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With Ramadan beginning this week, The Japan Times’ writer, Nicolas Gattig, raised an intriguing question about religious pluralism in his article, “Can Japan show the West to live peacefully with Islam?”
Due to recent changes in Japanese visa regulations, there has been an increase of visitors and expats from Muslim-majority countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia. This month, Muslims from Asia, the Middle East, and Africa are coming together to celebrate Ramadan at Tokyo Camii, Japan’s largest mosque in the famous Shinjuku neighborhood. Even non-Muslim Japanese people, attracted by the “social elements” of Islam, are joining in.
In a country known for lacking diversity, it’s not difficult to imagine that the group gathered at Tokyo Camii just might be “the most multiethnic crowd anywhere in Japan.” With so many people from various backgrounds, coming together for a religious purpose, Gattig wonders, could Japan be the “utopia of pluralism”?
Personally, I wouldn’t go that far (see some of my other posts to understand why). However, I do think that Gattig has a point. Religious pluralism in Japan doesn’t stir up the same resistance that it does in many other places around the world.
It’s not surprising that Japanese people are taking part in the social aspects of Ramadan just like they’ve done with Christmas, celebrating with a bucket of KFC and a strawberry christmas cake. The festive atmosphere of Ramadan is familiar to Japanese people. Gattig puts it this way: “[Japanese people] follow Ramadan more than Islam.” It’s easy for Japanese people to add Ramadan to their already multi-religious calendars of holidays and festivals.
This type of religious pluralism has been present in Asian cultures for millennia. Even after Westerners brought the concept of mutually exclusive religious identities to Asia, the idea of having one religion and sticking with it through and through never took hold. Japanese people never stopped blending religions.
So before asking if Japan could teach the West “to live peacefully with Islam,” we need to ask if Japan’s “have-it-you-way” approach to religion could really have a shot at winning over the West.
This is the question that I find most interesting. As someone with an multi-faith upbringing, I’ve always been curious about life “inside” different religious traditions. This has taken me on journey into the celebrations, rituals, practices, and teachings of people around the world. I feel that I’m partially an “insider” of many religions. It is a pluralism that’s not so different from what you find in Japan.
But my experience is not so common in the West. Instead, Studies are showing that the U.S. population is moving away from institutionalized religions all together. There is a growing preference for new categories, such as “spiritual, but not religious.” This category is still exclusive, making pluralism appear all the more elusive.
Moreover, there is the resistance to “mix-and-match spirituality” from religious institutions themselves. A recent article in The Atlantic discusses concerns toward pluralism from religious community leaders, fearing that it would cause religions to dilute, that it would strip away the “richness” of faith. This resistance is the hurdle that the West will have to continuously jump over if it is to learn from the Japanese way of religious pluralism.
In the end, I don’t want to say whether the West should adopt Japan’s religious pluralism (I’ll save the discussion of cultural relativism for another day). But to answer Gattig’s question of whether the West could learn from Japan, admittedly, I’m skeptical at best.
Ramadan Mubarak!
CROSS-CULTURAL KANSAI 