Contested Concept and Activities of Religions As Social Capital in Contemporary Japan

As Japanese social policy has oriented to post welfare society due to the stagnated economy and its consequence, the drop of tax revenue for last twenty years, the government stressed the plural actors for social works in a community and the importance of social capital in regions as its facilitating potential. However, Japan has not focus on varieties of religious engagement in public sphere, in contrast with other countries where religious groups and their faith based organizations are regarded as social organizers and/or catalysts.

This research studies the recent social works by traditional and new religions, and then illustrates the dispute over whether a religion should be engaged in society among the press, academician, and religious denominations.

In conclusion, the author first suggests that both the public and religious denominations should not continue to adhere to the legacy of modernization in which Japanese Meiji government controlled religions and forced them to support its militarism and colonialism over seventy years after the World War Two. Second, we can have the cooperative relations between non-believers and religious, by which various social problems will be gradually solved and as a result general social trust will also restored.