A Basic Concept of the Religious Studies about Japan

Hi! It's Shellil Linn.(_ _).｡o○

For those who are interested in religious studies will face a big wall to understand "what is the religion in Japan".

Some books say Japanese are mainly Buddhists, while the other material claim that most of the ordinary Japanese are sentimentally Shintoists.

If you try to find some ethnographical pieces written in English, you'll find so deep & narrow field work report on a very small village culture or religious activities.

Even the scholars in the religious major don't want to write on the religious culture covering entire Japan except Japanese government assign some scholar to do so.

If you ask any Japanese scholar, bureaucrats why the Japanese people hesitate to express their religious matter, most of they confess that "Japanese people are too shy to express what in each feeling".

I would say those Japanese authoritarians claim "Japanese are very shy and in-going" is the biggest which made of entire Japanese society with apathetic ignorance for the deterioration of religious literacy in Japanese society.

Majority of Japanese people concern the primitive chaos is the only truth. The chaos is true to Japanese because all the religious teaching can only tells the part of the primitive chaos. And all the world or local religions, the local folk belief, local processions and the pilgrimage are concerned as some part of "the entire primitive chaos".

And in the interaction of Japanese mentality, each person is looking forward to find a very personal spiritual ties with the primitive chaos in very individual way in person.

Actually, rest of the world except Japan realizing that we,  civilized people face the desperate high wall if one would do so.

But, in Japan, the Imperialistic Reformational Extremists who have risen on around early 18th century, at the very end of Tokugawa Tyranny, concerned that they revive the ancient myth called "Kojiki(Ancient mythical Writing)" and pick & pasted the "usable and convenient" concepts from Christianity, Greek and Roman philosophy along with the Confucian teaching "usable and convenient" for their political purposes.

99% of ordinary people had not agreed with these reformer's attempt. However, the reformers themselves had faced the high black on the wall; their parents, partners, and relatives.

During Tokugawa Tyranny, a household must have registered to some Buddhist temple nearby legally. There was almost no freedom of belief nor faith for both priests and lay Buddhists. Buddhist monks' child must inherit only the sect and temple one belong.

Typical shrine until Edo period had worshiped Buddhism and Shinto Statues  in one place.

There had been an annual check-up the temple belonging for their ancestral worship, and must temple the Holy Cross with Jesus to testify not a Christian.

Meiji Era reformers wanted the same system in Shintoism, and failed by five years.

So, the Meiji government had done their best to terminate the local culture, and brain washed the people through the school education by "a person should be spiritually tied with the primitive chaos directly without any religious teaching, faith and prayer which are not favorable to the power of the time.

Because Meiji government had trashed out the traditional religious feeling people had kept until the early 20th century, Japanese people gradually lost their religious literacy lived in their daily life by  political oppressions.

Also, the ethnical standard for sex, marriage, funerals, and folk art had rehashed even the time goes by,  the religious literacy in Japan had got lowered and degraded as the time goes by.