OGA, Japan — The Japanese have long taken an easygoing, buffetlike approach to religion, ringing out the old year at Buddhist temples and welcoming the new year, several hours later, at Shinto shrines ...

When World War II ended with Japan’s unconditional surrender in August 1945, the various sects of Japanese Buddhism lost the foundation they had all shared in State Shintō, falling into a state of ...

All major religions undergo change in their spread. That has definitely been the case with Buddhism in its spread north through China and Korea into Japan. Buddhism came to Japan late, almost 1,000 ...

Buddhism began around 2,500 years ago. Its founder was a person known to history as Siddhartha Gautama. Siddhartha was born into a noble family in the kingdom of Kapilavastu, close to what is now the ...

"For many families, encounters with priests at Buddhist temples are confined only to funerals. But due to the coronavirus pandemic, funeral services became streamlined, exacerbating people's ...

We turn now to Japan, a country that has over 77,000 Buddhist temples. For years, they have been a fixture in cultural life there. Yet many are expected to close - 40 percent of them in the next 25 ...

This article explores the part Shinto has played in Japanese life and culture throughout the country's history, and its shared its spiritual, cultural, and political roles with Buddhism and ...

This article examines the process by which Buddhism became a "religion" in Meiji Japan (1868-1912). As part of the climate of modernization, foreigners, government officials, and the press ...

Nichiren Buddhism differs from other schools of Buddhism in focusing on this world, and in its view that it is the only correct tradition. Nichiren Buddhism is a Japanese Buddhist movement in the ...

In the early Meiji period, Japanese Buddhists had to come to terms with a number of profound changes. The prime challenge for the clerical elite was the radically new religious policy of the Meiji ...