Critical Reflections on the Religious-Secular Dichotomy in Japan

For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV

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Making Religion

Theory and Practice in the Discursive Study of Religion

Edited by

Frans Wijsen Kocku von Stuckrad

LEIDEN | BOSTON


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Contents

List of Contributors vii

IntroductionKocku von Stuckrad and Frans Wijsen

PART 1 Theoretical Reflections

1 Theory and Method in Critical Discursive Study of Religion: An Outline 15

Titus Hjelm

2 No Danger! The Current Re-evaluation of Religion and Luhmann’s Concept of Risk 35

Stephanie Garling

3 The Matter of Meaning and the Meaning of Matter: Explorations for the Material and Discursive Study of Religion 51

George Ioannides

4 Slippery and Saucy Discourse: Grappling with the Intersection of ‘Alternate Epistemologies’ and Discourse Analysis 74

Jay Johnston

5 Distinctions of Religion: The Search for Equivalents of ‘Religion’ and the Challenge of Theorizing a ‘Global Discourse of Religion’ 97

Adrian Hermann

6 Discourse on ‘Religion’ in Organizing Social Practices: Theoretical and Practical Considerations 125

Teemu Taira

7 Towards a Praxeology of Religious Life: Modes of Observation 147Heinrich Wilhelm Schäfer, Leif Hagen Seibert, Adrián Tovar Simoncic and Jens Köhrsen


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Contents

PART 2 Contexts and Cases

8 Towards a Praxeology of Religious Life: Tools of Observation 175Heinrich Wilhelm Schäfer, Leif Hagen Seibert, Adrián Tovar Simoncic and Jens Köhrsen

9 Religion and Science in Transformation: On Discourse Communities, the Double-Bind of Discourse Research, and Theoretical Controversies 203

Kocku von Stuckrad

10 Indonesian Muslim or World Citizen? Religious Identity in the Dutch Integration Discourse 225

Frans Wijsen

11 Exploring the Spread of Marketization Discourse in the Nordic Folk Church Context 239

Marcus Moberg

12 Critical Reflections on the Religious-Secular Dichotomy in Japan 260

Mitsutoshi Horii

13 Whose Religion, What Freedom? Discursive Constructions of Religion in the Work of un Special Rapporteurs on the Freedom of Religion or Belief 287

Helge Årsheim

PART 3 Response

14 The Complex Discursivity of Religion 319Reiner Keller

Index 329

For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��6 | doi �0.��63/9789004309�80_0�4

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chapter 12

Critical Reflections on the Religious-Secular Dichotomy in Japan1

Mitsutoshi Horii

The term shūkyō was developed as a generic category in Japan in the late nineteenth century to refer to the English word ‘religion’. Adrian Hermann has briefly discussed this in his contribution to this volume (Chapter 5), add-ing that shūkyō also referred to the German Religionsübung. The term shūkyō denotes the generic notion of religion as the binary opposite of the secular. This specific notion of the secular as the binary opposite of religion is referred to as the ‘non-religious secular’ in this chapter. At the theoretical level, among the other contributions in this volume, this chapter most strongly echoes Teemu Taira’s critical approach to the category of religion and the entanglement of this classification with power (in Chapter 6). In the same theoretical light, this chapter argues that the employment of the con-cept shūkyō, based upon the ideologically demarcated distinction from the non-religious secular, was fundamental for the construction of the Japanese nation-state in the late nineteenth century as well as its reconstruction after the Second World War. In other words, the discourse on and the category of religion in Japan naturalizes the authority of the Japanese state and func-tions to maintain its hegemony.

Following a short theoretical discussion, this chapter reviews how the cate-gory of shūkyō emerged, how it was indigenized, and how it was employed by the state to classify and regulate its domain. Whereas the construction of the cate-gory of shūkyō in pre-war Japan has been extensively researched by many schol-ars, including two recent English-language monographs (Josephson 2012; Maxey 2014), the same kind of critical engagement has not been extended to Japan’s post-war era. In this light, the rest of this chapter is devoted to uncovering the

1 A draft version of this chapter was presented at the conference “Modern Government, Sovereignty and the Category of Religion” held at Uppsala University, 8–11 May 2014. Debates and discussions with various academic colleagues at this event have greatly contributed to the refinement my argument, which has materialized as the present chapter. I would like to thank especially Riksbankens Jubileumsfond for funding the conference and for making such an intellectually stimulating experience possible.


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ways in which the categorization has been reformulated in Japan after the Second World War, how its conceptual boundaries have been contested, and how the discourse on shūkyō has generated a specific meaning of ‘religion’, which has been entangled with the power structure of Japanese society. This latter task will be the main focus of this chapter. Finally, following a discussion about the colloquial meaning of shūkyō, the chapter concludes with implica-tions for further research.

Theoretical Background

This chapter aims to be a modest contribution to a critical discursive study of ‘religion’ within academic theories and practices on ‘Japanese religion’. The argument presented in this chapter has been informed by a body of theory often referred to as “critical religion” (e.g., Fitzgerald 2000, 2007a, 2007b; Masuzawa 2005; McCutcheon 1997, 2001). Echoing Goldenberg (2013: 40), the goal is “to build an argument for curtailing the use of category of ‘religion’,” specifically, in the case of this chapter, within the Japanese context. Like many other abstractions, ‘religion’ should be understood as “an empty signifier in the sense that it is historically, socially and culturally constructed and negotiated in various situations” (Taira 2013: 26). In other word, the term ‘religion’, as an empty signifier, “can be activated with definitions, meanings, and communica-tional practices” (von Stuckrad 2013: 17). Pointing out the ‘emptiness’ of this category does not mean that religion (however defined) does not exist. ‘Emptiness’ is the very nature of any social category, and this does not mean that these are ‘unreal’ and unimportant. The empty category of religion is ‘real’ and important, as Beckford (2003: 24) rightly highlighted, “in the sense of pro-ducing effects on some human lives and societies.” Therefore, what can be meaningfully studied with regard to ‘religion’ is “the processes of communica-tional generation, legitimatization, and negotiation of meaning system” (von Stuckrad 2013: 18) carried out by the employment of the term ‘religion’ in a specific historical and cultural context.

Peter Beyer (1998; 2006; 2013) has rightly highlighted that ‘religion’ is a glo-balized category. This Western “folk category” (Saler 1993) has been imported to and appropriated in many different parts of the world, including Japan. In the case of Japan, the term was encountered for the first time in the mid-nine-teenth century and had been appropriated by the local language by the late nineteenth century. A number of books and articles have been written about the history of Japanese religion(s). Some of them have reflected upon the afore-mentioned ‘critical religion’ perspectives. These include Beyer’s sociological


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explorations of religion in Japan in the context of globalization (2006: 225–52; 2003a: 172–74). Having reflected upon and criticized ‘critical religion’ perspec-tives, however, he maintains his projection of the generic notion of religion upon Japan and other countries in the light of Niklas Luhmann’s systems the-ory (Beyer 1998; 2003b). Kleine (2013) also acknowledges ‘critical religion’ per-spectives but disagrees with them, so as to assert that the concept ‘religion’ is applicable to premodern Japan within the framework of Luhmannian systems theory. These claims need to be contested before we can critically examine the notion of religion in Japan.

