WP2 Literary Review

Jackie Bangle

Writing 2: Professor Johnson

12/6/2020
 There are about 4,300 religions in the world. Varying areas of the Earth determine how

opposing cultures live their lives and mourn their deaths. By studying Japanese culture, I was

introduced to an entirely different lifestyle from what I am familiar with. To understand this

difference in lifestyle in more depth, I examined five peer-review articles, which all depict

differing views on religion and spirituality within the Japanese culture. All five articles are

within the disciplines of religion or anthropology, which allows for an interdisciplinary

perspective on the research and evidence provided. These articles were the starting point of my

literature review and led me to come up with one central conversation that encompassed a shared

aspect of each article. The conversation is about how economic status, social status, gender, and

psychological thought processes all play a role in the way someone experiences life. My

conversational goal is to expand on how these factors relate to religion and spirituality in regards

to life and death in Japanese Culture. This literature review unearths this conversation by

analyzing central ideas like the power of spirituality and religion. As well as identifying parallels

such as how physical attributes connected to spiritual identities and pointing out missed

opportunities like a prediction of how spirituality will age and the changing of traditions. To do

this I organized my peer-reviewed articles chronologically and explained their contributions to

my conversation. My findings present through the methodology of a qualitative ethnography.

Meaning, with the evidence from my articles I will be producing contextual real-world

knowledge about the behaviors and shared beliefs of the Japanese culture.

Studying a subject we can’t physically see or touch results in the accumulation of various

theories and narratives. Japanese scholars are well aware of this when it comes to their work

devoted to ancestor worship. 53 years ago author and Japanese scholar Herman Ooms wrote “

The Religion of The Household,” in the discipline of religious studies. This article analyses how
Japan has built a culture where individual ritual commemoration is done for those who have

passed on. Not only that but his article discussed how when spirits are threatened to disappear

from the memory of the living the ancestor cult saves them from complete oblivion. An ancestor

cult is the respect and propitiation of lost loved one's spirits, known as ancestors. Ancestors are

honored to avoid possible consequences and obtain positive fortune. By following the

experiential evidence and religious traditions provided in the article we learn that ancestral

relationships are not strictly in line with blood relations. We can assume other factors such as

social, economic, spiritual, and religious status determine one's life after death. Therefore, your

role in your living life will affect your treatment and circumstances in the afterlife. To add to this

conversation there is the final process known as the mortuary ritual that your body goes through

before your spirit leaves to another world. Which could also play a role in a person's

circumstances after death.

Compared to today, in the past, much more time has been dedicated to tending to the

dead and practicing mortuary rituals in Japan. Although these rituals were shortened their

importance remains constant. More details on this matter are established by author Hyunchul

Kim in the article “The Purification Process of Death,” which is written under the discipline of

anthropology. Within this piece, we find ​comparative e​ vidence of mortuary rituals from Kim by

the attending of sixty-two funerals and several subsequent memorial services. The evidence

provides us with concepts regarding the process of Japanese mortuary rituals and how culture,

class, social standings, and the reason for death all play a part to determine the reception an

individual will receive. To add to the ongoing conversation, Kim reported that the family must

purchase almost all of the funeral accoutrements and pay the undertakers for their services. Here

is a clear example of how economic status would determine the expenses spent on the funeral
and the religious beliefs would determine the type of priest hired for the funerals. Apart from the

religious, social, and psychological aspects of the mortuary services, Kim found that the

continued series of formal memorial services are above all else concerned with the purification

or elimination of death pollution and the distribution or replenishment. Now that we know more

about the process of death the focus of the conversation is going to shift to life in Japanese

culture.

Japanese spiritual therapies were immensely popular over the last decade but began to

fade away. Since limited research is available, author Ioannis Gaitanidis set up a few interviews

with women who still practice these therapies. These interviews are presented in Gaitanidis’

article “Spiritual Therapies in Japan,” which is under the discipline of religion. The audience is

provided with an insight into the world of healing rites. The experiential evidence shows us there

are multiple kinds of therapies but my center focus is going to be on Theta Healing. This practice

is about channeling universal energy to create physical, emotional, and spiritual healing."

