Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ABSTRACT
This paper explores the ideology of religious studies with respect to early 20th
century studies of Japan. Since 1945, “State Shintō” has been defined in academic
literature as a state religion which was enforced by the Japanese government from
an undetermined date after the Meiji Restoration until it was disestablished by the
Allied Occupation. In fact, the Japanese government took concrete steps to separate
their patriotic ceremonies from religion. Our current definition of the term “State
Shintō” was produced by the religious scholar D.C. Holtom.
Imperial Japan represents a unique case in the history of civilization before World
War II. Alone among its East Asian neighbors, it cast off the unequal treaties of the
nineteenth century and became recognized by the European nations as a “Great Power”. The
West had agreed in the prewar period that Japan had modernized itself and was to be treated
as an equal. It was awarded mandate over a group of Pacific islands by the League of Nations
after World War I, and would have been the first non-Western host of the Olympic Games
a cohesive nation-state. To this end, imperial Japanese authorities in the late 19th and early
20th centuries can be said to have invented a variety of teachings, actions, and physical
institutions designed to inculcate reverence and obedience towards the state and its
personification in the emperor. Notable among these were a national war memorial called
Yasukuni Shrine (1869), a calendar of imperial holidays (1870s), a document called the
1
Imperial Rescript on Education (1889), attendance at shrines by primary schools (1911), and
government that was adapting itself to European civilization for the first time, this was a
Arlington National Cemetery (1864), Washington's Birthday and Flag Day (1880s), the
Pledge of Allegiance (1892), the school flag movement (1890s), and so forth.
When the Allies occupied Japan in 1945, however, they saw these developments in a
vastly different light. Japanese fascism, the Allies declared, was not merely reliant on local
traditions but a “perversion of Shintō”, which was not a cultural vocabulary fit for use by
civilized nations, but “a primitive religion put to modern uses.”1 Confusingly, this meant that
they could not ban Japanese fascism outright, because this would deny freedom of religion;
instead, they could only “disestablish” it, even though there was no church or bureau which
The direct consequence of this report was a document called the Shintō Directive,
which in its own words “free[d] the Japanese people from ... compulsion to believe or profess
to believe in a religion or cult officially designated by the state.” The Directive reorganized
policies that were considered secular by the previous government into part of a religion.2 The
Yasukuni Shrine, the national war memorial which was once visited annually by the emperor.
As a private religious organization, Yasukuni has honored war criminals in its shrine, invited
paramilitary groups to its festivals, and built a museum on the shrine grounds devoted to a
1 Ken R. Dyke, “Shinto: A Study Prepared by General Headquarters, SCAP, C I & E Section”, Contemporary
Religions in Japan 7.4 (1966)
2 Ibid.
2
revisionist view of the Pacific War. These actions have led to international controversy in the
postwar period, but the Japanese government is unable to regulate this behavior. Why did the
Superficially, privatization affirmed the superiority of the Western way of life, and
uses of Western symbols that Homi Bhabha describes as “mimicry”. But the Allies were not
consciously trying to create a colonial discourse; rather, they were relying on an existing
narrative that denied the legitimacy of Japanese authority. I will here examine the writings of
a religious scholar named D.C. Holtom who was largely responsible for creating this
narrative, both to understand the normalcy of his opinions within the religious studies of his
period and to provoke further thought about the role of religious scholars in constructing and
In Edo period Japan (1603-1868), a mixture of shrines and temples dotted the
Japanese landscape. The temples were built, staffed, and regulated by private monastic
institutions, dedicated to Buddhist rites and education. The shrines, however, had no
institutional affiliation, except where a Buddhist temple had stepped into maintain them.
Shrines served important nonsectarian purposes in Japanese society: they were places where
festivals were held and historical or mythological figures, called kami, were memorialized.
The kami could be construed variously as heroes from an ancient era, figures who instilled
Confucian morality, or an unseen, animist force.3 If asked the common beliefs that all these
shrines shared, an intellectual might wager the generic word shintō, meaning matters of kami,
3
but not without a disclaimer: “The shintō are a difficult thing to speculate about.”4 There was
Because shrines were present throughout the country and mostly apolitical, they were
employed by the state for censuses and public announcements towards the end of the Edo
period. During the Meiji Restoration in 1868, part of the overthrow of the previous
government was a “restoration” of the ancient ways of the kami according to a philosophical
movement previously founded by Atsutane Hirata and Norinaga Motoori. These two
philosophers had identified shrines as heirs to an indigenous Japanese identity superior to the
“foreign” Buddhism, and aimed to “restore” their influence in Japanese society, but they
were actually inventing a new power structure, so to implement it some new rules had to be
made. Shrine owners now separated enshrined kami from the Buddhist images they had
previously intermingled with (shinbutsu bunri). Many Buddhist monks left the priesthood to
join this movement, but their training was too hasty and their mission too vague. In the
popular press, their effort was dismissed as an “insignificant movement”, their public lectures
were roundly mocked, and their ineffective government bureau was dubbed the “Ministry of
Afternoon Naps.” The government ignored the call to declare their shintō, a term they
popularized for the first time, the national religion.5 Instead, a way forward for the shrines
was proposed by the Buddhist priest Seiran Ōuchi (1845-1918), who relied on the new,
4 After Toshio Kuroda, James C. Dobbins and Suzanne Gay, “Shintō in the History of Japanese Religion,”
Journal of Japanese Studies 7.1 (1981), 10
5 James Edward Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan (Princeton: Princeton University, 1990),
98; Helen Hardacre, Shintō and the State, 1868-1988 (Princeton: Princeton University, 1989), 50, 294;
