"Political Modernity and Secularization: thoughts from the Japanese eighteenth and nineteenth centuries" (Journal of Religious History 36:1) (original) (raw)
Related papers
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.
"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.
Critical Reflections on the Religious-Secular Dichotomy in Japan
Making Religion: Theory and Practice in the Discursive Study of Religion
For at least the last two decades, the concept of ‘religion’ has been examined critically by a number of scholars. In the light of this scrutiny, this chapter takes the concept in Japan as a subject for investigation. The Japanese concept for ‘religion’ shūkyō was invented in the nineteenth century. The term was a key constituent element in the technology of statecraft. The term’s nineteenth century construction has been extensively studied by many, but the same critical thread has not been reached to the post-1945 era. This is the main area of the inquiry for this chapter. First of all, this chapter reviews how the term ‘religion’ was imported to and appropriated as shūkyō in Japan in the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. This is followed by the examination of how the concept was reformulated after the Second World War under the influence of American-style liberal democratic values. To the present day, the boundary between religion (shūkyō) and the non-religious secular is ambiguous and often contentious. Importantly, this exploration leaves us with the under-researched area of shūkyō in the colloquial discourse. Thus, this chapter concludes with implications for further research.
The Irony of Secularist Nation-Building in Japanese Modernity : Inoue Kowashi and Fukuzawa Yukichi
2016
Japan seems to face the issue of "religion and politics" again, as movements towards religious nationalism under the Abe government attract attention (Japan Times 2014). These movements allegedly aim at "return to prewar Japan" (Shimazono 2014; Yamazaki 2015; Sugano 2016). Underlying such observation is an assumption that such return to prewar Japan is nothing but a return to religious nationalism, which culminated in the fanatic militarism of wartime Japan. This assumption is based on a conventional view of Japanese political modernity. According to this view, political leaders of the Meiji era endeavored to build a modern state, that is, the Meiji regime, in which a state religion called State Shinto played a significant role. For example, Mark Juergensmeyer (1993: 199) categorizes Japan as a case of "religious nationalism"-a type of nationalism in which "religion has a role to play in defining a nation and in stating its basic values." Such religious view of Japanese nationalism, often coupled with the implication of a deviant case from the normal course of modernization, has been widely shared among scholars of Japan studies. 1 Yet, important questions about the nature of the Meiji regime arise. Did political and intellectual leaders of Meiji Japan intend to establish a modern state based on religious nationalism? How could most oligarchs of the Meiji government, often characterized as Machiavellian, be theocrats? Were intellectuals of the early years of the Meiji period not engaged in the task of enlightening and hence modernizing Japanese society to hastily catch up Western
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.
Religious nationalism and the making of the modern Japanese state
2008
This article explores the role of religious nationalism in the making of the modern Japanese state. We describe a process of adaptation featuring bricolage, as an alternative to imitation accounts of non-Western state formation that privilege Western culture. The Meiji state, finding it could not impose Shintô as a state religion, selectively drew from religio-nationalist currents and Western models for over two decades before institutionalizing State Shintô. Although we see some similarities to Europe, distinctive features of the Japanese case suggest a different path to modernity: a lack of separation between state and religion, an emphasis on ritual and a late (and historically condensed) development of popular religious nationalism, which was anchored by State Shintô disciplinary devices including school rituals and shrines deifying the war dead. Tôru Kondô, a high school teacher in Tokyo, was recently forced to take a retraining course, lectured on his conduct, and asked to do a written self-examination. He was one of 244 educators punished for refusing to comply with a new Tokyo Board of Education regulation: teachers were to stand, face the flag and sing the national anthem during enrollment and graduation ceremonies; another 67 teachers were warned because they failed to instruct their students to do so. While Tokyo school officials take down the names of teachers who fail to stand and sing, in Fukuoka Prefecture they keep track of how loud students sing the anthem (each school is classified as high, medium, or low). Backers of the rule, who want to expand it nationwide, argue that it is a step in making Japan a "normal" country that can have patriotic pride. However, the teachers object that the government is using the anthem
Politics and Religion in Japan
Religion Compass, 2009
The relation between church and state, or religion and politics, has always been an uncomfortably close one in Japan, but it is only in recent years that this relationship has been seen as problematical, both from a political and a religious perspective. This article surveys two major areas of contention in particular: the present Japanese government's apparent attempts to revive an Emperor-centered State Shinto, and the lively recent debates over the role of Buddhism, especially of ‘fascist Zen’, in the Asia–Pacific War. I also consider the political implications of the new movement of so-called ‘Critical Buddhism’, as well as of the ‘religious violence’ practiced by the Aum Shinriky? ‘doomsday cult’.
Journal of Religion in Japan, 2019
Starting from the premise that the diversity of forms for distinguishing between ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’ (i.e., multiple secularities) in global modernity is the result ofdifferent cultural preconditions in the appropriation ofWestern normative concepts of secularism, I would like to offer a modest contribution to the understanding of the corresponding cultural preconditions in Japan. I will try to showthat the specific—and at first glance, relatively unproblematic—appropriation of secularity as a regulatory principle in modern Japan is to some extent path dependent on relatively stable and durable epistemic and social structures that have emerged in the course of ‘critical junctures’ in history. In this context, I would like to put up for discussion my hypothesis that some decisions taken in the period between the sixth and eighth centuries CE regarding the organisation of the relationship between ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’ generated path dependencies that were effective well into the nineteenth century.