Something to mourn for...

Media of the world have special pages of his death
It was just before five in the morning, the reporters of the international division of the news center were running around noisily.
We at the current affairs division suspected that something has happened to the Pope. After that there were rounds of news flashes of the breaking story of his death. It was our job to cover relevant interviews and actions. After getting an appointment, I went to a cardinal's resident to get an interview about his sorrows and my collegue to a Mass in cathedrals.
The Pope's death is of course top news worldwide, as there were also thousands mourning in Japan too. But not hundreds of thousands like the millions in Latin American nations or some parts of Europe.
Have the Japanese public mourned like them these several years? Well, the Showa Emperor's death 16 years ago, may have been something close to today's mourning of the world. Though the Emperor in Japan is established over religious causes, it is much more like traditions and culture to the public, rather than pure religion.
And the Japanese are not all believers of the Shinto religion anyways, but rather choose Buddhism if they are asked which one they believe in the most. Maybe "believe" is not the word... it's rather like "participate in".
I know many Japanese celebrating Christmas in the end of the year, and going to Buddhist temples to mourn for the dead, and at the same time paying visits to Shinto shrines in the beginning of the year. Haven't seen so many Hindus or Muslims but unless there's not too much fundamentalism in it, the people don't have so much resistance in talking about other religions. There were some allergic reactions when the Aum cults' Sarin gas attack occured in 1995, but since then religion has walked through better paths winning more sympathy. But the feeling that the Japanese have no clear sense of responsibility to religion has not changed.
Many have mourned today. But when will many Japanese mourn together? Maybe only when you lose your closest ones, and that may be healthy enough!