talk about the ban on women. Outside his office I could hear other Shinto priests banging on drums and chanting.
"Some may call it discrimination, but in Japan there is a long tradition that some mountains are only for men and some mountains are only for women," he said. "...And of course on Mount Omine you have female animals, and the trees are both male and female. So it's not discrimination."...more...