A thread that kicked off with the question “If Japanese people have no religion, what do they lean on for spiritual support?” caught fire on 5ch’s Nanjatte Jikkyo G (Live News) board.
Discussion ranged from Shinto’s “eight million gods” and lingering traces of Buddhism to the role of the Imperial Family, with some even suggesting “maybe 2channel itself is our spiritual support.” Self-deprecating comments like “Japanese people are just empty inside” also surfaced, as posters traded a variety of takes on whether being irreligious is really a problem.
Wait, what was that from again?
Nevermind, figured it out
It's not really Shinto either though
Is it really though?
Saw it in the paper this morning
You become a believer because you can't believe in yourself
And making believers is profitable
Old kanji really were well-designed characters
Well, 2ch or religion aside, everyone relies on something — that's true for all of us
Japanese people really are empty inside
Every single thing has its own god
And each god is respected
Isn't that the essence of Japan's "harmony above all" spirit?
Sounds like Xenoblade 2
Like how a god comes to dwell in something you've used for a long time — dolls, stuffed animals, even cars and other inanimate objects can end up with a god in them, that's a hard idea to understand
This is basically Xenosaga at this point
I think they just loosely and shallowly absorb teachings and events from a bunch of different religions and call it faith
I wouldn't call that faith though
Well, if just showing up for the event itself counts as part of the faith, then sure, they've got faith
They got steeped in it once and have already moved on from it
Being steeped in Buddhism was a thing of the past — not now
Even today enough of that foundation remains that most people feel disgust toward shady new religions — without that, Japan might have collapsed by now
Sadly, though, Buddhism doesn't have strong teachings against suicide
That's probably part of why the suicide rate is so unusually high
Probably a lot of Japanese people get to stay irreligious thanks to the Imperial Family
That's probably true
For Japanese people, the Imperial Family probably plays a role similar to the Pope
Exactly that
Even without strong faith, it's definitely alive and well
Background and Key Points
Japanese religious identity has puzzled outside observers for over a century, and the numbers behind it are genuinely contradictory. Government-adjacent surveys of religious affiliation (via the Agency for Cultural Affairs’ annual report) often count more claimed adherents than there are people in Japan, because temples and shrines both tally “parishioners” by household or region rather than individual belief. Meanwhile, opinion polls asking “do you personally believe in a religion” routinely show 60-75% saying no. The reconciling fact is that Japanese religious life is largely practice-based rather than belief-based: New Year’s shrine visits (hatsumode), Buddhist funeral and ancestor rites (soshiki bukkyo, “funeral Buddhism”), Shichi-Go-San child blessings, and Christmas-as-a-secular-holiday all coexist without anyone treating them as competing faiths requiring exclusive commitment.
The thread’s actual fault line wasn’t over whether Japanese people are religious, but over whether that even matters — whether an irreligious society is “empty” (post 33) or whether diffuse, low-commitment participation in shrine and temple customs already constitutes a functioning belief system (post 51, 38 on the “eight million gods” framing). Posts 80 and 84, tying the Imperial Family to a Pope-like unifying role, and post 88’s claim that Buddhist residue explains resistance to “shady new religions,” show posters groping toward historical explanations without agreeing on one.
What the thread never mentions, and what a non-Japanese reader would likely miss, is the specific historical rupture behind this ambivalence: the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo sarin attack. That event is widely credited by scholars with turning “religion” (shukyo) into a loaded, suspect word in postwar Japanese public life, which is a large part of why “mushukyo” (no religion) became the default self-description even among people who visit shrines every New Year.
※This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Nanjatte Jikkyo G) thread “Foreigner: “If Japanese People Have No Religion, What Do They Live For?”“.
