Religion in Japan: A geographic analysis.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm currently making a series of maps about this, showing by prefecture the distribution of Buddhism (and specific Buddhist schools), membership in formal Shintō shrine networks, Christianity, and mushūkyō ('no religion', but in practice means unaffiliated folk Shintō). I'll upload the maps to this thread a few at a time with analysis of what I think the patterns indicate about the religion or sect in question's historical and demographic development in the Japanese context. Look forward to it.

[afleitch]

Looking forward to this.

[RFayette]

Japan seems to be one of the least Christianized countries in the developed world (Middle East excluded).  Is this because of its geographic isolation?

[Sol]

Cool!

Japan seems to be one of the least Christianized countries in the developed world (Middle East excluded).  Is this because of its geographic isolation?

I'm not well informed to say enough for certain, but I suspect it has to do with Japan's historical political isolation, rather than geography--South Korea is very Christianized.

[ingemann]

I don't think we should underestimate the fact that Japan have had a very complex history with Christianity, from the initial spread of Christianity and the eradication of it. The return of it, the conflict with Christian powers, and finally today. Where Christian rituals have been adopted and the Christian community having much more influence than their population size should give. But also the inability of Christianity to expand.

In Korea on the other hand, Christianity have been closely connected with Korean nationalism and the Korean Christians was more or less the backbone in keeping Korean culture going under the Japanese occupation, while the other religious groups collaborated much more with the Japanese.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Also looking forward to this.

[TDAS04]

Also looking forward to this.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Looking forward to this.

[anvi]

I'll very much enjoy seeing those maps, Nathan.

Not too many Christians in Japan, it is true.  Jesus and his brother Ouriki are buried in Aomori Prefecture though. 

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'll very much enjoy seeing those maps, Nathan.

Not too many Christians in Japan, it is true.  Jesus and his brother Ouriki are buried in Aomori Prefecture though. 

The brother's name is Isukiri. I've been there.

First maps coming by the end of the night.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

First two maps: Buddhism and mushūkyō/folk Shintō! These are the two largest religious demographics in Japan by a vast, vast, vast margin. Mushūkyō is the plurality in all but two prefectures: Fukui on the Sea of Japan coastline north of Kyoto and Lake Biwa, and Hiroshima on the Honshu side of the Seto Inland Sea. I'll be getting into why these prefectures stand out later, in the discussion of specific Buddhist schools. This post will deal more with general patterns, mostly regarding the mushūkyō map since with Buddhism there's, again, more to discuss when we get into the specific schools.




The first pattern that stands out is the east-west divide. Starting at a line roughly around the longitude of Mt Fuji and going westward, Japan is heavily Buddhist in the sense that Buddhist temple networks combined with practitioners of folk Shintō who have some degree of informal Buddhist outlook too make up strong majorities of the population. Eastward from that line, this is not the case. My current theory is that this is because Western Japan contained most of the seats of political power until about four hundred years ago, and most of the seats of religious and high-cultural power until about a hundred and fifty years ago. The temple networks in the West have simply been around for a lot longer (with a few notable exceptions to be discussed later), and Western Japan in general is considered more 'cultured' in this and other respects. Eastern Japan, except for the area immediately around Edo/Tokyo, had something of a 'frontier' ethos until surprisingly recently. In effect, the entire eastern half of the country is Japan's answer to the Unchurched Belt in the Pacific Northwest and northern Rockies.

The second thing other than Fukui and Hiroshima that stands out is Chiba in the far southeast of the country, just east of Tokyo Bay. If HockeyDude were ever to move to Japan, he should strongly consider Chiba Prefecture. Organized religion is incredibly weak there for reasons that I don't really understand, and it has something of a reputation as the New Jersey to the Tokyo Metropolis's New York.

Yamagata, the western of the third-northernmost tier of Honshu prefectures, has higher rates of religious affiliation than the rest of the Northeast. We'll see later that Zen is relatively strong in this part of Japan, and in Yamagata it's depressed the mushūkyō figure from the 70-80% range to the staggeringly low 69.5%! In other words, not quite statistical noise, but close to it, especially since this isn't true of the other Northeastern prefectures in which Zen is strong.

Finally, take note of Kōchi Prefecture in the southern part of the smallest main island, Shikoku. It's only slightly darker green than the other Shikoku prefectures--in raw numbers it's at 76.9% mushūkyō while its neighbors are in the 60-70% range--but it stands out on the map of formal Shintō affiliation too, so there appears to be a specific attachment to Shintō over against both other religions and genuine irreligion going on in this area. I'll theorize about why this may be, with reference to Kōchi's history and some of the major shrines there, in the next post.

