ABSTRACT
To understand how primary group interactions have affected the development of both the religious landscape of Japan and individual religiosity, this chapter begins with a brief discussion of religion in modern Japan. It highlights broad characteristics of religious life in Japan. Religions in Japan provide the people with a variety of eschatological teachings and guidance, especially concerning the existence of ancestral spirits and an afterlife. However, religions in Japan do not provide social rewards, at least not to the extent that they do in many other countries. Over time, it spawned many sects and gathered a significant following throughout Japan, ultimately being named the official state religion of the Tokugawa Shogunate in the seventeenth century. What currently exists in Japan, then, is a religious landscape that looks quite different from the United States.
