ABSTRACT
Buddhism, although it originally came from outside Japan, has become so firmly established in Japan as to be a Japanese religion in its own right. The other major religion to enter Japan from outside, Christianity, has not so far managed to do this, and continues to be somewhat distanced from the mainstream of Japanese religiosity. Christianity has never managed to adapt to the religious circumstances of Japan, in which cooperation and interaction between the various religions has been normal. Nor has it been able to come to terms with the importance of the ancestors in Japanese life, or with the fact that it is identified, by most Japanese, with foreign culture, with the result that becoming Christian can lead to an estrangement from the sense of Japanese cultural identity that is found in, for instance, Shinto.
