Events Difficult Subjects: Religion and Schools in Postwar Japan

It is an oft-repeated truism Japanese people are not religious (mushūkyō). In this talk I call this commonsense assertion into question by uncovering the centrality of “religion” in national education policy from the 1960s to the present. I first examine the “human figure” (ningenzō) policy of the mid-1960s, which treated religiosity as indispensable for achieving rapid economic growth. My second case shows how religious lobbies, political pressure groups, and conservative politicians advocated “religious sentiment education” (shūkyōteki jōsōkyōiku) at the turn of the twenty-first century, specifically in the service of making the kinds of citizens who would vote to revise the postwar Constitution. Although the two cases reflect different objectives, together they show how the widespread claims about Japanese people being “not religious” have often served to justify specific conservative political agendas rather than describing social realities.

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About the Author:

Jolyon Baraka Thomas is associate professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan (2012) and Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan (2019). He also co-edited the New Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions (2025) and co-authored, with Yulia Frumer and Aike P. Rots, the forthcoming book Animating Action: Changing the World with Anime, Rituals, and Robots.