From a ‘critical religion’ perspective, reference to Luhmann’s systems theory of religion cannot justify the generic utilization of ‘religion’ as an analytical category. This is not to dismiss altogether the intellectual value of Luhmann’s systems theory for the discursive approach to ‘religion’. For example, Stephanie Garling (in Chapter 2 of this volume) has highlighted the usefulness of Luhmann’s systems-theoretical perspective on ‘risk’ for examining specific dis-courses on ‘religion’ in the field of development cooperation. What I would like to critique here, however, is the generic notion of religion that is embedded in Luhmann’s sociology of religion. When Beyer (1998) and Kleine (2013) autho-rize their generic utilization of ‘religion’ under the authority of Luhmann, they seem to be repeating Luhmann’s category mistake in their own discourses. Luhmann (1985; 2013) conceptualizes ‘religion’ as a distinctive field of “a self-referential system” or “the autopoiesis of communication” guided by the tran-scendence-immanence binary code. ‘Religion’ in Luhmann’s analysis is a functional social system alongside other (ostensibly non-religious secular) systems such as economy, science, politics, and the like. Importantly, ‘religion’ in this sense is a modern construct, as Beyer (1998: 157) rightly and strongly emphasizes. The category of religion, as opposed to the non-religious secular, emerged as clearly articulated rhetoric in the late seventeenth century and was institutionalized in the late eighteenth century (Bossy 1982; J.Z. Smith 1998; Fitzgerald 2007a; Nongbri 2013).

At this point, it is possible to interpret Luhmann’s system theory of religion as an attempt to articulate the discursive construction of the category ‘religion’ as a self-referential system of communication which reproduces and main-tains itself. However, what is confusing about Luhmann’s narratives is that this specifically modern notion of religion is projected back onto premodern social contexts, such as medieval Europe and ancient Greek city-states. This pattern is repeated by Beyer (1998) and Kleine (2013). From a ‘critical religion’ perspec-tive, this is Luhmann’s major drawback. It indicates that the very discourse in which Luhmann articulates ‘religion’ as a modern construction is, at the same time, parasitized by the notion of “sui generis religion” (McCutcheon 1997),



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manifested as the generic idea of religion as a universal aspect of human lives throughout history. In my view, by referring to Luhmann, what Beyer and Kleine authorize is their own belief in sui generis religion. In this way, they are making the same category mistake as Luhmann.

In this light, assuming ‘religion’ in Japan before the mid-nineteenth century is highly problematic. Kleine (2013) claims that, between the beginning of the ninth century and the latter half of the twelfth century, such distinctions as seken/shusseken and ōbō/buppō were emic equivalents of the religious-secular dichotomy guided by the transcendence–immanence binary. He translates the terms seken and shusseken as “things that belong to this world” and “those which transcend the world,” respectively (Kleine 2013: 14). He refers to the concepts of ōbō as “the ruler’s law” and buppō as “the Buddha’s law” (Kleine 2013: 20). Referring to various historical documents, he concludes that the notions of “things that belong to this world” and “those which transcend the world,” on the one hand, and ‘ruler’ and ‘Buddha’, on the other hand, equate with the transcendence–immanence binary and correspond to the ‘secular’ and ‘religion’, respectively.

A critical reading of historical studies, however, leads us to a very different conclusion. The historical surveys indicate that medieval Japanese distinctions such as seken/shusseken and ōbō/buppō are, in fact, very different from either the transcendence–immanence binary or religion–secular dualism. Although the discourse of the historical studies referred to below also carries a sui generis concept of religion and uncritically projects the modern notion of religion onto the premodern Japanese context, more importantly, what a close reading of these studies suggests is not only the absence of the generic category of religion in premodern Japan, but also the non-existence of a self-referential system guided by the transcendence–immanence or religious–secular binary.

As for the seken–shusseken binary, for example, Abe (1995: 32–97) demon-strates in his historical survey that, during roughly the same historical period as that of Kleine’s study, the term seken meant the network of human relations in which the individual was deeply embedded. In this context, shusseken referred to one’s seclusion from seken. Nevertheless, being shusseken is still encompassed by seken in a wider sense, which meant the totality of the world. The notion of seken in this sense denoted the entirety of the premodern Japanese universe, which included both visible (or manifested) and invisible (or latent) realms, both worlds for the living and for the dead, and every humans and non-human being, whether sentient or non-sentient. In addition, in this premodern Japanese cosmology, the default state of all existence and nonexistence is imagined as transient. In this light, it is clear that the seken–shusseken distinction cannot be conceptualized in terms of transcendence–immanence dualism.


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Kleine’s second example, the ōbō–buppō distinction, cannot be represented as the transcendence–immanence binary either. According to Kuroda (1996), while ōbō referred to the system of power represented by the emperor (war-riors and courtiers), buppō denoted the major temple-shrine complexes as a distinctive form of ruling power. During the historical period of Kleine’s study, there was a principle of the mutual dependence of ōbō and buppō. This prin-ciple reflected the entry of the major temple-shrine complexes into the struc-tural principle of the ruling order as a whole. This same idea has been highlighted by Adolphson (2000), Ito (2008), and in other works by Kuroda (1980; 1983) in their extensive explorations of the ruling structure in Japan between the ninth and fourteenth centuries. There seems to be no justification for assuming that the authority of temples and shrines as ‘transcendent’ was opposed to the ‘immanent’ ruling powers of warriors and courtiers, as repre-sented by the emperor. The binary of transcendence/immanence does not reflect the ruling structure of premodern Japan, as characterized by the ōbō-buppō distinction.

Given this, the following discussion takes a fundamentally different theo-retical approach (from that of, for example, Beyer and Kleine) by conceptual-izing ‘religion’ in Japan purely as an empty signifier invented in the nineteenth century, without utilizing the term as a generic, analytical category. Conversely, it shares the theoretical orientation demonstrated by Taira in Chapter 6 of this volume. In other words, Taira’s critical approach to the discourse on ‘religion’ is applied to the Japanese context by turning the generic and analytical utiliza-tion of the term shūkyō into a subject of critical inquiry. More specifically, this chapter examines the classificatory practice of the generic notion of shūkyō and how this functions to naturalize a specific configuration of power. The category of shūkyō serves the norms and imperatives of the ostensibly non-religious secular Japanese state. The state, by defining itself against ‘religion’, naturalizes its authority and value orientations.

The Invention of ‘Religion’

In his book The Invention of Religion in Japan, Jason Josephson (2012) demon-strates—using diaries and diplomatic materials from Japan, the us, France, and the Netherlands—how the concept of religion was introduced to Japan during the power struggles of international diplomacy in the mid-nineteenth century. Japanese translators first encountered the English word ‘religion’ in the 1850s. ‘Religion’ as a newly imported concept was translated into Japanese in a number of different ways, but it was during the Meiji period (1868–1912),



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more specifically in the 1880s, that the word shūkyō established its place in the Japanese language as the definitive translation for ‘religion’ (Isomae 2003, 2005, 2007; Shimazono 2004a).

