Japan ? the country where religions from around the world meet

Added: 12/30/2005

In the majority of countries, people's religious beliefs are limited to a single faith. There can be many religions, but a man often chooses one and practices it throughout his life. The case of Japan is different, since many Japanese can embrace several faiths simultaneously. Many of them consider themselves as both Shintoist and Buddhist and it is common to Japan to be married in a Shinto ceremony ritual and berried with Buddhist rites.

Religion is not of great impact on the everyday life of most Japanese people today. The average person typically follows the religious rituals at ceremonies like birth, weddings and funerals; he may visit a shrine or temple on the New Year and participate at local festivals (matsuri), most of which have a religious background. However, religion is a kind of background of the life, but not a way of the life. Nevertheless, such a practice of putting religion into the background is common to many industrialized countries today.

Nonetheless, a religious practice in Japan is more intriguing for many observers. As with the culture and arts, the Japanese have assimilated many religions from around the world and put them into a continuous practice. These religions, in their turn have interwoven with each other, and an average person in Japan can practice both Buddhism and Shintoism, unnoticing the mixture of two.

For centuries many religions from around the world have entered Japan and they did not substitute the existing ones, but tended to complement them.

Opposite to Christianity that had a tendency to displace various religions when it spread throughout Europe, Buddhism did not displace native Shintoism when it entered Japan. In some areas these two coexist as distinct faiths, while in the other districts two traditions have influenced each other in the way they have become each other's part.

Fransisco Xavier brought Christianity into the country in 1549. Probably, Christianity is the only religion from innumerous faiths, brought to Japan from around the world, which had suffered much from chasing and persecuting, when many people were exiled and killed until it was allowed in 1873. Nagasaki is a contemporary center of the largest Christian community in Japan.

Since many foreigners and Chinese live in the country (there are the largest world's China Towns in Japan), people commonly practice Islam, Confucianism, Taoism and a number of other faiths that visitors and immigrants have brought from around the world for centuries.

A number of religions are generally called "new religions", though some have their origins in the early nineteenth century. The largest include Soka Gakkai (Value Creation Society), Rissho Koseikai (Society for the Establishment of Justice and Community for the Rise of Buddhism) and Tenrikyo (Religion of Divine Wisdom) with more than seventeen million, six million and about two point five million members, respectively registered in the late 1980s.

Many of the noted faiths claim to an organizational status equivalent to Shinto or Buddhism and they mostly synchronize elements of Christianity, Buddhism, Shinto and other faiths. Most of these new religions were founded by charismatic lay people, often women, who had experienced transforming spiritual episodes and felt to be called to convey these experiences to the others. Although assimilating Christian, Buddhist and other practices, the teachings of new religions are diverse. Some of them stress individual salvation, while the others stress hard work, sincerity, kindness and harmonious relations to the others as a way to a better life.

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