edit: Thank you for taking my comment to heart!

Original comment:

With all due respect, I think you’re being racist.

This is an active religious practice described objectively and with voice being given to those observing it. To dismiss it as “eastern mysticism narrative” is to deny Shinto itself a place in media on par with western religions.

A couple years back there was a similar bunch of articles about German Hunger Stones - stones expressing pity for the next people that would see the river level go low enough for them to be visible, because the drought would mean disastrous crop failure.

They’re long-lasting traditional climate disaster markers, expressed through the worldview of the culture that discovered the marker, with a news article focused on the unhinged fact that they are now constantly warning that disaster is incoming.