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In the present paper, we focused on religion and religiosity using data that had been obtained from the Seven Nations Comparative Survey, the East Asia Values Survey, and the Asia and Pacific Values Survey. In Japan, only about 30% of the population have a religious faith, and this percentage is the lowest among developed countries. On the other hand, 70% think that having a religious mind is important. If we presume that people who either claim to have a specific religious faith or say that religious mind in a generic sense is important as being more or less positive to religion, then we could say that the proportion of people who feel positively about religion in Japan is comparable to that in most other countries. While attempts have been made to investigate the meaning of the term "religious mind" with relatively small data sets in Japan , it is also true that "religiosity" -which carries a different meaning than "religion" as an object of worship -is now being debated in Western countries, too.In this paper, we analyze whether the "religious mind" is a distinctive property of the Japanese or if there is a similar sort of attitude in the West using an international and comparative data set.

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The telltale signs of the remarkable level of success that the discourse of feminism and the accompanying politico‐social movement of women's liberation have had on society and culture in Japan are quite visible, in spite of the country's reputation as a rather patriarchal and traditional society. For instance, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, first instituted in 1985 and considered largely symbolic and toothless then, has nevertheless been strengthened repeatedly through a number of reforms. In the twenty‐first century, the principles of egalitarianism and gender neutrality with respect to hiring, promotion, and so on, are widely accepted and deeply entrenched, at least at the level of the ideal, if not always at the level of practice. The relatively small but dedicated and tireless group of attorneys, feminist activists, academics, and lawmakers who have done the lion's share of the work of prodding and pressuring the government can also in large part take credit for some other notable accomplishments, like the Domestic Violence Prevention Act of 2001 and 2004.

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