{"id":11889,"date":"2006-11-07T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-11-07T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2006\/11\/07\/faking-it-as-a-priest-in-japan\/"},"modified":"2006-11-07T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-11-07T12:00:00","slug":"faking-it-as-a-priest-in-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2006\/11\/07\/faking-it-as-a-priest-in-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"Faking it as a Priest in Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/middle_east\/6067002.stm\">news.bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">SAPPORO, JAPAN, November 3, 2006: (HPI note: This struck us as a lesson in how old traditions, in this case Shinto weddings, can be displaced by fads.) Mark Kelly, originally from England and living in Japan for six years, works as a fake priest performing Christian wedding ceremonies on weekends. &#8220;I was living in Sapporo, studying Japanese, and I needed the money. It&#8217;s far better paid than teaching in a language school,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Being a fake priest is big business in Japan &#8211; I&#8217;ve done a TV commercial for one company. In Sapporo, there are five agencies employing about 20 fake priests. In a city like Tokyo, there must be hundreds.&#8221; The fake Western priests are employed at Western-style weddings to give a performance and add to the atmosphere. These are not legal ceremonies &#8211; the couples also have to make a trip to the local registrar. &#8220;People like the dress, the kiss and the image. Japanese Christians make up only 1% of the country, but now about 90% of weddings are in the Christian style,&#8221; Mr. Kelly said, &#8220;At the hotel where I work, there is a Christian chapel next to a Shinto chapel. The Christian chapel is always in use, but the Shinto chapel is being used as a storeroom.&#8221; Said one Japanese priest, &#8220;In the past almost all weddings in Japan were Shinto, but in the last few years Western-style weddings have appeared and become very popular.&#8221;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>news.bbc.co.uk SAPPORO, JAPAN, November 3, 2006: (HPI note: This struck us as a lesson in how old traditions, in this,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}