Japanese -The Most Religious People in the World

During my first year in Tokyo, I was frustrated and bemused at the wall of silence I crashed into every time I asked a Japanese person about religion or indeed anything 'mysterious.' I walked around the cosmeticised Japanese women that wandered aimlessly around department stores, and made quick and lazy judgments. However, after spending three years here, I now understand that I was completely mistaken. I now understand that the Japanese are the most religious people I have ever met.

My first mistake was to apply western notions of what it means to be religious, to the Japanese lifestyle. In the West, we endlessly try to explain and justify our beliefs and spiritual feelings. For the Japanese however, 'mystery' is an every day fact that should be silently experienced and appreciated rather than categorised and judged by the empty cleverness of cultural commentators. In Japan, I have discovered the integrity of silence.

Japan has a culture that is rightfully skeptical of using words to communicate spiritual truths. In the English language we have separate words, and thus separate concepts for 'mind' and 'spirit.' In Christian theology, arguments concerning the difference between mind and spirit have been raging for 2000 years. In the Japanese language, however, there is a single word 'Seishin,' which can be translated both as mind or as spirit. The exact meaning is ambiguous because for Japanese, to distinguish linguistically between western notions of spirit and mind is simply not necessary.

In Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan, there is no official set of doctrines, nor sacred scriptures. The "word" has no place in this religion. Unlike Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, Shinto has no founder such as Guatama the Enlightened One, Jesus the Messiah, or Muhammad the Prophet. Instead, Shinto is concerned with natural energies and invisible agents called 'Kami,' which dwell in any phenomena that generate a feeling of awe and mystery: mountains, flowers, rocks ... the list is endless.

Significantly, there is no distinction made between the 'object' and the 'spirit' within the object. The spirit in the mountain and the mountain itself are one and the same. Japanese neither think of the Kami conceptually nor theologically, but are aware of the Kami intuitively, dwelling in the depths of their "being." According to Shinto scholars, the world of Kami does not transcend the world of humans and daily life is to be regarded as "service to the Kami." Thus, the Japanese can experience awe and mystery in objects of everyday life - the world is not divided into the sacred and secular.

Japanese people will travel across the entire country to see a mountain, or a flower that blossoms for just for one week every year. When the cherry blossoms bloom, they hold parties and family ceremonies. They don't identify these activities as being religious in the western sense, it is simply a way of life.

With the religious fanaticism we are currently witnessing around the word, it is surely refreshing to experience the purity of spiritual feelings that something as simple as a cherry blossom can embody.

Back to List Page