Jun’ichi Isomae, “The Formative Process of State Shintō in Relation to the Westernization of Japan: the
Concept of ‘Religion’ and ‘Shintō’,” trans. Michael S. Wood, in Religion and the Secular: Historical and
Colonial Formations, ed. Timothy Fitzgerald (London: Equinox, 2007), 96; John Breen, “Ideologues,
Bureaucrats and Priests”, in Shintō in History: Ways of the Kami, eds. Breen and Teeuwen (Honolulu:
University of Hawai’i, 2000), 234
4
Western idea of “religious freedom” when he composed a letter to the government bureau in
If you insist on calling this shintō a religion — we should really call it not merely a
polytheistic religion, but a rag-bag religion ... if we attach the name religion to the
veneration and worship of our imperial ancestors, then, with respect, what will
happen is that those who believe that the spirits of the imperial ancestors repose
eternally in the other realm will believe, but those who do not will make a mockery of
it. Shintō rituals are national or public in character, and so the state should itself
perform rites at national shrines.6
national indoctrination was abandoned, and freedom of religion was declared throughout the
country in the 1889 Meiji Constitution. But the “freedom of religion” was actually a freedom
of personal faith, with an explicit disclaimer that religion could not interfere with public
“peace and order.”7 Religion in Japan was, and still is, considered a private matter of one's
inner mind, while in contrast, morality was deemed, in the words of the modern scholar
Jun’ichi Isomae, “a national, and thus a public, issue.”8 Thus, a new Shrine Bureau was
created that continued to own and operate the shrines as public moral institutions, even while
a Religions Bureau was separated from it for the regulation of private Buddhist, Christian,
uncontroversial, because it was scarcely different from how shrines were managed in the age
of their parents and grandparents. They never recognized something called “Shintō” that was
distinguishable from other habits of life in Japan, and even today, many Japanese will insist
that shrines are not religious but function as a public, nonsectarian part of Japanese culture.
6 Quoted in Hitoshi Nitta, “Shintō as a ‘Non-Religion’: The Origins and Development of an Idea,” in Shintō
in History, 255
7 Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan, 131-2
8 Isomae, “The Formative Process of State Shintō”, 93
5
The Shrine Bureau gave new prominence to the imperial shrine, Ise Jingū, and the imperial
ancestors. New shrines were also built (e.g. Yasukuni Shrine) and existing shrines were
remodeled to commemorate Japan’s war dead, an innovation on the existing, widely accepted
practice of memorializing ancestors to prevent them from coming back as disturbed spirits.
Shrines were being used in a way akin to American flags and war memorials, as national
A number of laws were drawn up to prevent shrine priests from using their public
position for private interests, and to separate them legally from private religious movements
led by charismatic leaders, which were dubbed Sect or Religious Shintō. The term jinja was
invented to distinguish shrines from other buildings that housed kami, and it was reserved for
nonsectarian purposes. Shrine officials were prohibited from conducting funerals, which
were the private business of Buddhists and Christians. They were also banned from
conversation.”9 Religious Shintō churches were banned from using the torii shrine gate,
which was repurposed as a nonsectarian national symbol. These laws made some novel
distinctions between religious and secular, causing angst among shrine priests who wanted to
continue their “restoration”, but to make such distinctions was the intent of the government.
They aimed to separate sect and shrine, so that shrine attendance could remain the duty of all
These policies to distinguish religious Sect Shintō and secular Shrine Shintō had little
9 D.C. Holtom, “Modern Shintō as a State Religion”, in The Japan Mission Year Book, vol. 28 (Tokyo:
Kyobunkwan, 1930), 57
10 Nitta, “Shintō as a ‘Non-Religion’,” 266
6
foreign influence, beginning with the “Three Religions Conference” in 1912, Japanese
Christians and missionaries alike were welcomed into the fold of Japanese society.11 Even as
relations between Japan and the West grew tense when Japan adopted fascist tendencies and
invaded China, there were no restraints put on Christian schooling or missionary work. In
1940, William P. Woodard related his surprise that missionaries from quasi-hostile states
continued to operate in Japan without interference, asking, “Is there another country in the
world where this could occur?”12 In this sense, at least, it is difficult to dispute the Japanese
commitment to freedom of religion. But at the same time, these minority communities often
Even though the Japanese government was embracing freedom of religion and
pluralism on its own terms, the Japanese Christian community was uncertain of whether to
Westernized state that had not embraced the religion popular among Western countries. The
secular world considered Japan an equal partner in trade and diplomacy, but did that mean its
newly invented internal customs were civilized and secular? Both the foreign missionaries
and Japanese converts felt confused and tested by the state's invented traditions.
The missionaries began complaints against Japanese state policy at the turn of the
century by claiming that bowing to the portrait of the Emperor, as was frequently asked of
them during school ceremonies, was “Caesar worship.” Their refusal was akin to the
Jehovah’s Witnesses' refusal to salute the flag, which had caused them to be labeled traitors
11 A. Hamish Ion, The Cross in the Dark Valley: The Canadian Protestant Missionary Movement in Japan
(Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier, 1999), 84
12 William P. Woodard, “The Foreign Missionary in Japan.” In The Japan Christian Year Book, vol. 38 (Tokyo:
Kyobunkwan, 1940), 89
7
to the United States and frequently persecuted.13 Nevertheless, the missionaries were
convinced that their way was the only civilized way. The American Baptist perspective on
this dispute was not merely that the Japanese had different customs from the missionaries,
but that “there is evidently room for progress and enlightenment even among the advanced
classes of Japan.”14 But of course, they were not actually talking about technological or social
“progress”, but about their own sectarian agendas, which they felt had not been sufficiently
disseminated into the Japanese conscience. By the mid-1900s, however, this particular issue
had died down. Bowing to the portrait was reconsidered as a patriotic duty, similar to saluting
a flag.
