I quite hesitated to put this here, because I think that the subject was too 'heavy' - I believe that the right to choose religion is one of the basic human rights, and no one has the right to influence other decision regarding of this. Anyway, I tried to make this as light as possible, and in the end, it is you yourself who have to choose the religion that you think is right (or not to choose at all...), because finally it is you who have to take all the responsibility that will ensue. Yuri had to write a report about how Japanese think about religion, and since she thought that it would be interesting to include how non-Japanese think about it, she asked me to give some comments. For those of you who haven't known it yet, lots of Japanese have a quite strange perception about religion. For example, it's normal for somebody to celebrate Christmas on December 25th, while on new year eve 6 days later, he goes praying in a 神社 (jinja - Japanese shrine). Or it is also normal for someone to have his birth celebrate by a Shinto priest, pledge his wedding in front of Christian pastor, and have his funeral ceremony by a Buddhist monk. Quite a complicated religion... :-)
Well, anyway, when Yuri, me, and Yuka (who was also being kidnapped to help her :-) ), met in a family restaurant to talk about that, Yuri explained the outline of her report - while eating. She told us that she also wanted to put the background of major religions in the world (to make the report longer :-) ), and she was thinking about writing on Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism. She had already asked her other friend about Christianity, and she would write about Islam from my account. But when she wanted to add Buddhism, she knew no Buddhist to whom she could ask. If your social science textbook told you that most Japanese are either Shintoist or Buddhist, and you think that it should be easy to find a Buddhist here, well, you might need to add some correction in your book. I don't know the real fact either, but my Japanese friends told me (and so far I found so), that most Japanese believe no religion. And since both Yuri and Yuka also have no religion, they also have no clue about Buddhism.
Actually Buddhism can be checked quickly in internet, but we didn't have any internet connection at that time, so we couldn't do that. That's when Yuka got a bright idea: in Japan, there is a dictionary called 広辞苑 (kojien) which more or less can be used as an encyclopedia, due to it's detailed explanation on a word. And this dictionary is often available in an electronic dictionary - which three of us brought - and she wasted no time to find the explanation and started dictating it to Yuri. The explanation was quite detailed, she could even find about the praying ritual that a Buddhist has to do.
"The Buddhist had to do a praying ceremony twice a day in the morning and evening in front of the small altar... hey, wait a sec, I do this kind of ceremony everyday... that means that I'm a Buddhist!", Yuka looked quite perplexed.
Yuri and I looked at Yuka disbelievingly. "You do the ceremony everyday, and you don't know that it was a Buddhist ritual?"
"No", Yuka was thinking for a while. "My grandpa told me to do that everyday, and I just do that. Of course I know that I'm praying while doing that, but I didn't know that I was praying for Buddha."
It looked like Yuri was trying to scan her memory - trying to check whether she might also belong to one of the religions - unconsciously :-).
Yuka's 'revelation' :-) brought a new topic to our chat: whether they believe in God or not, despite the fact that they don't have religion - or for Yuka - despite the fact that she thought that she didn't have religion :-).
"I believe that God does exist", said Yuri. "I may have no religion, but I believe that there's a greater power that arrange our everyday life."
Yuka also said that she believe in God, and that she even believed in the concept of fate and sin. "If you believe in sin, it will prohibit you from doing something bad, isn't it?"
That seemed to be the answer to a question that often being asked to me, about why people with religion sometimes still act badly. In the past, I had a preconception that a person with no religion was bad. However, after came to Japan and met lots of people with no religion but they still are good persons - even better than some people I know who proudly said that they have religion - I started to think that it's not just a religion that makes a person better. It is whether they really believe in God or not. I still believe that my religion is right, but by only having a religion, it won't make you a good person compared to anybody else. If you don't truly believe in God, if you don't truly believe in the concept of sin - that when a person does something bad, he will get a punishment equal to what he'd done - I don't think that you'd be a better person.
Our discussion - which actually out of the topic :-) - left Yuri with lots of material (and lots of work :-) ) to put in her report. Anyway, she said that she would use our conclusion for her report: It is not by having religion that made us a better person - if you don't actually believe in God, it won't bring you any further.
By the way, I think Yuka's 'revelation' won't change her a lot from now on, given the fact that she had believe in God even when she still didn't know that she's a believer in any religion. It made her a good person - may be thousands times better than those who proclaim that they're a believer, but not practicing on what they believe.
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