Lived Religion through a Japanese Lens: New Survey Approaches to Functional Equivalence
Lived Religion through a Japanese Lens: New Survey Approaches to Functional Equivalence
Monday, 7 July 2025: 12:00
Location: FSE001 (Faculty of Education Sciences (FSE))
Oral Presentation
Japan’s unique religious landscape, characterized by non-institutional religion, challenges conventional measures of religiosity developed in Western contexts. Despite this, many people in Japan engage in traditional religious rituals and express belief in spiritual beings, suggesting that alternative measures are needed to fully understand Japanese religiosity. Terms like “folk religion” or “diffused religion,” used to describe non-institutional practices, have explained this unique religious landscape. A long-standing challenge for Japanese scholars has been whether such practices qualify as “religion” and if Western-developed theories can explain them. Critics often argue that theories like secularization and privatization oversimplify Japan’s religious context.
Despite these differences, parallels have been drawn between Japanese and Western religious practices. Japanese cultural practices are often tied to beliefs in deities or the afterlife, and like in the West, these beliefs have shown a steady decline across generations. Such religious sentiment enhances subjective well-being and is linked to nationalism, suggesting functional equivalence with Western religiosity despite different historical contexts. This concept of functional equivalence—where Japanese religiosity serves similar social roles as Western religiosity—broadens our understanding of Japanese religiosity.
To better understand these dynamics, Japanese scholars have developed alternative survey questions that reflect Japan’s unique religious landscape, replacing traditional Western measures of religious belonging, worship attendance, and frequency of prayer. This functional equivalence justifies viewing Japanese religiosity as a legitimate object of study within religious studies, rather than merely a cultural phenomenon, even if it does not align with the strictest definitions of “religion.”
Moreover, it offers valuable insights for the study of “lived religion” in broader sociological contexts. In this presentation, I will share findings from several national representative surveys conducted in Japan, and demonstrate how this approach to examining functional equivalence can be applied to the emerging focus on “lived religion” in contemporary Western religious studies.
Despite these differences, parallels have been drawn between Japanese and Western religious practices. Japanese cultural practices are often tied to beliefs in deities or the afterlife, and like in the West, these beliefs have shown a steady decline across generations. Such religious sentiment enhances subjective well-being and is linked to nationalism, suggesting functional equivalence with Western religiosity despite different historical contexts. This concept of functional equivalence—where Japanese religiosity serves similar social roles as Western religiosity—broadens our understanding of Japanese religiosity.
To better understand these dynamics, Japanese scholars have developed alternative survey questions that reflect Japan’s unique religious landscape, replacing traditional Western measures of religious belonging, worship attendance, and frequency of prayer. This functional equivalence justifies viewing Japanese religiosity as a legitimate object of study within religious studies, rather than merely a cultural phenomenon, even if it does not align with the strictest definitions of “religion.”
Moreover, it offers valuable insights for the study of “lived religion” in broader sociological contexts. In this presentation, I will share findings from several national representative surveys conducted in Japan, and demonstrate how this approach to examining functional equivalence can be applied to the emerging focus on “lived religion” in contemporary Western religious studies.