In many parts of the world I have noticed that religion has and is still often used as uniting factor for political or economic means. This in my opinion is true of the United States in a way because religion is often intertwined with how people think of certain issues that can translate in the stances that certain political parties have. However, in the short time I've been in Japan I have not seen much strong religious affiliation like I see in the U.S. that may sometimes be very divisive. This is not to say that individuals in Japan are religious, as there are plenty of shrines and temples in Japan, but it seems to be different and perhaps more focused in values rather than worship.
This leads me to something I noticed yesterday during our time spent with the Waseda students. The topic of religion came up when we visited the shrine near the University and a fellow student asked what type of shrine it was. I was surprised that despite the shrine being so near the university none of the students knew what the name of the shrine was nor the religion of the shrine. However, all of them surprisingly knew the rituals that were relevant to visiting a shrine and shared that they all had visited shrines often with their parents as children. This experience reminded me of the reading because it mentions the sort of modern religion in Japan today as a mixture of some different religions ultimately making for a new religion that is not very traditional and mostly based on keeping traditional rituals alive. This experience helped me see that the understanding of religion that I have coming from the United States is different from that of the students I met from Waseda. I also began to see that the amount of people that have a religious affiliation in Japan is low as most of the student identifies themselves as not belonging to any religion.
From this experience I am curious about the nature of religious association of the Japanese people in general and the extent of religious practices today. Perhaps the the number of people that would admit to practicing a certain religion may differ with different age groups and gender.
With this I would also like to know how many younger or older people participate in the festivals and pay respects at the shrines on a regular basis. Is there religious motivation behind participation or have these festivities become more cultural?
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