[afleitch]

Madeline, are there any significant physical/geographical barriers or divides that are apparent markers of strength?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Madeline, are there any significant physical/geographical barriers or divides that are apparent markers of strength?

On some future maps, especially the Pure Land and Zen maps, there will be, but on these first two maps the only things going on that might constitute something like that are the fact that Hokkaidō has a somewhat different religious makeup from northern Honshū for reasons presumably related to its colonization history, and the fact that both Fukui and Kōchi are on the opposite sides of mountain ranges from the closest metropolitan areas.

The more I think about Chiba the more I just do not get what's going on there. At all.

(Also, note that these maps aren't going to be dealing with Okinawa because things are just so different there from the main islands. No religion has any strength worth mentioning there. It is at least 90% mushūkyō.)

[RI]

What's your data source?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What's your data source?

This (an English translation of the results, but not the writeup, is available on Wikipedia towards the bottom of the 'Religion in Japan' article. There are some instances of conflict between the English and Japanese versions, never more than a couple of percentage points either way; in those instances I've defaulted to the English version because it is, frankly, presented in a manner that's flat-out easier to read). It has a Buddhism map, but unlike mine it doesn't use the same color gradient for each range, and a map of the pluralities of specific types of Buddhism (Pure Land in pink, Zen in cyan, Tendai and Shingon in red, Nichiren in green). It doesn't have any other maps.

Looking at it again, the writeup is from 2009 but the information itself appears to be considerably older, so consider this thread a snapshot of where things stood about eighteen or nineteen years ago (although anecdotally I'm willing to say that things haven't changed that much since then, except for a slight across-the-board strengthening of organized religion in general and SGI in particular).

[RI]

What's your data source?

This (an English translation of the results, but not the writeup, is available on Wikipedia towards the bottom of the 'Religion in Japan' article. There are some instances of conflict between the English and Japanese versions, never more than a couple of percentage points either way; in those instances I've defaulted to the English version because it is, frankly, presented in a manner that's flat-out easier to read). It has a Buddhism map, but unlike mine it doesn't use the same color gradient for each range, and a map of the pluralities of specific types of Buddhism (Pure Land in pink, Zen in cyan, Tendai and Shingon in red, Nichiren in green). It doesn't have any other maps.

Looking at it again, the writeup is from 2009 but the information itself appears to be considerably older, so consider this thread a snapshot of where things stood about eighteen or nineteen years ago (although anecdotally I'm willing to say that things haven't changed that much since then, except for a slight across-the-board strengthening of organized religion in general and SGI in particular).

Thanks.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Very interesting thread; nice work.

Are the options in the data mutually exclusive? Or can someone self-identify as both Shinto and Buddhist?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Very interesting thread; nice work.

Are the options in the data mutually exclusive? Or can someone self-identify as both Shinto and Buddhist?

The latter. Pretty much everyone practices folk Shintō. This data, however, treats it as if it were mutually exclusive, meaning that what the mushūkyō statistic measures is, roughly, that part of the population that practices folk Shintō, and may practice some elements of Buddhism as well, but is uninterested in or distrustful of Buddhist organizations. (It also counts people who genuinely do not observe any kind of religious practice at all, but in Japan that number is very small.)

[Linus Van Pelt]

I see, thanks.

[Antonio the Sixth]

That's really fascinating, Madeleine. I don't have much to say on this topic, but I'll be sure to keep following this.

[H. Ross Peron]

This looks like a great thread, I'm particularly curious if there are statistics on the prevalence of Christianity and the "new religions".

FWIW, and for the sake of comparison here's a map of religion in Korea where the division is of course Buddhist/Christian:

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Statistics on Christianity will be in the next post. I can't find anything on new religions (except SGI, which is classified as a form of Buddhism but separate from Nichiren), which is strange because they are almost certainly bigger at this point than institutional (as opposed to folk) Shintō, possibly bigger than Christianity too.

Thanks for the Korea map. I've been wondering about the distributions there for a while now.

[TDAS04]

Which color represents which religion on the Korea map?

[H. Ross Peron]

Which color represents which religion on the Korea map?

Purple-Protestant
Blue-Buddhist
Orange-Roman Catholic

I find it interesting the map is quite similar to the political map of South Korea with heavily Christian areas pointing for the centre-left party and heavily Buddhist areas voting for the centre-right party which is odd since most of the ethnic Koreans I know are Christians and supporters of Saenuri (and the few Buddhists I know are all centre-left).

[RI]

Here are some South Korea religion maps by municipality (2005 census) that I made:

Religious plurality (Yellow is Buddhist/Won Buddhist and Grey is Non-religious):


Note: The following do not use the same scales as each other.

Buddhist strength:


Protestant strength:


Catholic strength:


Confucian strength:


New Religionist strength:


Non-religious strength: