The remarkable changes to Japanese life and religion instigated by Japan’s first military defeat and occupation are undeniable. After 1945, the nationalistic and militaristic trends that grew to prominence during the renewal period of the Meiji Restoration began to reverse, and a new religious landscape began to emerge in Japan reshaped by the Japanese reaction to defeat.
Seeking to end religion as a “tool of militaristic nationalism,” Allied Occupation forces occupying Japan after the war ordered the official disestablishment of Shrine Shinto. The immediate effect of this action was that Shinto once again became associated more with religious institutions than with government activities and state sponsorship. Particularly hard for Shinto at this time was its association with the war, as it was the religious tradition most closely tied to the failure of the Japanese war effort.
Also hard on Shinto was the disorganization of the religion, now set apart from the structure provided by government control throughout the Meiji period. Complete religious freedom was an option absolutely available to the Japanese for the first time after the war’s end, and this greater freedom meant smaller shrines that were forced to centralize under government control could reestablish themselves locally. Additionally, many Shinto shrines, as well as Buddhist temples, were stripped of a large portion of their land holdings at this time, removing a major source of their income.
Japanese Buddhism in the postwar period did not suffer the stigma of defeat as much as did the state-supported Shinto tradition, despite the fact that many Buddhist sects indeed supported the war effort. While Japanese Buddhism also suffered from loss of temple lands, income, and the chaos of postwar disorganization, the Allied Occupation forces actually removed prior government restrictions on denominational ties, allowing temple affiliations to become more flexible. In the postwar period, Buddhism continued the pursuit for religious and spiritual renewal that was called for since the inception of the Meiji Restoration but was never fully realized.
Christianity did not profit much from Japanese dissatisfaction with the other, more native religious traditions in the postwar period in Japan. Christian churches actually suffered greater losses proportionally during the wartime bombings than the shrines of Shinto or temples of Buddhism because most Christian churches were located in large cities. Additionally, the perpetual divisiveness of a Christianity denominationally splintered, coupled with the historical lack of a uniquely Japanese Christianity, kept the religion at a continuous disadvantage. Even in postwar Japan, it is believed that practicing Christians account for less than 1 percent of the total population of over 100 million individuals.
While it was Buddhism and Confucianism which dominated religious life and practice in the Tokugawa period, and Shinto which dominated the prewar period during the Meiji Restoration of 1868 to the end of the war in 1945, it is the New Religions that have dominated the religious life and practice of the Japanese since World War II.
The emergence of the New Religions as the dominant religious force in Japan is due to a number of factors. For one, the New Religions escaped the stigma of defeat after World War II more than any other religious tradition in Japan, with many sects having opposed the war effort outright. Also, the religious freedom afforded the Japanese people following the war benefitted these New Religions by allowing them a cleaner break from the older traditions that had dominated Japan for so long, and which now were be forced to compete with them on a more equal footing. The openness and acceptance of the New Religions, oftentimes taking the best features of the more popular traditions and integrating them into the new form, was another factor in their popularity. The inclusion in the New Religions of the persistent themes in Japanese religious history common throughout the main religious traditions of Japan served to ease their acceptance among the people in postwar Japan who wanted to live the principles of the old ways without the stigmata associated with the failure of the war.
The future of Japanese religion is an open book. While many of the old ways confront new challenges in the face of industrialization, social mobility, urbanization and the flattening of a global landscape, changes in religious life and observance are bound to occur. However, if anything can be learned through the study of the history of Japanese religion, it is the strength of the Japanese to adapt to new cultures, belief systems and ideas.
Sources:
Earhart, H. Byron. Japanese Religion: Unity and Diversity. 4th ed. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2004.
Earhart, H. Byron. Religion in the Japanese Experience: Sources and Interpretations. 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1997.
