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, ce
remonies surrounding deaths and memorial services.
But therein lies its problem.
"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 in northern Japan. "In Islam or Christianity, they hold sermons on spiritual matters. But in Japan nowadays, very few Buddhist priests do that."
Mori, 48, the temple's 21st head priest, was unsure 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."
Across Japan, Buddhism faces a confluence of problems, some familiar to religions in other wealthy nations, others unique.
The lack of successors to chief priests is jeopardising family-run temples nationwide.
While interest in Buddhism is declining in urban areas, the 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 Japanese turn to funeral homes or choose 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 current demographic upheaval in rural Japan.
In Oga, on a peninsula of the same name that faces the Sea of Japan in Akita Prefecture, Buddhist priests are seeing a population and local fishing industry in decline.
"It's not an exaggeration to say 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.
To survive, 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, proselytising. 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 with 170 members. She used to work at a day care centre while her husband was employed at a planning office.
On a recent morning, Mori, the Zuikoji priest, 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, Mori prayed and chanted sutras. Later, he repeated the rituals at another household, 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 on funeral homes – which provide Buddhist priests – when relatives die.
Also, an increasing number are having 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.
