A comparative study of the religiosity of students in Japan and Taiwan

Abstract

“Religious conviction and belief”and “religious practice”are two major elements of religiosity. In this study, these two elements of religion were divided into nine areas with a resulting questionare of 45 items. Samples of this study were taken from the regions of NALA in Japan where religious activities are very popular and Aichi in Japan were the such activities are inactive. A comparative group for this study was chosen from the Taiwan cities of Tainan and Kaohsiung (R.O.C.). The religious activities of both these two cities are similar to that of Japan. The subjects involved in the study were university students, senior high school students and junior high school and elementary school students. The total number of students studied involved 958 in Japan and 844 in Taiwan. The study period was 11 months (from October, 1983 to September, 1984). The result of this study showed Buddhism as the major “family religion”of both countries. (about 60% of the population). In Taiwan, where “folk religion”is very popular, Taoism involves 15% of the population. In Japan, only 5% of the population are involved in “folk religion”. 87.8% of the items of the questionare of study reached a statistically significant level (p＜0.05). All the student groups of Taiwan at all grade levels had higher marks in “belief”and “religious behavior”than those of the Japanese group. In contrast, in the areas of “witchcraft”, “conviction”, “religion and science”, the Japanese students had a higher score than the Taiwan students. No apparent sex predilection was observed amongst the study groups. According to the grade levels of students. an analysis of the data showed that the religious sense of Japanese students is gradually decreasing from elementary school to university grade levels, especially from junior high school to senior high school in which obvious differences in religiosity were observed. Amongst Taiwan students religiosity was shown to be gradually decreasing from elementary school, junior school to senior high school but from senior high school to university, there is a very obvious increasing tendency. The more interrelated items between “religious practice”and “religious conviction and belief”, the tighter the relationship in organization of religion behaviors. These interrelated items were shown to increase with the rise in grade level among Taiwan students. In Japanese students, although the interrelation of these items were higher amongst junior high students, there was a decreasing tendency in senior high and university students. From a standard point of classification of “religious behaviors”or “religious experience”, “witchcraft”in Taiwan and Japan was considered to be of a lower stratum of religious acts. “Religion etiquette”in Japan is also considered a lower stratum religion. In comparing the religiosity within Taiwan, the city of Kaohsiung showed a stronger religiosity than that of Tainan city. And male students were stronger in their beliefs than female ones.