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Rites of passage

The formal recognition of events is given great importance in Japanese culture. A common ritual, the hatsumiyamairi, entails a child's first visit to a Shinto shrine. A tradition holds that, if a boy he should be brought to the shrine on the thirty-second day after birth, and if a girl she should be brought on the thirty-third day. Historically, the child was commonly brought to the shrine not by the mother, who was considered impure after birth, but by another female relative; since the late 20th century it has been more common for the mother to do so. Another rite of passage, the saiten-sai or seijin shiki, is a coming of age ritual marking the transition to adulthood and occurs when an individual is around twenty. Wedding ceremonies are often carried out at Shinto shrines; these are called shinzen kekkon ("a wedding before the kami "). Prior to the Meiji period, weddings were commonly performed in the home, although shrines now regard them as an important source of income.

In Japan, funerals tend to take place at Buddhist temples and involve cremation, with Shinto funerals being rare. Bocking noted that most Japanese people are "still 'born Shinto' yet 'die Buddhist'." In Shinto thought, contact with death is seen as imparting impurity (kegare); the period following this contact is known as kibuku and is associated with various taboos. In cases when dead humans are enshrined as kami, the physical remains of the dead are not stored at the shrine. Although not common, there have been examples of funerals conducted through Shinto rites. The earliest examples are known from the mid-17th century; these occurred in certain areas of Japan and had the support of the local authorities. Following the Meiji Restoration, in 1868 the government recognised specifically Shinto funerals for Shinto priests. Five years later, this was extended to cover the entire Japanese population. Despite this Meiji promotion of Shinto funerals, the majority of the population continued to have Buddhist funeral rites. In recent decades, Shinto funerals have usually been reserved for Shinto priests and for members of certain Shinto sects. After cremation, the normal funerary process in Japan, the ashes of a priest may be interred near to the shrine, but not inside its precincts.

Ancestral reverence remains an important part of Japanese religious custom. The invocation of the dead, and especially the war dead, is known as shо̄kon. Various rites reference this. For instance, at the largely Buddhist festival of Bon, the souls of the ancestors are believed to visit the living, and are then sent away in a ritual called shо̄rо̄ nagashi, by which lanterns are inserted into small boats, often made of paper, and placed in a river to float downstream.