Japan - Religion Belief And Ritual

The indigenous religion of Japan is Shinto, and all Japanese people belong to it by default. From a population of roughly 126 million, 96 million people are also Buddhist and around 1.5 million Christian. The idea of combining religions may seem strange, but a mixture of philosophy, politics and a bit of creative interpretation has, over time, enabled this to happen.

The most important factor that allowed faiths to combine is that Shinto, a naturalistic religion, does not possess one all-powerful deity, sacred scriptures or a particular philosophy or moral code. It holds that its followers must live their lives according to the way or mind of the kami (gods), and that the kami favour harmony and co-operation. Therefore, Shinto tolerates its worshippers following other religions, and they find it an easy step to combine Shinto's nature worship with the worship of an almighty deity, such as that in Christianity, or with the philosophical moral code of Buddhism.

According to Shinto, the relationship between people and their tutelary kami is like that between parent and child. Generations have been born and lived under the protection of the kami . When they die, the Japanese become kami , so not only are their ancestors kami , but they themselves will become so, creating, in theory, an inherent and unbreakable relationship down the generations.

Festivals are a common sight in Japan and many Shinto customs are still manifest in everyday life, from marriage ceremonies to purifying building plots and new cars. Nevertheless, few Japanese today are aware of anything other than the basic tenets of either Shinto or Buddhism and many would not consider themselves "religious" as such. Instead, Shinto and Buddhist ideas are so deeply ingrained in everyday life that, in general, there is little sense of conscious involvement. This means that, while many people do not practise any faith on a daily basis, they find it quite natural to pray at a shrine or temple during annual festivals or on a sightseeing trip. And, as elsewhere, people tend to become more involved in religion, particularly Buddhism, during their later years.

Peter Grimshaw

The birth of Japan
Japan's mythological origins could have come from the pen of J.R.R. Tolkien. According to the oldest written records, the Kojiki and the Nihon-shoki , the god Izanagi-no-Mikoto and goddess Izanami-no-Mikoto leant...
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Shinto
Shinto , or "the way of the gods", only received its name in the sixth century to distinguish it from the newly arrived Buddhism. Gods are felt to be present in natural phenomena, for example mountains, trees, waterfalls, strangely shaped...
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Buddhism
The vast majority of Japanese people are followers of Buddhism as well as Shinto. Buddhism originated in India with a wealthy Hindu prince called Siddhartha Gautama who, dissatisfied with Hinduism's explanation of worldly...
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Shugendo
Shugendo is a colourful blend of Buddhist esoteric and tantric concepts, Chinese Taoist magic and Shinto shamanism. Based on mountain asceticism, the religion was formalized in the eighth century by the monk En-no-Gyoja , who was famous...
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Folk religion
Japanese folk religion draws on ideas from Shinto, Buddhism and Chinese Taoism, which added shamanism, spirit possession and magico-religious practices to the pot. The "holy men" (or women) of folk religion may be specialists in,...
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Christianity
Shipwrecked Portuguese traders were the first Christians to set foot in Japan, in Tanageshima, an island off Kyushu, in 1543. As far as Christianity is concerned though, it was not until Saint Francis Xavier and his Jesuit ...
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The new religions
Several new religions appeared in Japan during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many of them offshoots of Nichiren Buddhism. Their basic beliefs and practices are generally a mix of Shinto, Buddhism and Confucianism, incorporating...
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Religion, ritual and culture
It's often said that Shinto and Buddhism have given the Japanese a unique appreciation for ritual, nature and art. Various aspects of Japanese culture have developed from religious ritual and values, such as the No drama which...
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Japan - Religion Belief And Ritual - information