Practice without Faith As Leisure: Analyzing Multiple Dimensions of Religiosity and Those Effects on Happiness in Japan

In the sociology of religion, it is often reported that individual's religiosity is positively associated with subjective well-being in Western societies. In the case of Japan, where its religiosity is characterized by "believing without belonging" as its religious cultural context and "behaving without believing" as the consequence of secularization, the positive association between membership of religious organization (or religious denomination) and happiness are not confirmed. However, by analyzing survey data, we can still observe a positive effect of customary religious behavior on happiness, such as doing the first visit to the shrine after the new year (Hatsu-mōde), participating local festival, and visiting ancestors grave on the equinoctial week. The effect maintains its consistency even if controlling the variables for sex, age, education, household income and social capital. When considering individual's happiness, it seems rather customary behaviors are important than being a member of institutional religions.

In this paper, we attempt to disentangle the multiple dimension of religiosity within Japanese people and to examine the mechanism of customary religious behaviors effecting on happiness. We look at (1) structural changes in individual's religiosity which took place in Japan after 1970's through analyzing the data of "Survey of Japanese Value Orientation" which had been conducted by NHK since 1973 to 2008, and (2) the characteristics of religiosity which are highly shared by today's younger generation in secular-rational Japan. After looking at these overviews, the main question of this paper is (3) what dimensions of religiosity are positively associated with individual's happiness. To examine this, we conducted the other survey with randomly chosen 1,200 samples.

Our results imply that customary religious behaviors are accepted by individuals as leisure mediated by their social capital. These behaviors are positively associated with trusts and membership of voluntary organizations, and function to increase its effects on happiness.