Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses how religious practitioners at temples and shrines in Hokkaido understand and respond to the changes wrought by depopulation.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses how religious practitioners at temples and shrines in Hokkaido understand and respond to the changes wrought by depopulation. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research, this paper frames the issue of depopulation in concrete terms and provides a precise understanding of the impacts and plurality of factors that shape religious institutions in depopulating regions. I begin by exploring discussions of Ganjōji's (a temple in rural Hokkaido) viability that occurred as the community celebrated the temple's centennial throughout 2013. Starting with this case study and situating the temple in broader religious and secular networks demonstrates how issues of day-to-day temple operations and religious rites are being reconfigured as a result of regional demographic changes. Supplementing my case study with interviews conducted at shrines and temples throughout Japan, I show how attention to ground level engagements with religious practitioners provides insight into the place of shrines and temples within the region and the tensions and continuities between members, priests, and institutional hierarchies. I conclude by arguing that rather than using the language of religious decline (e.g., Reader 2011, Nelson 2013, Ukai 2015) to describe religion in Japan's rural regions, utilizing Rittel and Webber's concept of "wicked problems" (1973) allows for a broader and more nuanced conversation of the numerous precarities temples and shrines in Japan's shrinking regions confront on a daily basis.