Spiritual War in Japan

I investigated the patient’s childhood and found that there was an influence of Shintoism.

Most of the patients had the experience of Miyamairi—Japanese version of infant baptism.

Miyamairi is commonly practiced in Japan. With their grandparents, most of Japanese parents take their baby to the shrine and thanked the god of the shrine.

This ritual is considered to be a bad thing in Christianity. In Christian culture, parents are not allowed to dedicate their children to another god.

Shichi-Go-San (“Seven-Five-Three”) celebrates the passage of the children into the ages 3, 5, and 7. In Shichi-Go-San, parents take their children to the shrine and pray that a Shinto god will protect them. I discovered that most of the clients had the experience of Shchi-Go-San festival.

(Kamidana and Butsudan)

In the traditional families, children pray to miniature household altars provided to enshrine a Shinto spirit, ancestor spirits, or Buddha. According to one statistics, 45% of households had both Kamidana (miniature shinto altar) and Butusdan (miniature Buddhism altar) in 1985, and the figure down to 26% in 2019. As a child, the clients from traditional families were taught to pray at a Shinto or Buddhism home altar regularly.

There are many religious practices in Japan, like Bon Odori (a dance with the ancestor spirits) or ancestor worship.

Those religious rituals are usually viewed as recreational activities for holidays and seasonal change.

Hatsumode is a biggest seasonal activity for Japanese people. Regardless of their religions and beliefs, people visit the shrines or temples on the New Year’s Holiday. One estimate says that 100 million people flock to the shrines or temples of Japan on the first three days of January, so they can appreciate the last year’s health and happiness and pray for another good year to Shinto or temple spirits.

Growing up in the multi-gods culture of Shinto, the Christian clients had a unconscious belief of the existence of multiple gods. Although they went to churches, this belief prevented them from learning a right knowledge of God.

Faith in God fails when people have a faulty understanding of the Sovereign Lord. (Neil Anderson, Victory over the darkness)