Religion in Japan

As I have learned from my Japan and Globalization class, when Japanese people are asked about what they religious views, they are most likely answer that they are not affiliated with any one religion. In Japan, there are many religions that exist but the two major religions that people follow are Shintoism and Buddhism. Japanese people incorporate both Shintoism and Buddhism in their religious practices. For example, when a child is born, the celebration takes place at a Shinto shrine but when someone dies, the funeral arrangements are held in Buddhist tradition. Shintoism is defined as people believing in the spirits that exists in nature, which can be almost anything like a tree, a rock etc. Shintoism does make people follow any set of rules that Christianity or other religion has. I think the reason that people are not devoted to one religion or do not define what is religions means to them is because the role of religion has changed from what it once was. And not having a definite meaning attached to religion gives people the freedom and the flexibility. “We don't try to define it because we know that our definition would be either so wide as to be meaningless, or so narrow that it would leave out ever so many important things- The most we can expect at the moment are operative ad hoc definitions, adequate for the specific purpose which we have in mind…” (http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/jjrs/pdf/CRJ-111.PDF). Even when religion does not play a huge role in people’s lives, they do still attend religious ceremonies at temples and shrines on certain occasions like a birth of a baby, wedding, funerals, religious holidays, new years etc.

These two pictures were taken at Kyoto during my orientation week at Kansai Gaidai. This shrine was one of the places that we visited in our small groups. When we arrived at this shrine, I saw a lot of young couples and especially groups of girls buying these wooden blocks and writing their wishes. This seemed like a common practice when visiting a shrine. Trying to follow the norm and tradition, we too purchased our very own wooden block and wrote down our wishes so they would come true. I asked one of the Japanese Gaidai tour guides, what kind of things we should write and she said whatever I wanted. When writing these wishes, we were not thinking of any religious figures; instead we were just writing to get our wishes be heard and maybe for our own self to know what we want and the kinds of relations we want to formulate with others.