"Religion, Secularism and the Japanese Shaping of East Asian Studies", in Paramore (ed.) Religion and Orientalism in Asian Studies (Bloomsbury, 2016) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Although some politics and international relations discourses continue to maintain that there is a causal link between secularism and political modernity, religious studies, anthropology, and history research over the past decade has been rather merciless in debunking this idea as one of the tropes of Western imperialism. This article considers at how Japanese political thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries engaged this trope, and how that engagement contributed to the particular relationship between religion and governance that emerged in the modern Japanese empire (1868–1945). The article argues that developments in the Confucian political thought of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1868), particularly in the works of Ogyū Sorai (1666–1728) and Aizawa Seishisai (1792–1863), contributed significantly to the capacity of Japanese thinkers and politicians to creatively engage the role of religion in Western imperialism during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Introduction: Formations of the Secular in Japan
Aike P. Rots and Mark teeuwen early modern power configurations, and their "universalization" was embedded in imperialist projects even if the categories were appropriated and transformed by non-Western actors. 4 Thus, Asad and like-minded postcolonial scholars have contributed significantly to the re-historicization of these concepts and, accordingly, to the overcoming of universalistic, sui generis understandings of religion. 5 The title of this special issue, Formations of the Secular in Japan, is a direct reference to the work of Asad, whose genealogical approach and conceptual criticism constitute an important source of inspiration for us. At the same time, however, some of the articles in this volume depart from Asad, notably in problematizing his assertion that "the secular" was a uniquely Western product, developed in a Christian context and forcibly imposed upon non-Western Others. They show that the religioussecular dichotomy played a central part in modern state formation in Japan, in spite of the fact that Japan was one of a handful of non-Western countries that escaped colonization. 6 The categories of religion and the secular were not simply imposed by "the West": they were also shaped by Japanese (state and religious) actors, who drew on preexisting notions and practices as much as on newly imported ones.
Revisiting Japanese Studies in Southeast Asia
Border Crossings: The Journal of Japanese-Language Literature Studies, 2017
Asia. The paper presents a number of stumbling blocks of various institutions in Southeast Asia, such as language issues and funding. The study ends with possible suggestions as well as solutions towards success in this area.
American Imperialism and the Japanese Encounter with "Religion": 1853-1858.pdf
2016
It was during the years of intense American-Japanese treaty negotiations from 1853 when the Japanese first encountered the generic concept ‘religion’. The generic meaning of ‘religion’ was initially lost in the linguistically multi-layered process of translations during the earliest stage of the negotiations. When the term ‘religion’ was subsequently encountered more directly by Japanese translators, the formulation of new Japanese terms was required. For the Japanese in the 1850s, ‘religion’ was a diplomatic category, and no single word in Japanese could capture the contours of this Euro-American category. It was not until the 1870s that the generic concept of religion was popularised in Japan. This article examines the ways in which the Japanese elite engaged with the generic term ‘religion’ before the Japanese equivalent was developed. It focuses on Japanese interactions with the discourse on ‘religion’ conveyed by Commodore Perry’s expedition to Japan (1852-1854) and by Townsend Harris (1804-1878) who represented the United States in the subsequent negotiations. This resulted in the signing of the American-Japanese treaty in 1858, which guaranteed ‘religious freedom’ for American citizens in Japan. The notion of ‘religion’ in this treaty was not easily articulated by the Japanese. Japanese translators had to employ a variety of terms and phrases to accommodate the idea of ‘religion’. This article also highlights the American projection of ‘religion’ upon Japan. The articulation of ‘religion’ as a generic category, essentially distinct from the ‘secular’ realms of ‘state’, ‘politics’, ‘economy’, and the like, first appeared in the late seventeenth century. It was most powerfully institutionalised in late eighteenth-century North America. The nineteenth-century notion of religion in the United States constructed two types of discourse: ‘One discourse has been on Religion as Christian Truth and civility in opposition to superstitions as barbarous irrationalities; the other has been on “religion” in relation to the secular state and civil society conceived as neutral or indifferent towards religion’ (Fitzgerald 2007: 311). These were clearly observed in the American negotiations with Japan in the 1850s. Importantly, these discourses had ideological functions. ‘Both of these discourses, often mixed together, have at least facilitated a rationale for Western imperialism and a justification for colonial rule’ (Fitzgerald 2007: 311). American narratives on ‘religion’ in the nineteenth century appear to be closely related to the norms and imperatives of imperialism. This article assesses the validity of such a claim in the context of the American-Japanese negotiations between 1853 and 1858. Reference: Fitzgerald, T. 2007. Discourse on Civility and Barbarity. Oxford University Press.
"Premodern Secularism", Japan Review, 30, 2017, pp. 21-37.
This article argues that secularism is not an exclusively modern phenomenon, but is rather a recurring pattern which arises throughout different periods of premodern and modern history. I begin with a longue durée overview of Japanese history as a case study, proposing a regime of such historical cycles over a 1,200-year period. I then focus on changes in religious-political relations which occurred in one specific, important cycle, through the transition from the late medieval into the early modern period. I argue that this period ushered in a new form of political-religious relations where Neo-Confucianism, instead of Buddhism, for the first time represented the religious element in Japanese politics. I demonstrate how this early modern regime of political-religious interaction supported by Neo-Confucianism was particularly stable and functioned to support public discourse. In conclusion, the article notes the destruction of this early modern form of political-religious relations during East Asian modernization, and suggests that the continuing lack of a stable regime of political-religious relations in both contemporary China and Japan can be seen as an ongoing legacy of that destruction.
The Invention of Religion in Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
2012
Winner of the SSSR 2013-Distinguished Book of the Year Award. "Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of what we call “religion.” There was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning. But when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country had to contend with this Western idea. In this book, Jason Ananda Josephson reveals how Japanese officials invented religion in Japan and traces the sweeping intellectual, legal, and cultural changes that followed. More than a tale of oppression or hegemony, Josephson’s account demonstrates that the process of articulating religion offered the Japanese state a valuable opportunity. In addition to carving out space for belief in Christianity and certain forms of Buddhism, Japanese officials excluded Shinto from the category. Instead, they enshrined it as a national ideology while relegating the popular practices of indigenous shamans and female mediums to the category of “superstitions”—and thus beyond the sphere of tolerance. Josephson argues that the invention of religion in Japan was a politically charged, boundary-drawing exercise that not only extensively reclassified the inherited materials of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto to lasting effect, but also reshaped, in subtle but significant ways, our own formulation of the concept of religion today. This ambitious and wide-ranging book contributes an important perspective to broader debates on the nature of religion, the secular, science, and superstition."