In 1911, though, controversy flared up again when the Japanese government asked
Christian schools to begin sending representatives of each class to a state shrine on an annual
basis in order to pay their respects to those who gave their lives for the empire.15 Missionaries
were concerned by this development, which seemed to them to violate the separation of
church and state. Of course, the Japanese Christians grew up in a culture where families went
to shrines together, newspapers talked about them, and the government built them for special
occasions. They did not see shrines as alien or blasphemous to their Christian faith; they were
rather an integral part of Japaneseness. Many Christians disagreed with the missionary
perspective, and drew on familiar Japanese scholars to resolve the question: for example, in
1915 the Christian Tatsu Tanaka (1868-1920) published a book entitled My Opinion of Shintō
which cited dozens of authors to prove that the shintō of the modern shrines was non-
13 Shawn Francis Peters, Judging Jehovah's Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights
Revolution (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000)
14 The Baptist Missionary Magazine, October 1898, 4.
15 D.C. Holtom. The National Faith of Japan (London: Trubner, 1938), 73
8
religious.16 They won over not only other Japanese but also some Western hearts during
frequent discussions and meetings on the subject, such as the missionary R.C. Armstrong
(1876-1929), who beginning in 1916 agreed that “the Japanese are justified in saying that
Shintō is not a religion” and advocated for Christians to continue employing shrine priests in
secular ceremonies.17
Cult,” where he considered the nonsectarian and national value of the shrines:
We stand in a transition period in Japan: the fight over the homage and the
adoration of the Imperial photograph has been fought, but it has been
interpreted in a manner to give offence to no right thinking man, who
understands that all of these patriotic ceremonies are nothing but the
embodiment of the national spirit of reverence for the Imperial ancestors of
the Japanese people. In this sense, bowing before the national shrines may be
interpreted. It is not unlike our action in removing our hats in the presence of,
and out of respect for the dead.18
Armstrong still had some misgivings: he did not like the “foxes and other animals”
which stood inside the gates of some shrines, and looked forward to a stricter government
separation between religious and secular activities. But in general, he saw Christianity as a
On the Japanese side, too, there were some goodwill attempts being made at a
compromise with Christian qualms. In 1919, the shrine priest Kiyosuke Yasuhara published a
book entitled Shrines and Religion. Yasuhara considered that while some kami were
16 Tatsu Tanaka (田中達), Shintō Kanken (神道管見; Tokyo: Japan Christian Social Work League, 1915).
Others who expressed their support in writing include Jintarō Takagi, Danjō Ebina, Hiromichi Kozaki, and
Toyohiko Kagawa.
17 R.C. Armstrong, “The Religious Value of Shintō”, in The Japan Evangelist 23.11 (1916), 429-433
18 R.C. Armstrong, “Shintō as a National Cult”, in The Christian Movement in the Japanese Empire ... A Year
Book for 1918, ed. Edwin Taylor Iglehart (Tokyo: Fukuin, 1918), 266
19 Following the publication of D.C. Holtom's thesis in 1922, Armstrong changed his mind. See “Modern
Revivals of Ancient Religions in Japan”, The Japan Evangelist vol. 31, no. 2 (July 1924).
9
relatives, ancestors or other historical individuals, other kami had weak historical grounding
and seemed closer akin to characters of folklore or mythology. To resolve this he proposed
that lists of religious and non-religious kami be drawn up, and that some shrines could be
granted the ability to reorganize as a religion, while others could remain secular and be
purged of any “religious” influence.20 Several religious organizations for private shrines
already existed, e.g. Shintō Honkyoku for shrines associated with the restoration movement,
and Shintō Taiseikyō for more eclectic shrines; beginning in the 1920s, some religiously
Writers such as Armstrong and Yasuhara suggest a route the Shrine Bureau could
have taken to answer the Christians’ qualms. By reforming their mandates for enshrinements
and prayers to match Western expectations for secularity, they could acknowledge and
respond to the Christian position without doing too much damage to Japanese customs. But
unlike the issue of the imperial photograph, the shrine question was not going away that
easily. Among the missionaries there were many who saw “Shintō” as a monolithic entity
that could not be reformed. They simply could not see how something that had been
described as religion from the earliest accounts of foreign visitors could be reformed into
Christian arguments, and did not take much of an effort to respond to them. Their solution to
20 I suspect compromises like this were proposed by many groups: for example, the Buddhist priest Beihō
Takashima printed such a proposal in a Tokyo newspaper as late as 1930. See D.C. Holtom, “Modern Shintō
as a State Religion,” 41-43
21 Isomae, “The Formative Process of State Shintō in Relation to the Westernization of Japan”, 98
22 “Shrine Worship and Christians”, The Japan Evangelist, vol. 23, no. 12 (December 1916), 458
10
the problem of religiousness was to purposefully refrain from defining shrines, so that people
could interpret them however they wanted.23 A statement of the Home Ministry, which
managed the Shrine Bureau, affirms this solution: “Whatever opinion may be held as to what
should be done regarding religious attitudes toward the shrines, the government will maintain
a neutral position on the ground that religious belief should be free.”24 When the government
finally established a committee to discuss religious problems surrounding the shrines in the
1920s, it did not involve Christians in its discussion but put off their complaints for later. One
of the few officials who did answer the Christians offered this explanation:
Although the word kami continues to be used in the national cult, it has in no way the
meaning of a supernatural being, which you give to it. It connotes only illustrious
men, benefactors of their country. Consequently all Japanese, no matter what their
religion, can pay them honour without doing violence to their conscience. … I have
no doubt that you will willingly consent to enlighten your followers and to confirm
their patriotism and loyalty towards the Emperor.25
This response contains a good amount of truth, since kami often are human beings,
and the aim of government policies was indeed to induce “patriotism and loyalty,” not to
convert Japanese away from Christianity. But in his flat-out denial that any religious
complaint could be made, the governor also indicates a reluctance to address the Christian
perspective, or to make a compromise with them as Yasuhara’s proposals would have done.
