The
New York Times
July 14, 2008
In
Japan, Buddhism May Be Dying Out
By
Norimitsu Onishi
OGA,
Japan — The Japanese have long taken
an easygoing, buffet like approach to religion, ringing
out the old year at Buddhist temples and welcoming the New
Year, several hours later, at Shinto shrines. Weddings hew
to Shinto rituals or, just as easily, to Christian ones.
When it comes to funerals, though, the Japanese have traditionally
been inflexibly Buddhist — so much so that Buddhism
in Japan is often called “funeral Buddhism,”
a reference to the religion’s former near-monopoly
on the elaborate, and lucrative, ceremonies surrounding
deaths and memorial services.
But that expression also describes a religion that, by appearing
to cater more to the needs of the dead than to those of
the living, is losing its standing in Japanese society.
“That’s
the image of funeral Buddhism: that it doesn’t meet
people’s spiritual needs,” said Ryoko Mori,
the chief priest at the 700-year-old Zuikoji Temple here
in northern Japan. “In Islam or Christianity, they
hold sermons on spiritual matters. But in Japan nowadays,
very few Buddhist priests do that.”
Mr. Mori, 48, the 21st head priest of the temple, was unsure
whether it would survive into the tenure of a 22nd.
“If
Japanese Buddhism doesn’t act now, it will die out,”
he said. “We can’t afford to wait. We have to
do something.”
Across Japan, Buddhism faces a confluence of problems, some
familiar to religions in other wealthy nations, others unique
to the faith here.
The lack of successors to chief priests is jeopardizing
family-run temples nationwide.
While interest in Buddhism is declining in urban areas,
the religion’s rural strongholds are being depopulated,
with older adherents dying and birthrates remaining low.
Perhaps most significantly, Buddhism is losing its grip
on the funeral industry, as more and more Japanese are turning
to funeral homes or choosing not to hold funerals at all.
Over the next generation, many temples in the countryside
are expected to close, taking centuries of local history
with them and adding to the demographic upheaval under way
in rural Japan.
Here in Oga, on a peninsula of the same name that faces
the Sea of Japan in Akita Prefecture, Buddhist priests are
looking at the cold math of a population and local fishing
industry in decline.
“It’s
not an exaggeration to say that the population is about
half of what it was at its peak and that all businesses
have also been reduced by half,” said Giju Sakamoto,
74, the 91st head priest of Akita’s oldest temple,
Chorakuji, which was founded around the year 860. “Given
that reality, simply insisting that we’re a religion
and have a long history — Akita’s longest, in
fact — sounds like a fairy tale. It’s meaningless.
“That’s
why I think this place is beyond hope,” Mr. Sakamoto
said at his temple, which sits atop a promontory overlooking
a seaside village.
To survive, Mr. Sakamoto has put his energies into managing
a nursing home and a new temple in a growing suburb of Akita
City. That temple, however, has drawn only 60 households
as members since it opened a couple of years ago, far short
of the 300 said to be necessary for a temple to remain financially
viable.
For centuries, the average Buddhist temple, whose stewardship
was handed down from father to eldest son, served a fixed
membership, rarely, if ever, proselytizing. With some 300
households to cater to, the temple’s chief priest
and his wife were kept fully occupied.
Not only has the number of temples in Japan been dipping
— to 85,994 in 2006, from 86,586 in 2000, according
to the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs — but
membership at many temples has fallen.
“We
have to find other jobs because the temple alone is not
enough,” said Kyo Kon, 73, the head priest’s
wife at Kogakuin, a temple here with 170 members. She used
to work at a day care center while her husband was employed
at a local land planning office.
Not far away at Doshoji, a temple whose membership has fallen
to 85 elderly households, the chief priest, Jokan Takahashi,
59, was facing a problem familiar to most small family-run
businesses in Japan: finding a successor.
His eldest son had undergone the training to become a Buddhist
priest, but Mr. Takahashi was ambivalent about asking him
to take over the temple.
“My
son grew up knowing nothing but this world of the temple,
and he told me he did not feel free,” he said, explaining
that his son, now 28, was working at a company in a nearby
city. “He asked me to let him be free as long as I
was working, and said that he would come back and take over
by the time he turned 35.
