Ask any Japanese person about his religion and you’re likely to be told ‘無宗教’ (mushuukyou), or ‘none.’ Now, to anyone who has made a pilgrimage to this nation of islands (the creation story of which is saturated with Shinto practices) to delight in its temple walks, god-worshipping festivals, spiritual rituals—and succeeded, no less—this statement may seem utterly fallacious.
Japan is a country that served as a linchpin of major world religions, a country of temple and shrine-dotted maps—how could it be that its citizens are atheists?
Put simply: Japan is an areligious religious nation.
Put logically: Religion in Japan is so deeply embedded that practitioners, which account for nearly 100% of the population, rarely see themselves as practitioners at all. That is not to say they do not believe; the popularity of Shinto festivals (祭り- matsuri), adherence to Buddhist rites at funerals (葬式 – soushiki) and in the yearly, days-long custom of ancestor worship (お盆 – Obon), in addition to the loyalty of the masses gathered to pray at shrines and temples on New Year’s (お正月 – Oshougatsu) are all clear indicators that that is not the case. Rather, in Japan, religion and culture are bound to each other. Not only that, but so are religions tied to other religions.
As you may have guessed, Buddhism and Shintoism (仏教 – bukkyou and 神道 – shintou) are two of Japan’s most widely practiced religions. Providing exact numbers of who is what would prove tricky, however, as the majority adheres to both, depending on the occasion. This is not entirely unlike the once-favored Shinbutsu Konkou/Shuugou (神仏混交/習合), a mixture of Shinto and Buddhism that was banned during the Meiji period. Although it is less common nowadays to find temples and shrines sitting on the same property as it was then, it is still entirely normal to find both dogmas within one person.
Perhaps a cursory glance at the three phases of life will help explain this balance.
Birth: Following a longstanding tradition, many families are registered with a local temple or shrine, thus assigning a person to the denomination of Buddhism or Shintoism at birth. Newborns are taken to a local place of worship (usually a shrine, but sometimes a temple) on the seventh day after birth (お七夜 – Oshichiya) to make offerings to guardian deities in return for protection.
Marriage: Shinto priests are often solicited for wedding ceremonies to be held at a shrine—or more recently, hotels or wedding halls—though this tradition is falling out of favor to the Christian (or) secular white-dress, rings and cake wedding of Western societies.
Death: Funeral rituals most commonly abide by Buddhist procedures, particularly Pure Land (浄土 – jodo), by which the deceased spirit is carried to a sort of Buddhist Heaven.
Beyond death: The spirits of ancestors visit during the Buddhist Obon season and are greeted with lanterns, flowers and a feast. For other days of the year, many families have Buddhist altars or Shinto shrines in their homes where they chant scriptures (if Buddhist, as Shinto is scripture-less) and offer gifts.
This Shin-butsu blend can also claim a number of offshoots under the broad category of Shinshuukyou (新宗教 – New Religions); among its best-known are Soka-Gakkai and Aum Shinrikyo (also Aleph), the latter of which dwells on apocalyptic fears and may better be termed a cult.
In addition to these, there are also strands of Taoism (道教 – doukyou) and Confucianism (儒教 – jukyou) that have been present in Japan for centuries on a similarly secular level. The first is at the root of many beliefs held today about astrology, fortune-telling and demonology/spiritism, while the latter, less a religion than a philosophy, greatly reformed the structure of government, education and society in Tokugawa Japan (when samurai occupied the top rung of the populace).
Finally, as the Japanese constitution contracts ‘freedom of religion,’ a number of imported minority religions have found niches in Japan. The most established of these is Christianity (キリスト教 – kirisuto-kyou), which is not only visible in wedding ceremonies or holiday decorations, but exists in practice, with followers in the low millions. Its success over other less indigenous religions is much in thanks to the arrival of missionaries to Western Japan who came bearing Roman Catholicism in the 16th century.
Other present religions include Islam (イスラム教 – isuramu-kyou), Hinduism (ヒンズー教 – hinzu-kyou), Judaism (ユダヤ教 – yudaya-kyou), Sikhism (シーク教 – shiiku-kyo), and Bahá’í (バハーイ教 – bahaai-kyou).
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