Problems of teaching about religion in Japan: another textbook controversy against peace?

Abstract Although inter‐religious conflicts have not yet surfaced as major social problems in Japan, religious education for peace and tolerance is needed in the country as much as in other countries. This article aims to disclose that, in light of political contexts, supposedly neutral 'teaching about religion' can be as problematic as history education is in Japan. The central problem lies in how to represent the nationalistic aspects of Shinto to the 'non‐religious' majority of Japanese. While each nation has its own variety of 'civil religion', Shinto, being an ethnic religion, can be entangled with nationalism more than other kinds of religion. I will begin by explaining the prejudice of 'non‐religious' Japanese people against religion as a background to the discussion of religious education in Japan. I will then take an example from a recent children's book and critique the politics of teaching about religion, in particular, Shinto in contrast with other religions. By employing my own survey data, I will also show how small the presence of Shinto is in Japanese education, even in higher education, where religious education is conducted most freely. I will further explain historically why this is so and what kind of problems the issue has been causing. Keywords: Teaching about religionJapanese history textbook controversyShintoNationalismOrientalismCivil religion Notes 1. The textbook was adopted by 0. 4% of secondary schools in Japan in 2006. For sources on this issue that are easily accessible in English, see http: //en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Japaneseₕistory ₜextbookcontroversies. 2. According to the 2000 World Values Survey, 23. 1% of Japanese respondents say that they are faithful (choices are 'faithful', 'not faithful', 'atheist', 'have no idea', 'no answer'). This is the second lowest among the 60 countries surveyed (Dentsu‐Sōken and Japan Research Center, Citation2004, p. 194). 3. According to the 2000 World Values survey, 12% of Japanese respondents say that they are atheists. On the other hand, only 8. 4% say that they have not been to any church, temple or shrine at all lately (Dentsu‐Sōken and Japan Research Center, Citation2004, pp. 192–193). 4. The same survey shows 4. 6% of Japanese respondents think that religious organizations in their country are coping well with current social problems. This is the lowest among the 60 countries surveyed (Dentsu‐Sōken and Japan Research Center, Citation2004, p. 198). 5. In ethics classes, which are elective and taken by a small number of students, teachers can describe in more detail the teachings of major religions. However, they are treated purely as 'thoughts', not as 'religions'. There is not even the question "What is religion? " in ethics textbooks. 6. To be precise, people who support this kind of religious education have always existed in post‐war Japan, however small in number. 7. While the phrase 'the feeling of awe' is common, the description of its object varies slightly from advocate to advocate, for example, 'towards some majestic being beyond comprehension', 'towards some being beyond human power', 'towards the source of life', 'towards the forces of nature'. 8. Strictly, it says that he 'supervised' it, but the other people who worked on the book are scarcely mentioned. 9. In Japanese there is no distinction between the plural and the singular form of a noun. 10. Although in the preceding chapters the book does not explicitly argue that Shinto is superior to other ethnic religions, in this last chapter it shows that both Hinduism and Judaism are intolerant, bellicose religions while Shinto is not. 11. In this survey a 'course in religion' means a course whose major theme is related to religion. I picked every course which discusses religion in some way or other for at least one‐third of the entire course. The 100 colleges are randomly selected. 12. The number of all four‐year colleges in Japan is 698. Among them, there are 584 non‐religious colleges, while there are two Shinto, 29 Buddhist, 77 Christian, two new religion and four Confucian colleges. I classified colleges according to whether or not they currently announce on their websites that they are religious. 13. Strictly speaking, Kōgakukan University was closed in 1946 and reestablished in 1962. 14. To be precise, the Imperial University of Tokyo had a 'chair' (not 'department') of 'Shinto studies', while other universities had its equivalents under different names. 15. The book is the fifth volume of a series of five books. The other four volumes are on Buddhism, Christianity/Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism respectively, written by different scholars. There is no volume exclusively on Shinto.