The Article 20 of the

Japanese Constitution The Constitution of Japan (Shinjitai: , Kyūjitai: , Hepburn: ) is the constitution of Japan and the supreme law in the state. Written primarily by American civilian officials working under the Allied occupation of Japan, the constitution ...

provides for

freedom of religion Freedom of religion or religious liberty is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. It also includes the freed ...

in Japan, and the government generally respects this right in practice.

Religious demography

The

government of Japan The Government of Japan consists of legislative, executive and judiciary branches and is based on popular sovereignty. The Government runs under the framework established by the Constitution of Japan, adopted in 1947. It is a unitary stat ...

does not require religious groups to report their membership, so it was difficult to accurately determine the number of adherents to different religious groups. The Agency for Cultural Affairs reported in 2017 that membership claims by religious groups totaled 182 million. This is out of a total population of 127 million, but does not account for overlapping memberships (some families may be registered at both a Buddhist temple and a Shinto shrine), or double membership due to change of address. This number, which is nearly twice Japan's population, reflects many citizens' affiliation with multiple religions. For example, it is very common for Japanese to practice both

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

and

Shinto Shinto () is a religion from Japan. Classified as an East Asian religion by scholars of religion, its practitioners often regard it as Japan's indigenous religion and as a nature religion. Scholars sometimes call its practitioners ''Shintois ...

rites. According to the Agency's annual yearbook, 85 million persons identify themselves as

, 88 million as Buddhist, 2 million as Christian, and 8 million follow "other" religions, including

Tenrikyo is a Japanese new religion which is neither strictly monotheistic nor pantheistic, originating from the teachings of a 19th-century woman named Nakayama Miki, known to her followers as "Oyasama". Followers of Tenrikyo believe that God of Origin, ...

, Seicho-no-Ie, the

Church of World Messianity Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chris ...

, and PL Kyodan. Academics estimate that there are 120 thousand Muslims in Japan, 10 percent of whom are Japanese citizens. The Israeli Embassy estimates that there are approximately 2,000

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

in the country, most of them foreign-born. As of December 2017, under the 1951 Religious Juridical Persons Law, the Government recognized 157 schools of Buddhism. The six major schools of Buddhism are

Tendai , also known as the Tendai Lotus School (天台法華宗 ''Tendai hokke shū,'' sometimes just "''hokke shū''") is a Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition (with significant esoteric elements) officially established in Japan in 806 by the Japanese m ...

Shingon Shingon monks at Mount Koya is one of the major schools of Buddhism in Japan and one of the few surviving Vajrayana lineages in East Asia, originally spread from India to China through traveling monks such as Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra. Kn ...

Jōdō , meaning "the way of the ''jō''", or is a Japanese martial art using a short staff called ''jō''. The art is similar to ''bōjutsu'', and is strongly focused upon defense against the Japanese sword. The ''jō'' is a short staff, usually a ...

Zen Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...

(

Sōtō Sōtō Zen or is the largest of the three traditional sects of Zen in Japanese Buddhism (the others being Rinzai and Ōbaku). It is the Japanese line of the Chinese Cáodòng school, which was founded during the Tang dynasty by Dòngsh� ...

and

Rinzai The Rinzai school ( ja, , Rinzai-shū, zh, t=臨濟宗, s=临济宗, p=Línjì zōng) is one of three sects of Zen in Japanese Buddhism (along with Sōtō and Ōbaku). The Chinese Linji school of Chan was first transmitted to Japan by Myōan ...

sects),

Nichiren Nichiren (16 February 1222 – 13 October 1282) was a Japanese Buddhist priest and philosopher of the Kamakura period. Nichiren declared that the Lotus Sutra alone contains the highest truth of Buddhist teachings suited for the Third Age of ...

, and

Nanto Rokushū The Six Schools of Nara Buddhism, also known as the ''Rokushū'' 六宗 (also ''Rokushuu/Rokushu''), were academic Buddhist sects. These schools came to Japan from Korea and China during the late 6th and early 7th centuries. All of these schools ...

. In addition, there are a number of Buddhist lay organizations, including Soka Gakkai, which reported a membership of eight million. The two main schools of Shinto are the

Association of Shinto Shrines The is a religious administrative organisation that oversees about 80,000 Shinto shrines in Japan. These shrines take the Ise Grand Shrine as the foundation of their belief. It is the largest Shrine Shinto organization in existence. Descriptio ...

and Kyohashinto. In addition, the postwar legal changes ended the Japanese imperial regime's use of discourses of "not religion" (hishūkyō) to protect the religious privileges of state backed Shinto movements.

