In total, two thirds visit shrines, temples or churches a few times or once per year. Parallel to the above are the results to the question of how often the participants visit a shrine, temple or church. 40% of the Japanese Christians indicated that religion is important or very important for them in everyday life, while for majorities of Buddhists and Shintoists religion has only a little importance in daily life. For every second person religion has no importance at all in everyday life, for 38% it is a little bit important, and for only 12% it is either important or very important. The next question asked the participants after the importance of religion in their daily life. Among the American survey participants, this percentage is only 17%. Furthermore, every third Japanese participant indicated not to know whether he/she is religious or not. On the other hand, 48% of the Japanese Christians indicated to be religious and 55% of the Americans who feel to belong to a religion indicated to be religious. most people who feel to belong to one of the traditional Japanese religions do not consider themselves religious. Surprisingly, the percentages of religious people is among Buddhists (15%) and Shintoists (11%) even below the total average i.e. On the question whether they are religious or not, a majority of 55% of the Japanese participants answered not to be religious, and only 16% answered to be religious.

What are the reasons for these large differences? The wording of the question? An uncertainty concerning the meaning of the terms 'religion' and 'believe' in a Japanese context, especially concerning Shinto? On the other hand, the official number of believers published by the Agency of Cultural Affairs in 1997 show the Japanese nation to consist of 49% Shintoists, 44% Buddhists and 2% Christians (in total far over 100% since many people consider themselves Shinto Buddhists). The results were similar to ours with non-believers in the majority (63%), followed by Buddhists (26%), Shintoists (2%) and Christians (1%). A survey conducted by Asahi Shimbun in 1995 asked national voters in which religion they believe. If we look at a few other surveys and statistics published on religions in Japan, the variety of results is amazing. As in the Christmas survey, female teenagers are especially attracted to the Western religion with 17% feeling to belong to Christianity. A large group of 11% indicated to feel closest to Christianity. 36% feel to be Buddhists and 11% Shintoists. A majority of 52% indicated that they do not feel to belong to any religion. In the first question, the participants were asked to which religion(s) they feel to belong. For more detailed information about religions in Japan, visit our religion information pages. The first Christian missionaries entered Japan in the 16th century, but the foreign religion was later banned from Japan for most of the Edo period that lasted until 1868. Basically, the two religions have coexisted harmonically for most of Japan's history and have even complemented each other and melted together to a certain degree. Japan's two traditional religions are Shinto, the indigenous religion which is as old as the Japanese people, and Buddhism which was introduced from the Asian mainland in the 6th century. We received 134 questionnaires filled out by American citizens. We also sent the same questionnaire to registered American pen pals in order to be able to conduct some comparisons. In addition to the unbalance in age and gender, we must consider the fact that all survey participants are registered in an online international pen pal service, which may mean that they are overall more internationally and less traditionally oriented than the average Japanese. We received 241 valid responses from Japanese people 70% of them were female, and 83% were between 10 and 30 years young. In January 2000, we sent questionnaires to all the people who were registered in the category of Japan of our pen pal service and who indicated that they are willing to participate in surveys.

Religion percentages