Perhaps the official was considering such factors as widespread approval of the government
uses of shrines, the strong association between patriotic feeling and the preservation of
as a whole.
23 Isomae, “The Formative Process of State Shintō in Relation to the Westernization of Japan”, 97
24 D.C. Holtom, The Political Philosophy of Modern Shintō: A Study of the State Religion of Japan (Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1922), 66
25 J.D. Evans (?), The National Cult in Japan (Kobe: Japan Chronicle, 1918)
11
Overview of D.C. Holtom’s Work
stand-off between the Christians and the Japanese. To the overwhelming majority of
Japanese, shrine attendance was unproblematic; indeed, as late as 1936 an outside observer
concluded that “whatever their religious beliefs,” all Japanese citizens were capable of
participating in state ceremonies, and “Christianity alone seemed to conflict.”26 One of these
conflicting Christians was Daniel Clarence Holtom (1884-1962), who was initially sent to
Japan by the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society in the early 1910s and continued to
live there as a religious scholar through the 1940s, teaching at Japan Baptist Theological
the University of Chicago entitled The Political Philosophy of Modern Shintō: A Study of the
State Religion of Japan. This work initiates a line of argument which remains constant
Within Holtom’s major works are two narratives. The first will ring a bell for students
of Japanese history on either side of the Pacific: he discusses such major philosophical
figures as Kūkai and Saichō in the early ninth century (who had unified kami with Buddhas)
and Norinaga Motoori and Atsutane Hirata in the early nineteenth century, explaining the
influence of all of these figures on the development of the concept of kami. He then goes into
pan-Japanese unity and obedience to the state. In this history, kami is a complicated subject,
related to such ideas as Buddha, Emperor, spirit and heart, that changes over time in response
26 E.E.N. Causton, Militarism and Foreign Policy in Japan (London, G. Allen & Unwin, 1936), 30
12
to the social and political currents of Japanese history.27
At the same time, a teleological narrative, which contradicts this history, dominates
his work. According to the history as described by Holtom himself, to put it simply, kami is a
term that has developed over time. But in the other narrative, kami is an undeveloped
intelligent men in the modern world.”28 Although Holtom does not accept Shintō-influenced
Holtom begins his book Modern Japan and Shintō Nationalism (1943) not with a
description of the history of Japanese nationalist movements, but with a presentation of the
evolution of religion from its primitive state to the modern, advanced state typified by
Christianity. He questions “our essentially sound conviction that religion ought somehow to
have a more vital adjustment to contemporary social life than that reached through dogma
and theology,” lumping this belief in with things such as “Christmas trees ... Santa Claus ...
fairies and elves, our names for the days of the week” and calling all these things the
“outmoded” remnants of “communal folk religions.” He claims that because of the saving
sacrifice of Christ, religion has progressed beyond “the primitive way of life”, and today
represents the fulfillment of all its promises in “the new loyalties of an uncompromising and
In this passage, the word “universalizing” is put in contrast to the “communal”. What
is being universalized? From the examples given, it appears that Holtom holds in his mind an
13
idealized Christianity, which he would like to see both believed and practiced the same way
around the world—with Christmas trees and Santa Claus representing profane, tribal
remnants of our pre-monotheistic culture. His preference for Christianity is not only made
explicit but put in stark contrast to every heathen idea he can think of, including the belief
that religion (not just Christianity) should reflect social norms rather than the other way
around. His definition of what makes religion good is therefore clearly grounded in this
rejection of socially grounded religion and preference for universalist teachings. Assigning
the positive value to the universal, he dismisses the communal as its antithesis. From this
passage he jumps directly into his representation of Japanese society: “The old communal
form of religion that was normal in the West two thousand years ago exists in Japan as a
evolutionary sociology of Émile Durkheim and the French anthropological school. Although
Holtom does not explicitly make the connection, he derives his definition of religion from
Durkheim and cites him in his dissertation.31 Durkheim’s classic example of primitiveness is
the Australian aboriginal claim that the sun is a white cockatoo, which he saw as a starting
point on the “intellectual evolution of humanity.”32 Thus, although he considered all humans
to have the same capacity for development, the “primitive mind” remained for him
intrinsically different from the “developed mind” and lacked at a cultural level most rational
abilities.33 Those holding a “primitive” worldview could not be entrusted with the rights and
responsibilities of governing a modern state, for, according to one sociologist, “it was the
30 Ibid., 1-2
31 D.C. Holtom, “Modern Shintō as a State Religion”, 45; National Faith, 302
32 Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (London: George Allen, 1976), 237
33 E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), 80-87
14
mind of the primitive which, to Western observers of many kinds, was suspect above all.”34
But Holtom was not dealing with a preliterate, unreflective society that would submit
easily to classification as “primitive”. On the contrary, the Japanese government was framing
itself as secular and Western, and European powers had recognized this. The historical
narrative which Holtom expounded shows that the category of kami, like other concepts in
Japanese philosophy, had already been debated and discussed for hundreds of years, and that
shrines had just recently undergone vast changes in structure that supposedly secularized
them in the eyes of the ordinary Japanese citizen. As a polemicist, Holtom was therefore
tasked with refuting the Japanese claims of secularity by demonstrating that their shrines
were barbarous in both philosophy and execution, or in his own words, that they represented
civilized countries.
