Japanese Religious System in Great Transformation

Abstract

Secularization is one of various trends of modernization. According to secularization theory, this trend consists of three major processes;1)functional-structual differentiation of religious subsystem, 2)rationalization, and 3)privatization. Although Japanese society has some particular religious features, it has certainly been under those processes. In the 1970's, when Japan successfully caught up the Western advanced societies, desecularization as a counter-trend began to appear dialectically. It has three major processes;1)extension of religious functions into marginal areas, 2)derationalization, and 3)quest for moral communities with social bonds of network type. Now Japanese religious system is going to turn to postmodern direction through the complicated interactions between those conflicting trends. Japanese religious system has its own structure consisting of four strata; 1)institutionally established religion, 2)organized religion, 3)new venture religion, and 4)folk religion. Through modernization, this stratified structure had shaped a system of vertically discriminative differentiation. However, the present activations of lower strata 3) and 4) through desecularization will transform this structure into the system of horizontal and conflictual complimentarity.