Column: Letters from Japan (Part 3)
This spring Mr. Thompson is a visiting professor at Osaka University of Commerce. This is the second of his three letters. Click here to read his first letter. Click here to read his second.
Last week I had two invitations. I was invited to be the guest speaker in an English language class, and I was invited for a weekend car tour of Nara and Kyoto. The English class was held at Osaka Women's Junior College. The ten students were in their middle ages, most over forty. We exchanged information about families and life styles in America and Japan. I ask how many of them were"religi." No response, I asked again, how many believed in religion. No response. However when I asked if their families had religion, four responded in the affirmative, saying their families were Buddhist, but they never participated in any religious exercises, except attending marriage ceremonies and funerals.
Nara is the home of the Great Buddha Hall, the largest wooden building on Earth. Inside the temple structure is a sitting Buddha. The Image of Buddha is the largest such Buddha in the world, weighing 500 tons and extending almost fifty feet high. The structure was built in 749 AD, at a tremendous cost--equaling almost the cost of the national budget that year. It was built in part as a collective unity effort to stem a tide of unrest in the country. I found this supposition to be rather strange as in the churches I know about the building program is ALWAYS the start of a tide of unrest.
Next to the Great Buddha Hall there is a complex of Shinto shrines. Nara is a religious center in Japanese history, but it was difficult to see any religious participation on the Saturday of my visit. Monks were busy--selling souvenirs Many souvenirs were lucky charms for everything from good health, to good marriages, good luck gambling, good luck on school examinations. Outside (and inside too) the temple and shrines a major activity of the throngs of visitors was to be feeding the deer who wandered about everywhere--except inside the restrooms which had special gates to keep them out. Deer were considered a favorite animal of the Buddhas. The other activity that received a lot of attention was watching children crawl through a hole in one of the major support columns inside the Great Buddha Hall. Getting through the hole was a symbol that one would have good health. Many laughs accompanied the successful attempt of a young Chinese man to barely squeeze through.
Kyoto was the seat of the emperors' governments for a thousand years. It also became a religious center, as well as the national training center for Geisha. It is the background setting for the popular book Memoirs of a Geisha. There are now over 1600 Buddhist temples and hundreds of Shinto shrines in Kyoto. My friend and I did not try to do it all, but we did get to the Golden Pavilion and the Kiyomizu temple that overlooks the city. Throngs of people crowded the delightful sites. However, it was not until we came back down toward the town that we saw the cameras of the national television station. We knew something was about to happen so we gathered with others and waited. We were rewarded, in fact for my friend it was the high moment of the day. Soon we saw two Geisha strolling down the street. They walked RIGHT BESIDE US and then into a fancy restaurant. My friend told me that indeed we had experienced a rare treat.
I have traveled a bit and I have certainly visited my share of religious buildings from the church bearing Rose de Lima's name in Peru, to Riverside Church, to Salisbury Cathedral, and Cathedrals in Belgium, France, and Germany, as well as the White Horse temple in Louyang and many other Buddhist Temples in China. Whenever I went to these religious places, I like the others about me were very silent, as we sought to be respectful for the always several if not many people who were at the religious places to meditate or pray (even in"Communist" China).. This was not the case on my visits to Nara and Kyoto as the crowds were always talking, laughing and taking pictures. Indeed in holy journeys of the weekend, I saw but one single person who was engaged in serious prayer at a temple or shrine.
My visit to a college classroom and my single journey of one weekend afforded me an impressionistic observation that religion, at least in any organized sense, is not a major factor in Japanese life, Vignettes from my own experiences. Perhaps, but the point I am making is well supported by empirical research evidence. Osaka University of Commerce conducts an annual general survey of the population of Japan. In 2001 they interviewed 2,790 randomly selected adults. They asked several questions about religion.
When asked if they"follow a religion" 278, or 10.0 percent said"Yes," while another 24.9 said they did not, but that they did have a family religion. 63.4 percent simply said they did not"follow a religion." Of the followers, only 75 (2.7 percent of the sample) said they were"very devoted" to religion. (3.9 percent of the sample were"frequent" pachinko players -- pachinko is their version of a slot machine).
When asked if they believed in"life after death" 50.8 percent were"undecided," whereas 18.6 said"yes," and 30.1 said"no."
Among the institutions of Japan, religion was held in the lowest esteem by the population. People were asked how much confidence they had in several institutions. Only 2.1 percent expressed"very much" confidence in religious organizations, while 10.9 had"some" confidence in the organizations. This combined positive confidence factor of 13.0 for religions did snot compare favorably with other organizations in Japan. The positive confidence factor for the Diet (national congress) was 31.8 percent, for labor unions 38.0, the bureaucracy 40.5, while it was 51.3 for major corporations, 53.2 for banks, 66.2 for schools, 70.6 for police, and 78.3 for hospitals. Public media even scored higher.
These statistics contrast greatly with ones from American surveys. Since 1944 the Gallup Poll has consistently found that well over 90 percent of Americans say they"believe in God." A more recent poll found that 62.8 percent were firm in their conviction that there was a God. 55.0 percent in a poll (ISSP) conducted by the National Opinion Research center believed in"life after death," while 63.1 believed in"heaven" and 33.5 believed that the Bible was literally the word of God. While other countries did not show an adherence to religion anywhere near that of Americans (except in Philippines, Ireland, and Poland), religious beliefs appeared much stronger than the numbers from Japan.
My observations from a cursory examination of religion in Japan lead me to believe (tentatively--as all my beliefs are, especially the political ones) that the destructive anti-religion force of the American government as expressed in the "no establishment" clause of the First Amendment is of much much greater virility than any pro-religious force that may emanate from the "free exercise" clause of the same First Amendment. We used the military might of America to prohibit another society from having publicly supported military cemeteries, forces of chaplains in their public institutions, and even public displays of religion by public officials--things that we do openly and see done openly in the United States.
We are in a time where we can be VERY thankful that our political leaders (and this includes GEORGE W BUSH) are choosing to act in a manner that was not witnessed in the case of one HARRY TRUMAN. The circumstances of events since 9-11 could have been used to destroy religions of other peoples, peoples who certainly would qualify to be called enemies of America whatever their capacity to utilize weapons of individual or small group or mass destruction. A PEW Research Center poll finds that 44 percent of the American public now believe that Islam is more likely than other religions to "encourage violence among its believers." We certainly have some evidence that terrorists have some religious motivations in their activities.
Certainly times have changed and even a Democrat president today would be different from the "one who will go down in history as a great president," but we now have a president who seems not to get much respect from his opponents because of his religious posture on many matters. They should reflect just a bit on the course of our national events if this George W. Bush would have chosen to follow the precedent set down by President Harry S Truman as he set about a course of events that has resulted in the destruction of religion--Shinto, Buddhist, AND CHRISTIAN as a major factor in Japanese life.
We may ponder other consequences of our anti-religious policies in Japan. Religions take energy from populations. When the source of energy expenditure is removed, the energy is directed in other ways. In the case of Japan, the people were also forbidden to direct energy toward military objectives after World War II. The anti-trade policies of the Democrat candidate for President (however come lately) must be examined. Why was Japan able to focus so much energy on an economic development revolution that has wreaked so much havoc on our steel and auto industries? Consider the above, and the American source of the American problem today.
Next stop Korea, casinos and the 38th parallel---maybe this is one (the only one) place where I can observe real live actual COMMUNISTS in the whole world today.