Izumo

How Many Times Do You Clap at a Japanese Shrine? A Priest Checked the Records — and 849 Comments Name the Shrines That Clap Four, Five, Even Seventeen Times

The most-liked comment (461 likes) under a Shinto priest's record-by-record video on how to pray at a shrine is one line: "It varies from shrine to shrine. Izumo is four claps, after all." Japanese viewers are arguing about this because a three-bow, three-clap version has been spreading through Japanese social media, and the priest went to the historical sources to check it. What the 849 comments settle is more useful than the argument: two bows, two claps, one bow is the safe default, but commenters name the shrines that break it — four claps at Usa Jingu, five at a neighbourhood shrine, seventeen at Yoshimizu in Yoshino. And they agree on the one thing a visitor can actually act on.