Japan: Atheist Paradise

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Comment by Derek Ashley Thomas on May 7, 2013 at 12:29am

Hi Spencer,

I don't generally frequent this site, but I do read the comments. Your questions hit a cord with me and I thought I would try to help you understand, from my perspective living in Japan for half a decade.

There are a number of reasons that may be causing low turn out for atheists in Japan:

1. My dealings with religious discussions here have led me to believe that people don't put a whole lot of thought into it. They are less motivated to fill out surveys and seek information to be active compared to "atheist" counterparts in countries that have higher religious numbers. That being said, you bring up some of the strange cults around Japan and you may find some strong opinions, it's just that I think people put less of their self identity into it here.

2. The survey page, is only in English and requires hunting for google-translate language settings. This excludes participation from less-motivated non-english speakers in countries like Japan where the predominant language is not English. Region auto-detect may get you a couple extra votes, but #1 will still be your limiting factor.

3. If you expect to also gain votes from expats in Japan, than you would be mistaken. The final question says "What country are you from?" the use of "from" here is a rather ambiguous term that could either be now or 5+ years ago. This ambiguity I would suggest surveys avoid. Questions should be more exact like "In what country were you born?", "In what country did spend your childhood?" or "In what country do you currently reside?". My guess is you would prefer to know country of origin.

In the end, I think that a lot of non-believers around the world have misconceptions of Japan as a glorious haven for atheism. While the majority population does not hold strong religious convictions, this says nothing about critical thinking or skepticism.

As I see it, a major stumbling block here is the education system. The education system revolves around extruding students through a long series of aggravating standardised tests, which have little value to the student after they are done. This leads to students not going to college for 1-3 years just to take the test again to get into a school they respect. This on top of the fact that majority of government spending on university budgets only goes to a few "top" schools really leads to a maladjusted group of graduates after university. You may not know, that these recent grads were recruited to the companies 1-2 years before graduation (so they don't really care too much about school). I won't really get into traditional/non-traditional work environments here, but let's just say many places frown on questioning authority.

Sorry, this got very long. If you got this far, thanks for reading, and of course this is my personal perspective. It is only very general and covers more traditional aspects of Japan, so you should experience Japan yourself to get your own perspective.

Comment by Spencer Lucas on May 1, 2013 at 7:51pm

Hello all.  My name is Spencer Lucas and I'm the Atheist Census Coordinator for Atheist Alliance International.  Has anybody taken the atheistcensus.com survey ?  If not please do.  

Also I'm curious about the low count in Japan (48 in Japan compared to 10,000 in Canada).  Does anybody have any theories?  Any suggestions on how to promote this project to Japanese atheists?  I know there are a lot of them.

Cheers,

Spencer

http://atheistcensus.com

Comment by Carl Pastor on April 8, 2012 at 10:41am

well i first arrived here in '62. i was here off an on till 66, i was here till '68 then, and i left and came back in '68. ive been here since.

Comment by Keiji Fujita on April 8, 2012 at 6:24am

thank you!

Carl-san,wow 40 years!
that's longer than I do!

Comment by Scott Donald on April 7, 2012 at 3:25am

Hey hey, welcome.

Comment by Carl Pastor on April 6, 2012 at 12:48pm

hi keiji. im an american man who has lived in japan mostly kyoto for 40 some years.

Comment by Keiji Fujita on April 6, 2012 at 9:44am

hi nice to meet you
I'm a Japanese man
I joined this community about a year ago
but I'm not active here so I don't know what to do here yet
so please feel free to talk to me
thanks 

Comment by Carl Pastor on October 26, 2011 at 10:34am

yasan tachi no ooku wa byoki de shinu. yaku butsu ammari tsukateimasu. dakara washi no tonari san wa jinzo ga dame ni natte, shinda.

Comment by leveni on October 26, 2011 at 3:59am

sono yasan, shizenn ni shinimashitaka, dareka ni korosaretanndesuka?

Comment by Carl Pastor on October 20, 2011 at 1:27pm

yasan wa yakuza.  hajimete nippon ni kitta no ga '62, showa 37 kedo tokyo ni tsuita kara miyako jima ni itta

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