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 conclusion. The Japanese Supreme Court has ruled that Shrine Shintoism is a religion. On the other hand the Government, while showing partiality toward it. has tried to pass it off as a form of politeness to departed heroes, like D. A. R.-ism in the U. S. Christianity has 300,000 followers in Japan. Last week U. S. Presbyterians, precisely like the Japanese, were arguing over whether Shintoism is a religion. Reason: If it is a faith, U. S. missionaries in Korea have been guilty of the equivalent of worshiping false gods.
U. S. Presbyterian mission boards, North and South, spend more than $300,000 a year to support a Korean Presbyterian Church with 100,000 members. The Japanese Government feels less sure of Koreans than it does of Japanese, worries more about their exposure to Occidental influences. Increasingly in the past five years, beginning when Shinto services were held for soldiers dead in China and Manchukuo, the Government has put pressure upon Korean Christians to join in what it calls "patriotic" ceremonies at Shinto shrines. Christian teachers have been ordered to take their Christian classes to the shrines, join in observances which involve obeisance to the departed. Last straw came when Korean Presbyterian churches were recently ordered to join in visits to the shrines.
Last week the Sunday School Times, world's largest weekly of its kind (circulation: 63,500). brought up the question of whether or not a Christian should bow at a Shinto shrine. Emphatically answering no, it saluted Dr. Charles Darby Fulton, affable, Japanese-speaking secretary of the Southern Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, who ordered schools in his jurisdiction in Korea closed—in defiance of the Japanese Government—wherever there were nearby shrines. Korean Presbyterian churches, which are self-governing, may well follow Secretary Fulton's example if the Government tries to force their leaders to visit shrines.