Saikai

Shinto's central ritual concern is not sin in the sense of moral transgression but kegare, a state of pollution or defilement brought on by contact with death, serious illness, blood, or other forces treated as disruptive to the vital order the kami preside over. Saikai names the deliberate discipline of avoiding, in advance, anything likely to bring on kegare in the days before a rite: eating meat, drinking alcohol, attending funerals, entering a house where death or birth has recently occurred, and in some traditional formulations even avoiding certain kinds of ordinary speech or contact considered coarse. The logic is preventative rather than remedial, distinct from misogi and harae, which cleanse a pollution already incurred; saikai instead tries to ensure the celebrant arrives at the rite already in a state close to purity, so that the purification performed immediately before the ceremony has less to undo.

The Engishiki, a compilation of Heian period ritual law completed in 927 CE, formalizes fixed periods of saikai, sometimes a single day and sometimes considerably longer, required of officiants before major state ceremonies, treating the discipline as a legal as well as a religious obligation for anyone serving the imperial cult.

Historically the most demanding form of saikai belonged to imperial ritual roles requiring extended seclusion, most notably the saio, an unmarried imperial princess appointed to serve the sun goddess Amaterasu at the Grand Shrine of Ise, who observed prolonged dietary and behavioral restriction, housed in a dedicated purification hall, the saikaisho, before and during her tenure, an institution maintained for centuries before lapsing in the medieval period. Ordinary shrine priests today observe a far more modest version, typically abstaining from meat and alcohol and avoiding funerals or other death-associated contact for a period ranging from a single day to about a week before officiating a major festival, or matsuri, the length varying considerably by shrine and by the rite's importance.

Lay participants in a community festival are sometimes asked to observe a lighter form of the same discipline, particularly those chosen to carry a shrine's mikoshi, or portable palanquin, through the streets, since carrying the vessel that houses the kami during its festival procession is itself treated as requiring a purified state. Where misogi purifies through active water ritual, saikai purifies through sustained restraint, and Shinto practice has generally treated the two as complementary rather than interchangeable disciplines, often combined in the run-up to a shrine's most important annual observance.