The field of Shinto studies is coming of age. The new Shinto series of Bloomsbury Academic has already four volumes in print at the time of writing, with more in the pipeline. The book under review here, the second volume of this series, fills a prominent hole in the existing literature by addressing the early modern and modern history of Izumo Shrine and its deity.

Zhong does not cover the whole of Izumo's history but focuses on a time span of just over two centuries, from the 1660s, when the Izumo Shrine was reconfigured as a Shinto site, until the 1870s and 1880s, when Izumo's priests attempted to secure prominence for their deity Ōkuninushi in the state pantheon of imperial kami. It is in fact around this deity, rather than its shrine, that Zhong builds his history. Much of his book deals with changing conceptualizations of Ōkuninushi and his relationship to Amaterasu; the local affairs of Izumo, its priests, and its patrons tend to recede into the background.

The first three chapters cover developments in the Edo period. In 1665–1667, the temple buildings that dominated the Izumo compound were dismantled and the site was “restored” as a Shinto shrine. This also involved a change of Izumo's kami, from Susanowo to Ōkuninushi. Izumo developed as a pilgrimage centre of the same type as, say, Ise or Konpira, with a community of oshi agents who marketed the site to lay confraternities. The amulets distributed by Izumo's oshi depicted Ōkuninushi as Daikoku, one of the seven gods of good fortune. Izumo's oshi also promoted the idea that all the gods leave their shrines and convene at Izumo in the 10th month to decide who will marry whom in the coming year.

Zhong argues that such tales formed a “theological matrix” that “implicitly displace[d] the discursive and ritual structure in which the authority of Amaterasu was articulated and the imperial court was organized” (p. 87). This appears to me as an over-interpretation that reads Meiji concerns into the Edo period. Izumo's oshi were competing not only, or even primarily with the oshi of Ise, but also with agents from such places as Zenkōji, Ōyama, and Konpira. Moreover, Amaterasu's Ise was propagated to pilgrims not as a site of imperial ritual but as a place of healing, prosperity, and, not least, entertainment. Challenging an Ise that did not yet exist was hardly a concern for the Izumo priests and oshi in the Edo period.

In his third chapter, Zhong moves away from Izumo to explore the reinvention of Ōkuninushi by kokugaku scholars, notably Hirata Atsutane. He stresses the influence of Catholicism and Western astronomy on Hirata, who redefined Ōkuninushi as the lord of the Invisible World and the judge of the souls of the dead. This elevated Ōkuninushi to a position on a par with, or even above Amaterasu, as the lord of the Visible World alone. Zhong argues convincingly that in devising this theology, “Hirata was reworking Catholic doctrines to reconfigure them into a Shinto form” (p. 117).

Chapter 4 takes us into the first years of the Meiji period, up to the year 1875. It was during this period that the reinvented Shinto of the late Edo period was catapulted onto the national stage. In these years the new regime sought to bolster imperial authority and simultaneously prevent the spread of Christianity by “unifying ritual, doctrine, and governance” on the basis of Shinto. In 1872, however, this policy was found to be too narrow and divisive. The Shinto Missionary Office (Senkyōshi) was replaced by a joint Shinto-Buddhist Ministry of Doctrine (Kyōbushō), which coordinated the so-called Great Promulgation Campaign through a semi-private body called the Great Teaching Institute (Daikyōin). Buddhists soon found out, however, that this Campaign forced them into a Shinto framework and compromised their freedom to uphold their own doctrines. The Shinshū priest Shimaji Mokurai employed the Western notion of “religion” as a means to denounce the many contradictions of the Campaign. Most importantly, he argued that the state could not base its authority on doctrine because doctrine belonged to the realm of religion and could therefore not be enforced. In 1875, Shinshū sects left the Campaign and the Great Teaching Institute was dissolved. The Shinto leg of the Campaign responded to this crisis by founding a new Office of Shinto Affairs (Shintō jimukyoku) so as to coordinate the activities of priests and Campaign instructors.

