The global population of Buddhists shrank by roughly 5% between 2010 and 2020, the sole major religious group to decline.

Buddhism is the only major religion whose global population shrank between 2010 and 2020. Learn why it declined in East Asia, particularly in Japan and South Korea.

From the ninth century CE, two esoteric schools (Shingon and Tendai) took on a dominant role in Japanese Buddhism and laid down the foundations for almost all subsequent developments in the centuries ...

Buddhism was attractive in this context as a diplomatic tool way to indicate that Japan had joined the Sinosphere. By becoming a Buddhist country like China, the country’s leaders believed, Japan ...

TOKYO (AP) — Buddhist leaders say a third of the country’s 75,000 temples are barely functioning, but a younger generation of priests is working to reverse the faith’s downward spiral. TOKYO (AP) — ...