At Gene Expression I have a post up, Religion, the United States, Sweden, South Korea and Japan, where I examine a little bit of data from the World Values Survey. I observe:
South Korea and Japan are harder to interpret. Despite being very secular Japan is obviously rather conservative when it comes to many social mores, and Korea exhibits the same tendency. Rather than pinning down a specific explanation it is important to note that the role of institutional organized religion has been relatively marginal in these two societies until recently, and what role it did play was of low prestige compared to that in Western societies. In fact it can be argued that South Korea is simultaneously becoming a more religious and liberal society.
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“Japan is obviously rather conservative when it comes to many social mores”
Well, the whole lolicon thing notwithstanding…
I’ve always thought that it was strange how occurring secular conservative life styles were among asian ethnicities. Perhaps it’s due to the largely non-theistic nature of most religious institutions within the east. Buddhism is an Atheistic religion, Jainism is Atheistic, Taoism and Confucianism hold non-theistic metaphysical views. It’s as if eastern conservatives still hold religion as a standard bearer of morality like their western counter parts, but are less driven by mystical revelation or the concept of a single creator deity, not to the exclusion of the mystical aspects of eastern philosophy because there is still allot of that. I wonder wether eastern religions devoting more time and effort towards worshipping ancestors (tree spirits and what not) instead of a God endowing original sin in us gives them a more positive and concrete outlook towards the world, enough at least to keep them secular.
@Miles White
Miles, I think it’s important to emphasize that while those East Asian countries are mainly non-theistic, they’re ridiculously superstitious.