Religion

In Japan every village has a torii (sacred archway) that leads to a Shinto shrine where residents attend seasonal rites for the benefit of the community. A few Shinto groups have had adherents in Canada, but most immigrants have been nominally Buddhists. Some retained their religious ties, others joined various Christian denominations, and a number have adopted features of both faiths. Nevertheless, Japanese Canadians have not escaped tensions, particularly of a generational variety, within the various religious groups.

Buddhism, like Christianity, includes many sects. Although the immigrants were associated with a variety of such groups in Japan, most in Canada became affiliated with the Nishi Honganji, a jōdō shinshū (True Pure Land) school of belief that was distinctive because it did not distinguish between clergy and laity. Followers of this sect believe the Buddha Amida (Infinite Light) will provide salvation or “rebirth in the Pure Land at death for all those who have faith in his goodness and accept his merit.” In Japan, services were generally held at the butsudan (home altar), and people attended public temples only for special feast days or the annual obon, or memorial services for the dead. For the first generation, the obon and other rituals for the dead remain a central focus of public religious activity. Of the various Buddhist traditions, the “Pure Land” school was most similar to Christianity. It became even more so as Buddhists adapted to Canadian customs and borrowed such Christian practices as Sunday congregational services with sermons and Sunday schools. A Christian children’s hymn was even appropriated to become “Buddha loves me, this I know.”

Since Buddhists were accustomed to private worship, it was not until 1904 that they formed the Nihon Bukky Kai (Japanese Buddhist church or association) in Vancouver and invited the mother temple in Kyoto to send a missionary. As well as providing religious services, the church – in Canada, Buddhist places of worship are known as a churches, not temples – offered English classes and social activities, especially for women and young adults. Growth was slow, however. Unlike the Christians, Buddhists had no white co-religionists to provide financial aid and encouragement. Moreover, although some were proud of their Buddhist beliefs, others feared that building a temple would antagonize the whites, who would see it as proof of a Japanese reluctance to assimilate. The Reverend W.H. Gale, who was in charge of Anglican mission work among the Japanese, warned members of his church that by denying the franchise to the Canadian-born, white British Columbians were creating a situation in which “a rising tide of Buddhism and Shintoism” was sweeping into the province.

In referring to Shintoism, Gale was repeating a popular misconception. State Shintoism promoted emperor worship and Japanese nationalism, but it was quite different from the community religion. As for Buddhism, in the 1930s less than half the second generation belonged to the Buddhist church since some argued that its members were too conservative, too nationalistic, and too superstitious. Nevertheless, the congregation in Vancouver grew, and Buddhists in other communities organized their own churches. By 1940 there were sixteen in British Columbia and one in Raymond, Alberta. Collectively, they had eight priests and a total membership of 4,235. Since the 1941 census recorded 6,650 first-generation Japanese Canadians (about 70 percent of the population) as Buddhists, clearly not all were active church members.

The number of Buddhists counted by the census fell from 14,759 in 1941 to 8,792 in 1951. This drop can be partly explained by the growth of Christian denominations, which offered educational and social services during the wartime uprooting, but it also reflects the departure of some Buddhists, including several priests, as a result of the policy of repatriation. The dispersal of the community, however, resulted in the establishment of new churches, especially in Ontario and Alberta.

Originally called the Buddhist Mission of Canada, during the 1950s they became known as the Buddhist Churches of Canada. In 1965 the lord abbot in KyÊ to inducted the Reverend N. Ishiura, who had been born in Hawaii, the first bishop of the Canadian churches and his only representative in Canada. The lord abbot remains responsible for providing ministers, most of whom are essentially sojourning missionaries from Japan. Their limited knowledge of English has often made it difficult for them to communicate with the Canadian-born in their congregations. There is also division within the Buddhist church between older people who desire to preserve its Japanese character and younger members who are chiefly concerned with the survival of Buddhism in Canada. Today, about ten thousand Japanese Canadians are nominally of the Buddhist faith, but there are fewer than three thousand paid-up members in nineteen churches. The assistant minister in Toronto is the third generation of his family to minister to Buddhists in Canada.

Some Buddhists have converted to Christianity while retaining Buddhist traditions. Doing so has been relatively easy because of the traditional Japanese tolerance for all religions and the similarities between the moral precepts of the two religions. Also, the emphasis in Buddhism as practised in Japan on the veneration of ancestors meant that it was not necessarily contradictory to Christianity. Indeed, such traditions could be incorporated into Christian practices. The compatibility of the two faiths was expressed by Arthur M. Ozawa, a Buddhist who became a Methodist after attending English classes and religious services at the mission in Vancouver. He later recalled that, while he was in the process of converting to Christianity, he “worshipped Buddha in the morning and Christ in the evening” and then “reversed to Christ in the morning and Buddha in the evening, relegating to Christ the higher honour of the morning worship.” Eventually, Buddha disappeared from his religious horizon, and he became an ordained Methodist minister who worked in both Japan and British Columbia. In fact, Japanese, not whites, initiated Christian work among the Japanese in the province. In 1892 the Japanese Christian Endeavour, a Methodist organization in Seattle, sent Masutaro Okamoto to Vancouver as an “apostle to the Japanese in British Columbia.” He was the first of many such missionaries, most of whom were from Japan but had a good knowledge of English.

