While the differentiation of the legal control of Shintō and Buddhism that has just been outlined was being worked out a situation was developing within Shintō itself which necessitated the careful attention of the authorities. That sect-making tendency which had operated as a powerful formative influence throughout Japanese history was again at work—this time within Shintō itself—and various bodies were appearing with Shintō designations and more or less well defined Shintō characteristics, but which, at the same time, were presenting sufficiently wide variations from the officially established norm to embarrass considerably the development of the state system.
This popular enhancement of Shintō was undoubtedly given extraordinary momentum by the efforts of the government to secure in its refurbishing of the old religion a satisfactory state ceremonial. In proportion as the authorities magnified the shrines popular interest in the Shintō deities and ceremonies was stimulated and popular organization about tenets and practices centering in the national kami strengthened. We have already had occasion to note how in the long course of Japanese history various schools of Shintō have appeared, notably in the Tokugawa era. As a matter of fact some of the sects now under consideration have their roots in the soil of the Tokugawa period. The Meiji era, however, witnessed a truly remarkable multiplication of Shintō societies, so much so that it became necessary for the national government, fairly early in the story, to outline the limits of official Shintō as distinct from the non-official movements.
In 1882 all Shintō organizations were divided by law into two classes. The institutions of the state, that is, all Shintō shrines,. were from now on to reserve to themselves the title of jinja (lit. “god house”) in contradistinction to the institutions of the sects which were to be called kyōkai or kyōha (“churches”). All Shintō bodies classified under the second of these divisions were separated from direct relationship with the state and were obliged to depend on private initiative for organization and support.1 This has furnished a distinction that has been of great service to the government but which, at the same time, has led to much confusion.
The main points of difference between the two forms of Shintō thus differentiated by governmental decrees are as follows. Sect Shintō nucleates, for the most part, about the faith! and activities of historical founders. Shrine Shintō, on the other hand, claims to perpetuate the authentic and traditional beliefs and rituals of the Japanese race and declares that it has developed spontaneously in the national life without the aid of individual historical founders. The sects, like all other ordinary religious bodies, maintain their own independent organizations and their legal properties are totally distinct from those of the shrines. They are denied the use of the latter as meeting places. Except in special cases they are not permitted to make use of the torii—the distinctive gateway that stands outside of the shrines. On the other hand, the shrines receive supervision and a measure of financial support from village, municipal, prefectural or national government, depending on the grade of the particular shrine. Special legal enactments regulate the affairs of the shrines in matters of organization, priesthood and ceremony.
The sects carry on definite religious propaganda. They employ religious teachers and preachers. They maintain churches, chapels, schools and social welfare activities. They conduct religious services at appointed times wherein appear such elements as exhortation and instruction, prayer and ritualistic adoration. They publish a vast amount of literature for the ethical and religious guidance of the people. Faith-healing is a dominant interest in several of thie sects. The official system, on the other hand, confines itself to the celebration of ceremonies and festivals considered appropriate to the fostering of “national characteristics.” Its priests are forbidden by law to attempt to indoctrinate the people. Again, as is pointed out in greater detail immediately below, the form of governmental control differs greatly in these two main branches of Shintō. State Shintō is managed by a special Bureau of Shrines in the Department of Home Affairs. Sect Shintō is controlled, along with other recognized religions, by the Bureau of Religions in the Department of Education.
The one conspicuous point of identity between the Shintō of the state and that of the people lies in the deities that are honored. The kami of Sect Shintō and those of State Shintō are for the most part one and the same; that is to say, the deities worshipped in any particular sect are sometimes a limited number of important kami selected from the abundant pantheon of Old Shintō; sometimes the entire god-world of thfe classical period is taken over. This is not exclusively so, for once in a while one finds deities in the sects not known to State Shintō.
The number of sects now recognized by the government as independent legal bodies totals thirteen. There are numerous sub-sects, however. The total number of adherents enrolled in the thirteen sects, according to reports most recently available from official sources, is slightly less than seventeen million four hundred thousand.2 Whenever in current literature one finds statements of the number of believers in Shintō, it should be remembered that the figures refer to the sects and not to the shrines. Statistics of adherents in State Shintō are not published by the Japanese government.
