Historians often interpret the “freedom of religion” clause in the Meiji Constitution as a concession to the treaty powers, who viewed the ability to propagate Christianity as a prerequisite to the renegotiation of unequal treaties. Trent Maxey's erudite and closely argued volume does not contest that this was a matter of utmost concern among Meiji oligarchs, but places the clause within the larger context of attempts to understand and tame the alien category of “religion,” perceived as their “greatest problem” in efforts to consolidate and legitimize rule. Maxey traces how the fledgling state, premised on restoring the imperial institution to a centralized position of power, experimented with religious policy, first promoting the concept of sacred authority then distancing the imperial institution from potential religious threats. He argues overall that the government's creation of a miscellany of institutions and measures around “religion” was influenced not only by treaty status, but also by domestic political concerns and by nineteenth-century debates on the relationship between religion and state occurring abroad.
The first three chapters cover ground familiar to students of Japanese history, including Aizawa Seishisai's treatise Shinron, the Iwakura Mission, and the Great Promulgation Campaign. Maxey fruitfully reexamines these and other topics, demonstrating that early Meiji leaders held pragmatic, if mutable, attitudes toward religion's potential for bolstering or threatening nascent state authority. Chapter 1 addresses how initial attempts to define and promote imperial authority drew upon Aizawa's articulation of the Christian threat and his recommendation that the “unity of rite and rule,” a centralized ritual regime, provided a resource capable of attracting popular loyalty to counter that threat. Chapter 2 describes tensions between the diplomatic necessity of legalizing Christianity, soon realized by the Mission, and the government's fear of resulting internal unrest. One outcome was “silent toleration” (p. 81) through the removal of visible signboards prohibiting Christianity. Chapter 3 examines debates on religion and governance by the influential Meiroku society, pitting calls for a state religion against advocacy of freedom of belief. All agreed, however, on the need for the state to instill a Christian-like morality among the people, by, for example, proscribing “superstitious” religious practices such as faith-healing. The Promulgation Campaign thus deployed instructors from diverse backgrounds to enlighten the masses on prescribed national values. Shin Buddhist priest Shimaji Mokurai, however, charged that the campaign improperly located the imperial institution within the realm of religion, and demanded a clear boundary between state power and private belief. Meiji leaders agreed, and religion was, thereafter, “subjectified” (p. 129), that is, judged a matter of personal, subjective belief, removed from but subject to state power. In sum, during the first decade of the Meiji period, sectarian frictions and foreign pressures convinced leaders that the imperial institution must be removed from the contentious sphere of religion to shield it from failure as the putative basis of national authority.
Chapters 4 and 5 recount how Meiji leaders began to build barriers between state authority and sectarian concerns during the 1880s and 1890s, and how religious leaders reacted by lobbying the new Imperial Diet for special considerations. Recognizing that entanglement in religious affairs attracted criticism by the press and the sprawling People's Rights movement, officials bifurcated Shinto into a public ritual practice and private religious belief—Shrine and Sect Shinto. To appease both domestic anti-Christian movements and the treaty powers, they aimed to regulate sects in a neutral, indirect manner that would allow but not endorse Christianity. With impending passage of a general Religion Bill in 1900, placing all sects generically under one regulatory regime, and with the advent of mixed residence prompting the expectation of increased Christian missionary activity, Shintoists lobbied for the revival of a separate bureau for shrine administration while Buddhists sought special recognition as a majoritarian religion. They found common cause with political parties seeking to discredit clique government—the Diet approved the separate status of Shinto shrines and denied passage of the Religion Bill, a humiliating defeat for the oligarchs.
The narrative ends with the Home Ministry's 1912 invitation to Buddhist, Shinto, and Christian clerics alike to enlist in the ideological battle against threats like socialism and anarchism, which had replaced religion as the nation's “greatest problem.” Maxey concludes that the Diet's approval of a distinction between Shinto shrines and sectarian religion produced the basis for State Shinto, an “increasingly narrow ideological orthodoxy” and “coercive force” (p. 238). Given the earlier level of careful argumentation, I find it questionable that he uncritically adopts the contested category of “State Shinto,” a postwar construct rejected by many contemporary scholars.
This is, nevertheless, an excellent, deeply researched work that makes an invaluable contribution to the growing study of religion in modern Japan, taking a place alongside studies by James Ketelaar, Richard Jaffe, John Breen, Sarah Thal, and Andrew Bernstein, among others. It further invokes scholars like Talal Asad and Gauri Vishwanathan, who have critically analyzed the construction of “religion” by other national and colonial regimes. In short, this is a must-read for all specialists in modern Japanese history and religion. Be aware, however, that undergraduates and others lacking thorough grounding in the concepts, institutions, and individuals discussed may find it dense, dry, and challenging.
