ABSTRACT
Constitutionally, Japan is a secular state in which religion is legally separate from public life and the state; the Japanese Constitution, adopted in 1946 after Japan's defeat in World War II and subsequent Allied Occupation, guarantees individual freedom of religious affiliation and worship while legally ensuring that religion is a matter for the private sphere and is kept apart from public affairs. State support for and funding of religion is prohibited. This is very different from before 1945, when state, politics and religion were not kept apart, in which state support for religious institutions, and religious support for state activities, were common, and in which conceptual divisions or differentiations between notions such as ‘religion’ and ‘culture’ were vague. This pre-war situation—which reflects a long history in which the notion of public and private spheres was virtually non-existent and in which religious observances were commonly associated with the public sphere—has left a deep imprint on the Japanese religious situation and has given rise to extensive legal debates about whether certain actions (e.g., visits to Yasukuni Shrine, a prominent Shinto institution in Tokyo, which enshrines the spirits of the war dead) should be classified as ‘religious’ or as ‘cultural’. 1
