State Shinto

State Shinto (Kokka Shinto) is a term coined by postwar government officials and Japanese scholars of religion to retroactively evaluate the prominent and official incorporation of kami worship into the modern Japanese nation-state and empire. This system of "unified rites and rule" (saisei icchi 祭政一致) began in the mid-1800s and ended in 1945 with the surrender of Japan and the conclusion of World War II. In reality, various factions of Japanese politicians and Shinto priests long disagreed over the exact form this unity should take, and so the actual mechanisms and missions of the State Shinto system underwent several significant changes over the eight decades it spanned. One significant and enduring debate within the study of Japanese religions concerns whether State Shinto should be understood as a religion and, by extension, a form of religious nationalism. That is, Article 28 of the Meiji Constitution promulgated in 1889 made provisions for freedom of religion. While some Shinto traditions were defined as religions (technically churches) under the umbrella category of Sect Shinto and thus a matter of private belief, the Meiji state legally distinguished the majority of Shinto shrines as public sites of explicitly nonreligious, civic ritual. The state established several successive government agencies tasked with the oversight of shrine operations: the Divinities Administration Section/Bureau (Jingi Jimuka/Jimukyoku, 1868-1869), the Department of Divinities (Jingikan, 1869-1869), the Jingishō (1869-1877), the Shrine and Temple Bureau (Shajikyoku, 1877-1900), the Shrine Bureau (Jinja Kyoku, 1900-1940), and the Institute of Divinities (Jingiin, 1940-1945). State Shinto extended from Japanese citizens to colonial subjects in territories such as Taiwan and Korea. The establishment of overseas shrines went hand in hand with imperial expansion, and often the "Three Pioneer Kami" (Kaitaku sanjin)–Ōkunitama no Kami, Ōnamuchi no Kami, and Sukunahikona no Kami–were enshrined in an official regional shrine to aid in the colony's assimilation. The hierarchical pantheon of deities at the center of State Shinto also shifted over time. Most famously, factions supporting the cults of Izumo and Ise competed during the the Pantheon Dispute to decide which kami should be the focus of state rites. In the end, the dispute went unresolved, and the Ise faction, which venerates the solar deity and imperial ancestress Amaterasu and her descendents, eventually claimed central importance. A few core aspects of State Shinto ideology included the divinity of the emperor, the sacred status of Japan as a nation protected by the gods (shinkoku), and the unification of rites and rule. While the establishment of State Shinto was presented as a "restoration" of historical tradition, it was mainly a process of modern invention, necessitating many changes in shrines and rituals. The government agencies overseeing shrine affairs in many cases changed the gods enshrined in shrines to better align with kami mentioned in the Kojiki, a classical state mythohistorical text. It also abolished the hereditary priesthood, instating oversight of priestly training and appointments, and adopted the Shrine Consolidation Policy, which sought to merge or abolish the majority of local shrines according to the principle of "one shrine per village." In addition, new rituals such as funerary rites for emperors and a Shinto wedding were invented during this time. Significant sites associated with State Shinto include: the Grand Shrines of Ise; Meiji Jingū, an imperial shrine established for the deified Meiji Emperor and his empress after their deaths; the tombs of past emperors; and Yasukuni Shrine, which enshrines for public veneration the spirits of Japan's war dead, including two controversial groups: colonial subjects and convicted war criminals (after WWII). One noteworthy text produced during this period is the Imperial Rescript on Education, promulgated in 1890. While the rescript is commonly considered to contributed to State Shinto, the values promoted within the text (e.g., filial piety, reverence for the ruler, benevolence, duty to the state, etc.) are clearly Confucian in origin. The modern Japanese state distributed the text to all public schools and required it to be memorized and read aloud on certain occasions. A separate structure called a hōanden was built on school grounds to house the portraits of modern emperors and the Imperial Rescript for veneration. The "union of rites and rule" in the Japanese government was formally abolished by the Allied Occupation's Shinto Directive in December 1945. Occupation officials considered "State Shinto" to be a coercive and corrupted "religion" that fueled modern Japan's "ultranationalism" and contraverted citizens' right to religious freedom. Now categorized as a religion, Shinto had to be formally disestablished from the government to separate church and state. Postwar, Shinto (now Shrine Shinto) thus came to be legally redefined as a private religion, and a new umbrella agency (Associaton of Shinto Shrines, Jinja Honchō 神社本庁) was founded to replace the Institute of Divinities in overseeing shrine affairs.