Posts Tagged ‘religion’

Road to Hajj – Japan

An interesting Al Jazeera feature report from November about members of Japan’s Muslim community traveling to Mecca for the Hajj (with particular focus on ethnic Japanese who have converted to Islam):

Part 1

Part 2

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Chanting down the mountain

This is a short video (sorry about the bad quality) I took during a climb of Ontake-san 御嶽山 on September 21st.  Ontake-san is one of the holiest mountains in Japan, having been opened for religious practice around the 16th century.

Even now worshipers from all over Japan come to climb the mountain and pray at its many shrines.  These practioners are part of the Shingon sect (真言宗) of Buddhism, which is associated mainly with Mt. Koya.

Shingon practicioners view Ontake-san as their spiritual mother, which they symbolize through the red cords they wear at their hips to represent an umbilical cord.

This group had come from a temple in Ibaraki prefecture.

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Contributor Bio: I am a doctoral student of environmental anthropology currently living and conducting research in a mountain village in Nagano. In my research I explore modernity as it is expressed in a rural mountain community. Specifically I look at national management structures, as well as social discourses, related to forests and probe the impacts these have on local human communities. I have lived and worked in Japan for 5 years. My interests also include Buddhism, literature, music, and mountaineering. Read more at my personal blog: In the Pines.
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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)

Hard times for rural temples in Japan

The BBC posted a very interesting report the other day about how declining population in Japan’s rural areas is hurting small temples. Here’s an excerpt:

Their timber-framed building, perched on the side of a mountain, is in a part of the country so remote that the monk says he can go three days without seeing anyone at all.

Mr Toyoma needs the support of 100 households, he tells me, to keep the temple going.

In Japan traditionally much of a monk’s job is to say prayers and hold services for people’s ancestors. You commemorate the dead a year after they pass away, then two years, six years, 12 years – eight times in all over a 50-year period.

Usually the monk asks for a fee for each memorial service, and in a community of 100 households keeps pretty busy, the services providing a regular income. But these days Mr Toyoma has fewer than 50 households who worship at his temple.

Read the rest here!

[Hat tip to John K for the article, image via: 極楽寺]

The Buddhism brand in decline

The New York Times reports on the recent decline in Buddhism in Japan, owing in part to the exodus of younger generations from rural areas, but mostly as a result of the moving away from traditional Buddhist style funerals at temples or at homes:

Buddhism is losing its grip on the funeral industry, as more and more Japanese are turning to funeral homes or choosing not to hold funerals at all.

Over the next generation, many temples in the countryside are expected to close, taking centuries of local history with them and adding to the demographic upheaval under way in rural Japan.

Ryoko Mori, chief priest at Zuikoji Temple in Akita, conjectures that Buddhism may have lost its spiritual influence after the war, with allowing special Buddhist names to be available for purchase:

Mr. Mori . . . said that after the war there was a desire for increasingly lavish funerals with prestigious Buddhist names. These names — with the highest ranks traditionally given to those who have led honorable lives — are routinely purchased now, regardless of a dead person’s conduct in life.

“Soldiers, who gave their lives for the country, were given special posthumous Buddhist names, so everybody wanted one after that, and prices went up dramatically,” Mr. Mori said. “Everyone was getting richer, so everyone wanted one.

“But that gave us a bad image,” he said, adding that the price of the top name in Akita was about $3,000 — though that was a small fraction of the price in Tokyo.

Indeed, that image is reinforced by the way the business of funerals and memorial services is conducted. Fees are not stated and are left to the family’s discretion, and the relatives generally feel an unspoken pressure to be quite generous. Money is handed over in envelopes, and receipts are not given. Temples, with their status as religious organizations, pay no taxes.

While Mr. Mori and Kazuma Hayashi, founder of obohsan.com, a Buddhist priest dispatch company, recognize the need for Buddhism to return to its spiritual roots, the focus remains on the bottom line, and the attitude of Buddhism as a “brand” to be sold to customers persists:

Mr. Hayashi argued that . . . his business attracted more people with its lower prices. The highest-ranking posthumous name went for about $1,500, a rock-bottom price.

“I know that, originally, that’s not what Buddhism was about,” Mr. Hayashi said of the top name. “But it’s a brand that our customers choose. Some really want it, so that means there’s a strong desire there, and we have to respond to it.”
[emphasis added]

Image by Ko Sasaki for The New York Times

Former Komeito chief speaks out against Soka Gakkai

There is sometimes speculation about the connections between the Japan Times and religious sect Soka Gakkai, but the papers seems to have printed a story today about a former leader of the New Komeito party speaking out against the sect:

According to Yano, Soka Gakkai forced him to abandon his activities as a political commentator, published libelous statements about him in the group’s Seikyo Shimbun newspaper, and has attempted to force him into selling his house to make a ¥200 million to ¥300 million donation to the group over the last several years.

Yano, who had been a member of Soka Gakkai for more than 50 years, also said he and members of his family have been under surveillance and shadowed by strangers on a daily basis.

“Soka Gakkai is not what it used to be. It has changed,” Yano said during a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo. Soka Gakkai “is taking antisocial action here and there, and I feel righteous indignation as a citizen.

After he and his family left the group, Yano filed a damages suit against Soka Gakkai on May 12. He was then countersued by an executive member of the influential group, which effectively serves as New Komeito’s base.

“As someone who was a lawmaker for a long time, I felt I was abandoning my social responsibility by keeping my mouth shut” about Soka Gakkai, Yano said. “Also, I felt it wouldn’t do any good to the members of Soka Gakkai themselves, who took care of me, if I endured (the threats) in bitter silence.”
[...]

Soka Gakkai “is a massive religious organization that has strong political influence . . . I cannot overlook its antisocial behavior anymore,” Yano said.

The New Komeito Party is nothing more than Soka Gakkai’s political wing. Most Japanese people are well aware of this, especially those that face annoying requests before every election to vote for Komeito from co-workers and friends that that are members of the sect.

The Japanese media is afraid to report the obvious about this issue because doing so would imply that the religious party violates Japan’s constitutional separation of church and state, something that would surely invite lawsuits from Soka Gakkai/New Komeito. The Japan Times phrases the relationship between the religion and the party by writing that Soka Gakkai “effectively serves as New Komeito’s base,” which is about as close to the truth as media reports can get without entering dangerous territory.

56% of Japanese have had some form of supernatural experience

The Yomiuri reports on an interesting survey:

According to the survey, 26 percent of respondents said they believed in a religion, virtually unchanged from a similar survey conducted three years ago. Only 37 percent said religion was important for living a happy life.

Views of people’s religious sentiment were split, with 45 percent of respondents saying Japanese had little religious faith while 49 percent thought otherwise.

However, 94 percent of respondents said they respected their ancestors, and 56 percent claimed to have had some form of supernatural experience.

The results suggested that many Japanese feel little affinity to a particular religion, but many do harbor feelings of respect for things that are scientifically unproven.

The Yomiuri Shimbun interviewed 3,000 randomly selected people across the country face-to-face on May 17-18, of whom 1,837 gave valid answers.

Asked about what happens to people’s spirits after they die, 30 percent said they believed they would be reincarnated, 24 percent said they would go to another world and 18 percent answered they would vanish.

The recent popularity of new forms of spirituality and other new age-related beliefs, such as an interest in previous lives and guardian angels, was particularly prominent among female respondents. Although 21 percent of all respondents said they were interested in such thinking–far below the 75 percent who were not–27 percent of women saw the appeal of such beliefs, whereas only 13 percent of men said they felt this way….