A Japanese scholar, speaking from the standpoint of the political necessity involved, has given the following informing interpretation of the reasons that led to this division of Shintō institutions into two classes:
“In the case of a civilized country there must exist freedom of faith. If Shintō is a religion, however, the acceptance or refusal thereof must be left to personal choice. Yet for a Japanese subject to refuse to honour the ancestors of the Emperor is disloyal. Indeed, a Japanese out of his duty as subject must honour the ancestors of the Emperor. This cannot be a matter of choice. It is a duty. Therefore this cannot be regarded as a religion. It is a ritual. It is the ceremony of gratitude to ancestors. In this respect the government protects the shrines and does not expound doctrines. On the other hand, since it is possible to establish doctrines with regard to the (Shintō) deities, it is necessary to permit freedom of belief in Shintō considered as religion. Hence there has arisen the necessity of making a distinction between Shintō regarded as the functioning of national ritual and that Shintō which proclaims doctrines as a religion.”3
The final noteworthy step in the legal separation of the shrines came in 1900. The Bureau of Shrines and Temples was now abolished and in its stead two entirely distinct offices were created in the Department of Home Affairs, namely, a Bureau of Shintō shrines (Jinja Kyoku), having charge of all affairs concerning the official shrines and their priests, and a Bureau of Religions (Shūkyō Kyoku), with oversight of all matters classified by the government as having to do with religion proper. This latter office included within its field of jurisdiction the various sects of Shintō and of Buddhism as well as all Christian denominations and churches.4 Still further separation of the national administration of the Shintō shrines from ordinary religious matters was effected beginning June 13, 1913, when the Bureau of Religions was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Department of Education, the Bureau of Shrines remaining as before in the Department of Home Affairs.5
In estimating the significance of the realignment of the legal control of Shintō and recognized religions effected in the ordinance of 1900, certain important developments in the political and educational fields must be taken into consideration.
On February 11, 1889, the national government, acting under the spur of foreign examples, had issued a written Constitution, containing a guarantee of full religious liberty. A complete realization of the provisions of the new Constitution was not possible, however, as long as outside powers exercised jurisdiction over judicial affairs relating to foreign residents. Problems of extraterritoriality and tariff control were acute in Japan throughout the nineties of the last century. A beginning in the matter of securing treaties of equality with foreign countries was made in 1894, but it was not until the summer of 1899, that the nation attained complete autonomy in internal affairs. Beginning with this latter date, a more exact supervision of domestic matters was possible. This included religious teaching, since a large number of the aliens now brought directly under Japanese law were missionaries.
Both Buddhism and Christianity were conducting their educational programs in such a way as to utilize educational opportunities as a means of fostering personal religious faith. Propaganda has been a primary motive, if not indeed, the dominant one, in the founding of denominational schools, whether Buddhist or Christian. Meanwhile the government has attempted to build up a nationalistic moral control within the schools on the basis of the Shintō-Confucian Imperial Rescript on Education promulgated October 30, 1890. The rescript highly exalts loyalty to the Imperial Ancestors as its chief tenet, and this involves in a fundamental way allegiance to the chief of the Shintō kami.
The problem, then, was how to foster those nationalistic values of Shintō which were considered absolutely essential to a proper moral education within the official educational system, how to make good the guaranty of religious liberty established in the Constitution and thus furnish proof at home and abroad of the existence of a truly modernized government, and also, at the same time, how to exert a proper control over religious teaching conducted in various educational institutions founded and maintained by religious bodies, to the end that legitimate educational theory and practice should not be displaced by mere religious propaganda. The thoroughgoing solution of this problem presented a double requirement; first, the prohibition of religious teaching in the schools; and, second, the insistence on a non-religious status for the official cult. The government attempted action in both these directions. On August 3, 1899, the Department of Education issued its famous “Order Number Twelve,” which sought to restrain religious education in the schools with the following enactment:
“The separation of general education from religion is very necessary to educational administration. Accordingly, in all schools established by the government and in all public schools (privately) founded and, also, in all schools wherein the curriculum is fixed by law, religious instruction and the holding of religious services are prohibited even outside the regular curriculum.”6
Had this order been rigorously and consistently enforced, religious education connected with private and sectarian schools might have been completely driven from the field. Even the limited application of the regulation that followed for the few years subsequent to its first enactment brought no little hardship to certain Buddhist and Christian institutions. Some schools met the situation by abandoning religious education, others closed their doors, others surrendered their government privileges and continued their religious education. Today, Order Number Twelve, while still retained on the statute books, is practically a dead letter. It has not proved feasible or wise, either from the legal or from the educational standpoint, to carry the law into effect.