Sessions that involve healing therapists require the participant to explore deeper into their

subconscious and find aspects of themselves that may be preventing them from achieving a task.

Sessions are generally an hour long and the theta healer can work on physical healing, changing

beliefs, instilling positive new thoughts and emotions, clearing spaces, and much more. This

article adds to our conversation about the physical and mental aspects in life. The Japanese

culture attempts to reach within the mind spiritually to channel positive energy at a chance at

fixing a person's beliefs or point of view. The next article will follow up on the ideas of healing

and explain why spirituality is sometimes chosen over traditional religion.

Any individual is capable of spirituality, but author Komatsu Kayoko focuses on women

in her article “Spirituality and Women in Japan.” Within the discipline of religion, Kayoko
personally interviewed twenty-two women to get a glimpse inside spirituality and healing in

Japan. With Kayoko’s research, we are provided with experiential evidence of women who have

found ways to live outside established, organized religions. They sense in spiritual ways of life a

power with the ability to activate collective energies capable of achieving global social change

that is motivated by joy and capable of envisioning a better world. The actions of women such as

these are bringing about a transformation in views of gender in Japan's participation in

spirituality and healing. Women have the challenge of holding a job and are subjected to the

additional demand that they have children, the earlier the better and that they fulfill their role as

mothers. Societal standards such as these leave women depressed and overwhelmed in terms of

their body and mind. This contributes to the discourse of the subject and shows the struggles

within Japanese society that women face socially. Over time spirituality and healing techniques

were found to aid women when dealing with these physical stressors and their psychological

worries. Although some people identify with spiritual entities, others claim physical objects as a

place of worship.

This idea prompts the question of religious artifacts and how much spiritual power they

encompass. Author Fabio R. Gygi dared to investigate this notion with his peer-reviewed article

“Things that Believe Talismans, Amulets, Dolls, and How to Get Rid of Them.” Written under

the discipline of religion the article's main concentration is whether religious objects are

understood as expressions of cognitively held beliefs, or if belief emerges as the result of

practices involving these religious objects. The evidence utilized comes from Gygi’s

observations regarding Japanese religions and his first-hand experiences with interviewing

individuals from various spiritual backgrounds. The author argues that the material presence of

an object is more important than bringing out the meanings these artifacts are imbued with. Gygi
also stated that the material presence of these objects was not a psychological projection of

interior belief into the external world, but rather the ability to externalize the belief, therefore

keeping it at arm’s length. Making belief part of your material environment protects you from

having to articulate or verify what you believe. What Gygi’s observations append to the

discussion is the strength of religion and spirituality. People spend their lives worshiping a

higher power that they have no evidence of. It is the mindset and the belief that brings their

religion, spirituality, or God to the physical world.

Through the review of those 5 articles, we can see the similarities and how they all

contribute to the initial conversation of economic status, social status, gender, and psychological

thought processes all playing a role in Japanese culture. As well as how these factors relate to

religion and spirituality in regards to life and death. Although lots of theories and ideas were

covered, some missed opportunities in the evidence were predicting how these traditions would

play out in the future. We were already informed that spiritual therapy practice is declining, so is

there a way to stop the end of these techniques and get the younger generations involved? Or

why not expand on how the afterlife and ancestor cults vary between Japanese religions and the

true consequences of death pollution. All these authors did an impressive job within their articles

but religion is such a broad topic so many theories and questions remain untouched.

Although this conversation must conclude, as they all do, the theories and discoveries

that can be made among Japanese religion and spirituality are endless. Literary reviews open a

world for intersectionality between disciplines which I conveyed in my connecting of articles.

This topic has been researched for decades yet there are still missed opportunities and gaps in

evidence. Hopefully, as time progresses the gaps are filled and more evidence is provided so the

chain of authors sharing their evidence and personal findings can continue throughout the ages.
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