As a background to the construction of the category shūkyō, it is important to recognize the particular circumstances of Japan with respect to interna-tional relations with the West. Ever since Matthew C. Perry, a commodore of the us Navy, arrived in Japan in 1853 and demanded the opening of the coun-try, one of the most important matters for the Americans in negotiations with Japan was ‘freedom of religious belief ’. This was the demand for a constitu-tional guarantee of the right to practice Christianity in Japan. At the same time, according to Isomae (2007: 93): “With the opening of the country to the West, mid-nineteenth-century Japan’s status as a sovereign nation-state remained elusive owing to unfair treaties established with Western countries.” Thus, it became an urgent task for Japan to adapt itself to a Western-style nation-state model in order to be acknowledged as an independent nation-state and to avoid following the path of a colonial state. Isomae (2007: 93) notes, “Essential conditions to be achieved included the establishment of a constitution and recognition of Christianity.” On the Japanese side, having for many years perceived Christianity as ‘heresy’ and a threat to social order, the process of translating ‘religion’ into Japanese therefore consisted of “tactical efforts on the part of Japanese diplomats to quarantine Christianity and fore-stall missionary activity” (Josephson 2012: 4).

The invention of the category shūkyō played an integral role in creating the ostensibly non-religious secular domain, in which the legitimacy of the mod-ern Japanese nation-state was authorized and maintained. This realm of state orthodoxy, reified as the binary opposite of ‘religion’, is called “the Shinto secu-lar” by Josephson (2012). This is referred to as “the hybrid Shinto-scientific ide-ology, formulated in terms of a nation-state, articulated in relation to the person of the emperor, distinguished from religion, and intended to produce a unified Japanese subjectivity” (Josephson 2012: 19). Shinto (literally, “the Way of the Kami” or “the Way of the Gods”) was represented by the Meiji govern-ment as “public worship,” which was associated with the notion of “social unity” and “thus became a point of national pride and uniqueness” (Thal 2002: 107). The government needed to “produce the image of the transcendent col-lective unity of the nation-state” (Ketelaar 1990: 121).

Pre-Meiji Japan “lacked anything resembling a modern state” (Ravina 1995: 1000). It was characterized by “an intricate patchwork of district governments, with broad areas of ambiguous and overlapping authority” (Ravina 1995: 1000). In order to succeed, therefore, the newly formed Meiji government “needed to redirect the Japanese people’s loyalties from their old domains to the new


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state” (Doak 1997: 286). It was this “desire for unity” (Thal 2002: 107) that mobi-lized the Meiji government to utilize Shinto symbolism to create “its first national ceremonial calendar, flag, national anthem, and rites of state accessi-ble to all subjects” (Hardacre 1989: 4) in order to resemble European nations. Drawing on Hobsbawm and Ranger’s (1983) famous phrase, Hardacre (1989: 4) claims that Shinto was an “invented tradition,” invented by the Meiji govern-ment “to unite disparate elements into a modern nation.”

It was during the early Meiji period when the “historical consciousness” of an indigenous entity called Shinto clearly took shape, as if it had existed in Japan since ancient times (Kuroda 1981: 19). In premodern times, what consti-tuted the customs and beliefs of the Japanese people “was the kenmitsu Buddhist system including its components, such as Shinto and the Yin-yang tradition, and its various branches, both reformist and heretical” (Kuroda 1981: 20). This was a “comprehensive, unified and self-defined system” in Japan in pre-modern times (Kuroda 1981: 20). It was from the kenmitsu system that Shinto was extracted to be an independent entity, and it was represented as ‘indigenous’. This process was achieved “both in name and in fact with the rise of modern nationalism” (Kuroda 1981: 19) by the so-called nativist scholars in the second half of the nineteenth century, during the decline of the Tokugawa shogunate and the establishment of a centralizing, imperial government in its place. According to Thal (2002: 101), “worship of the kami [gods] emerged from the activities of scattered scholars and priests to coalesce into a widely recog-nized entity called Shinto central to the political and intellectual life of the emerging nation-state.” The construction of Shinto was “never intended to rep-resent or codify the amorphous faith of the people seen in innumerable, local-ized, and highly diverse cults of kami” (Hardacre 1986: 53). Instead it “gradually transformed local folk Shinto shrines into political instruments for inculcating emperor-centred patriotism and values of social harmony” (Garon 1997: 65) and simultaneously for “inculcat[ing] in the people a willingness to follow the state’s commands regarding taxation, conscription, and a host of other mat-ters” (Hardacre 1986: 53).

The construction of the Shinto secular required the notion of religion. In other words, the category of shūkyō was utilized by the state in order to main-tain its hegemony over competing institutions and value orientations. Specifically, this category included Buddhism, Christianity, and sectarian Shinto (which had divorced from the state-authored Shinto institution). These three religions are also modern constructs. In particular, ‘Buddhism’ was given an independent ontology in the process of constructing ‘Shinto’ (Ketelaar 1990; Snodgrass 2003), when it was extracted from the so-called “kenmitsu system” (Kuroda 1981). The important point is that, by defining the realm of shūkyō as



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the binary opposite of the ostensibly non-religious secular national ethos, the state attempted to secure its dominance by excluding ‘religions’ from its opera-tion. Buddhist temples were part of the pre-Meiji ruling structure, whereas Christianity was perceived as ‘heresy’ and a threat to social order. Doctrinal disagreements within Shinto were represented as the ‘religion’ of sectarian Shinto. Maxey (2014: 3) summarizes this as follows: “Efforts to shield the state from competition with Christianity, from Buddhist disaffection, from interne-cine conflict among Shinto priests […] led to the political construction of reli-gion as a category to be rendered distinct from the state.”

The state’s control over shūkyō was paradoxically further reinforced by the constitutional notion of ‘freedom of religion’. This was guaranteed in Japan by the Constitution of the Empire of Japan of 1889 (the so-called Meiji Con stitution). Article 28 states: “Japanese subjects shall, within limits not prej-udicial to peace and order, and not antagonistic to their duties as subjects, enjoy freedom of religious belief” (National Diet Library 2003–2004c). “Freedom of religious belief” is a translation of the Japanese phrase “shinkyō no jiyū.” The term shinkyō was popularized by Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835–1901), a prominent intellectual and writer in Meiji Japan. He used the term in 1866 in his work introducing Western civilization. “Shinkyō” literally means “belief teaching.” By the 1870s, this term was used to mean something like “religious conviction” (Josephson 2012: 232). The employment of shinkyō, as the constitu-tional category for shūkyō, indicates that “what was guaranteed was a type of belief, located in a private sphere, not a freedom of association, political action or indeed anything that could be externalized in public” (Josephson 2012: 232).