In searching for examples of the primitive nature of shrine culture, Holtom took
advantage of ancient and medieval treatises which collectively demonstrated the changes
which shrines and various kami had undergone throughout Japanese history. Although
Holtom praised early modern interpreters of kami discourse such as Motoori and Hirata, he
also considered the ancient records of kami to be both more “primitive” and more important
than its modern reinterpretation and insisted that the earliest interpretations had only been
covered over in folklore out of neglect, as stones are gradually covered in moss. In other
words, he denies that these symbols might change over time, as a stone is hewn into a
34 Steve Fenton, Durkheim and Modern Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1984), 134
15
Holtom explains that the stories in the Kojiki, a quasi-historical text which is often
used to provide a biography of enshrined kami, have their origins in “the magico-religious
ceremonies of the savage” for primitive needs such as “protecting the food supply.” One
mythological fire god who has been “submerged in ancestor worship” in the shrines that
honor him. All this means in practical terms is that the figure seen in the shrine is a human
being, whose hagiography has probably changed over time. However, in Holtom’s narrative
the beliefs of centuries past are more real than the present-day manifestation.35
To the Japanese themselves, such analysis is unimportant; neither the shrine keepers
nor the visiting locals have any interest in psychoanalyzing the origin of Takemikazuchi. But
recall that Holtom does not believe in allowing tradition to survive for its own sake, because
disinterest is a flaw in the Japanese character. In Modern Japan, he charitably attributes this
flaw to a political climate which encourages ignorance, but in National Faith, he explains
more clinically that in “Japanese racial psychology,” “strong emotional factors operate to
subordinate objective historical data ... to the felt needs of group solidarity and continuity.”36
Sources of Authority
This condescending attitude towards participants in the culture is not limited to his
readings of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, but applies generally to his perception of shrines
under the imperial system. One way to defend Holtom’s approach to Shintō and shrine policy
would be to claim that he is simply putting the practices of the Japanese into a form that can
35 Holtom, National Faith, 94, 105; D.C. Holtom, “A New Interpretation of Japanese Mythology and Its
Bearing on the Ancestral Theory of Shintō”, The Journal of Religion 6.1 (1926)
36 Holtom, Modern Japan, 36; National Faith, 77
16
be easily understood by English speakers. However, much of what Holtom does is to deny
the narratives and analogies of other participants in Japanese life: Japanese Christians,
government authorities, and even American missionaries. To show that his interpretation is
In 1942, Holtom wrote a series of articles for The Christian Century in which he
sought to reassure a general Christian audience that what they had heard from their Japanese
compatriots was false, biased information: “Many of the statements regarding this issue,
especially those from Japanese sources, Christian included, represent the propaganda
interests of the Japanese government rather than the conclusions that flow from unbiased
historical study.”37 In other words, the Japanese themselves, both Christians and scholars,
have not recognized the true nature of their shrines, their histories, or even their own
government. It is up to Holtom to both uncover the conspiracy which the Japanese could not
recognize and determine what is scientific and what is falsehood. Edward Said recognized a
similar current in Middle Eastern studies: “The Orient and Islam have a kind of extrareal,
phenomenologically reduced status that puts them out of reach of everyone except the
Western expert. From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing
Said’s theory does not apply exactly here, because Holtom’s enemy is not all
Japanese, nor is it even all Shintō scholars. It is only those who side with the government
37 D.C. Holtom, “Japanese Christianity and Shintō Nationalism”, The Christian Century, January 7, 1942, 11
38 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Penguin, 2003), 238
17
scholars such as Genchi Katō who regarded Shintō as the national religion of Japan, and
mystics such as the Religious Shintō leaders who regard the kami as a private source of faith.
Although their work was regarded by the Japanese government as “the private opinions of
It was common when discussing the shrine question to draw analogies between the
shrines and Western institutions. For example, a Japanese Christian, Toyohiko Kagawa
(1888-1960), wrote that “the shrines of state Shintō are the monuments and tombs of men
who have rendered conspicuous service for the state. In this respect they differ not at all from
the Lincoln Memorial in Washington and the Cenotaph in London.”40 Holtom acknowledges
the frequency of these analogies, but does not portray them neutrally as part of the case made
by the pro-Japanese side of the debate. Instead, he accuses their proponents of denying “the
religious warmth of the Japanese people in their faith in the divine beings of these great
shrines”.41 In this response Holtom confusingly claims to be speaking for the true beliefs of
the entire Japanese people, even though some of the authors he is attempting to refute are
themselves Japanese. At the same time, by emphasizing this sanctity to create such a
division, he also denies the “warmth” held by Westerners towards their own political
heritage. But if the reader is compelled by his arguments, then the resulting conclusion must
“State Shintō”
The result of this discourse defines what Holtom calls State Shintō, the “national
faith” of Japan. Holtom did not use the term “State Shintō” in his dissertation, because no
39 Arthur Morgan Young, The Rise of a Pagan State (New York: William Morrow, 1939), 136
40 Toyohiko Kagawa, Christ and Japan, trans. William Axling (New York: Friendship Press, 1934), 86
41 Holtom, Modern Japan, 48
18
Japanese source used it. He first published it in the 1930 Japan Christian Year Book, and
expanded on it in The National Faith of Japan. In the political history outlined in the latter
book, Holtom portrays the shrine system as a modern invention, based on ample evidence:
the prior work of the restoration movement, the novel separation of kami from Buddhas, and
so forth. However, he ignores the modern arguments of the Japanese government that these
inventions made the resulting system non-religious in nature. Instead, he employs the second
narrative of the shrine system, this one much more hypothetical and speculative, in which he
critiques it as a primitive religion. He claims that “the establishment of Shintō as the state
religion” occurred sometime “in the early part of the Meiji era”.42 In terms of official
declarations, he is simply rewriting history, because no such declaration was ever made, even
during the brief restoration era. Such a statement also conflates the equally complex periods
of the restoration campaign and the “moral” use of shrines. But when we learn what Holtom
Holtom’s list of the elements of State Shintō is an almost complete list of political
institutions that gave structure to the Japanese nation. It seems to have begun with shrines
alone, but Holtom included in his 1922 dissertation some tangents on other aspects of
Japanese nationalism,43 and by 1943 his State Shintō hit list had grown to include all things
that missionaries had complaint with: the imperial portrait, the Imperial Rescript on
Education, the traditional platforms on which these two things were often housed
(kamidana), Imperial House Law, and the unscrupulous use of the classical imperial history
text Nihon Shoki in children’s history textbooks. To consider these things “State Shintō” was
19
solely up to Holtom, because as all later scholars have had to acknowledge, the Japanese
government had never grouped these things together under any classification.44
Conspicuously missing from this list are the Japanese flag, the national anthem, and the
symbolic use of the nation’s military forces. Additionally, Holtom explicitly rejects the idea
that national holidays were part of “State Shintō”.45 This is probably because the United
Even in the wartime context, there was disagreement among other academics and
missionaries over whether any of these things were even religious, much less part of a unified
system called State Shintō. The issue of the imperial portrait, for example, had been resolved
decades earlier; as for the textbooks, the 1941 Japan Christian Year Book reported on a
campaign to introduce instruction in religion in Japanese schools, using the following choice
of words: “The association has been urging the importance of religion in national education,
Unlike the Japanologist Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850-1935), who seemed to call
Japanese patriotism “the birth of a new religion” mostly for the purpose of analogy, Holtom
was adamant that he was “not using the word ‘religion’ in a merely figurative sense” when he
talked about Japan.47 But this makes his definition of “State Shintō” bizarre to read: “The
ideals of sacred obligations of loyalty to Emperor and Fatherland are inculcated as primary
dominant. In all these respects we find in State Shintō differentia that are accepted as
44 Wilbur M. Fridell, “A Fresh Look at State Shintō”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 44.3
(1976), 547-561.
