The Spirituality of Japan.
In a country of non-religious, what really is the Japanese relationship with spirituality?
As a foreign resident of Japan, one of the first things I discovered was that most of the cliché adjectives one hears about Japanese culture, such as “rich” or “complex”, are in fact absolutely grounded in some sort of reality, albeit not so black and white.
My own particular fascination has been with the peculiar relationship Japanese people have with their spirituality. Most Japanese people I have spoken to claim to be non-religious. Their sentiments are consistent with Pew research that places Japan among the most “religiously unaffiliated” cultures in the world. In Japan, 57% of the population self-identifies as religiously unaffiliated, a number second only to North Korea.
This is not peculiar on the surface until one realizes that everywhere you look in Japan there are clear and obvious associations with their Shinto and Buddhist spiritual history. In the concrete jungle of Tokyo it is hard not to spot an old shrine or a place of veneration, often nestled between completely modern structures. Japanese cities have a beautiful contrast between the old and the new, much of which is attributed to the presence and abundance of these well-maintained shrines.
The vestiges of the Japanese spiritual past can be seen in Japanese homes as well. Many Japanese have what are called Butsudan, which are small altars for honoring the dead. In fact, John Nelson at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture writes that in Japan, the manufacturing of these altars is “one of its largest consumer markets.”
If one looks at the Japanese calendar, you will see that it is littered with ancient holidays and festivals that invite citizens to gather at shrines or in the streets for participating in traditions that have specific spiritual origins. There are equinox and harvest festivals, festivals related to mythical characters, New Years Eve festivities, and days that are considered best for “warding off evil”. These traditions are commonly participated in and are thoroughly enjoyed by the Japanese masses.
There are also hugely popular right of passage holidays for children and teenagers that originate from beliefs in eastern numerology. Shichi-Go-San is a holiday for children ages three, five, and seven to go to the shrine and celebrate their “lucky” ages as they progress to middle adulthood. Japanese parents will dress their children in traditional clothing and take them to the shrines to drive out evil spirits and pray for good health.
Even the Japanese Yakuza are deeply entrenched in old religious traditions. The famous Yakuza tattoos often depict old Shinto and Buddhist iconography. Christopher Altman, a research fellow at J.F. Oberlin University in Tokyo, writes that the initiation ceremony for new pledges into the Yakuza “is typically performed at a Shinto shrine, and as such is designated religious significance.”
Japan is also not a religiously discriminatory country, as opposed to its communist neighbor North Korea. In fact, according to the 2009 U.S State Department Report on International Religious Freedom, the Japanese Constitution adequately provides for freedom of religion.
Why then, is it the case that despite spirituality being such an integral part of the culture and citizens being perfectly free do indulge in it, do the Japanese largely identify as religiously unaffiliated? I spoke with Dr. Lee Roser, a professor of religion at Temple University Japan, about this odd dichotomy.
“Japan seems very odd”, said Roser. “Because more than any other nation, you have such a large percentage of people who will say ‘I am not religious’…yet, cultural activities that have a religious base are very big, happening all the time.”
“So what’s going on?” asked Roser.
Roser continued to say that the origins of Japan’s unique religious beliefs are a crucial factor for understanding the interesting orbit between confessed lack of affiliation and frequent participation in many spiritual traditions. “Before the strong influence of China, Japan didn’t have an organized religious system, they didn’t have priests, and so they didn’t have creeds. Nevertheless they had a strong spiritual sense. Their ideas were so much apart of ordinary life; they didn’t need to distinguish it as a separate institution. It’s apart of reality.”
To illustrate the idea of spirituality simply being part of reality, Roser talks about the Japanese belief in something called Kami power. “It’s right here, its part of the natural world”, Roser says. “Everything is created from Kami power, and it’s very close. It’s is not a far transcendence. For the Japanese everything is spirit.”
In talking to Dr. Roser I came to understand that overt belief and intersession with “far transcendence” is not how the Japanese interact with spirituality. Rather, everything is spiritual. Mountains, tools, even the government have Kami power. It is just reality. Yet, because of the misuse of spiritual belief for things like emperor-worship (which partially lead Japan into WWII) as well as a rash of bizarre cult attacks in the twentieth century, Japanese people seem to have a healthy distrust of organized religion in general. This may be the source of the lack of religious self-identification.
After the war, the Japanese embraced a more secular society that was more in alignment with their ancient views than the wartime Hirohito cult. To this day they do not feel the need to publicly proclaim religious affiliation in order to feel that they live spiritual lives. Their spirituality is infused in their cultural heritage and in their overall way of life. The association with luck, the banishment of evil spirits, and general acknowledgement of something divine are not only a remnant of the Japanese spiritual past but a defining part of Japanese daily life. The sacredness of nature and the need to fit into the cogs of society without complaint are deep paradigms that stem from ancient spiritual belief. Much of the ancient way of viewing reality is in fact an intrinsic part of what it means to be Japanese.
I spoke with a Japanese woman named Yurie Uno to get a native opinion on this particularly fascinating incarnation of culture that is so radically different from the West. Ms. Uno says, “When I go the shrine, I pray…but I don’t talk to a god. I talk to myself…like, ‘Hey Yurie, good job this year, but this New Year you should do better in school’…or something like that. I don’t view our traditions as religious. We just don’t know any other way to do things. Also, I don’t want anyone’s help for finding answers like ‘why am I here’, or those big questions. I prefer to just talk to myself.”
In the end, describing one’s self as religiously unaffiliated while still participating in centuries old spiritual tradition is not a contradictory way of living one’s life, from the Japanese perspective. All one needs to do is a little digging and what, to a Western mind, seems contradictory, makes perfect sense in its cultural context. Coming from the West where spiritual life is institutionalized and often passionately advertised by its practitioners, it is easy to be confused by the way spirituality manifests itself in a country like Japan. This is just one of the innumerable and interesting differences between Japan and the West. As a new resident of Japan, I can honestly say, I am just beginning to scratch the surface.