Today is the second day of my Silver Week (holidays from Sept 21st through 23rd) staycation. As I was arranging my magazines and books , I came across an old copy of the magazine Hiragana Times, April 2014 issue.
It has an article in multi-level text - English, Japanese (Kanji/Hiragana/Katakana) with romaji. The title, " Is Japan a Shinto or Buddhist Country?" caught my attention. I must have read this before, but it is only this time that I find it interesting and worth sharing.
So I am copying this entire article here for me to read again many times without the Japanese characters (which can be distracting for my old brain haha) . I think with some photos from Google pages to go with some paragraphs, I would be able to retain more facts from this article. So here it is...
" Having continued for more than 1,500 years, the Japanese imperial family is the world's oldest hereditary monarchy and is said to be descended from the Goddess of the sun.
Japanese people have worshiped nature by practicing Shinto since ancient times, but in 538 Buddhism was introduced from the Korean Peninsula.
Dragging the imperial court into the fray, two powerful clans fought over its introduction: the Soga clan who were keen to adopt this new culture, and the Mononobe clan who wished to protect the traditional Japanese gods.
Behind the scenes, the three kingdoms of Baekje, Silla and Goguryeo on the Korean Peninsula were fighting against each other for dominance of the peninsula.
Through Buddhism, Baekje expected to ally itself with Japan, while Japan intended to adopt their advanced culture.
By joining forces with Prince Shotoku - who was later credited with outlining the blue print for present day Japan - the Soga clan won the battle and Buddhism was introduced into Japan.
In addition to those in Nara - including Horyuji, the world's oldest wooden temple, and the largest wooden temple, Todaiji - many temples were built all over Japan, and Buddhism spread.
Horyuji Temple
Todaiji Temple
However, this did not eliminate the traditional Shinto religion, instead a unique religious practice, in which Shinto and Buddhism coexisted, took root with the Japanese.
After that, Buddhism divided into numerous sects, which became so influential that they were sometimes used by those in power, or had gained enough power to oppose the authorities.
In the 17th century, in order to rid itself of the influence of Christianity, the Edo shogunate enforced a Buddhist policy of forcing its citizens to belong to a temple.
It was established in this era that funerals were carried out in the Buddhist style, and that the corpse was buried in the cemetery of the temple to which that person belonged.
Japanese Buddhist cemetery
It was the strength of support for the Emperor that brought about the end of the Edo period, which had lasted for about 260 years.
The newly created Meiji administration made political use of the Shinto religion by positioning it at the heart of the state.
Shinto shrine
The Showa era saw the rise of militarism and Yasukuni Shrine became a special Shinto shrine to commemorate those who died in the war, and later visits to the shrine by politicians became a controversial political issue.
Yasukuni Shrine
In this way, those in power at the time made clever use of Shintoism and Buddhism.
Shinto has no clear doctrine except the deification of nature; worshiping mysterious mountains, forests, rivers, waterfalls, rocks, even animals, as well as great human beings as gods.
Buddhism teaches people how to live by understanding and dealing with the truth that everything is subject to constant change and that all things have no true state but are inherently subject to decay, so consequently it's hard to control our destiny.
It is said that 80% of Japanese visit a shrine or a temple during the New Year in Japan.
people praying in a shrine during New Year
However, few Japanese know that April 8 is Buddha's birthday.
On the other hand, Japanese celebrate Christian events which have not had much influence on Japan.
a Catholic church in Japan
Kobe Baptist Church in Kitano
The underlying cause of this is that an interest in adopting and easily accepting new things is in the Japanese nature.
Many contemporary Japanese seem to feel that Buddhism is old-fashioned, while Christianity is rather fancy.
Although many gods coexist in Japan, few Japanese visit a church, shrine or temple for religious purposes - this includes New Year visits.
The majority of Japanese are not very pious; for them religious events are merely events, and they even regard them as a bit of fun.
In other words, you might say that Japanese live in a blessed society in which religious aid is not much needed. "
