Japan Didn’t Just Import ‘Religion.’ It Reinvented It

October 28, 2026 by Ken Chitwood

Japan Religion

Adobe Stock

If you are one of the nearly 43 million foreign visitors who traveled to Japan in 2025 or the millions who have already visited in 2026, you might be tempted to think the country is intensely religious.

It is hard not to. Religion appears to be…well, everywhere.

Go for a walk through the megacity of Tokyo and you encounter Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines around almost every corner. Travel outside the metroplex and you’ll come across tiny roadside jizō statues and enormous temple complexes in the countryside.

From Sapporo to Kagoshima, you see people washing their hands before approaching a shrine, drawing fortunes, making offerings, bowing, clapping, praying or simply pausing for a moment in front of a shrine or statue while out on a morning walk with their dog before moving on.

So thick is the spiritual infrastructure of Japan that in Kyoto, visitors say they can suffer from “temple fatigue,” which describes the mental and physical exhaustion they feel after visiting too many temples in a short time and the wooden architecture, gardens and Buddha statues begin to blend together. These travelers are, in a sense, complaining about an excess of religion.

And yet, if you ask many Japanese people whether they are religious, you are likely to get a very different answer.

So, which is it? Is Japan highly religious or notably secular?

The problem may lie in the question itself.

Religions and the religious in Japan

One way to understand everyday religious life in Japan is through the relationship between Shinto and Buddhism.

On the one hand, Shinto, broadly speaking, encompasses traditions surrounding kami, which, according to the eighth-century Shinto chronicle Nihon Shoki, include upwards of 8 million spirits or deities associated with particular places, natural features, ancestors or other forms of sacred presence.

Buddhism, on the other hand, arrived from the Asian mainland in the sixth century and developed alongside, rather than simply replacing, existing practices like Shinto. At first, Buddhist tradition seemed a threat to Shinto practitioners. But over centuries, the two became deeply entangled, as Shinto was supple to a diversity of spiritual embodiments and Buddhist temples came to be built alongside, or include, Shinto shrines within their precincts.

Such is the case in the famous Nara Park complex, which houses the massive Tōdai-ji temple and Kōfuku-ji as well as prominent Shinto sites like Kasuga Taisha. This is due to the fact that during the Nara period (710–794), Japan practiced shinbutsu-shūgō, a deep fusion where local Shinto kami and Buddhist figures were viewed as complementary or different manifestations of the same universal truth.

That is, until the Meiji Restoration, when, in 1868, the government passed laws to separate Shinto from Buddhism (shinbutsu bunri) to promote a national state religion.

Nonetheless, today, Shinto practices may accompany New Year celebrations, visits to shrines, purification rituals and ceremonies surrounding birth. Buddhist institutions are particularly prominent in funerals, memorial rites and relationships with the dead. Because Shinto focuses on the living world, nature, and birth — and even views death as a state of spiritual impurity (kegare) — most modern Japanese families hold Buddhist funerals instead of Shinto ones.

There are other religious traditions in Japan as well.

For example, “after the arrival of Francis Xavier in Japan in 1549, Christianity spread rapidly in Japan by European missionaries” and, despite the banning and severe persecution of Christianity, communities survived – including in places such as Nagasaki and the surrounding islands, where communities of so-called “Hidden Christians” maintained forms of Christian practice through centuries of prohibition. There are also Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox communities alongside newer evangelical and charismatic movements across Japan’s urban centers.

Japan is also home to a remarkable array of new religious movements, from large organizations such as Soka Gakkai — a Nichiren Buddhist tradition that focuses on the development of world peace through the spread of Buddhist humanism and has been heavily involved in Japanese and global politics — to groups that have attracted far less international attention, such as Happy Science and other Japanese-founded religious movements that have developed their own distinctive cosmologies, rituals and institutions.

Article Continued On Next Page

Page: 1 of 3

10/28/2026 1:59:21 AM

more at patheos

Restoring the Watershed of Divine Love

Heron Michelle

An Epilogue to Our God Is an Awesome Brand

Joey Cochran

The "Passion Translation" of the Bible

Gene Veith

Thoughts on a "primitive culture"

Dan Peterson

About Ken Chitwood

Ken Chitwood is a religion nerd, writer and scholar of global Islam and American religion based in Germany. His work has appeared in Newsweek, Salon, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Religion News Service, Christianity Today, and numerous other publications. He is the author of The Muslims of Latin America and the Caribbean. Follow Ken on Twitter @kchitwood.

Patheos Logo Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Subscription Support Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In

Follow Patheos