Wikipedia:Notes for Japan-related articles

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[edit] Religion

• "Among the major explanations of this type was Ruth Benedict's designation of Japanese society as a "shame society," as against the West's being a "guilt society," and of Japanese morality as "situational" and not based on universal principles. Benedict also noted the unusual combination of great aesthetic sensitivity [...] Among many Westerners a monotheistic-centered view had been prevalent, which associated high levels of commitment with an orientation toward some transcendental realm, above all toward a God who is beyond the mundane world, and assumed such commitment would therefore be either very weak or entirely absent among so-called pagan religions. Japan appeared to contradict this picture. Its religions--above all Shinto, but also the mixture of Shinto, Buddhism, and Confucianism that characterized Japan--seemed to lack a strong transcendental dimension or orientation. Some Western scholars identified such religions as pagan, while others claimed that it was difficult to find any religion in the Western sense in Japan. This lack of any transcendental dimension in Japanese religion has been asserted [...] The very strong sense of commitment found among the Japanese to be oriented, as Ballah put it, to an "empty center"--itself a rather thought-provoking phenomenon." (S. R. Weisman 7)
• S. R. Weisman, "An Ancient Shrine Is Testing a New Emperor," New York TImes (excerpted in S. N. Eisenstadt 459n.50)

The new emperor is coming to the Grand Shrine of Ise, where he is still worshiped as a god. [...] But to understand Japan, they would do well to come here [...] Here a lone horse, retired from service to the emperor or crown prince, sometimes stands guard. The horse, too, is seen as a god, which stable hands must exercise by running alongside, and never atop. Here the sun goddess, from whom the emperor is supposedly descended, is nourished with the four essential foods: rice, salt, waster and abalone.

This is the center of Shinto, Japan's nature-worshiping and tribal religion that predates Buddhism, Confucianism and Christianity. Here in concrete form are the contradictions that often baffle outsiders: permanence in renewal, renewal in destruction, sacredness in the ordinary.

Even here, the Japanese do not take their religion too seriously. Some elderly tourists dip their hands into the sacred Isuzu River, gazing at hills of dark pines feathered with young green maples. Then, patting their hands dry with handkerchiefs, they laugh as their tour guide, a young woman holding the inevitable tour banner, cracks a joke she clearly cracked a hundred times before. A priest, Masayuki Nakanishi, [...] walked along the pebbled path. [...] In his suit and tie, he looks like a typical Mitsubishi employee, and he says he sees himself that way: a typical Japanese with a job at the shrine, a schoolteacher wife, four children. Shinto, unlike some sects of Buddhism, has no moral code and demands no ascetic living; it wants to be part of everyday life, to be everyday life. "We'd like you to think that these hills themselves are gods," Mr. Nakanishi said. "The Japanese image of god is not one built into a house. It's one that is diffused into nature itself." [...] "Just one stone is enough to be a shrine." [...] Mr Nakanishi says, the emperor is an individual who nonetheless embodies a divinity passed down from generation to generation. "By becoming emperor, he carries the divinity of Amaterasu," he said. "Each emperor has his own character, but the divinity of Amaterasu is conveyed as one." [...] "Some people will say that only before the war did people think the emperor was a god," Mr. Nakanishi said. "This is not so." [...] So the question of emperor worship remains serious business for some Japanese, and to some it is worrisome. [...] The hills are gods, the rice is a god, even the horse is a god, so why not the emperor?

• "Religious life in Japan is rich and varied, with a long history of interaction among a number of religious traditions. Most of the individual features of Japanese religion are not unique; the distinctiveness of Japanese religion lies in the total pattern of interacting traditions./Many traditional Japanese beliefs and practices hark back to prehistoric customs, and most of these form the core of Shinto, the only major religion indigenous to Japan. Indian Buddhism, the Chinese contributions of Confucianism and Taoism (transmitted first through the cultural bridge of Korea), and, much, later, Christianity were introduced to Japan from outside. All these foreign traditions have undergone significant transformations in a process of mutual influence with the native tradition." (Japan 476)
• "Religion in Modern Japan: After the remarkable changes in national life of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, religion changed drastically./In the 19th century, popular movements formed around pilgrimage associations and charismatic leaders. Such groups often expanded to form the so-called new religions. Until 1945 the government controlled religion closely, but new religious movements continued to arise and expand, and after 1945 they became the most conspicuous development of the religious scene. With urbanization and centralization, folk customs generally and folk religion in particular declined. Such mobility, especially immigration to cities, tended to weaken both local ties and family relationships, in turn impinging upon organized religion." (Japan 480)
• Ratio of believers (1995). (Japan 476) Source: Agency for Cultural Affairs
  • Shintoism - 54.1%
  • Buddhism - 40.5%
  • Christianity - 0.7%
  • Other religions - 4.7%
• NationMaster [1] say the Japanese "observe both Shinto and Buddhist 84%, other 16% (including Christian 0.7%)"

• Religion. Source: Lonely Planet Guide to Japan
  • "In many respects, the term 'religion' can be misleading for Westerners when it is applied to either Japan or China. In the West and in Islamic culture, religion is connected with the idea of an exclusive faith. Religions in Japan, for the most part, are not exclusive of each other."
  • "Shinto (the native 'religion' of Japan), Buddhism, Confucianism and even Christianity all play a role in contemporary Japanese social life, and are defining in some way of the Japanese world view. If you are sceptical of the inclusion of Christianity, you need only attend a Japanese wedding to find certain Christian elements mingling happily with more traditional practices."

[edit] Bibliography

• S. N. Eisenstadt "Japanese Civilization" University of Chicago 1995.
• Japan a Profile of Nation