Although the Reverend Bernard Oana, who studied theology in Japan after receiving his early education in Vancouver, served the city’s Anglican mission from 1920 to 1931, laywomen initiated and carried out most of the social-service and educational work sponsored by the church. At first they were whites, but in the 1920s a few Canadian-born Japanese women joined the missionary work. Laywomen were also assisted by Gordon Goichi Nakayama; he had converted to Methodism after coming to Canada and then to the Anglican faith after marrying Lois Masui Yao, an immigrant whose father had become an Anglican in Japan. She came to Canada in 1924 to teach kindergarten at the Anglican-sponsored Holy Trinity Kitsilano Kindergarten and met her husband in Vancouver. Kathleen O’Melia, who in 1903 established in Vancouver the first Anglican mission to the Japanese in Canada, converted to Roman Catholicism in 1912 and began working with the Franciscan Sisters of the Atonement at their mission and kindergarten. The kindergarten was especially popular with young mothers because it provided day care while they were employed in nearby dressmaking shops or at other jobs.

The Methodist Church was the first and the most active Christian denomination to work among the Japanese, and like its successor, the United Church of Canada, it had the largest number of Japanese members. The Anglicans and Roman Catholics followed, with significantly fewer adherents. Many immigrants, such as Arthur Ozawa, and especially their Canadian-born children saw joining a Christian church as a way to cultural assimilation into Canadian society, a practice that several Japanese consuls promoted in the hope that the adoption of Christianity would raise the standing of the Japanese in the white community. Some individuals joined a Christian church simply because they had become Canadians, and many parents assumed that their children were Christian because they had learned the Lord’s Prayer at school. The practical services offered by Christian churches, such as English classes for adults and day care or kindergartens for children and assistance in dealing with an English-speaking community, also attracted converts.

The churches were most successful among members of the second generation, who regarded Christianity as part of the Canadian culture that they were in the process of acquiring. A survey in 1934 revealed that nearly 44 percent of Nisei were Christian and that in urban areas the proportion was 55 percent. In 1936 the Reverend K. Shimizu organized a United Church congregation for them in Vancouver. Among the Anglicans, the second generation became more fluent in English than in Japanese yet did not have the numbers to warrant a separate congregation, and Anglo-Canadian congregations were unwilling to accept Japanese parishioners. The Christian churches generally segregated the Japanese into separate congregations and missions. This practice was partly for linguistic reasons, but it reflected the fact that although whites who worked directly with the Japanese in Canada or as missionaries in Japan were friendly with the people and occasionally spoke out against discrimination, some of the Christian clergy and laity were among the most vocal proponents of a “white Canada.”

For the Christian churches, as for Japanese Canadians, the wartime relocation was a decisive experience. Soon after the government issued the evacuation order, the churches encouraged the British Columbia Security Commission to assign all members of a particular denomination to the same resettlement community. The scheme soon broke down, but remnants of it remained. Thus, for example, the United Church operated high schools in Tashme, Lemon Creek, and New Denver and the Catholics in Greenwood and Slocan. In the last-named community the Anglicans ran a high school too. The churches also provided kindergartens and social workers in some settlements. In many cases, the social workers were white missionaries who had returned from Japan because of the war. During and following the dispersal of Japanese Canadians across the country, church groups in eastern Canada served the evacuees. For example, the Anglican and United churches offered general assistance with the resettlement in southern Ontario, and the Catholics opened a women’s hostel in Montreal. Members of the Christian churches, through such agencies as the Co-operative Committee for Japanese Canadians, also took a lead in protesting the repatriation policy.

The community responded in various ways to the actions of the Christian churches during the war. Some Japanese Canadians who had not previously been Christians were favourably impressed with the educational and other services that the denominations provided, and they joined a Christian church. Others were disappointed that the churches had not done more to protest the government’s treatment of them. Many Japanese Canadians felt uneasy and unwelcome in eastern churches during the wartime period. Although white prejudice declined after the war, they still preferred to worship in their own ethnic churches. As a result, the United Church assisted in the formation of Japanese congregations in eastern Canada that offered services in both Japanese and English to meet the needs of the two generations. However, by 1983 these congregations had only fifteen hundred adult members. After thirteen years of planning, the Anglicans in 1957 transferred responsibility for work among the Japanese in Canada to the local dioceses and officially ended missionary endeavour specifically directed to Japanese Canadians. At Coaldale, Alberta, Gordon G. Nakayama started a parish that served all Anglicans, not just those of Japanese ancestry.

Although nineteen Buddhist churches and a few separate Christian congregations still exist, their future is uncertain. While most mainstream Christian churches today have problems recruiting clergy, the Buddhists have the additional complication of requiring bilingual priests who can minister to both the elderly immigrants and the younger generations. Post-war immigrants might be expected to replace the ageing first generation, but they have not done so to any extent. Few are interested in belonging to Japanese organizations, and if they do attend a church, they often have little in common with the elderly Issei or their Canadianized children and grandchildren. For many Japanese, as for other Canadians, religion plays a much less important role in everyday life than it did a generation ago. Since the 1960s many Japanese Canadians have abandoned their church affiliations, whether they were Buddhist or Christian. By 1981 almost a third said that they had no religious connections. Assimilation has occurred, not because of religion, but in spite of it.