Journal Special Issues: Japanese Religions and the Meiji Restoration: A Reconsideration
Publication Date
2018
Document Type
Other
Description
The end of the Heisei period on 30 April 2019 put into stark relief the ways in which history, past, and time have been defined in modern Japan. A new temporal paradigm emerged in Japan with the 1868 Meiji Restoration (Meiji Ishin 明治維新), bringing with it fundamental reformulations of many aspects of Japanese society. Religion was no exception. Scholars have dissected the relationship between the Meiji Restoration and Japanese religions through frameworks such as State Shintō, the nascent category of “religion” (shūkyō 宗教), millenarianism, and government-led initiatives including the “separation of kami and buddhas” (shinbutsu bunri神仏分離) and the Great Promulgation Campaign (Taikyō Senpu Undō 大教宣布運動). However, there are aspects of Japanese religions in the nineteenth century that have been overlooked because they do not readily fit or even conflict with these historiographical paradigms. Furthermore, although scholars have problematized the conception of 1868 as an explicit line of demarcation between the early modern and modern periods, the framework of the Meiji Restoration can at times function as a kind of teleological lens that climaxes in the mid-century regime change and the rise of Japan as a modern nation state. The received narratives of modernity do not always do justice to the complexity of the events leading up to and following 1868.
Source Publication
Journal of Religion in Japan 7, 3
Department
Comparative Humanities
Recommended Citation
Shields, James Mark, "Journal Special Issues: Japanese Religions and the Meiji Restoration: A Reconsideration" (2018). Other Faculty Research and Publications. 213.
https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/fac_pubs/213