This page looks at the particular ethical issue of organ donation and Shinto.
Organ donation
Last updated 2009-09-16
Organ donation in Shinto
The Shinto faith is very much bound up with the idea of purity, and the wholeness of the physical body.
Organ transplantation is comparatively rare in Japan because the body after death is impure according to Shinto tradition.
Shinto traditions also state that interfering with a corpse brings bad luck.
Families are concerned that they might injure the relationship between the dead person and the bereaved (known as the itai) by interfering with the corpse.
This means that many followers of Shinto oppose the taking of organs from those who have just died, and also would refuse an organ transplanted from someone who has died.
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