Status of religious freedom

Legal and policy framework

The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the government respects this right in practice. At all levels, the Japanese Government seeks to protect this right in full and does not tolerate its abuse, either by governmental or private actors. As of December 2016, 181,098 out of 216,927 religious groups were certified by the government as religious organizations with corporate status, according to the Agency for Cultural Affairs. The government does not require religious groups to register or apply for certification; however, certified religious organizations receive tax benefits. More than 83 percent of religious groups were certified by 2016. In the wake of the 1995 sarin gas attack on Tokyo's subway system by

Aum Shinrikyo , formerly , is a Japanese doomsday cult founded by Shoko Asahara in 1987. It carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 and was found to have been responsible for the Matsumoto sarin attack the previous year. The group says ...

, the Religious Juridical Persons Law was amended in 1996 to provide the government with the authority to supervise certified religious groups. The amended law requires certified religious organizations to disclose their assets to the government and empowers the government to investigate possible violations of regulations governing for-profit activities. Authorities have the right to suspend a religious organization's for-profit activities if they violate these regulations.

Restrictions on religious freedom

Government policy and practice contributed to the generally free practice of religion. Unlike in previous reporting periods, there were no reports of restrictions on religious freedom. There were no reports of religious prisoners or detainees in the country.

Forced religious conversion

There is a possibility that victims of international abduction by a Japanese parent will be raised in a different religious context from those in which the parent(s) report the victim to have been abducted. Human Rights Without Frontiers reported a long-standing and persistent trend of abduction and deprivation of religious freedom in Japan for the purpose of religious de-conversions, in which families abduct a loved one who has adopted a faith seen as too extreme, confine them, and pressure them to give up their faith. The organization criticized the inactivity of Japanese police and judicial authorities in investigating and prosecuting this form of domestic violence in which kidnappings and long-term detentions are organized by family members in cooperation with " exit counselors". Victims can suffer from severe psychological problems including PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). HRWF emphasizes the extreme case of one Toro Goto, a

Unification Church The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, widely known as the Unification Church, is a new religious movement, whose members are called Unificationists, or " Moonies". It was officially founded on 1 May 1954 under the name Holy Sp ...

member, who was violently abducted and held in isolation for 12 years. Japanese officials are accused of acting passively and to have failed to investigate and indict his kidnappers. HRWF gives two pages of recommendations to the Japanese authorities and civil society in the conclusion of their report. HRWF submitted its report at the United Nations' 98th session of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances held 31 October 2012 in Geneva, Switzerland, entitled ''Religious Discrimination in Japan''. Forum for Religious Freedom Europe
Conference at the U.N. in Geneva
press release The U.S. State Department used the Human Rights Without Frontiers report and in the 2011 annual International Religious Freedom Report to Japan summarized that

deprogrammer Deprogramming is a controversial tactic that attempts to help someone who has "strongly held convictions," often coming from cults or New Religious Movements (NRM). Deprogramming aims to assist a person who holds a controversial or restrictive be ...

s cooperate with family members on abductions of members of different minority religious groups for several years. Although the number of cases decreased in the 1990s, abductions and deprogramming of Unification Church members continue to occur.U.S. State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor
International Religious Freedom Report for 2011, Japan
/ref>

Other cases

U.S. State Department in its annual 2011 report mentioned a case of 14 Muslims, who filed a lawsuit against the government, when leaked documents showed, that

Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department The serves as the prefectural police department of Tokyo Metropolis. Founded in 1874, it is headed by a Superintendent-General, who is appointed by the National Public Safety Commission, and approved by the Prime Minister. The Tokyo Met ...

and the

National Police Agency National Police may refer to the national police forces of several countries: *Afghanistan: Afghan National Police *Haiti: Haitian National Police *Colombia: National Police of Colombia *Cuba: Cuban National Police *East Timor: National Police of ...

systematically collected their personal data, religious activities and associations, allegedly because of their religion. Case was still ongoing on end of 2011.

Societal abuses and discrimination

Christian employees are widely expected to submit to group norms and work on the Sabbath and/or

Christmas Day Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world. A feast central to the Christian liturgical year, ...

when asked, despite Japanese employment law.

References

* United States Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor
Japan: International Religious Freedom Report 2007
an

''This article incorporates text from these sources, which are in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

.'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Freedom Of Religion In Japan Japan Human rights in Japan Religion in Japan