近代日本における宗教と社会活動
My concern is to understand what moved people to social action, in particular, in
nineteenth century Japan and how this can be located within a broader comparative
context. To address this question it is necessary to define the contours of the
intellectual topography during this period and I would argue that the exclusion of
‘religion’ has obscured the contours of this topography. The exclusion of religion as a
defining element obscures the motivations but also serves to strengthen the presence
of the so-called ‘West’ as the defining element in shaping modern Japan. complex
ways in which social movements arose.
The modern state and its relationship with religious groups and their exclusion
from public affairs is now being thought afresh. Amongst others Talal Asad has
questioned the universal definition of religion and secularism and shown the varieties
of secularism within the Western world.1 He has argued that ‘religion’, as it is
generally defined, is a modern Western invention, and so underlined the need to
rethink the religious-secular dichotomy. He argues that secularism is not just when
human life emancipates itself from religion but indeed it is a political strategy to build
a particular conception of the world. In the case of early modern Europe the project of
secularism was used to control the mobile poor, govern hostile sects and regulate
colonial expansion.2 I would like to take Talal Asad’s assertion as my starting point to
think about the varieties of secularism and religion in the context of Japan.
The long process through which modern rationality became the accepted idiom
of political discourse produced the view that the Japanese are not a religious people,
indeed religion was dismissed as largely irrelevant and became the preserve of
religious specialists. Culture became the defining element This view was accepted
despite a vast range of research that showed the pervasive influence of religious
groups in forming the political and social landscape of modern Japan. The large
followings of the established Buddhist sects as well as the growth of popular religions
at different times was largely ignored in the general explanations of Japanese history.
It is my contention that religion has been an integral part and shaped the political
discourse in complex ways. I take two examples to look for an answer to the question
of the shaping of the political discourse and the examining of secular. One the life of
Kitabatake Doryu to ask the question why did a Honganji monk work to establish a
people’s militia, study law and establish a law school and then go on to propagate
gender quality. And two, Kimura Shigeki 木村卯之 who sought to define Japan’s
identity in terms of culture and link this to a statist conception, that is the restoration
of the state would lead to a strong culture. These two very different conceptions
provide a way to understand the ways in which Japanese win the nineteenth and
twentieth century were defining the secular world.
Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion:Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity
and Islam, John Hopkins University Press, 1993.
2 Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam Modernity, Stanford
1
University Press, 2003, pp192.