The Difficulty of Financial Maintenance in the Age of Population Reduction

Abstract

Financial statements of religious communities—such as activity plans, reports, budgets, and settlement of accounts—published by various Buddhist sects every year are valuable data showing their current economic condition.

We can also understand economic conditions on the basis of an attitude survey of respective religious communities conducted from the latter part of the 20th century.

In this article, these data (to which attention has rarely been paid in research papers in the past) were used to mainly discuss the economics of Buddhism and Christianity in Japan today. For this purpose, the field surveys conducted by the author himself for 20 years has been analyzed. Buddhist sects, which had managed their communities by dues and such gained from respective temples, worked out countermeasures against difficulties in maintaining them; but drastic reforms focusing on further slow growth and depopulation are not yet accomplished. In Christian societies, even a pension system of their own is difficult to maintain.

If we keep in mind the life of each believer and think of not only the maintenance of respective temples and churches but also that of an entire religious community, drastic reforms will be necessary to take into consideration the reduction of the scale of organizations that were done by incorporated educational institutions and other organizations.