Evidently, nealy half a century after it first revealed signs of decline (in late Meiji and early Taisho years), the traditional custom of ancestor worship is now found here in Japan to be even more deprived of its vitality. For all that, however, we would hardly be justified in utterly ignoring the influence it still exerts upon our social life as a whole.
With the hope to investigate the real range of such a religious factor in our rural life of to-day, a field survey was recently undertaken by the Department of Kyoto University, so as to survey on the spot those several villages which had deen chosen as representing each of these three major types of village livelihood : “agricultural”, “fishing” and “forestry”. The present article which is the result of this survey, may be summarized as follows :
In point of religious consciousness, first of all, the task consisted in determining whether the belief in ancestral spirit is faithfully maintained among the villagers or not, and if it ts, how it varies with the differences in sex, age and social status.
Secondly, from the ritual point of view, close attention is focused on religious implications still observed in the yearly circle of festivals and practices, as well as in those which mark the stages human life (such as birth-ceremony, initiation, wedding, funeral, etc.). As to the daily acts of worship e. g. that of holy tablets memorial of the deceased, the observance of which used to be obligatory; the actual extent to which they are still maintained was investigated here also in regard of the difference in sex and age.
Thirdly, a survey was conducted in an attempt to find out the relationship between inheritance and ancestor worship. The traditional predominance of the latter custom explains the fact that the former term is used to mean in fact the simultaneous succession (necessarily by right of primogeniture) of both the responsibility for sacred rites, as well as the right to secular estate, proper to each family. Now that, as a result of post-war reform, the new inheritance law does not concern ancestor worship any more than it limits inheritance to the eldest son alone, the research centers on the question of whether there still exists a tendency to allow the all real property to be inherited by the one who would be willing to take up the ritual responsibility.
Conclusion : -Admitting that a gradual increase in the horizontal and vertical mobility of society surely tends to lessen the role of such a traditional custom as ancestor worship, its influence still survives in Japanese villages more forcibly than might be expected, to a remarkable extent, especially, in the matter of “inheritance”.