This constitution therefore confines whatever is defined as shūkyō to the private sphere and legitimizes the state’s authority over the public. Importantly, the category of shūkyō, in the context of ‘shinkyō no jiyū’, was often interpreted as “a pejorative label for an inadequate, or subversive, form of knowledge and education” (Ketelaar 1990: 132). This kind of negative connotation of the term shūkyō, circulated in government discourses on ‘religion’, authorized the state to establish constitutional ‘limits’ on ‘freedom of religious belief ’. According to Isomae (2007: 93): “Following the principle of Western-style enlightenment, ‘religion’ (shūkyō) was entrusted to the sphere of the individual’s interior free-dom, while the ‘secular’ sphere of morality (dōtoku) was determined to be national, and thus a public, issue.” The state regarded whatever was defined as shūkyō with indifference, as long as it remained within the private realm; all possible means of its external expression were subject to regulation. This notion of the non-religious public, separated from the religious private, was therefore manifested as the ‘secular’ domain of which the state takes control. Josephson (2012: 21) explains: “By defining religion as a particular type of


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interiority, this constitutional guarantee did not actually produce more free-dom. Paradoxically, guaranteeing freedom of religion enabled the state both to appease international power and to maximize a rigorous control over all exter-nal manifestation of ‘religion’.”

The social category of shūkyō was constructed outside the realm of the Shinto national ethos. This was manifested in the institutional arrangement of the state. For example, both Shinto and Buddhism had been administered by the Ministry of Education (Kyōbushō) until 1877. Thereafter, the responsibility was taken over by the Bureau of Shrines and Temples (Shajikyoku) of the Home Ministry (Naimushō). In 1886, the Bureau was divided into a shrine section and a temple section, thus clarifying an administrative distinction between shrines and Shinto-related sects, on the one hand, and Buddhist temples, on the other. In 1900, two new bureaus were created in place of the Bureau of Shrines and Temples: the Shrine Bureau (Jinjakyoku) and the Religions Bureau (Shūkyōkyoku). While the former was designated as relating to the Shinto national ethos, the latter administered the officially recognized shūkyō—namely, Buddhism, sectarian Shinto, and Christianity. Such an insti-tutional division is symbolic of the construction of shūkyō as a category sepa-rate from Shinto.

At the same time, the institutional manifestations of shūkyō—the three reli-gions of Buddhism, Christianity, and sectarian Shinto—were utilized by the state as a means of what Garon (1997) calls “moral suasion.” Government offi-cials “routinely called on the three religions to aid the government in propagat-ing ‘moral suasion’ to their adherents and the general populace” (Garon 1997: 67). The symbolism of this is that when shūkyō (‘religion’) became incorpo-rated into a legal category, it was classified under the legal category of kōeki, which can be translated as “public good,” “public benefit,” or “public interest.” Hardacre (2003: 136) notes, “Religious organizations were recognized as work-ing for the ‘public good’ (kōeki).” The organizational manifestation of shūkyō was only allowed to exist as long as it served the ostensibly non-religious secu-lar state. Importantly, unofficial faith groups outside the category of shūkyō were labeled “at best ‘pseudo religions’ (ruiji shūkyō), and at worst, ‘evil cults’ (jakyō)” (Garon 1997: 60). These were said to be organizations which “engage in activities resembling those of religions, yet do not belong to the denomina-tions and sects of Shinto, Buddhism, and Christianity” (Directive of 3 March 1919, quoted in Garon 1997: 73). Those faith groups that did not belong to the official classification of ‘religion’ were subject to harsh persecution. In this way, the discourse on ‘religion’ was deeply connected to the ruling power of the state. The government’s classificatory practice of shūkyō resulted in the crimi-nalization of specific faith groups, which were excluded from the category.



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Post-war Re-classification

After the Second World War, the category of shūkyō was reformulated into a more inclusive social category. This new classification was largely carried out during the Allied Occupation, between 1945 and 1952, and was closely associ-ated with the implementation of American-style liberal democratic ideology. In short, American liberal democratic values and sensitivity played an impor-tant role in the formation of the post-war Japanese religion–secular dichotomy. The post-war (re-)classification of shūkyō in Japanese society formulated a tri-umphant discourse of liberalism, represented as the liberation by democratic America of the Japanese people from its Emperor system, the state-sponsored shūkyō called ‘State Shinto’. This also represents a reorganization of state power and social order. When the category of shūkyō was given this new meaning, its entanglement with the state was transformed into a new constellation.

The us government started planning for post-surrender Japan well before the actual date of the surrender. Importantly, the United States Initial Post-Surrender Policy for Japan (National Diet Library 2003–2004a), issued in April 1945, states, “Freedom of religious worship shall be proclaimed promptly on occupation.” This indicates the assumption of us policy-makers that whatever they presumed to be ‘religion(s)’ had been suppressed in Japan and implied the claim that those suppressed ‘religion(s)’ had to be liberated. The principle of ‘freedom of religious worship’ was again expressed in the Potsdam Declaration, issued on 26 July 1945 (National Diet Library 2003–2004b). The notion of ‘religious freedom’ was presented as being of the utmost importance for creating a democratic Japan. It states that the “democratic tendencies” of post-war Japan were to be built by establishing liberal principles, including “freedom of religion.”

After Japan surrendered to the Allies on 15 August 1945, these principles were implemented, and the Japanese social system was reorganized accord-ingly. Importantly, while the pre-war category of shūkyō was limited to the ‘three religions’ (i.e., Buddhism, Christianity, and sectarian Shinto), the post-war category of shūkyō included various other faith groups, which would have constituted the pre-war heterodoxy. The pre-war ‘pseudo religions’ and ‘evil cults’ were included in shūkyō under the principle of ‘freedom of religious wor-ship’. Other, newer groups that would have been excluded from the pre-war category of shūkyō were also included in the post-war category.

At the same time, the pre-war secular was now also included in the post-war category of shūkyō, after being reformulated as ‘Shrine Shinto’. After Japan’s surrender, the first task of the Allied authorities was the demolition of the pre-war Shinto secular. The so-called Shinto Directive (Translations and Official


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Documents 1960), issued by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Power (scap) on 15 December 1945, “effectively reduced Shinto to the status of a vol-untary organization” (Mullins 2012: 66). This was achieved by reorganizing Shinto as a ‘religion’. In more concrete terms, combined with the principle of religion–state separation, the directive’s reclassification of Shinto as a ‘religion’ ended government financial support for and administration of Shinto shrines. It also instructed the Japanese government to remove “Shinto elements”—such as Shinto altars and the custom of compulsory shrine visits—from all public institutions, including schools and public offices (Mullins 2012: 67).

