Jinja at the Centre

Issue 277 of Shintō Shūkyō includes a research report entitled “Hiroike Chikurō’s “Shrine-Centrism” at the End of the Meiji Period”, by Hashimoto Tomitaro (I think that should probably be “Tomitarō”, but it is written without the macron in the English contents page of the journal).

“Shrine-Centrism” was the idea, pushed in the late Meiji and early Taishō eras (roughly 1900-1920), that jinja should be at the centre of regional communities, leading the improvement of local society. The priests should be good examples, and guide the local people into being better Japanese citizens. Unfortunately, there were not enough priests, and those there were were not always up to the job. Hiroikë was the professor in charge of Shinto and Shinto History at Jingū Kōgakkan, one of the main centres for educating priests, and so he was expected to take a leadership role in addressing this. He did.

His thoughts on this subject were known from a book published in 1915, entitled Jinja Veneration and Religion, and in the preface Hiroikë says that it is a version of lectures he gave in 1911, which had previously circulated in informal copies. The occasion for this research report was the discovery of one of those copies. As far as I can tell from the article, this discovery basically confirmed the claim in the preface — the book is expanded, with additional chapters, but the core appears to be the same as the lectures.

The point of interest is the content. The lectures start with an explanation of why it is necessary to improve the moral character of the people of Japan (oddly, people at the time do not seem to have shared the view of contemporary conservatives that everything was great in 1911), and then argue that ancestor veneration is central to Shinto. Next, they explain about local kami, and then argue that people should form their characters by looking up to the kami, particularly Amaterasu Ōmikami.

Thus far, this is conventional for the Shinto community, but the next bit is more unusual. Hiroikë seems to have argued that there were limits to how far non-religious Jinja Shinto could go in shaping people into the citizens that they should be, and that Sect Shinto should play that role. “Sect Shinto” is the standard English translation for “Kyōha Shintō (教派神道)”, which refers to the thirteen Shinto traditions that were recognised as religions by the Meiji/Taishō government. The report does not say exactly what Hiroikë suggested, but it does point out that he seems to have been the first academic to take Sect Shinto seriously.

This is interesting for two reasons. The first is that the thirteen traditions in Sect Shinto were (and are) quite different from one another. I find it hard to believe that they could have produced a consistent character. If this is what Hiroikë had in mind — securing diversity in Japan through a diversity of religious traditions — then it is very interesting, but without further detail I cannot say.

The other reason bears on the question of whether State Shinto was a national religion. This is further evidence that people in authority at the time genuinely thought that it was not, and thought that other religions were needed to supplement it precisely because it was not a religion.

The opening section of the report notes that previous research has shown that “Shrine-Centrism” failed to have much effect in society. That is an important reminder not to take programmatic statements, even from influential individuals, to reflect the actual situation in society.