Asian Topics on Asia for Educators || Contemporary Japan: Religions

CONTEMPORARY JAPAN:
RELIGIONS
Buddhism

In addition to the traditional religions of Shinto and Buddhism, Japan is also home to more than 600 “new religions” (shinko shukyo), which incorporate Buddhist, Shinto, and Christian elements. In this video series, Harvard University professors Theodore Bestor and Helen Hardacre discuss the impact of religious values and traditions on Japanese life.

Theodore Bestor :: Traditionally, most Japanese families have a long-standing affiliation with a particular Buddhist temple, and it’s related in part to the family system that a traditional family, known in Japanese as an ie, would have a particular temple at which the funerals for their family would be performed, and where memorial services for the ancestors would also be performed. And one of the duties of the heir to a family — in a traditional family only one, usually the son, only one son would inherit the responsibilities of the family — among the responsibilities would be taking care of the memorial tablets that are kept in the family altar, called a butsudan, from generation to generation. So one of the ways in which you can sort of tell whether a family is inheriting the main line of a traditional family is whether they possess a butsudan, something to worship the ancestors. Other children who leave the family and have to establish their own households wouldn’t necessarily have that.

Helen Hardacre :: During the Edo period, national law required every Japanese family to be affiliated with a Buddhist temple. At that time, the custom arose of families entrusting, so to speak, their ancestors to the care of a Buddhist temple. And for their part, the temples required each of those affiliated families to have funerals and periodic memorial rituals performed by the temples. Thus, in Japan, ancestor worship has, at least from the beginning of the Edo period, that is to say 1600, been almost exclusively a Buddhist observance.

Shinto funerals are not unknown, but nearly so. Thus, while in China, ancestor worship is more connected to Confucianism, in Japan, ancestor worship is almost exclusively a Buddhist phenomenon, based on this historical background.