Constitution, Religious Corporation, and Public BenefitThe foundation of a post-war category of religion—or shūkyō—was codified by the new constitution, which was written under the Allied Occupation. scap drafted the current constitution, which is still in use today. The Constitution of Japan, which allegedly has “essentially American origins” as well as “clandes-tine American influence” (Ward 1956: 1008), was promulgated in 1946 and enacted in 1947. The constitutional notion of shūkyō is codified in Articles 20 and 89. As regards the sign of American influence in these, it is important to point out that Article 89, as well as Article 20’s separation clause, did not appear in the drafting process until scap submitted its February 1946 draft (Inoue 1991). More specifically, Van Winkle argues (2012: 389) that “scap inserted Articles 20 and 89 solely to eliminate Shintō as a source of ultra-nationalism that could hinder pacification; scap had no concern in drafting those provisions, whatsoever, for the ideals of religious freedom.” Article 20 of the Constitution states:

Freedom of religion is guaranteed to all. 1) No religious organization shall receive any privileges from the State, nor exercise any political authority. 2) No person shall be compelled to take part in any religious acts, celebra-tion, rite or practice. 3) The State and its organs shall refrain from reli-gious education or any other religious activity.

Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet, no date

Article 89 of the Constitution states:

No public money or other property shall be expended or appropriated for the use, benefit or maintenance of any religious institution or associa-tion, or for any charitable, educational or benevolent enterprises not under the control of public authority.

the prime minister of japan and his cabinet, no date



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The constitution distinguishes “religious organizations” (shūkyō dantai), “religious acts” (shūkyō jō no kōi), “religious education” (shūkyō kyōiku), and “religious activities” (shūkyō katsudō) from ostensibly non-religious secular organizations, acts, education, and activities. This constructs the categories of the “non-religious” (hi-shūkyō) or the “secular” (sezoku) while reifying “reli-gion” (shūkyō) as something essentially distinguishable from these.

Importantly, what is constitutionally considered shūkyō, as distinguish-able from the non-religious secular, is highly ambiguous. For this reason, this new codification of shūkyō was not necessarily welcomed by those who were categorized as shūkyō. In many cases, it was very confusing or even threaten-ing for them. As Woodard (1972) reports, for example, when the Diet ratified the Constitution, the Religions League of Japan (Nihon Shūkyō Renmei), representing leaders from the three pre-war official religions, expressed dis-satisfaction with Articles 20 and 89. The Religions League of Japan then pre-pared itself, under the guidance of scap’s Civil Information and Educational Section (cie), for the end of the Occupation and the impending autonomous Japanese parliamentary power. The League was joined by organizations newly qualified as part of the expanded category of post-war religion: namely, by the Association of Shinto Shrines (Jinja Honchō), representing Shrine Shinto, in 1946, and the Union of New Religious Organizations of Japan (Nihon Shin Shūkyō Dantai Rengō Kai), representing the so-called ‘New Religions’, in 1950. The result was the Religious Corporation Law of 1951 (shūkyō hōjin hō).

The Religious Corporation Law had one specific purpose: “to enable reli-gious organizations to acquire legal capacity” (Woodard 1972: 98). The law “allows religions to incorporate, giving them a legal right to own property and business enterprises” (Hardacre 2003: 138). By constituting shūkyō as a legally certified organizational category, organized ‘religion’ became legally codified as something essentially different from other kinds of organizations, therefore claiming an independent ontology in the public realm. Nevertheless, the post-war freedom given to the legal entity of shūkyō is not limitless. Religious corpo-rations have continued to be classified under the pre-war category of kōeki corporations, according to Article 34 of the Civil Code in 1896, which has con-tinued to be in effect throughout the post-war period. As for the post-war legal status of organized religion, Hardacre (2003: 136) notes: “Religious organiza-tions were recognized as working for the ‘public good’ (kōeki).” When ‘religious’ organizations are expected to be kōeki, it might indicate the subordinated sta-tus of this category to the state. The expressed norm in the name of kōeki is that whatever is defined as shūkyō is expected to serve the state, by being ‘good’ for the public.


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The coexistence of the two concepts of shūkyō and kōeki can be difficult. The law defines the organizational purpose of a religious corporation, in a rather circular way, as “to propagate religious teachings, perform rituals, and teach and foster a following” (Amemiya 1998: 75). An implicit notion here is that the ‘religious’ corporation is to propagate apparently ‘religious’ teaching. This kind of circularity does not at all clarify what kind of distinctive quality is meant by ‘religious’. Nevertheless, these ostensibly ‘religious’ activities are also expected to support the so-called ‘public good’. Importantly, since the year 2000, the Public Benefit Corporation Law (kōeki hōjin hō) has been revised and was subsequently reformed at the end of 2008. In this process, the concept of kōeki was further scrutinized by the government. This forced many religious corporations and ecumenical bodies—such as the Japanese Buddhist Federation—to reflect on their kōeki status in relation to their ‘religious’ activi-ties (Shimazono 2004a; Tanaka 2004; Ishimura 2005).

There have been widespread concerns—for example, among Buddhist priests—that the most common activities carried out by priests, such as funer-als, memorial services, graveyard management, and faith healing, might not be defined as kōeki. While some claim that the daily prayer they offer to the Buddha ultimately benefits the public, a significant majority interpret the notion of kōeki more instrumentally, as practical benefit for society in general or for many unspecified individuals (Rinshō Bukkyō Kenkyūjo 2009). This understanding has been translated into various ‘socially engaged’ activities, and the emergence of socially engaged Buddhist temples and priests is widely celebrated by academics and other commentators (e.g., Ueda 2004; Rinshō Bukkyō Kenkyūjo 2009; Inaba and Sakurai 2009; Takahashi 2009; Akita 2009), even while this trend may paradoxically force temples to become divorced from the aforementioned organizational purpose of legally certified religious corporations (Horii 2012).

Contested BoundariesWhat qualifies religious corporations’ activities to be distinctively and self-evidently ‘religious’ is highly arbitrary and contentious in relation to other ostensibly non-religious secular categories. For example, religious corpora-tions must make the clear distinction between ‘religious’ and ‘commercial’ regarding the nature of activities they carry out. This is because of the tax exemption on their income from ‘religious’—and therefore, by definition, kōeki—activities. Religious corporations can be engaged in ‘commercial’ activ-ities to a limited extent in supporting their aforementioned ‘religious’ organi-zational purposes. Importantly, the distinction between ‘religious’ and ‘commercial’ is often disputed—for example, when Buddhist temples perform



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funerals, burials, and memorial services for dead pet animals (e.g., Miki 2004; Ito 2009; Asatsuma 2006). Tax authorities have not been consistent on such issues. In the case highlighted by Miki (2004) and Ito (2009), the court recog-nized the storage facilities for the ashes of dead pets in a Buddhist temple as ‘religious’ and the basis on which the temple has been practicing pet burial for some centuries as the center of a local belief. Conversely, the court pointed out that the pet-related services carried out by this temple were ‘commercial’ because the temple had published price lists for these services (Asatsuma 2006). This indicates that ‘religion’ as a concept is unclear in the eyes of public authorities. The demarcation between ‘religious’ and ‘commercial’ is the prod-uct of a complex process of negotiations between different parties, which often requires the involvement of juridical authorities.

