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Priest Delivery: Civilization In Japan

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The definition of civilization looks at multiple aspects of the word, including technology. Growth in technology is a huge part of civilization, and in the last few days a big topic for Japan has been their new technology innovation. In Japan, the religion of Buddhism is very prominent and important to them. On the New York Times website, an article was released on September 20th, 2016 that had to do with Japan’s innovative technology and religion. This new piece of technology is called Priest Delivery, and allows people to hire Buddhist priests for special events. The article follows a man by the name Yutaka Kai, as he is trying to find a Buddhist priest to visit with on the anniversary of his wife’s death. When Kai moved from his hometown for work, his new town did not have a Buddhist temple that allowed him to perform a ritual important in the Buddhist religion. …show more content…

While some people find the new use of technology wonderful, because of the amount of people that can now be in contact with a priest, Buddhist leaders condemn the innovation. One thing that the Buddhist leaders to appreciate is that the use of this service does allow temples to receive generous tax breaks in the country, because the traveling priests are receiving a fee instead of a donation the temple is now seen as a regular business. Mr. Kakubo of the Buddhist federation stated, “ …many temples had done a poor job of adapting” (Soble, 2016). This idea of the traveling priest is called Obosan-bin, and can be accessed through Amazon. This new business is allowing people to access the religion they grew up on, and allows them to partake in rituals that are important to

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