About the ISF

Rev. Masafumi Nakanishi

My name is Masafumi Nakanishi. I am the officer at the New York Center of the International Shinto Foundation. New York is known as a mixing bowl of people from different ethnic origins under the present globalization. I am so pleased to serve as an officer in an exciting and global city like New York.

ISF is associated with the United Nations as an NGO. I would like to bring Shinto ideas and thoughts into the UN families

I was born as a Shinto family and grew up inside the Grand Shrine of Ise, famous shrine which Amaterasu, the ancient goddess of Japanese monarchy, is enshrined and regarded as a main shrine of Shinto. I majored in religious studies at the Graduate school of Kokugakuin known as Shinto University. I had studied Japanese history at the University of California, Berkeley as an exchange student. There I finished my MA dissertation about the views on Shinto shown by the Western scholars in English.

My first assignment as a Shinto Priest was at the Meiji Grand Shrine in Tokyo. Afterwards I was moved to Masumida Shrine in Aichi Prefecture. Now I am assigned at Chichibu Shrine in Saitama Prefecture. Shinto is said to have been invisible for foreigners perhaps because of its character as a national religion, and it's roots in naturalism and animism. However, Japanese and Shinto has global ideas as well.