The Japanese have long taken an easygoing, cafeteria-style approach to religion, ringing out the old year at Buddhist temples and welcoming the New Year at Shinto Shrines a few hours later. Japanese weddings hew to Shinto rituals or, just as easily, to Christian ones.

The New York Times reports that, “when it comes to funerals, though, the Japanese have traditionally been inflexibly Buddhist – so much so that Buddhism in Japan is often call ‘funeral Buddhism,’ a reference to the religion’s former near-monopoly on the elaborate, and lucrative, ceremonies surrounding deaths and memorial services.”

But that expression also describes a religion that appears to cater more to the needs of the dead than to the living, which means it’s losing its standing in Japanese society.

Ryoko Mori, the chief priest at the 700-year-old Zuikoji Temple in northern Japan, confessed that funeral Buddhism fails to meet people’s spiritual needs. He noted that Buddhist priests don’t give spiritual sermons during a funeral procession, while the religious leaders of Christianity and Islam do hold sermons on spiritual matters.

Mori is quoted by the NY Times as saying, “if Japanese Buddhism doesn’t act now, it will die out. We can’t afford to wait. We have to do something.”

To read the entire article from the New York Times, link here:

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