Religion and Politics in Japan Today: New Perspectives from Grassroots-Level Activists

Though most people in Japan do not self-identify as religious, religious and religion-affiliated organizations exert significant influence over Japanese politics. Faced with recent political upheavals, aging support bases, rising regional security concerns, harsh economic realities, and related challenges, how are influential religion-linked organizers now seeking to guide policymaking and affect elections to pursue their ideal visions of Japan? Following the July 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, the October 2025 breakup of Japan’s generation-old governing coalition, and the rise of Takaichi Sanae as the country’s new leader, ideologically motivated religious actors who have long informed Japanese politics have been reevaluating how best to face Japan’s shifting political realities. In this presentation, Levi McLaughlin will draw on his recent ethnography with politically consequential religious activists to suggest how Shinto affiliates, members of the controversial Unification Church, and adherents within the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai are now restructuring their activities in ways that affect Japanese politics, from local-level communities up to the highest levels of government.

 

 

Levi McLaughlin is Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University. He is co-author of Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan (IEAS Berkeley, 2014) and author of Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan (University of Hawai`i Press, 2019; in Japanese from Kodansha, 2024), as well as numerous book chapters and articles on disaster, religion, politics, and other topics.

 

This event is part of The Japan Seminar Series, presented by the Centre for the Study of Global Japan and the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto.