Born Shinto, Die Buddhist?
A Journey to the Pure Land or a Guardian at Home
The other day, I received a very interesting message from a Spiritual Japan Journal subscriber:“Are there Shinto funerals in Japan? I thought there were no Shinto funerals in Japan. I have never heard of them.”
Reading these words, I was taken aback. It is true that we Japanese visit shrines for 安産祈願 (Anzan-kigan - Prayers for safe childbirth) before we are born, and after birth, we visit shrines for every celebration of a child’s growth, such as Omiyamairi (shrine visit for newborns) and Shichi-Go-San.(Note: I previously introduced how Japanese people live alongside shrines in the article "The Life of Japanese People and Shinto Shrines.")
Despite living so closely with the 神 (Kami - Gods) during our lives, once someone passes away, the funeral is conducted in the “Buddhist style” as a matter of course. Shinto funerals do exist, but their ratio is said to be only about 3%. Although I was born and raised in Japan, I have never attended a Shinto funeral, nor have I even heard friends talk about one.
Why do we visit shrines so often while we are alive, yet entrust the closing of our lives to Buddhism? Until I received this question, I had never even questioned this “distortion.” It was simply too natural a part of the Japanese landscape.
However, prompted by this simple question, I conducted deep research and discovered an amazing “system of prayer” and a historical drama that Japanese people have built over hundreds of years. In this issue, based on the question from our subscriber, I would like to unravel the mystery of the “Japanese funeral” that we accept unconsciously.
A Free View of Life and Death Seen in Drama and Anime
If you watch Japanese TV dramas, movies, or Anime, you may notice that the “dying words” or “confessions of love” spoken by characters contain a surprisingly contradictory mix of concepts when viewed religiously.
For example, in the recent massive hit Demon Slayer (Kimetsu no Yaiba), there is a famous scene where a character wishes on the verge of death, “If we are reborn as humans, will you take me as your wife?” This worldview is based on the Buddhist concept of 輪廻転生 (Rinne Tensho - Reincarnation). Originally, reincarnation in Indian Buddhism was a “cycle of suffering,” and the ultimate goal was to liberate oneself (Nirvana) from it. However, Japanese sensibility has freely reinterpreted this system as a “romantic device to reunite with loved ones.” Here, we can see a Japanese “attachment to the present world,” which differs from strict Buddhism that denies attachment to this world.
And in Dragon Ball, loved all over the world, when the protagonist Goku dies, he ascends to the sky with a halo above his head. While there is a Shinto structure where 神 (Kami - Gods) watch over the world from above the sky, there are also Buddhist developments such as reincarnation. Western angels, Eastern Buddhism, and ancient Japanese Shinto... all these elements coexist without discomfort within a single story.
This is not limited to anime. In Japanese TV dramas, Shinto lines like “I will watch over you from the sky even after I die,” philosophical expressions like “I will live on in your heart,” or Christian phrases like “I’ll be waiting for you in Heaven” are used quite normally.
Of course, these are just fiction. However, the “fact” that such a free worldview is depicted and that we accept it naturally without any discomfort seems to me to symbolize the Japanese view of religion. No Japanese person gets angry at this “anything goes” worldview, saying, “That’s different from the doctrine.”
I suddenly wonder: do those of you in India, the Islamic world, or the Christian cultural sphere watch these Japanese anime and feel that the “religious view is messy”? Or is such free expression in the world of entertainment “normal” in your countries as well?