“But
considering the future, pressuring a young person to take
over a temple like this might be cruel,” Mr. Takahashi
said, after giving visitors a tour of his temple’s
most important room, an inner chamber with wooden, locker
like cabinets where, it is said, the spirits of his members’
ancestors are kept.
On a recent morning, Mr. Mori, the priest of the 700-year-old
temple, began the day with a visit to a rice farming household
marking the 33rd anniversary of a grandfather’s death.
Bowing before the home altar, Mr. Mori prayed and chanted
sutras. Later, he repeated the rituals at another household,
which was commemorating the seventh anniversary of a grandfather’s
death.
Increasingly, many Japanese, especially those in urban areas,
have eschewed those traditions. Many no longer belong to
temples and rely instead on funeral homes when their relatives
die. The funeral homes provide Buddhist priests for funerals.
According to a 2007 report by the Japan Consumers’
Association, the average cost of a funeral, excluding the
cemetery plot, was $21,500, of which $5,100 covered services
performed by a Buddhist priest.
As recently as the mid-1980s, almost all Japanese held funerals
at home or in temples, with the local Buddhist priest playing
a prominent role.
But the move to funeral homes has sharply accelerated in
the last decade. In 1999, 62 percent still held funerals
at home or in temples, while 30 percent chose funeral homes,
according to the Consumers’ Association. But in 2007,
the preferences were reversed, with 28 percent selecting
funerals at home or in temples, and 61 percent opting for
funeral homes.
In addition, an increasing number of Japanese are deciding
to have their loved ones cremated without any funeral at
all, said Noriyuki Ueda, an anthropologist at the Tokyo
Institute of Technology and an expert on Buddhism.
“Because
of that, Buddhist priests and temples will no longer be
involved in funerals,” Mr. Ueda said.
He said Japanese Buddhism had been sapped of its spiritual
side in great part because it had compromised itself during
World War II through its close ties with Japan’s military.
After Buddhist priests had glorified fallen soldiers and
given them special posthumous Buddhist names, talk of pacifism
sounded hollow.
Mr. Mori, the priest here, said that after the war there
was a desire for increasingly lavish funerals with prestigious
Buddhist names. These names — with the highest ranks
traditionally given to those who have led honorable lives
— are routinely purchased now, regardless of a dead
person’s conduct in life.
“Soldiers,
who gave their lives for the country, were given special
posthumous Buddhist names, so everybody wanted one after
that, and prices went up dramatically,” Mr. Mori said.
“Everyone was getting richer, so everyone wanted one.
“But
that gave us a bad image,” he said, adding that the
price of the top name in Akita was about $3,000 —
though that was a small fraction of the price in Tokyo.
Indeed, that image is reinforced by the way the business
of funerals and memorial services is conducted. Fees are
not stated and are left to the family’s discretion,
and the relatives generally feel an unspoken pressure to
be quite generous. Money is handed over in envelopes, and
receipts are not given. Temples, with their status as religious
organizations, pay no taxes.
It was partly to dispel this bad image that Kazuma Hayashi,
41, a Buddhist priest without a temple of his own, said
he founded a company, Obohsan.com (obohsan means priest),
three years ago in a Tokyo suburb. The company dispatches
freelance Buddhist priests to funerals and other services,
cutting out funeral homes and other middlemen.
Prices, which are at least a third lower than the average,
are listed clearly on the company’s Web site. A 10
percent discount is available for members.
“We
even give out receipts,” Mr. Hayashi said.
Mr. Hayashi argued that instead of divorcing Japanese Buddhism
further from its spiritual roots, his business attracted
more people with its lower prices. The highest-ranking posthumous
name went for about $1,500, a rock-bottom price.
“I
know that, originally, that’s not what Buddhism was
about,” Mr. Hayashi said of the top name. “But
it’s a brand that our customers choose. Some really
want it, so that means there’s a strong desire there,
and we have to respond to it.”
After apologizing for straying from Buddhism’s ideals,
Mr. Hayashi said he offered his customers the highest-ranking
name, albeit with a warning: “In short, that this
is different from going to a shop in town and buying a handbag,
you know, a Gucci bag.”
