A Bit of This, a Bit of That

By Richard N. Ostling

The Japanese sample many faiths, but few believe fervently in any

Bundled in colorful silks, the newborn Keiko Shirato was taken by her parents to a neighborhood Shinto shrine, where a white-gowned priest pronounced blessings for a long and healthy life. On three childhood birthdays she also visited Shinto shrines, clapping her hands and clanging bells to awaken the gods so she could pray to them. In 1980 Keiko used Buddhist omens to select a propitious wedding day. But she exchanged Christian vows with her fiance in a small chapel at one of Tokyo's elegant hotels. Keiko, now 26 and a mother, expects that some day her ashes will be interred in a Buddhist cemetery, where her descendants will annually return with a Buddhist priest to pray in her honor.

To Keiko, such religious eclecticism is perfectly natural. "I owe respect to my ancestors and show it through Buddhism," she explains. "I'm a Japanese, so I do all the little Shinto rituals. And I thought a Christian marriage would be real pretty. It's a contradiction, but so what?"

If many Japanese are searching for a deeper spiritual meaning to their lives, most are content with what they call chuto-hanpa (a bit of this, a bit of that) and scholars describe as juso shinko (multilayered faith). Blending aspects of different faiths has been the tradition in Japan since prime val Shinto, with its reverence for spirits in nature, began mingling with Buddhism and Confucianism. Both doctrines were imported from China via Korea 14 centuries ago.

Japan today claims a cumulative total of religious adherents well in excess of its actual population: 201 million, vs. 119 million. As in centuries past, the two dominant faiths are Shinto (98 million) and Buddhism (88 million).

Despite these impressive figures, government polls indicate that a scant 30% of the population today claim to have any real personal religious beliefs. Many scholars trace the reasons for this void to the social shocks of World War II, which left a widespread legacy of nihilism. As large numbers of people flowed from the countryside into urban centers during the 1950s, they were separated from ties with the religions in their home areas. Getting a good education and blazing a successful career became national preoccupations, supplanting traditional faiths.

Most Japanese still observe the venerable rituals; these ceremonies are part of the life of the nation. The symbols of religion are everywhere. Kyoto, the ancient capital, has more shrines and temples than cigarette shops. There are even Shinto altars in numerous offices of major cities. New skyscrapers are often decorated with red-and-white-striped sheets of Shinto cloth. Rural village homes, where traditional spirituality survives, typically have both a kamidana (Shinto altar) and a butsudan (Buddhist altar).

Formal religious observance in Japan revolves around the family's rites of passage (births, marriages, funerals and death anniversaries) and, for the community, a sequence of colorful, joyful festivals. So popular is Hatsumode, the New Year's visit to local sacred places, that specially installed traffic lights guide millions of worshipers along the gravel paths of the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo.

For many Japanese, however, pure ritual is not enough, nor is the attraction of the established religions. To fill this spiritual gap, the discontented have turned to so-called new religious movements, many of which were founded before World War II but grew spectacularly afterward. The groups, 170 or more claiming about 14 million adherents (about 12% of the population), all make use of traditional Japanese themes, although the rituals may vary.

By concentrating on "essentially conservative values and ideals," says Ken Arai, a research associate at Tokyo University, these religions give many Japanese a "renewed feeling of self-confidence and even changes that have reshaped the nation.

Claiming 16 million adherents, Soka Gakkai (Value Creation Society) is by far the most successful of the new religious movements. It has its roots in ancient Buddhism, and followers are included in the statistics for Buddhists, not in the "new religions." Unlike other new Japanese sects, Soka Gakkai is intolerant, going so far as to preach that "Shinto is a heretical religion that we must destroy." Contrary to Japanese custom, Soka Gakkai also asks its believers to proselytize, and has moved abroad: it claims 200,000 members in the U.S., mainly in California. Soka Gakkai teaches that continual repetition of the phrase Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, derived from the title of the Lotus Sutra, one of the Buddhist scriptures, is the key to success, happiness and the good life. The group has produced a political offshoot, Komeito (Clean Government Party), with the third largest number of members in Japan's legislature. The growth of the new religions has slackened since the late 1960s, apparently because of increased affluence and secularization.

Christianity now has relatively fewer adherents--some 950,000, split about evenly between Protestants and Roman Catholics--than it had in the decades after Francis Xavier, a 16th century Jesuit and the pioneer Christian missionary in Japan. Says the Rev. Timothy Pietsch, a Baptist missionary: "A Japanese Christian has to give his allegiance to a 'foreign' God and say that he's not first and foremost a Japanese--an impossible task."

The Christian concept of a universal God simply does not mesh with being Japanese. Indeed, many Japanese seem less interested in defining themselves as even Buddhist or Shintoist than in finding the "spirit" of being Japanese. "The real quest is to find the seed at the bottom of your heart and bring forth a beautiful flower," says Shigenori Kameoka, director of the Shinto Moral Training Society. "To be a good person, yes. But in order to be one, to be a good Japanese." --By Richard N. Ostling. Reported by Alan Tansman/Tokyo

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