45 Holtom, Modern Japan, 208
46 Japan Christian Year Book, vol. 39 (Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 1941), 270
47 Holtom, Modern Japan, 2
20
characteristic in classifying so-called religious data from other fields. There is no good
reason why we should make an exception in favor of State Shintō.”48 This is simply a
description of patriotism. There is nothing in this description that could not have been applied
to England or Germany during the same time period. This also applies to the Durkheimian
definition that he uses for “religion”: “a unified system of belief and practice relative to
Holtom did not address this argument until 1945, when he conceded the point: “It
would serve no useful purpose in our discussion to point out the extent to which these
characteristics of Japanese nationalism have their counterparts in the West ... Certainly Japan
has no monopoly of convictions of benevolent destiny ... It is certain that the whole world is
one in the urgency of overcoming the devastating influences of exclusive, irrational, pre-
scientific nationalism.” Instead of resting on this conclusion, though, he then exhorts the
Allies to repair the Japanese mind to cooperate with something called the “world-spirit” (a
secular spirit, undoubtedly): “At the same time it would be doubtful if any country will be
called upon to make as thoroughgoing changes as would be needed for Japan to qualify for
the possession of the true ‘world-spirit’.”50 Why? Because Japan must develop a religion.
Within Holtom’s teleological narrative lies a prophesied outcome for this civilizing
project, demonstrated by the unusual value he imbues in the term “Shintō”. In The National
Faith of Japan, for example, Holtom claims that official assertions of secular government
deny the “intrinsic nature of State Shintō”.51 He claims, in other words, that the government
48 Holtom, “Modern Shintō as a State Religion”, 60-61
49 Ibid., 45; National Faith, 302
50 D.C. Holtom, “Shintō in the Postwar World”, Far Eastern Survey 14.3 (February 1945), 33
51 Holtom, National Faith, 306
21
is failing to address some religious element which lies behind its explicit wording. But can a
government policy have an intrinsic nature behind its legal definition? How would Holtom
In both National Faith and Modern Japan, he seems to provide an answer to this
question. The former book contains lengthy descriptions of new religious movements such as
Tenrikyō which were categorized as religious shintō, emphasizing especially the saintly lives
of their founders and exploring the universal virtues they promote. The positive, almost
poetic tone of these descriptions is markedly different from anything Holtom has to say about
state policy. In the latter work, Holtom quotes from Tenrikyō foundress Oyasama and again
remarks, “This is Shintō at its highest ... it is part of the all-pervading fire of the human soul
and inspires the conviction that, in spite of the blighting effects of nationalism, there is still
such a thing as universal human nature.”52 This explicit avowal of a higher goodness shows
that Holtom was imagining a future in which Shintō could be moved forwards on his
teleological scale, away from the “old communal forms” and towards universality. Note that
he conflates a private religious movement with public policy in the word “Shintō”: this is
purposeful. Even if the current mandates are secular, Holtom believes that the shrine system
of the future could and should mimic the Christian message and power structure.
This is how Holtom recognizes a “religious warmth” in patriotic ceremony, and why
he regards State Shintō as possessing an “intrinsic nature”. Beyond the secularist policy,
which might be ranked alongside Christianity were it not for government interference. When
he claims that “the worth of Shintō to the world must depend on the success wherewith it is
22
able to adjust itself to the demands of a true universalism”53 (emphasis added), Holtom is
asserting the truth of his theological project, and laying the ground for constructing a
“Universal Shintō” which will join the ranks of the “world religions”.
Holtom’s entire thesis was based on a Western category, religion, that did not exist in
Japan before the Meiji Restoration, and he attempted to prove the applicability of this
category by denying Japanese narratives and imposing his own narrative. His term “State
Shintō” did not correspond to any Japanese entity, and his image of the future of shrines was
based on his positive evaluation of new religious movements. Nevertheless, because of his
unparalleled expertise and historical knowledge, he was received as an academic with insider
probable that no other English speaker knew more about the meanings of the word “kami”
than he did, so his conclusions on the subject were taken quite seriously.
