“CONVENTIONAL WISDOM” AND THE POLITICS OF SHINTO IN POSTWAR JAPAN
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54561/prj0401068bKeywords:
Shinto, Supreme Court rullings, Sorachibuto, 'object and effective', Yasukuni, National Association of Shrines (NAS), ISE, State foundation day (kenkoku kinen no hi))Abstract
In January 2010, the Supreme Court delivered a historic verdict of unconstitutionality in a case involving Sorachibuto, a Shinto shrine in Sunagawa city, Hokkaido. All of the national newspapers featured the case on their front pages. As the case makes abundantly clear, issues of politics and religion, politics and Shinto, are alive and well in 21st century Japan. In this essay, I seek to shed light on the fraught relationship between politics and Shinto from three perspectives. I first analyze the Sorachibuto case, and explain what is at stake, and why it has attracted the attention it has. I then contextualize it, addressing the key state-Shinto legal disputes in the post war period: from the 1970s through to the first decade of the 21st century. Here my main focus falls on the state, and its efforts to cultivate Shinto. In the final section, I shift that focus to the Shinto establishment, and explore its efforts to reestablish with a succession of post LDP administrations the sort of intimacy, which Shinto enjoyed with the state in the early 20th century.
References
Asahi Shinbun Breen, John, “’Voices of rage’: six paths to the problem of Yasukuni”, in Roy Starrs ed., Palgrave, (forthcoming 2010).
Breen, John, ‘”The danger is ever present”: Catholic critiques of Yasukuni shrine in post-war Japan’, Japan Mission Journal, 63, 2 (2009).
Breen, John, ‘Yasukuni and the loss of historical memory’ in Breen ed., Yasukuni, the war dead and the struggle for Japan’s past, Columbia University Press, 2008.
Breen, John and Mark Teeuwen, A New History of Shinto, Wiley- Blackwell, 2010.
Jinja Shinpō Jinja Shinpō sha ed., Kenshō Jinja Honchō 60 nen: sennin no ashiato, Jinja Shinpōsha, 2008. Mainichi Shinbun
Nelson, John, “Social memory as ritual practice: commemorating spirits of the military dead at Yasukuni Shinto shrine”, Journal of Asian Studies, 62,2 (2003).
Okumura Fumio, “Koizumi Yasukuni soshō to wa nan datta no ka”, (What was the significance of the Koizumi Yasukuni lawsuit?), Kenpō Ronsō 14 (2007).
Rose, Caroline, “Stalemate: The Yasukuni problem in Sino-Japanese relations”, in Breen ed., Yasukuni, the war dead and the struggle for Japan’s past Sankei Shinbun “Conventional wisdom” and the politics of Shinto in postwar Japan.