Japanese Small Businesses in Jeopardy

Posted by Kyle Yates in Kansai Area News, Kansai Christian

The economy in Japan has recovered, not fully, but well enough where people are spending money and traveling more freely without worries over whether or not they’ll have a job or money enough to provide for the next meal and house over their heads. But for some whether the country is experiencing a recession or not really doesn’t matter because their businesses aren’t effected by the economy the way other businesses are.

What business could I possibly be talking about?

Buddhism. Small Buddhist temples and shrines.

Here is Japan, and in other countries as well where Buddhism prospers, it’s big business. But where smaller shrines and temples exist and Buddhism is a family practice, in many cases handed down from generation to generation, father to son, many are finding living off their earning a big problem.

Many monks, or as business goes, business owners of temples and shrines, are finding it hard to make ends meet. Fewer people are visiting their places of worship to pray or to have their ancestors prayed for using them to perform ritual ceremonies and prayers.

Why? Well, it’s not because of a recent Christian boom or anything like that. Although, Christianity is gradually growing, Japan has a less than 1% Christian population. Christianity in Japan isn’t what’s threatening the Buddhist economy.

Smaller shrines and temples opened to communities in the enaka, countryside, are seeing the numbers of people sponsoring them drop as they move away to the larger cities where better jobs, income, and lifestyles are more enticing and larger temples and shrine feed the Buddhist appetites of worshippers and ancestors. Where a small temple or shrine has been supported by a hundred or more families in the past, in some cases centuries of support and use, now those numbers are half. And in business, fewer customers means less money, and less income for a business owner or manager means they have to either change their way of marketing to attract new customers or close up shop.

Monks are finding themselves changing their marketing, using new and better promotional tactics to attract customers. Some monks are taking out ads to promote their prayer ceremonies for ancestors while others are lowering their prices for ceremonies and services to attract new customers.

Relying on the families that have supported them over centuries isn’t paying the bills. Maybe more prayers will help, but then which shrine or temple god do they pray to for finances? And is that temple or shrine going to be in business tomorrow or next year with the current trend? God only knows.