I find myself in the rather odd position of having become the English language spokesperson for minzoku shintô/NEO-shintô. Odd because I'm of Slavic/German descent not Japanese, and not a priest but just a highly interested layperson.

Of course you don't have to be Japanese or a priest to engage in shintô practices — especially the folk practices of minzoku shintô.

I didn't deliberately set out to become the spokesperson, but instead seem to have inherited the position by default.

Originally I just wanted to share what I had learned about minzoku shintô with other interested people, and explain a bit about how I incorporated that into my personal practices.

However, it turns out that, as a category, minzoku shintô is seriously under-served on the English language portion of the internet.

Also, while there are some English articles on minzoku shintô, they tend to be short and unchanging. I on the other hand, maintain several web sites that are constantly evolving and expanding as I discover new information — not terribly difficult given the enormous diversity of minzoku shintô practices.

On top of that, I spend a fair amount of time promoting shintô, in all its forms, in social media. All of this seems to be what the major search engines look for when they rank websites — relatively unique content, high activity, and information rich. So anything I post appears to bubble to the top of search results.

And that's how a small family shrine in the American Midwest unintentionally wound up as the English language voice of minzoku shintô on the internet. Frankly, if someone else wants the job, they're welcome to it.