Thank you Fabienne for this very interesting case study. 
I feel that what you told us is very stimulating to think about  the new deals traditional religious institutions have to cope with in nowadays Japan. 

Natacha had explained the difficulties which a sanctuary encountered under the land pressure to reorganize its space. You propose a case study here, of one of the particular cases under consideration by Natacha: the construction of a cemetery in the enclosure of a sanctuary.
You remind us that the financial situation of local shintô shrines, especially in urban areas, is so precarious nowadays that the priests are obliged to sell land, and furthermore, plots of land belonging to the enclosure of the shrine, while in a strict and theological way, this space is the place where to welcome deities. The structure of these “sacred places” is reorganized under the really same economical pressures one can check in more mundane places. The phenomenon is certainly not new: everybody can check how the sacred places of Japan has been invaded by shops, restaurants, photographs and souvenirs sellers. Nor rare are the schools build on what was, before Meiji, the property of the temple or shrine. I know several places where the shrine or the temple had send or rent land to the floating world, bars or even love-hotels (Konpira-gu in Kyoto). 
	What could be more surprising in the case you studied is that the land of the shrine is to be used in the construction of a cemetery. As everybody is told in Japan, death and everything around it fall on the buddhist institutions while shintô, obnubilated by purity, only cope with happy rituals : birth, wedding and other enthronements. In reality, shintô also do funerals, and you certainly can find some shintô’s cimetery (I’ve seen some in Izumo, not so different from the buddhist ones). Natacha explained us that the establishment of shintô’s cemeteries went hand in hand in the Meiji period with the will to create shintô as a true religion, which could be compared to the others “religions of the world”. Yet shintô cemeteries are still really episodical. 
If, from a theological – and political – point of view, it appeared that non-bouddhist people should be able to rest in peace in non-buddhist places, the reasons evoked nowawadays by the priests are, as you said, mainly economic. 
Economic it is for the shrine’s manager first: not only the land operator promises to use the income from the sales of the plots of land to reconstruct two buildings of the shrine (the main pavilion shaden; the administration office, which is also used as the Shinto priest’s family’s house, shamusho), but the construction of a cemetery would constitute a regular revenue with the edification of “shintô tomb” okutsuki, “shintô funeral” shinsosai and “shintô funeral rites” reisai.
Economic it will be for the people too: The price for a concession in a shintô cemetery is between 2 or 5 times less expensive than a buddhist one you said, shintô funeral is sober (i.e. less expensive) and post mortem rites are less numerous.
	Economic for the operator of course, who is sure to earn millions of yen thanks to the sale of lots for tombs. It’s such a goldsend, with the price land have reached, that finding spaces, even not so big ones, has become an activity which attracts all kind of specialists, even small gangsters groups. Like in your case.
	And yet the business is not done.
My impression here is that the business has not be done, not by refusal of the economic logic, but because the shrine worshippers does not want to treat with a little yakusa’s group. And I wander if the very same project will not become reality when the priest will find a more reliable partner.
Anyway, whatever the true reasons are, the arguments mobilized by the priests and the local people to stop the project are extremely interesting. They light on a kind of “common knowledge” about what should be a sacred place. I want to insist on that point, since my opinion might be slightly different from Fabienne’s one. What we can hear here is a strategic discourse, changing its rhetorics with its targets: either local worshippers (and then the arguments are quite technical) or the city hall. I do believe that local people don’t say what is their shrine for them. They list arguments, which they think can commonly be understood, even and especially by the japanese administration, to prove and to convince that the project can not be accepted because it will change what a shrine is fundamentaly. They draw a theory of what a sacred place is, and to which conditions it won’t be transformed into a non-sacred place, and that is very interesting to us. 
As we could expect, nor “religion” itself, nor “the deity” are key words in this theory.

The first arguments reveals how important the spatial dimensions of a sacred place is. The shrine has to offer a large space (if the cemetery is built, the enclosure of the shrine would be to small said the priest). To reduce this space has social and ritual consequences: the annual celebration would not be able to take place. 
The shrine is also a place in a landscape, participating into the landscape. By changing the structure of the shrine, the landscape will be “denatured”, to use the words of the priest. It seems important to me that we could check, here and again, how the sacred places are essential to build the nature of an environment. A nature that the shrine should allow to contemplate : in the priest discourse, the view from the shrine also appears as a problematic issue. 

	The second category of arguments certainly sounds the most “religious” oriented. It emphasizes specifically the social aspect of the religious: the shrine is the place which link a particular local group. This group defines itself as the whole of the persons, regardless of their faith, under the protection of the local deity. Without a sacred place, such a group is no longer able to exist.

The third category of arguments has more to do with the “culturals” aspects of the sacred place, considered as a landmark that build a local identity : history and tradition, refined culture, patrimony officially attested.
 The terrace where the shintô shrine is has a past, “prestigious”, eventually going back even to prehistoric time, to say as eternal as the japanese culture itself. 
It was the meeting place for writers and artists, main actors of modern Japan… and is still frequented by numerous intellectuals – not only writers -. To attest the authenticity of what is established as the “patrimony of the citizens”, the label of “cultural treasure” is employed. 

The fourth category of arguments refers to everyday use of a sacred place. Here only few examples are given, moving examples mobilizing the weakest part of the local society: kids and old persons. Some do physical exercises early in the morning, others play in the afternoon. 

Place in the landscape, place building the landscape, landmark established in history for a local community, place to play and to move, the sacred place defined by shintô shrine is described first as a very open place characterized by the tranquillity ones could find there and the freedom to use it. Freedom ? Certainly as long as this utilisation is timely limited, punctual, ephemeral. After the fest, after the games, the open place has to remain open, ready to other potential utilisations. Economic can reorganize it, but what the citizens said to the city hall administration is that the sacred place won’t remain if the space is to be divided into small plots access restricted to personal and very long term use.

	I really believe that the reasons given by the local people have to be understood this way and that to maintain shintô as the everyday religion of life, vital forces and purity is far from their concern. But I like the idea that the taking in charge by the shintô of death seems antinomic because death might not be controlled in an open place as the shrine. I think that the partition of roles between shintô and buddhism has to be reconsidered through their specific way to spatially structure their sacred space.