On the cutting room floor

This is the kind of stuff that I have to cut out of my thesis, because it's entirely tangential. I'll just leave it here instead.

-

Many parallels were drawn between patriotism and religion by Westerners in Japan. It is not always clear what “religion” means when it is used in this way. For example, one missionary wrote that “the war with China, 1894-1895, quickened the national consciousness and led to the exaltation of patriotism almost to a religion, under the name of 'Nihon Shugi,' whose most ardent advocates were Kimura Takatarō and Professors Motora and Inouye.” (Fisher 1908:55) Kimura indeed proposed to implement nihon shugi as a “national teaching” (国敎 kokkyō),[1] paralleling the suggestions of others to use Buddhism,[2] Confucianism,[3] or a Zen-Shinto-Confucian syncretism[4], but his philosophy had more in common with Byronic heroism than anyone else,[5] and this archetype was never called a “religion” in the West. Today, we would say that, using the contemporary wasei-eigo, there was a “Nihon Shugi boom” in Japan. If it had been a “religion”, even in the rhetorical sense, it would have had some staying power, but in fact Kimura's suggestions faded as quickly as they came.

Several years later, Basil Hall Chamberlain singled out “Japan-worship” and bushido as “the invention of a new religion”, but what he apparently meant by this is that the state was being run by intelligent citizens (“it not only governs, but aspires to lead in intellectual matters”), that the people were obedient to their head of state (“implicit obedience to [the emperor] as head of the army”), and that Japan had developed a national exceptionalism of the sort which rightfully belonged in the hearts of Europeans and Americans alone (“a corresponding belief that Japan is ... far superior to the common ruck of nations”). He compares this Japanese “religion” to the “pseudo-history” and “gospel” of the “fanatic” Rosseau. What Chamberlain really appears to be complaining about here is the lie of the state. He is watching a state being built, and feels “outraged” that the Japanese are being uncritically instructed in allegiance to their nation, using the same caliber of myths that have always been employed for such purposes. The word “religion” does not seem to have any meaning here other than a rhetorical device, and the point does not seem to have been pursued further by others.[6]

Although both were rhetorically compared to religion, neither nihon shugi nor bushido were ever actually subjected to interrogation by “objective religious scholars”. Perhaps it was recognized that to take these recently invented terms and single them out as Japan's “state religion” would stretch plausibility. Instead, the term “State Shinto”, although infrequently used in Japan, was given new life in the West in order to analyze the “religiousness” of the country's patriotic practices.

[1] Kimura Takatarō. 日本主義国敎論 Nihon shugi kokkyōron. 1899.
[2] Unshō 雲照. Dainihon kokkyōron 大日本国敎論. 1882
[3] Motoda Eifu 元田永孚. 国敎論 Kokkyōron. 1884
[4] Kawai Kiyomaru 川合清丸. 日本国教大道社設立主意. 1891
[5] Kikuchi Yuuki. “Byronism transformed into Japanism (Nihon-shugi): Kimura Takataro's interpretation of Byron”. 和洋女子大学英文学会誌 43.3 (2009). pp. 121-137.
[6] B.H. Chamerlain. "The Invention of a New Religion". 1918.