Another kind of dispute occurs over the religion–politics separation. This is particularly the case with the Komeitō (Clean Government Party), the party founded by the religious corporation of Soka Gakkai in 1964. Amongst many controversies surrounding this party, what is most relevant for the sake of this argument is the ‘religious’ association the party carries into the realm of osten-sibly ‘secular’ politics. Unlike other political parties, Komeitō’s association with a well-known religious corporation has repeatedly made the party vulnerable to accusations of breaching the constitutional principle of the separation of reli-gion and politics (e.g., Klein 2012; McLaughlin 2012; Baffelli 2011; Metraux 1999).

In 1993, for example, when a multi-party coalition succeeded in unseating the Liberal Democratic Party (ldp) from their uninterrupted thirty-eight-year rule, Komeitō was part of the coalition and was “soon identified as a major target for attacks by the ldp” (Klein 2012: 82). Komeitō was characterized as Soka Gakkai’s alter ego, and its inclusion in the coalition was interpreted as an attempt by Soka Gakkai to take over Japan, despite official claims of the insti-tutional separation between the two. ldp politicians opposed Komeitō’s pres-ence in politics on constitutional grounds, as a breach of the separation between religion and the state, and the March 1995 Tokyo subway attack by Aum Shinrikyō fuelled the ongoing anti-Soka Gakkai/Komeitō smear cam-paign (McLaughlin 2012). Nevertheless, soon after the ldp lost the 1998 upper house election, it approached Komeitō leaders, seeking areas of common interest for a potential political partnership (Metraux 1999). In 1999, Komeitō became part of the ruling coalition, which also included the ldp and the Liberal Party. Since the Liberal Party merged with the Democratic Party of Japan in 2003, Komeitō alone has been “key to the success of the ldp” (Baffelli 2011: 225).

These controversies over Komeitō represent the hegemony of the non- religious secular. Once a specific value orientation and its organizational form


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are classified as ‘religion’, in exchange for constitutional freedom and legal privilege, it is difficult, if not impossible, for its followers to enter the realm of ‘secular’ politics in an organized way, without wearing the badge of ‘religion’. Although the Komeitō has been a key ally for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party for many years, its association with ‘religion’ has always followed the party like a shadow. For those who see the world through the lens of the reli-gious–secular dichotomy, it cannot be seen as a ‘proper’ political party because it brings the shadow of ‘religion’ into the realm of non-religious secular poli-tics. It provokes the sense of “pollution” (Douglas 1966) in the minds of the public and of politicians as well as academics—who share a belief in the sepa-ration of religion and politics—because they perceive that Komeitō trans-gresses the sacred boundary between ‘religion’ and ‘secular’ politics.

The next distinction to be made is between religion and the state. The con-stitution codifies ‘religion’ as an entity that is somehow distinguishable from the state. However, this constitutional separation has not been clear-cut. For example, whereas Article 20 (3) prohibits the government from directly engag-ing in “religious activity,” it is constitutionally acceptable for public schools to offer “religious programs as extracurricular activities, as long as the school did not restrict itself to one religion” (Van Winkle 2012: 390–91). This is because, in the constitutional separation of religion and state, it has generally been inter-preted that “government actors may support religion, as long as they do not deny other religions an opportunity to work with the state as well” (Van Winkle 2012: 391). The current mainstream interpretation implicitly assumes that ‘reli-gion’, or something ostensibly ‘religious’, is an ontologically independent entity essentially distinguishable from the ‘secular’. This then allows the state to sponsor so-called religious activities (as distinguishable from ‘secular’ activi-ties), as long as the state-sponsored activities do not aim at preaching or prop-agating a particular ‘religion’ (as opposed to ostensibly ‘secular’ value orientations) or have the effect of assisting, encouraging, or promoting a par-ticular ‘religion’ (O’Brian and Ohkoshi 1996).

The boundary is even more ambiguous and contentious in the case of state sponsorship of Shinto ceremonies. In 1977, for example, “the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the Tsu city authorities’ donation of funds for the performance of a Shintō groundbreaking ceremony (jichinsai) prior to the erection of some public buildings” (Yumiyama 2007). This conclusion was drawn on the basis that “the ceremony aimed neither at propagating Shintoism nor at interfering with other religions” (O’Brien and Ohkoshi 1996: 87). Additionally, the court noted, “the ceremony had a secular purpose in confor-mity with traditional folkways” (O’Brien and Ohkoshi 1996: 87). In deciding whether the Shinto ceremony qualified as religious, the criteria for the court’s



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decision were highly arbitrary—namely “the generally accepted social idea” and the “general public’s judgment.” This leads us to ask an important ques-tion: What governs these criteria? The full examination of this issue would be beyond the scope of this chapter. What can be relevantly said here, however, is that these criteria constitute a vague notion of social consensus, which can be critically translated as the dominant ideology. The study of assumptions and beliefs that govern the demarcating criteria of the religion–state boundary could be an important subject for further critical investigation.

Throughout the post-war period, many individuals and groups have turned to the courts for the enforcement of the constitutional provision for the dises-tablishment of the state’s support for ‘religion’. According to O’Brien and Ohkoshi (1996: viii), such litigation “represents three separate yet interwoven undercurrents of social conflict—conflict over militarism, the revival of gov-ernmental support for Yasukuni and the emperor system, and demands for human rights.” Their study indicates that the discourse of ‘religion’—more spe-cifically, of ‘religious freedom’—has been deployed as a resource by these citi-zens in their legal battles against the state.

Among these, the Yasukuni Shrine is probably the most illustrative example. The precursor to the Yasukuni Shrine was the Tokyo Shōkonsha, which was established in 1869 to commemorate the dead soldiers of the Boshin War (1867–1868), which brought about the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Following the creation of Japan’s modern army, it came to venerate men who died fighting for the Empire of Japan. The vast majority of the Yasukuni war dead are the fallen from the Pacific War. The shrine was maintained by the Army and Navy Ministry until 1946, when the Shinto Directive divorced the shine from the state. Thereafter, the Yasukuni Shrine has been a religious corporation, which is entrusted with the nation’s war dead.

The various issues surrounding Yasukuni “can hardly be understood in state–religion terms” (Breen 2011: 278). In other words, we should not ask whether activities involving Yasukuni are essentially ‘religious’ or not. Rather, what can be more meaningfully examined is the ideological function of the term ‘religion’ in the discourse surrounding Yasukuni. Politicians’ visits to Yasukuni, for example, have been a controversial issue throughout the post-war period in the light of the constitutional principle of the state–religion separation (Takizawa 1988; Shibuichi 2005). On one hand, the discourse of Yasukuni as ‘religion’ often functions to delegitimize the violence associated with the pre-war Japanese state, while it tacitly authorizes and naturalizes the post-war Japanese state as the non-religious secular one. When violence and sacrifice in warfare become associated with the ‘religion’ of the pre-war Japanese government, the souls of dead soldiers are represented as victims of


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brainwashing by the state cult, and those of military officials are represented as ‘war criminals’ who were responsible for such fanaticism. On the other hand, many wish to (re)unite Yasukuni with the realm of the non-religious secular—for example, in the form of ‘official visits’ by the prime minister and the emperor, and in claiming the constitutionality of such activities. This can be seen as an effort to redefine Yasukuni as a symbol of the Japanese nation and visiting Yasukuni as a patriotic act of paying respect to those who sacrificed their lives to lay the foundation upon which the present Japanese state has been built. Such discourse claims the ‘secularity’ of Yasukuni and subtly legiti-mizes the pre-war state government as a non-religious secular one and its mili-tarism as part of a ‘rational’ strategy to fight for national survival amidst the international power struggle during that particular historical time. Thus, this type of discourse is likely to upset those who suffered from pre-war Japanese state violence. In my view, what Yasukuni represents is the pre-war Japanese state. What is at stake here is the meaning of Japan’s state violence and human suffering prior to 1945.

