Faith-related Organizations Rising in Japan despite an Unawareness of Spirituality

Dynamics of the Connection between Volunteering and Religiousness

Abstract

This paper discusses a connection between volunteering and religiousness from 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake to 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. In Japan, the national government used particular religions to govern the country; such as Buddhism in the medieval period and Shintoism in the modernization. Voluntary actions were lead by some spirituality under the Constitution of Japan, established after the World War II. This paper treats religious actors as faith-related organizations not as faith-based organizations. As stated Tatsuya Shirahase’s research (2015) on the sociology of religion. Furthermore, from another study on the sociology of religion, Keishin Inaba (2011) projected many kinds of activities in the stricken areas of Tohoku earthquake. Based on a comparison among about 20 years practice with these former studies, voluntaryism for seeking a proper governance and nomadization of volunteering were already apparent in the action by faith-related organizations.