Most Japanese (46,000,000 of them) are adherents of Buddhism, for three centuries, until 1868, the official religion of Japan. However, Shintoism ("The Way of the Gods"), a native Japanese system of nature and ancestor worship, commands the allegiance of 17,000,000. There are two forms of Shintoism, one divided into many small religious sects, the other attached to the State and called "Shrine Shinto." Whether the latter is a religion at all is today a matter of great controversy. A State commission, established in 1929, spent four years pondering it without reaching a unanimous...
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