What Do the Japanese Mean by ‘Religion’?

This chapter has so far argued that the notion of ‘religion’ (shūkyō) in Japan is utilized with specific norms and imperatives. Importantly, the meaning of ‘reli-gion’ is entangled with the legitimacy of the power exercised by the Japanese state. In other words, any form of boundary-making between religion and the non-religion secular serves specific purposes and interests. Thus, this chapter claims that the religious–secular dichotomy is ideological in the sense that it functions to naturalize a specific configuration of power. Nevertheless, there is a drawback to the discussion so far; it results from over-reliance on historical documents. These texts mainly represent the thinking of the literate elite and exclude the ordinary language of the non-elite. Therefore, it appears that a very simple but important question still remains ambiguous: What do ordinary Japanese people mean when they use the term shūkyō? This question has not been seriously considered by academics who study ‘Japanese religion’, and it should be addressed before concluding this chapter. In my view, this indicates important implications for further research.

Existing surveys on ‘Japanese religion’ do not tell us what ordinary Japanese people mean by the term shūkyō. These studies project a particular notion or category of religion upon questionnaires, so that ‘Japanese religion’ becomes reified within a predetermined conceptual framework, which does not reflect what respondents might mean by ‘religion’ in another context.



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According to the 2010 World Values Survey, when Japanese people were asked, “Do you have any religion? Please select one from the following,”2 53.3 percent selected the box “None” and 36.6 percent selected “Buddhism” (World Values Survey 2014: 70). The questionnaire provides a list of ‘religions’, which consists of: “No religion,” “A Christian religion (Roman Catholicism),” “A Christian religion (Protestantism),” “A Christian religion (other than the above),” “Judaism,” “A Muslim religion,” “Hinduism,” “Buddhism,” “Other religion (spec-ify: ),” “Don’t know” (World Values Survey 2010b: 19). Interestingly, there is no option for Shinto. It seems to be the case that only “None” and “Buddhist” are relevant boxes for most Japanese respondents. Another survey in 2008 (Nishi 2009) asked the question, “Do you believe in any religion?” This was followed by options consisting of “Buddhism,” “Shinto,” “Protestantism,” “Catholicism,” “Judaism,” “Orthodox,” “Islam,” “Other,” and “No Belief in Religion.” 49.4 percent of respondents indicated “No Belief in Religion,” while 34 percent identified their ‘beliefs’ (shinkō) in “Buddhism,” and only 2.7 percent indicated “Shinto” (Nishi 2009: 66). Compared with Buddhism, Shinto seems to be much less likely to be self-ascribed by the people in terms of ‘religion’ (shūkyō).

These international surveys project upon Japan a particular notion of ‘reli-gion’, based upon which the ‘religious’ landscape of Japan is constructed and imagined. Importantly, however, this kind of reification of ‘Japanese religion’ does not correspond to what ordinary Japanese people themselves mean by shūkyō in their social interactions. This creates some questions, which need to be addressed. For example, when various social practices associated with Buddhist institutions are likely to be seen as ‘non-religious’ by the Japanese, what does the self-identification of ‘Buddhism’ mean in the context of these ‘religion’ ques-tions? What these surveys indicate is only a very limited part of what these respondents could mean by shūkyō. In these surveys, the content of the term ‘religion’ has already been predetermined in the form of the choices following the question. Therefore, it tells us very little about what the term ‘religion’ means to Japanese people when they speak the word in their everyday lives.

In their co-authored book, Reader and Tanabe (1998: 5) state that the Japanese concept of shūkyō is “imbued with multiple meanings and historical

2 This is my own translation of the Japanese question. The English translation of the original Japanese question reads: “Do you currently practice any religion? Please select one response only from the following list” (World Values Survey 2010b: 19), whereas the same question in the English language in the published result states: “Do you belong to a religion or religious denomination? If yes, which one?” (World Values Survey 2014: 70). In the actual Japanese questionnaire (World Values Survey 2010a: 17), the meaning and nuances of the question in Japanese appear to be different from these English versions.


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accretions that provoke different interpretations and suggest different and fre-quently elastic meanings to different people in different contexts.” A number of scholars of Japanese religion, including Reader and Tanabe, have noticed that Japanese people often use the term in a particular way, although this has almost always been at the periphery of their studies of so-called Japanese reli-gion. For example, Reader had already noted this point in one of his works on Japanese religion some years prior to the above quotation:

In fact many Japanese people I have talked to about hatsumode [the New Year’s visit to shines and temples] hardly consider it a religious festival at all, and are reluctant to view their participation in religious terms […] Again, many Japanese state that this [o-bon, and visiting the graves of the ancestors at this time] is a cultural and social event, revolving around family obligations and tradition.

Reader 1991: 11

Furthermore, Dorman (2007) states that, in the context of popular discourse, the practice of divination and the element of ‘ancestor worship’ are referred to as ‘non-religious’. His study deals with how a particular person with a large following distances herself from the term ‘religion’. In this case, ancestor-related activities are portrayed as ‘non-religious’, partly because the concept of ‘religion’ has been tarnished by Aum Shinrikyō, whose leaders were found responsible for the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack in 1995. It is also noted that the more general identification of ancestor-related activities as ‘non-religious’ is not necessarily related to the impact of Aum Shinrikyō, but is nevertheless a very common description of these kinds of social practices. Davis (1992: 234–35), for example, comments that the “feelings [of ‘revering one’s ancestors’ and ‘filial piety’]—which one naturally associates with ‘ancestor worship’—seem to be divorced from ‘religion’ (shūkyō) by the Japanese.”

In the popular discourse on shūkyō in Japan, what ordinary Japanese people generally mean by shūkyō tends to be confined to what Ama (2005: 3) calls “revealed religion,” whose examples “include Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and Japanese new religions, which are revealed through texts, preached by cer-tain people, and managed by profitable organizations,” while associations with other forms of beliefs and practices, which are also referred to as religion or shūkyō by scholars, are generally described as ‘non-religious’. It also has to be pointed out that the term shūkyō has more specific associations with the prac-tices and philosophies of so-called New Religions, whose general image was very poor for most of the post-war period and was worsened with the Aum Shinrikyo affair in the 1990s (Hardacre 2003). It seems that the term shūkyō in



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this context carries a very similar nuance to the pre-war concept of ‘pseudo religions’ (ruiji shūkyō) and ‘evil cults’ (jakyō).

