The “Greatest Problem”: Religion and State Formation in Meiji Japan by Trent E. Maxey (review)

The “Greatest Problem”: Religion and State Formation in Meiji Japan. By Trent E. Maxey. Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge, Mass., 2014. xiv, 330 pages. $49.95.

This book takes the reader through the labyrinthine process of establishing what Trent Maxey calls a “grammar of religion” in nineteenth-century Japan. Most readers will find numerous new insights in the meticulous analysis presented in The “Greatest Problem.” From my own perspective, the book’s greatest achievement is that it liberates us from the myth of a conspiratorial plot on the part of “the Meiji government” to establish Shintō as the “state religion in disguise” of modern Japan. We have long known that things are not so simple, but it has not been easy to find a comprehensive and convincing account that offers an alternative perspective. That is exactly what Maxey offers in this book.

Maxey structures his narrative chronologically by highlighting five “separations,” occurring in 1868, 1872, 1882, 1889, and 1900 (p. 3). The year 1868 marked the start of a concerted effort to convert all Japanese to a nebulous Shintō teaching, in response to a perceived threat of mass Christian conversion that, many feared, might lead to full colonization or, at least, social collapse. Predictably, this wildly unrealistic scheme soon failed dismally. Within Japan, Buddhists rallied and lobbied among the new leaders to recognize the potential of their “religion” as a moral foundation for governance. Shintō leaders, meanwhile, embarrassed their dwindling number of supporters by failing to agree on the Shintō pantheon and doctrine. Beyond Japan, Western powers protested vehemently against the treatment of Christians in Japan. Western leaders and scholars urged members of the Iwakura mission to abandon their repression of Christianity and adopt a Western model of dealing with “religion,” either by establishing religious freedom or by privileging one state religion and tolerating others. In 1872, even before the mission’s return to Japan, shrine ritual was administratively separated from Shintō teaching, and at the same time the campaign to spread the “Great Teaching” among the people was opened up to Buddhists. This was the first step of a steady retreat on the part of the state from questions of faith and “religion.”

The “separations” of 1882, 1889, and 1900 mark stages on the way to what Maxey calls the Meiji state’s “religious settlement” (shūkyō shobun). In 1882–84, this settlement entailed measures to end the Great Teaching campaign and open the way toward a full legalization of Christianity (p. 171). The Constitution of 1889 formalized the government’s choice of a system of religious freedom, rather than a system based on a recognized state religion. Finally, the years toward 1900 were marked by an (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to apply a single administrative regime to all of Japan’s “religions”: Buddhism, Shintō sects, and Christianity. The effort to “legislatively equalize the status of divergent religions” (p. 228) in Japan proved too controversial. In contrast, the separation of Shintō shrines from “religion” as sites of nonreligious state ritual passed the newly established Diet without much debate.

The road toward a religious settlement was by no means straight. It involved many actors with disparate agendas; it took place in a political context marked by factional struggles and by the urgent need to renegotiate the unequal treaties with the Western powers; and it was constrained by the practical necessity to administer shrines, temples, and churches in a legally sound manner that did not alienate powerful groups. Maxey makes a heroic effort to give due weight to all these factors. In the process, he lays to rest any notions of a master plan skillfully imposed on the nation by a faceless elite.

While reality on the ground was chaotic, Maxey finds a logic in the process toward a religious settlement in the form of the gradual consolidation of the above-mentioned “grammar of religion.” This grammar took shape as the Western concept of “religion” found its own place in the political setting of Meiji Japan. Maxey does not define the nature of this grammar, but he...