For those of you that live outside of America, does this occur where you live as well?
It's a monday in a small village in northern Japan I currently call home. At 12:30, all the elementary school students (and therefore 99% of the village's children) stream into the cafeteria, where
all the students and
all the teachers eat the same prepared lunch.
At 12:50, in the adjacent middle school, all the middle school students (and therefore 99% of the village's young teenagers) enter their cafeteria, and eat the same lunch as the elementary schoolers.
The lunches are very healthy and quite tasty, but not the least bit kosher (mmm, pork-stock miso soup . . .).
One might chock it up to the cultural/ethnic homogeneity of Japan, but I can say that the environment of the school is inconducive to individual needs, including religious freedom. No one will persecute for your religion, but you would be extremely hard pressed to find support.
Japan is an extremely group-oriented culture, and living inside it, one must learn the importance of adhering to the surrounding culture and the will of the group. This is an extremely critical skill for both the students to learn as they enter Japanese society, and for any foreigner looking to come eye-to-eye to the Japanese.
Even having been raised in the group-oriented culture of Hawaii (largely due to Japanese and Polynesian influence), I sometimes find Japanese uniformism suffocating.
Takeaway: In a culture where the vast majority of people have the same religion, saying something "is for your own religion" would pretty much be equivalent to saying it is for "my own selfish whim."
Religion in general is very unobtrusive in Japanese culture. Almost all Japanese engage in both Shinto and Buddhist rites. Generaly speaking though, the Buddhist rites exist with almost zero extremism, zero obligation to the religion, and minimal obtrusion to daily life (oh, ok I pray at my family alter for 10 seconds every day, lol).
Shintoism on the other hand, is so religiously bland, that many Japanese suggest that it is not a religion at all but merely part of the manifestation of Japanese culture (ie. Shinto rites equivalent to taking your shoes off when entering a house, eating raw fish, or bathing at night). Shinto "gods" (kami) are imperfect spirits who can be mean-spirited, make mistakes, and exist on the same plane as people and animals. Many Christian Japanese think nothing of also following Shinto customs since the kami are simply beings on the same lower plane as humans-- one could see them as simply other creations of God. Speaking to them is more like speaking to your neighbors than worship. If you do a fortune telling and don't like what one kami tells you, just go ask for the advice of another at a different shrine.
conclusion: There is a joke that Japanese are "Shinto at birth, Christian in marriage, and Buddhist in death." All in all, religion is a pretty non-issue here.
. . . well it
should be anyway . . .
Incidentally this is at the source of much tension between China/Korea and Japan. There is a Shinto shrine dedicated to "the souls of those soldiers who died in battle for the sake of the Emperor" called Yasukuni Jinja. The souls of the leaders of WWII are also enshrined there. To the Chinese/Korean, this is monstrous-- "What would other Europeans think if the Germans made a shrine to worship Hitler?" This is a large misunderstanding though, as in Shintoism, one does not "worship" souls or kami-- there isn't theologically any honoring involved. One only performs rites so that restless souls will not disturb the living.
. . . and yet no understanding comes about it . . . :/ humanity is so foolish sometimes.
I would note though that the Imperial house of Japan, the Emperor, who is essentially the "Pope" (head) of Shintoism, being highly active and dedicated to bettering the foreign relations of Japan and friendly international sentiment, has a strong disapproval of Yasukuni's conduct. This is the same Emperor who has, on multiple occasions, visited Pearl Harbor and Punch Bowl military cemetary in Honolulu to pay his respects to the US's WWII fallen soldiers. Man, if Obama similarly visited Hiroshima the Japanese would go nuts with appreciation (here's to that happening someday).
Thus, that Emperor holds strong resentment to Yasukuni's continued unnecessary instigation of conflict and anti-foreign sentiment. So far, the Imperial House has yet to publicly censor Yasukuni (as it has many strong supporters, including former primer Prime Minister Koizumi), and has limited itself to subtler political subversion like leaking diary entries of previous Emperors deploring Yasukuni's post WWII conduct. We shall see how that situation unfolds in time . . .