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Facing the threat of Western imperialism, Japanese leaders in the Meiji period dedicated themselves to what Joseph Kitagawa once termed “renovation” and “restoration ”: renovating economic and political institutions while restoring the emperor , on paper at least, to his position as head of the body politic.1 They took steps to “open” Japan and promote “civilization and enlightenment” (bunmei kaika),2 all the while recognizing the dangers of rapid change. With an eye toward preventing social chaos, they formulated an ideology of the “Imperial Way” (kōdō) and reconfigured Shinto to unify the Japanese behind the emperor. In these ways they directed the process of nation building that later devolved into expansionist militarism. Simply put, from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the end of World War II in 1945, Japan modernized to resist imperialism and then militarized to pursue it. Okada Kōryū has divided Japanese religious history during these years into five periods. The first, 1868–1872, featured the advocacy of the “unity of rites and rule” (saisei itchi), the separation of Shinto and Buddhism (shinbutsu bunri), the establishment of the Department of Divinity (Jingikan),3 and shrine registration, all based on the policy of making Shinto the national creed (kokkyō). In the second period, 1872–1877, the Ministry of Religion (Kyōbushō) and the Great Teaching Promulgation Campaign (Taikyō Senpu Undō) attempted to consolidate Shinto and Buddhism behind a national edification program. During the third period, 1877–1912, government officials cemented the power of the imperial system and State Shinto, while ostensibly separating religion and politics. In the fourth period, 1912–1935, the state pressured authorized religions to foster “Japanese spirit,” eradicate “evil thought” such as socialism, cultivate Imperial-Way Buddhism, Useful Buddhism, 1868–1945 C H A P T E R O N E   USEFUL BUDDHISM, 1868–1945 pacify colonized areas, and eradicate subversive religious movements. The fifth period, 1937–1945, started two years after the end of the fourth period and centered on the system established by the Religious Organizations Law and the full mobilization of religions.4 I will devote the rest of this chapter to an examination of these developments, in the midst of which Japanese Zen earned the sobriquet “Imperial-Way Zen.” Early in Meiji Japan, government officials faced a daunting challenge. “During the Tokugawa period [1600–1867],” as Takashi Fujitani explains, “the common people had neither a strong sense of national identity nor a clear image of the emperor as the Japanese nation’s central symbol.”5 To rectify this, officials in the late 1860s and early 1870s transformed the emperor into a rallying point. They formulated a “national creed” (kokkyō) in terms of the Imperial Way. This moral and political philosophy represented the nation as a patriarchal family and the emperor as the national father who embodied a cultural essence that had been transmitted down through the ages in an unbroken lineage from the Shinto sun goddess Amaterasu. As a descendant of Amaterasu and other kami, if not a kami himself, the Meiji emperor would now reinstate the “unity of rites and rule” (saisei itchi) that ostensibly characterized early Japanese history. In response, his subjects would display reverence, gratitude, and loyalty. To provide institutional support for this emergent ideology, the Department of Divinity and its successor, the Ministry of Divinity, facilitated rituals for imperial ancestors and portrayed the emperor as a sacred national father.6 Their successor, the Ministry of Religion, propagated the Great Teaching (taikyō), which was encapsulated in the Three Standards of Instruction (sanjō no kyōsoku): (1) respect for the gods and love of country (keishin aikoku); (2) the principles of Heaven and the Way of humans (tenri jindō); (3) reverence for the emperor and obedience to the will of the court (kōjō hōtai).7 These and other constructs came to be woven into what Carol Gluck has called a “grammar of ideology,”8 and by the 1890s Japan possessed what can properly be called an imperial ideology, which would be reworked and embellished over the next five decades. In addition to its mythology, Shinto provided the architects of national identity with cultic centers—local, regional, and national shrines—that were deployed from the 1870s as “sites for the performance of state rites.”9 These rites were dusted off or in some cases invented, then made accessible to imperial subjects as the primary vehicle for emperor veneration. Shinto priests, reclassified as government officials on the public payroll, conducted the rites, expounded on the Imperial Way, and...

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