With the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Holtom’s message was
boiled down, along with that of other Japanologists, into increasingly hostile xenophobia. His
against the Japanese nation. In the American propaganda film “Our Enemy: The Japanese”
(1943), we have the core of Holtom’s teleological analysis of Japanese culture delivered to
us by former U.S. ambassador to Japan Joseph C. Grew: “The real difference is in their
minds ... Their weapons are modern, their thinking 2000 years out of date.”55
23
In his writings at the end of the war and afterwards, Holtom was forced to respond to
the widespread perception he had helped to create that Shintō was an evil cult that had to be
destroyed.56 In February 1945, he portrayed this opinion as follows: “Can we discover any
permanent values in Shintō? Or shall we anticipate a future for Japan in which the institution
of the Tennō—‘The Son of Heaven’—is abolished, the shrines and all they stood for
destroyed, and education divested of all traces of Shintō nationalism?” He also related that
the America mass media had advocated for bombing the shrines.57 In his answers to them,
Holtom steps back from advocating for the destruction of his “State Shintō” outright. He
points out that shrines are sacred to the Japanese people, and that their fascist use was only
one development in a long history. He even advocates to keep Yasukuni Shrine a publicly
owned institution, because he believed that privatizing it would “feed the flame of resentment
In 1945, the American Occupation forces issued the Shintō Directive, citing Holtom’s
work and employing the language of religious freedom. Yasukuni and other shrines were
privatized and the photos of the Emperor in schools were removed, but the shrines were
preserved, and they continue to be used in Japan for a rich variety of purposes. Many of
these, such as paying respects to war dead, buying good-luck charms, or praying for health
and success, continue traditions that already existed in the imperial period. While there are
individual shrine priests who aim to imitate Christian preaching, an institutional move
towards “true universalism” has not occurred in any meaningful sense. The institutions of the
56 “[Holtom’s work encouraged] the view that Shintō as a whole was merely an ersatz religion, the creation of
the Meiji government.” Stuart D.B. Picken, Sourcebook in Shintō: Selected Documents (Westport, CT:
Praeger, 2004), 241
57 Holtom, “Shintō in the Postwar World”, 29
58 Holtom, Modern Japan, 206
24
state, on the other hand, have been radically changed by the Shintō Directive. The Shrine
Bureau became a private religious organization, and some (although not all) priests now
consider themselves religious practitioners. However, the general population of Japan still
believes shrines to be places of public custom and ceremony.59 As a result, the Japanese
Supreme Court has been faced with perilous cases such as a lawsuit filed in 1965 by a
Communist Party leader against the city of Tsu for holding a ground-breaking ceremony
(jichinsai) that employed a shrine priest, or one filed by residents of Ehime Prefecture to
prevent its officials from sending money to Yasukuni Shrine. The court ruled for the local
government in the first case, but against it in the latter, based on a fragile interpretation of
when services become “religious” in nature and when they are purely social.60 Additionally,
several bills have been proposed to re-nationalize Yasukuni Shrine as a secular institution.
The problem of church-state separation, which was an issue mainly for Christians before the
war, has been further complicated by the privatization of shrines, which has legally alienated
A Way Forward
The general academic result of Holtom’s work is that fascism in Japan has been called
in retrospect “State Shintō”, and has become the object of religious studies,61 whereas
fascism in Germany and Italy are considered mostly secular and are studied only in terms of
history. In Japan, there is now a journalistic “State Shintō narrative” that attributes, rightly or
to Ise shrine to the legacy of a religious system that must be eradicated from Japanese
59 Toshimaro Ama, Why Are the Japanese Non-Religious? (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2005)
60 Carl F. Goodman, The Rule of Law in Japan (Fredrick, MD: Kluwer Law International, 2008), 76-78
61 For example, Hardacre’s Shintō and the State.
25
politics.62 In western academia, the use of the religious category has segregated European
nationalist movements from the Japanese other. The general byproduct of this has been
confusion over the meaning of Japanese nationalism, but some authors such as Walter Skya
have attempted to recast the Pacific War itself as a clash of civilizations between “ethnic-
ideology” pitted in unavoidable battle against the secular, rather than an ideologically and
socially complex nation which was attempting to construct its own secularism.63
However, the entire theoretical grounding of Holtom’s polemic has meanwhile been
uprooted. If examining Japan through the lens of an evolution on the path to Christianity was
abandoned his unilinear theory of religious/secular evolution later in life, acknowledging that
perceived religious symbols preserve “collective sentiments” just as well in modern societies
“infancy” of anthropology, pointing out that the real distinction is not between primitive and
civilized but between any two different ways of thinking.65 The opportunity is ripe to
26
question Holtom’s picture of “State Shintō”. They claim that it distorts the religious freedom
found throughout the imperial era to a “fanatical ‘cult’ of the emperor”,66 or that it is an
essentially meaningless term that is relevant only because of the Shintō Directive and
resulting discourse.67 This more modern work implies that citing Holtom uncritically will
Conclusion
D.C. Holtom’s work has had lasting influence on how the categories of Japanese
politics and Japanese religion were determined in the second half of the 20th century. In fact,
insofar as we can call the idea of “Japanese religion” an invented tradition, that is to say an
idea foreign to Japan which has been given an ancient appearance,68 Holtom can be given
part of the credit for establishing this tradition in the academic world.