In a similar line of argument, Shimada (2009) claims that most Japanese people associate the term shūkyō with Christianity and Islam as well as the so-called New Religions. The stereotypical image thus indicates that adherents to these religions show their commitment in daily practices of their faith, includ-ing participation in activities to propagate their beliefs to others. Thus, Reader (1991: 14) explains, “In shūkyō and hence in the idea of ‘religion’ there is a hint of something committing, restrictive and even intrusive.” For this reason, according to Shimada (2009), the Japanese are likely to identify themselves as ‘non-religious’ (mushūkyō) when they are asked the question: ‘Do you believe in any religion?’ In the words of Kawano (2005: 36), “The word [mushūkyō] implies that a person does not belong to any religion that emphasizes personal faith, such as Christianity or the so-called New Religions. Mushūkyō persons often follow social convention by participating in life-cycle and calendrical rites at Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples.” The claim to be mushūkyō could be seen as an expression of the dominant ideology, to which the emphasis on personal faith in Christianity and New Religions, for example, is fundamentally alien. The social norm of mushūkyō symbolically eliminates shūkyō as a source of conflict or “pollution” (Douglas 1966) from the structure of social relations in order to maintain the existing social order.

In this context, many social practices—which are described as ‘religion’ by scholars of Japanese religion, such as Reader and Tanabe—are unlikely to be seen as shūkyō by the Japanese. More specifically, although Reader and Tanabe (1998: 5–6) define religion as “a matter not only of doctrine and belief but of participation, custom, ritual, action, practice, and belonging,” these are all likely to be described by the majority of the population as ‘non-religious’, char-acterized instead by terms such as ‘cultural’, ‘traditional’, and the like.

Of course, this does not eliminate the possibility that some ordinary Japanese people share a very different understanding of the term shūkyō. Those Japanese who participate in what is generally regarded as shūkyō in Japan may see what is allegedly ‘non-religious’ in the Japanese context as shūkyō. For example, Reader (1991: 17) illustrates this with the story of a young female Soka Gakkai member who “gradually began to eschew” and eventually stopped participating in activities such as “going to the shrine at New Year, tak-ing part in festivals and praying to the kami for good luck” as her involvement with Soka Gakkai grew deeper. First of all, in a particular popular Japanese discursive framework of the term shūkyō, this young woman sees her affiliation to Soka Gakkai as her shūkyō, with a positive nuance, while the majority of Japanese categorize Soka Gakkai as shūkyō negatively. Importantly, her


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identification of shūkyō has changed so as to include other activities generally regarded as ‘non-religious’. This may reflect a particular way of conceptualizing shūkyō in Soka Gakkai, in which Japanese society is seen as deeply ‘religious’ by default, so that the social identity of Soka Gakkai as shūkyō can be discursively normalized. In this way, she excluded what she now saw as ‘other religions’ from the activities of daily life, in which she had previously participated, in order to maintain the purity of her own shūkyō.

Nonetheless, this kind of conceptualization of ‘religion’ is not necessarily prevalent in other groups that have been socially regarded as shūkyō in con-temporary Japan. Reader (1991: 13) gives us another story:

I once interviewed a young Japanese man who had converted to Mormonism: what, I asked, did he do at o-bon? The answer, of course, was that he went with his family to pray to the ancestors, satisfied that this was a cultural and social action and thus did not conflict with his reli-gious beliefs. He could take part as a member of the family at o-bon and as a Japanese at hatsumōde without compromising his religious beliefs. In the same vein, people who are “not religious” yet pray to the kami are not contradictory.

What various studies of Japanese religion have indicated—but not discussed extensively—is that the term shūkyō has been employed strategically at the levels of everyday conversation among the Japanese. The demarcation almost unconsciously drawn between shūkyō and the non-religious secular reflect specific norms and imperatives shared by speakers as well as ideologies that govern a specific discursive field. What can be investigated critically as a cen-tral issue, rather than left on the periphery in academic discourse on Japanese religion, is the ways in which the conceptual boundaries between ‘religion’ and the non-religious secular are constructed and contested in ordinary people’s everyday lives in Japanese society.

Conclusion and Implications for Further Research

This chapter began with a critique of the generic notion of religion in Luhmann’s sociological discourse. Although Luhmannian systems theory rightly indicates that the category of religion is an invention of Western moder-nity, Luhmannian discourse on religion uncritically projects this specifically modern, Western notion back onto premodern and non-Western social set-tings, including Japan. This is because the Luhmannian approach to ‘religion’



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embeds the belief in sui generis religion underneath its apparent critical engagement with the notion of religion. In contrast, this chapter has boldly highlighted that the category of shūkyō was first invented in Japan in the nine-teenth century as the definitive translation of the generic notion of religion. It has also emphasized that the discourse on shūkyō functions to naturalize the authority of the Japanese state. The idea of shūkyō as a generic category was conceptualized as some kind of interiority, which was essentially different from the national ethos of the state. In pre-war Japan, the value orientations and their institutional manifestations categorized as shūkyō were Buddhism, Christianity, and sectarian Shinto. These institutions were utilized by the state to disseminate the national ethos to the population. After the Second World War, during the era of the Allied Occupation, the category of shūkyō was expanded to include the pre-war national ethos of Shinto and those faith groups that existed outside the pre-war category of shūkyō. Nevertheless, such classifications do not necessarily reflect the colloquial usage the term shūkyō, which carries a multiplicity of subtle nuances and meanings in relation to the speakers’ norms and imperatives.

The fact that ‘religion’ questions can be asked at all in the aforementioned international surveys, and the fact that people know how to respond, suggests that ‘religion’ is not a meaningless term in Japan. As indicated in the last sec-tion above, however, the complexity of what ordinary Japanese people mean by the term shūkyō has only briefly been discussed in academic studies of Japanese religion. Although these mentions of the colloquial meaning of shūkyō are highly significant in their implications, these are no more than speculative assertions through rather casual observations. Nevertheless, what is certain is that we cannot assume that shūkyō in Japan denotes the same aspect of human lives for everyone. The meanings and nuances of the term vary between different individuals and within a diversity of social relations. What these surveys and other related studies of ‘Japanese religion’ have rarely indicated is what ordinary Japanese people mean by ‘religion’, the variety of its meanings, and its functions in relation to the power structure of Japanese soci-ety. What is urgently required now, therefore, is empirical research on and sys-tematic analysis of norms and imperatives that govern specific meanings and utilizations of the term ‘religion’. The diversity of conceptual boundaries between religion and the non-religious secular needs to be mapped within specific social settings where the discourse of religion occurs. Different mean-ings of the term ‘religion’ should be analyzed in terms of their entanglements with the power structure of society. In this light, the functions of the discourse on religion can be examined critically. This will be the foundation upon which the discursive study of Japanese ‘religion’ can be built.


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