The fact that it has not been found practicable to attempt to curtail freedom of religious education in the schools has not affected the official policy of retaining the shrines in a special relationship to the state, accompanied by the correlative effort to establish at least on the formal, legal side, a non-religious status for State Shintō. Since 1900 officials of the government have been particularly emphatic in their insistence that the state ceremonials are not religious in nature.
The action of the national Department of Education in registering formal disapproval of religious instruction in the schools does not at all mean that a grounding of the pupils in the essentials of State Shintō is likewise debarred. On the other hand, it is expressly required. A systematic, nation-wide effort is being made by the authorities to utilize the schools, particularly those of elementary grade, as agencies for inculcating in the minds of the young definite ideas concerning the nature of Shintō deities and human obligations to them. In 1911 Mr. Komatsubara Eitarō, the Minister of Education under the second Katsura cabinet, issued orders that school teachers should conduct their pupils in a body to local shrines and there do obeisance before the altars. The original order appears to have been in the form of naikun, or “unofficial instructions,” to the various prefectural offices and was from there handed on to the schools. In translation the order reads:
“Concerning Attendance at Local Shrines on the Occasion of Festivals. The sentiment of reverence (keishin) is correlative with the feeling of respect for ancestors and is most important in establishing the foundations of national morality. Accordingly, on the occasions of the festivals of the local shrines of the districts where the schools are situated, the teachers must conduct the children to the shrines and give expression to the true spirit of reverence. Also, either before or after the visits to the shrines the teachers should give instruction to the children regarding reverence in order that they may be made to lay it deeply to heart. This is announced by government order.”7
The above order cannot be found on the records of the national Department of Education, at least in so far as they are open to public examination. It does appear, however, in the published ordinances of many of the prefectures, a fact which cannot be accounted for apart from instructions from the central government. Enforcement depends largely on the attitude of the local prefectural authorities and tends to be particularly rigid in the territorial areas where the presence of populations not thoroughly assimilated to the characteristic ideals of Japanese state education heightens the caution and conservatism of the ruling classes. This enforcement has been the occasion of no small amount of petty persecution on the part of school masters and local officials and has furnished the ground of considerable friction between some of the more progressive elements of the nation and certain of the representatives of the government. The order still stands.
We have reviewed the main steps in the legal separation of State Shintō from ordinary religious organizations. The most important of these took place concomitantly with Japan’s attainment of full internal autonomy at the close of the last century. It hardly seems mere coincidence that the elimination of foreign participation in the control of customs and judiciary, accompanied as it was by a heightened feeling of the necessity of presenting to the world evidence of the existence of a modernized and reliable government, together with the attempt to secularize education as conducted by religious foundations and, also, the perfecting of legal and administrative arrangements on the basis of which the non-religious character of Shintō could be asserted—it hardly seems mere coincidence that these various developments should have appeared in rapid succession within a period of less than nine months. Japan, advancing for the first time into full self-direction among the nations of the world, found it wise and expedient to maintain a written guaranty of religious freedom according to the Constitution and, at the same time, equally imperative to retain in a special relation to the state the great unifying and supporting influences of nationalistic Shintō. This historical necessity must be taken into careful consideration in estimating the validity of statements to the effect that modern Japan is without a state religion.
The steps which marked the legal differentiation of State Shintō from ordinary religious organizations have coincided with a governmental attention to the internal affairs of the state system which has decidedly promoted both its usefulness to the national life and its special status as compared with ordinary religious bodies.
