Bulletin > Volume 50 Explaining Ise: The shikinen sengū in Japanese–English Public Media

Mayo, Christopher M.

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This essay draws on intercultural communication and translation studies to examine how Japanese–English outreach materials explain the shikinen sengū of Ise Jingū to audiences with no prior knowledge of it. Across three case studies, translation overlaps with editorial intervention through selection, restructuring, simplification, visual design, and adaptation to different media. The essay borrows the term “transediting” from translation studies to name that combined labor and to keep attention on the finished materials rather than on the presumed intentions of translators the sources do not identify. It shows that outreach materials consistently foreground themes that provide portable frames for explaining the sengū in public settings, while ritual efficacy, institutional authority, and other shrine-specific dimensions receive comparatively less explanatory weight. The paired Japanese materials show a second direction of mediation, preparing domestic intermediaries to explain Shinto in English, so that the audience for this work includes Japanese readers as well. These materials do not so much translate the sengū as produce a public form of it, shaped by medium, genre, and institutional priority.