Chapter 5 describes how in the 1870s and 1880s, tensions between Izumo and Ise, or Ōkuninushi and Amaterasu, set the Office of Shinto Affairs on fire. At Izumo, Senge Takatomi had built up an extensive propagation programme by organizing the old confraternities of his shrine into a new “Izumo Church” (p. 168). In 1872, he petitioned the Ministry of Doctrine to recognize the special status of Izumo's deity Ōkuninushi as the creator of the land and the founder of the state, and to rank Izumo as equal with Amaterasu's Ise, which was elevated above all other shrines. Senge found allies among priests who were inspired by Hirata Atsutane's teachings, and also among those who found the idea that Ōkuninushi judges the dead in the Invisible World useful as a doctrinal foundation for Shinto funerals (pp. 169–71).

His opponents rallied around Tanaka Yoritsune, appointed as head priest of the Ise Shrines in 1874. It was Tanaka who took the initiative to found the Office of Shinto Affairs in 1875, and he was adamant that this office would streamline Shinto propagation under a unified Ise leadership. There was no place in his vision for either Izumo or Ōkuninushi. In 1877, he proposed that Ise should assume responsibility for the management of all shrines, shrine priests, and Shinto instructors in the country (p. 180). As one might expect, this antagonized not only Senge but many other priests as well.

In the meantime, Senge had been lobbying to have Ōkuninushi enshrined as Amaterasu's equal, first in the Great Teaching Institute, and after 1875 in the Office of Shinto Affairs. This triggered the incident that is generally known as saijin ronsō, the “enshrinement debate.” This debate split the Shinto world and invited ridicule in the press. The discussions became ever more acrimonious, until in 1880 the Home Ministry reluctantly intervened. In 1881, the matter was decided by an imperial edict ordering the Office to enshrine the same deities as the imperial palace: Amaterasu, the spirits of past emperors, and the gods of heaven and earth. This ended Senge's dream of winning parity for Ōkuninushi with Amaterasu.

Zhong makes the convincing argument that this conflict was not only a factional battle between Izumo's Senge and Ise's Tanaka, but also an ideological dispute between two visions of the place of Shinto in the modern state. Where Tanaka fought for a non-religious, or at least non-sectarian, Shinto that focused on ritual, Senge envisioned a Shinto mission based on a religious doctrine. In the heat of the debate, Senge was accused of “preaching Christianity while hiding behind Ōkuninushi”Footnote ¹ – a characteristic that caused the conflict to escalate even further. In light of Zhong's emphasis on the Christian nature of Hirata's reinvention of Ōkuninushi, this was a rather ironic turn of events, and it is a pity that Zhong misses this telling detail in his account. He does, nonetheless, offer a very convincing analysis of the way the debate was handled, its outcome, and its aftermath. In 1882, the Home Ministry adopted measures that were in line with Shimaji's logic, separating shrines from “religion” as sites solely dedicated to “ritual.” We can conclude that Tanaka had read the mood of the times more accurately than Senge.

Zhong's volume is timely, well researched, and focused. He covers some aspects of the social history of Izumo Shrine from the Edo period onwards, but in the end is more interested in the conceptual history of the idea of Izumo, as a contrast to Ise. Throughout, Zhong describes the fate of Izumo's deity Ōkuninushi as “vanquished and exiled from history” (p. 3), or “rendered anonymous and silent” (p. 198). This assessment appears somewhat inaccurate, since what was vanquished was not Ōkuninushi but Hirata's reinvention of this deity. I am also unsure whether this reinvention did indeed mark “the origin of modern Shinto,” as the book title claims. Zhong argues that the exclusion of Ōkuninushi from the imperial pantheon, and the resulting exclusive focus on Amaterasu, constituted this “origin.” In my view, this gives a bit too much weight to the enshrinement debate.

This book leaves many issues unexplored, including most of the local history of Izumo, and of the Izumo Church from the 1880s onwards. This does not detract from the value of what Zhong does explore: Izumo's moment in the sun in the late Edo period and the early years of Meiji, and its retreat from the political stage in 1881. By choosing Izumo as his lens, Zhong opens up a fresh perspective on the conflicts that shaped Meiji Shinto.