The September 28th issue of Jinja Shinpō (the trip to Kazakhstan has put me behind) had a front page article about a research meeting of the “Society to Correct the Relationship Between The State and Religion” (政教関係を正す会). It is an oversimplification to say that this society’s purpose is to get the Prime Minister and Tennō to visit Yasukuni Jinja again, but it is an informative oversimplification. Most of the time, they are concerned with what they think are inappropriate limits on the involvement of state actors with religion.
That was one of the topics for this meeting, but they also had a presentation on Islam and Islamic culture. This has become a bit of a hot topic recently, because there are a lot more Muslim immigrants from south and southeast Asia than there were even a few years ago. There have been people trying to stir up trouble with rhetoric that sounds quite familiar from Europe.
The presentation was given by a Japanese convert to Islam.
Unsurprisingly, he was not contributing to the xenophobic rhetoric. Rather, he emphasised the complexity of human life, the need to accept diversity, and the importance of encouraging diverse communities to create relationships organically. The questions were about his experience as a member of a minority, and about attitudes to Shinto in the Muslim countries he knows (which happen to be in Africa).
All very lefty and progressive and even “woke” — and not necessarily what you would expect from such a conservative, right-wing organisation. Shinto is, on the whole, very tolerant of other religions (or just of religions, if you decide Shinto isn’t one), and this is an important part of the self-image of mainstream Shinto priests.
This juxtaposition did, however, make me realise something that may be causing some of the perceived problems with the treatment of Muslims in Japan. For example, it is illegal to bury dead humans in Japan — they must be cremated. In Islam, cremation is, it seems, forbidden — or at least, that’s how the problem is being framed. Muslims want to be able to bury their dead near their homes.
Here, the problem that the Society to… is normally concerned with rears its head. The Japanese Constitution (Article 20) forbids the state from giving special privileges to any religious group.
This means that “it is required by our religion” is an absolutely terrible argument to make for anything in Japan. The authorities certainly cannot make an exception to the current law on that basis. And if the religious campaign for the change is prominent, the law cannot be changed in that way, because somebody will take the government to court over it, and may well win. I am not a lawyer, and for pity’s sake do not take comments on an English-language blog about Shinto as authoritative statements on Japanese constitutional law, but my reading of the case law in this area is that if the change was clearly motivated by religious demands, the courts might block it. It would, in practice, be giving special privileges to one religious group.
To get things past Article 20, you have to argue that they are cultural, and not religious at all. The Shinto community has become very good at this. The Japanese Muslim community may well need to learn.
Japanese Catholics formerly buried their dead, as did some Koreans in Japan, and one Korean temple in Kyoto has opened their gates for Islamic burials. There are also a few very small Shinto sects that forbid cremation and mandate burial; I think they are Maruyamakyō, Fusōkyō, and Shintō Shūsei-ha. I know that some municipalities forbid burial, and I’m not sure what these sects do in those areas; maybe they are small enough that it is not a problem. But there are areas where burial is permitted.