The Land of the Rising Sun has had a unique spiritual environment. While Shinto has been the belief of life, Buddhism has been the solace in death. Amaterasu and Buddha living together in the kind of harmony that the Children of Abraham do not. But this may be changing. Not because a split has opened between them, but rather, because the beneficiaries of ‘funeral Buddhism’ are literally dying off. And those that aren’t are moving on. And Buddhism’s support of the Japanese war machine during the Second World War did it no favors either.
The triumph and tragedy of the non-Levantine faiths is that they don’t proselytize. And, as the Dalai Lama pointed out in a recently published history, Buddhism, at least as it has been practiced in Tibet, has lacked the public service mission of the Abrahamic faiths. The priesthood in Japanese Buddhism is a family business passed on from one generation to the next, and the latest generation isn’t in a hurry to take over the business. These reasons have played their own parts in the crisis of Japanese Buddhism.
It would be a shame to see the sun set on Buddhism in Japan. But Buddhism’s roots run deep and perhaps it’ll simply be reborn in innovative ways in the next generation.
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