"Have outright elements of western religion (meaning orthodox Christianity, for the most part), with priests and churches almost exactly copying the style of dress, the mode of address, etc. Pews, Nuns - you get the point.
In addition, the pervasiveness of the “Cleric” character type, even in games that do not feature “churches” outright."
A few reasons why Japanese game use these elements:
- Tradition. RPGs originated in the West. Hence when the Japanese make RPGs, they, like everyone else, tend to fall back on the old reliable material that everyone knows and loves–things from Dungeons and Dragons or from the earliest RPG videogames (Ultima, Wizardry, Rogue, etc.)
Those elements have become an integral part of the genre over time, by sheer force of tradition. For example, the reason the Cleric character is so common is for what he does in terms of the game (healing and protection spells) not for what he represents (religion.) You could strip the religious connotation and call him the Medic or the Protector instead. But it’s been Cleric for so long that everyone’s used to it.
(The same is true in the West: developers are much more likely to fall back on D&D than they are to do an RPG set in the present day, or in ancient Rome, or on some strange, completely original fantasy world with creatures and insitutions no one has ever heard of.)
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Convention. For whatever reason, Japanese popular culture of the last 50 years has borrowed heavily from Western iconography–to the point, as HPL says, that many characters in Japanese comics/anime/videogames look more like caucasians than Asians, even when it’s not setting-appropriate. (I’m playing a Japanese videogame set in medieval China right now, and all the characters look like white Hollywood actors with their hair dyed black.) So it’s not just RPGs that do this.
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Exoticism. Often Western elements are used because they are unusual, and hence interesting. You may find, say, nuns and Western-style churches to be rather mundane, but to the Japanese they are as exotic as pagodas and the tea ceremony are to us.
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Lack of a cultural context. People assure me that Japanese RPGs are full of references to Shinto and other Japanese/Asian traditions. However, I’m largely ignorant about such things, so those references just fly right over my head.
Meanwhile, the Western references stick out to me like a sore thumb – even when, in some cases, they aren’t really Western references. E.g. when I see a community of religious men living in their own compound and wearing robes and funny haircuts, I think of Western-style monks and monasteries. But of course there are Aisian monks as well, and so I may see a Western reference where a Japanese player may not.
Likewise, the translation can make something appear more Western that it really is, e.g. translating “samurai” as “knight.”
"After all, there is no lack of religion in Western games and RPGs as well, but most of them feature Western Orthodox religion as well, and never the Eastern religions. "
Not so. I’ve never played a fantasy RPG videogame* where you play a character belonging to an actual modern-day Western religion. (“Hmmm … should I make this character an Archbishop, a Minister, a Rabbi, or an Imam?”) Apart from some terminology (e.g. “Cleric,” “Priest”) and some concepts (monestaries, holy water, etc), most religion in Western fantasy RPG videogames is in fact a made-up mixture of long-dead pagan religions and convenient game mechanics.
There are good reasons for this. One, it avoids offending people: not everone wants to see their deeply held beliefs turned into a recipe book for killing giant rats and bandits. Two, it’s a lot easier for the game designer to make the religion fit the game than to make the game fit the religion.
*Well, OK, there was one: Darklands. And pen-and-paper RPGs are less concerned with offending people, so there have been a fair number of pen-and-paper RPGs that use real Western religions.