“CONVENTIONAL WISDOM” AND THE POLITICS OF SHINTO IN POSTWAR JAPAN

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54561/prj0401068b

Keywords:

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

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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).

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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.

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Published

2010-06-10

How to Cite

Breen, J. (2010). “CONVENTIONAL WISDOM” AND THE POLITICS OF SHINTO IN POSTWAR JAPAN. Politics and Religion Journal, 4(1), 68–82. https://doi.org/10.54561/prj0401068b