Blog
Articles on recording and organising goshuin, written by the author of the iOS app “Goshuin Ledger”.
What is a goshuin? What it is, what is written on it, and what you take home
A goshuin is the brush writing and vermilion seal you receive as proof of a visit to a Japanese shrine or temple. What each part of it means, where the practice came from, and what to do with pages you cannot read once you are home.
- How to ask for a goshuin in Japanese: the phrases and the whole sequence at the desk
The phrases to use when you ask for a goshuin, with romaji and meanings, plus the sequence at the desk: respects first, book handed over open, wait quietly, thank them.
- Goshuincho size and page count: how the book is built before you fill it
The two sizes a goshuincho comes in, how accordion and stitched bindings differ, how many writing faces a book holds, and how to count the ones you have left.
- How to read the Japanese era date written on your goshuin
Your goshuin's date is written in a Japanese era, in kanji, top to bottom. Read the five era names, the kanji numerals and 元年, then convert the date to a Western one.
- Is a goshuin a souvenir? What you are receiving, and how to treat it
What a goshuin is meant to be, in the words of the shrine offices that issue them: worship first, why resale is discouraged, what each place decides for itself, and what you are left holding after the trip.
- Planning a goshuin trip: the five things to decide before you fly
What to settle before a goshuin trip: how many books to carry, where to buy the first one, how to note the shrine or temple and the visit date, and why small coins matter.
- Goshuin vs shrine stamp: which English words mean the same thing, and which do not
English guides call it a goshuin, a shrine stamp, a temple seal and a shuin. This sorts out which words point at the same thing, which point at something else, and where the line runs between a goshuin and a commemorative stamp.
- Your goshuincho filled up mid-trip: three ways forward, and how to read it back home
What to do when your goshuincho runs out of pages part-way through a trip: a second book, the backs of the pages, or a pre-written sheet. Includes what to photograph before you fly home.
- Which shrine or temple is this goshuin from? Identifying one after the trip
How to work out which shrine or temple a goshuin came from once you are home: read the brush writing before the red seal, convert the Japanese-era date, and use the capture date and place of your own photos.
- Why your goshuin came on a loose sheet of paper
Handed a printed sheet instead of a goshuin brushed into your book? What a kakioki is, the three reasons you get one, and what to do with it before you fly home.
Keeping a list of your goshuin: the rows and columns that let you look one up later
A list answers what the book cannot: have I been here before, and which book holds it. How to choose the rows and the columns, and how a notebook, a spreadsheet, an app and print compare.
- Castle seals and goshuin: separate books, one record
What the sources actually say about keeping castle seals apart from goshuin, how a single type field lets separate books still read as one record in date order, and how to date a castle seal that carries no date, from your own photographs.
- Keeping goshuin in a spreadsheet: the columns to use, and three places it breaks
A ten-column layout for a goshuin spreadsheet, with an example value for each, plus how to avoid the three breakages: photos losing their row, era dates sorting wrongly, and losing the book-and-page order.
- Exporting goshuin records: how a backup, a CSV and a PDF differ
A table of what a backup, a CSV and a PDF each hold when you export your goshuin records, and what each one cannot do — including the columns in the CSV and what goes onto a page of the PDF.
- Choosing what to record for each goshuin: what you can add later, and what you cannot
How to decide which fields your goshuin records carry, sorted by whether you can add a field later. The four to settle first, and the ones one note can carry.
- Printing a record of your goshuin: what goes on the paper, and what stays off
Printing your goshuin records: whether to divide the paper by book or by year, how an edition number keeps new prints apart from old, and the four things to put on the page.
- What to take out of a goshuin record before you show it to anyone
What to take out of a goshuin record before you show it, broken down by screen, photo, PDF, paper and spreadsheet, with how to handle your own notes, the location stored in a photo, and a companion's name.
Goshuin photos piled up on your phone: how to organise them into a record afterwards
How to organise a pile of goshuin photos in three stages you only have to do once: gather the photos, settle the visit dates, then place them into books and pages — and how to pick the method that suits you.
- Did I already receive a goshuin here? Checking your record on a revisit
How to use your own record when you visit a shrine or temple again and cannot remember whether you already received a goshuin there — down to which book and page it is on, and whether you hold another one from the same place.
- A nokyocho carries no date: recording the visit behind each stacked seal
A nokyocho may carry no date, but the capture dates on your photographs plus a short list can still tell you which round a stacked seal belongs to and when. Photograph on the day, photograph at the joins, or reconstruct it afterwards.
- Will your goshuin records survive a phone change? What to check before you move them
How to move goshuin app records to a new phone without losing them: export, keep the copy off the old phone, match the counts on the new one — and when the standard iPhone transfer brings them back on its own.
- No account, stored on the device: how to choose a goshuin record app
A four-point checklist to run before you pick a goshuin record app that needs no sign-in. No account, stored on the device, no advertising and no network are four separate things.
- Is there an app that logs all the goshuin photos you piled up at once?
How to log a backlog of goshuin photos in one pass, and what you can use without a purchase. The capture date starts each visit date off, you fix it in its Japanese era, then add the photo to a book and its page.
- Photographing a goshuin: how far is all right?
Etiquette for photographing goshuin and posting them online: what holds at any shrine or temple, where each place decides for itself, and what to check before you take the photograph and before you post it.
- Behind on recording your goshuin: where to start again
Your goshuin record stalled and the backlog built up. Where to restart so it actually clears: the newest visit and the one book you are using now, then photos, then dates, then books and pages.
- When was this goshuin? Tracing a visit date the page never recorded
How to pin down the visit date of a goshuin afterwards, from the capture date of your photograph and the photos either side of it — which photos lie about their date, and how to keep an estimate marked as an estimate.
- Why the date on your goshuin is in a Japanese era, and how to live with it in a record
Why the visit date on a goshuin is written in a Japanese era, why moving it into a record breaks the order, and how to stop that. With a table of the Reiwa, Heisei and Showa boundaries.
- Before you lose count of your goshuincho: keep the record book by book
How to keep a record that never runs together, however many goshuincho you own: a running number inside the front cover, and every goshuin held as two numbers — which book, and which page of it.
- For anyone holding a stack of goshuin sheets they never pasted in
How to pin down which place and which day each unpasted kakioki sheet came from, and put the stack back into visit-date order. Whether you paste them in can be decided afterwards, with nothing to undo.
- The date on your kakioki goshuin is blank. Do you write it in yourself?
Handed a goshuin sheet with the date space empty? The three ways to handle it, the thinking behind each, and how to keep the visit date whichever one you choose.