modern religious scholar. He wanted to see a Japan that could move forward within his
teleological narrative, a nation that could someday impress the Western world with earnest
devotion to a “pure” monotheism unmarred by nationalist fervor. It is not his fault that he
lived in an age when the line between ethnography and evangelism was as blurry as has been
described here. Although we are more familiar with the problem now, our moral standards
are not that different from his, and confronting the dogmas hidden within our “secular”
ethnographies has proven no less challenging. The modern sociologist Tomoko Masuzawa
recognizes this:
66 Aiko Kojima, “Religion or Civil Religion as the Basis of Nationalism? : State Shintō Plan and National
Moral in Meiji Japan ” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association,
San Francisco, CA, Aug 14, 2004), 14
67 Susumu Shimazono, quoted in Sakamoto Koremaru, “Thoughts on State Shintō Research”.
68 Jun’ichi Isomae, “Deconstructing 'Japanese Religion'”, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 32.2 (2005)
27
Missionaries’ views and opinions were informed and predetermined by dogmatic
Christianity, so it is said, and such religiously biased observations are palpably at
odds with the principle of scientific objectivity and impartiality. This commonplace
assessment of the missionary ethnography largely ignores, though it does not
necessarily deny, that there is a significant continuity between “prescientific”
ethnographic writings and later, academically certified anthropologists’ studies,
especially with regard to the position of the observer and the style of notation.69
own teleological narratives. The perception of undercurrents within foreign societies that
resemble our own passions brings the Other closer to us and gives us hope for a future
reconciliation of our differences. Yet at the same time, emphasizing these perceptions at the
expense of the subject’s self-identity can cause misunderstandings in the present day. If it is
only those perceived undercurrents within a society which we find to contain a seed of
civilization, does that not mean that we have concluded the society at large to be primitive
and ignorant? Anthropologists and historians have long understood that political and social
choices which may appear primitive to us are the product of cultural history. The only way to
We must acknowledge the influence of these narratives when studying modern social
movements that have been caught in the web of “religion”. We may want to regard this
category as neutral with respect to the concerns outlined above, but the changes it brings to
social discourse are anything but neutral. When we categorize the Hindu nationalist
movement as “religious”, as Holtom did for “State Shintō”, what sort of consequences does
that have on the way we talk about it? Does it enable people to dismiss Hindutva concerns as
69 Tomoko Masuzawa, “Culture”, in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. Mark C. Taylor (Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1998), 84
28
nationalists who know nothing about the universalist and nonpolitical essence of “their
religion”? Does it allow an American Sanskritist whose area of expertise is 8th century Indian
country she has never lived in, and be taken seriously? How do these things help or hinder
understanding of Indian politics within and without India, and what real consequences might
they have in terms of organizational, national, or international policy? The forces at play here
are not much different from the ones prominent in D.C. Holtom’s day.
Timothy Fitzgerald has claimed that the religious and secular are not permanent,
natural fixtures in the cultural landscape of all places and times. Instead, he argues that they
are “rhetorical categories which have proved useful for certain groups of people with
particular objectives and values at specific points in history, and ... that they therefore do not
close accordance with his hypothesis, that D.C. Holtom did not employ the category of
“religion” in an objective manner in his analysis of Japanese culture, but that his work rather
70 Timothy Fitzgerald, Discourse on Civility and Barbarity (Oxford: Oxford University, 2007), 66
29
Bibliography
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the Japanese Empire ... A Year Book for 1918. Tokyo: Fukuin Printing Co., 1918.
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Holtom was not the greatest fan of fellow Japanologist W.G. Aston, who saw state shrines as
non-religious. In a later book he seems to rewrite Aston’s views.
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——. “The Christian Message and Shintō”. Japan Christian Quarterly, July 1927.
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30
Although this is a complete discussion of “religiousness” with regards to the national
shrine system, the term “State Shintō” is not used; he has not invented it yet.
——. “Modern Shintō as a State Religion.” In Paul S. Mayer (ed.), The Japan Mission Year
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——. “Recent Discussion Regarding State Shintō.” In Luman J. Schafer (ed.), The Japan
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——. “Shintō in the Postwar World.” Far Eastern Survey 14.3 (February 1945), 29
This article defends state shrines; an interesting change in tone.
——. “The Japanese Mind.” The New Republic, May 28, 1945.
With claims like “Buddhist pessimism accentuates primitive impersonality” and
references to “false gods”, this article seems to reflect Holtom’s missionary attitude.
This does not prevent Haring from listing it as a work of “ethnography”.
——. Modern Japan and Shintō Nationalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947.
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Seoul: Paegyŏp Munhwasa, 1949.
In postwar Korea, a half-dozen ministers who believed in the non-conflict of shrine
attendance with Christianity were arrested for pro-Japanese activism, beginning in
1949. The Korean church issued a statement that “since all church leaders participated
in Shintō worship, they have to purify themselves through penitence before engaging
in church activities.” Of course, among Japanese Christians there was no such call for
penitence. Declaring the shrines an abhorrent expression of paganism was a political
move which reoriented Korean Christianity with national interests.
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31
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This is a study of the Japanese side of the debate which future research could find
extremely useful. Unfortunately because of my limited Japanese knowledge I was
only able to briefly skim its contents.
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(1990). pp.380-84.
A point that might be made in future studies: While the Japanese flag was distributed
by the government and poorly received in local communities in the late 19th century,
the American flag was being pressed onto Congress by a grassroots patriotic
movement.
Scott, J.W.R. The Foundations of Japan. New York: Appleton and Co., 1922.
Skya, Walter. Japan’s Holy War. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009.
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Japan Christian Year Book. Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 1940.
Woodard spent much of his life preparing his 1972 book. This short submission to the
Year Book demonstrates his keen eye for detail in describing the missionary climate
in Japan on the eve of the Pacific War.
——. The Allied Occupation of Japan and Japanese Religions. New York: Brill, 1972.
Woodard refutes the idea that “State Shintō” was non-religious based on the legal
point that shrines and sects were managed by the same local bureaus, rather than
discussing the Christian shrine debate in full. But this is only an appendix to his
unbiased and complete book on the postwar situation, which I am indebted to.
Young , Arthur Morgan. The Rise of a Pagan State. New York: William Morrow, 1939.
32