Travel & the Road

Kōtsū Anzen: Traffic-Safety Amulet and Car Purification

Also called 交通安全, Kuruma harai, Kuruma kiyobarai, Traffic-safety omamori, Car oharai

In Japan new cars are taken to a shrine or temple to be purified by a priest, and drivers hang a kōtsū anzen (traffic safety) amulet or stick a sticker in the car. The amulet is renewed each year and the old one is returned to be burned.

TraditionJapanese Shinto and Buddhist practice

RegionJapan

EraPostwar 20th century to present

Moon◐ Any moon

DayAny

ElementAir

Difficulty●○○ Simple

Time20 to 40 minutes at the shrine

Tonight's moon is read when the page loads.

The working

Choose a shrine or temple that offers car purification and check whether you need to book.
Fill in the application with your name and the car's plate number, and pay the offering at the counter.
Drive into the purification area and stand beside the car as instructed.
Bow while the priest waves the haraegushi (paper-streamer wand) over the car to sweep away impurity, and listen to the prayer for safe driving.
Open the doors, hood or trunk if asked, so the purification can reach inside.
Receive the amulet or sticker and place it where it will not block your view, such as hung from a rear grab handle or stuck in a corner of the rear window.
After a year, return the old amulet to a shrine for ritual burning and take a new one.

Take care: Keep amulets and stickers clear of the windshield and airbags. Follow the shrine staff's directions in the purification bay, because cars are moving in and out.

Versions across time and place

Naritasan Shinshōji car prayer hall

Shingon Buddhism, Chiba Prefecture · Postwar to present

Naritasan Shinshōji, a Shingon temple founded in 940, is known across Japan as a center for traffic-safety prayers. It runs a dedicated hall for vehicle prayers where monks chant and perform a fire (goma) prayer for the car, and trucking companies and new-car owners come in large numbers. Here the rite is Buddhist, aimed at Fudō Myōō, rather than Shinto.

Uses: Car, Goma prayer fee, Temple amulet

Recorded in: Motor-Fan, 'Naritasan Shinshōji: one of Japan's leading traffic-safety prayer sites'; Reader and Tanabe, Practically Religious (1998)

Kuruma kiyobarai at a Shinto shrine overseas

Shinto Shrine of Shusse Inari in America · 21st century

Japanese American shrines offer the same car purification to new drivers and owners of new or used cars, in English or Japanese. The shrine asks for an application and a set donation, which includes one omamori, and will travel to bless a car at your own location for a higher donation.

Recorded in: Shusse Inari Shrine, 'Kōtsu Anzen & Kuruma Kiyobarai' service page

iii

The yearly omamori cycle

Common Japanese religion · 20th century to present

Reader and Tanabe describe traffic safety as one of the most popular 'worldly benefits' sold at Japanese shrines and temples, with amulets bought fresh each New Year. Old amulets are brought back and burned in bonfires such as dondo-yaki in January, so the protection is renewed rather than used up.

Recorded in: Ian Reader and George J. Tanabe Jr., Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan (1998)

History

Omamori are small cloth or paper amulets sold at Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, each tied to one kind of help: study, childbirth, health, or safe travel. As private car ownership spread in Japan in the 1960s and road deaths rose, kōtsū anzen amulets and car purification became among the most requested services. Large sites built purification bays and prayer halls where drivers could pull in, and trucking firms began bringing whole fleets each year.

Ian Reader and George Tanabe, in their 1998 study of Japanese 'practical religion', treat traffic safety as a textbook case of genze riyaku, the this-worldly benefits that people seek from the gods and buddhas without needing to hold a firm doctrine. Naritasan Shinshōji in Chiba, founded in 940, became a national center for car prayers. The rites are open to anyone who pays the offering, and overseas shrines now offer them in English.

Sources

Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan · Ian Reader and George J. Tanabe Jr., 1998
成田山新勝寺(千葉県成田市):全国屈指の交通安全祈願所 · Motor-Fan
Kōtsu Anzen (Safe driving) & Kuruma Kiyobarai (Blessing for Car) · Shinto Shrine of Shusse Inari in America

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