The first step taken by a modern Japanese government to secure the internal reorganization of the shrines was the abolition of the hereditary status of the Shintō priesthood, a condition which had developed almost universally during the mediaeval period. The changes now effected brought the entire priesthood immediately under the control of the national, prefectural and local governments for appointment, support, discipline and dismissal. This completely destroyed the earlier arrangements under which shrine finances had been regarded as purely local affairs, with incomes, whether from lands, offerings, or other sources, treated as personal property by the priests. These readjustments came in 1871 and were manifestly indispensable to the creation of an efficiently centralized state religion.8
Further coordination was effected in the same year that saw the abolition of the hereditary status of the priesthood, by the establishing of a systematic gradation of all recognized shrines. This has been modified to a certain extent in the years that have intervened between the time of the initial reorganization and the present, but essentially it exists today as set up in 1871. As stated at an earlier point in the discussion,9 twelve different grades of shrines are distinguished in all, beginning with the Grand Imperial Shrine of Ise, which stands in a class by itself as expressive of the unique position of the Emperor and his ancestors in the national life, and passing down through the large government and prefectural shrines to those of the local districts and villages. Support and management are supplied from the central government, from prefecture, country, city, or village, depending on the grade of the shrine. One important result of this gradation has been to systematize the beliefs and practices of the people, in so far as they are expressed in Shintō, in the same imperialized pyramidal structure that is found in the political life of the nation, supporting the Emperor and the central government at the top and bringing the entire complex of local, prefectural and national interests into a mutually dependent and properly graded whole.10
Another step of importance was taken in 1875, when new rituals and ceremonies were drawn up and promulgated by the central government for use in the officially recognized shrines.11 The originals of these new rituals were found in the old norito of the Engi Shiki, modified somewhat to meet the new requirements. They were further revised in 1914. They furnish minute directions for shrine ceremonies, including the texts of prayers to be offered to the deities, and can be departed from only under special permit. These rituals of modern Shintō are taken up for more extended explanation at a later point in the discussion.
Ordinances have also been issued from time to time during the past thirty years carefully fixing the grades and duties of priests and placing them under the disciplinary regulations of ordinary civil officials of the state.12 Hereby the Shintō “ritualists” have been clearly differentiated from the priesthood and ministry of ordinary religious bodies.
We have before us the main outline of the institutional development of modern Shintō. It is a story of attempted adjustment on the part of the authorities of religious, educational and political issues that has probably created as many problems as it has solved. The statement of these problems is postponed until the close of the entire discussion. We pass on to the consideration of the actual functioning of the shrines, including their associated beliefs and ceremonies, in the national life.
1. Hōrei Zensho, 1882, under entry for May, 15; also idem., 1885, p. 177.
2. See below, p. 281.
3. Ariga, Nagao, Shintō Kokkyō Ron (“Shintō as a State Religion”) in Tetsugaku Zasshi (“Philosophical Magazine”), Vol. 25, No. 280 (June, 1910), p. 702.
4. Hōrei Zensho, 1900, Chokurei (Imperial Ordinance) Section, pp. 197–198; Kampō (Official Gazette), April 27, 1900. For a translation of the law see Holtom, The Political Philosophy of Modern Shintō, pp. 28–29.
5. Hōrei Zensho, 1913, Chokurei Section, pp. 255–6. For translation see Holtom, op. cit., pp. 29–30.
6. Order Number Twelve of the Department of Education, Aug. 3, 1899 (Meiji 8.3.32), translated from Genkō Tōkyō Fu Gakurei Ruisan, Ippan Hō no Bu (“Collected Contemporary School Regulations of Tōkyō Urban Prefecture, Section on General Matters”), p. 33.
7. Mombushō Kunrei Fu Reiki no Bu (“Regulations of the Department of Education, Section on Prefectural Ordinances”), Ch. 3, Ordinary Education, Primary Schools, p. 32(2).
8. Hōrei Zensho, 1871, p. 187; Dajōkan Order No. 234 (July 1).
9. See above, p. 10.
10. Hōrei Zensho, 1871, p. 187; Dajōkan Order No. 235. Also, Jinja Hōrei Ruisan, p. 341.
11. Hōrei Zens ho, 1875, pp. 827 ff.
12. Hōrei Zensho, 1891, p. 206. Genkō Jinja Hōrei Ruisan, p. 212. Holtom, Political Philosophy of Modern Shintō, pp. 32 ff. for translations.